LIBERTY FEATURE

EASEL ON STRIBLING

How the U.S. Naval Academy shaped an artist

by Courtney Stringfellow

She had just been processed out of the Navy when Hurricane Irma flooded her growing family’s home in Arlington. Months later, crammed in one upstairs bedroom with her husband and daughter, she realized she couldn’t run from it anymore: Kristin Cronic was meant to be an artist.

“When the panic attacks started waking me up at night, I started to paint again, and that was when I realized this has kind of been enough. I need to do this,” Cronic said. “And so I painted an entire body of work during that time, with everyone living upstairs, and doing my job, being a new mom, and pregnant, because it was making me happy.”

Cronic immersed herself in art throughout her childhood. Being an only child, painting was a solitary activity she could appreciate. Her aunt was an artist who also had a day job, and her life served as a realistic example of the level of freedom Cronic could expect as a future artist.

Cronic carried that love with her through high school, taking every art class Episcopal School of Jacksonville offered. It is in those halls that she met who would become another influential figure: Vietnam Marine Veteran Richard Chamblin.

“I remember that being a pretty pivotal moment, because I could see that he also did other things with his life and was an artist. And so it really empowered me to pursue all of the dreams I had, which was not just art, even though that was a huge part of who I was,” Cronic recalled.

Growing up in Florida, she automatically considered attending the University of Florida, Florida State University and other schools in the region, but none of them captured her attention. She remembered a middle school trip to the Chesapeake Bay area from years prior, which is when she first noticed the United States Naval Academy (USNA). One of her school counselors recommended she seriously consider applying.

“And then I went up for a recruiting trip for swimming, and I fell in love. I loved the structure, I loved the fact that it was just like really great education, and I wanted the adventure and the opportunity to lead. And just everything that it offered, I was really drawn to,” Cronic said. “So I was looking at other art schools at the time, but, honestly, once you get accepted to something like that, ‘No’ is not an answer.”

Cronic chose USNA over art school, knowing she could always develop those skills later in life, but she didn’t leave her passion for art behind. She kept a sketchbook during Plebe Summer—the rigorous two month training program incoming freshmen (aka plebes) must endure on their journeys to becoming midshipmen. In the weeks that she prepared for this next chapter of her life, she discovered Pete Souza, the photojournalist who would later become the chief official White House photographer for former President Barack Obama.

“Back then, I found [Souza’s] photographs of Plebe Summer in a book, and they were so raw and so honest, and this was before social media, so it was really the only thing I had to mentally prepare. I had no military in my family, and I really didn’t know what to expect,” Cronic said. “I was able to look at something that was the art of somebody else, and it really helped me prepare. And so I kind of made this promise to myself that one day I would tell the story the way I would, which is through painting.”

Throughout those next four years, 2007-2011, Cronic would take mental notes of her experiences at the academy—such as replacing the dixie cup cover at the top of the greased Herndon Monument—and reproduce them on paper when she could. Long days stood between Cronic and her sketchbook, but she found her break during her third year in the form of a forgotten studio on campus.

“You had to walk up this spiral staircase and this turret, and it was at the top of this tower, and I had to track down the keys; no one had been in it for years. So I got to open it up, and we had a little art club, and a girl from out in town came and taught us,” Cronic said.

She and a group of four or five others would meet once or twice every week or so to learn new art skills and take a break from their everyday lives as midshipmen. It wasn’t much, but it kept the fire burning until graduation. Then in 2011, two weeks after Cronic was commissioned into the Navy, she married her best friend: Caleb Cronic. Then came the hard work.

“Being new on a ship is just this firehose, and it’s intense, and my husband was my very best friend. We met the very first day of Plebe Summer, and we spent every single day together for four years, and so all of a sudden we were on two different ships going in different directions, and it like broke me,” Cronic said.

What did she do to cope during their first tours? In between deployments, when her husband was at sea and she had what seemed to be an infinite amount of time to conquer alone, she picked up her paintbrush. Years of memories flooded canvases for days on end until she left for the sea again. It must have worked: when she was on the ship, she gave it her all, and because of that, she was able to earn a qualification early.

Her second tour saw a move from Norfolk, Va., to Cronic’s hometown of Jacksonville, Fla., and steady hours (typically 8 a.m.-5 p.m.) when she wasn’t deployed. This allowed her time to truly develop her art skills when she wasn’t on duty as a surface warfare officer.

“My husband was gone the majority of that tour, and so I found an artist in Jacksonville who had retired as a professor, and I started just studying in his studio at night,” Cronic said. “I kind of attribute that year to the most significant growth in my art, because it was like one-on-one or one-on-two and immediate feedback, and I was painting like two to three paintings a week on top of my job.”

That professor was Paul Ladnier, and Cronic worked with him on and off for about a year and a half until she was comfortable branching off. Over the next couple of years, she switched to short duty and became an engineering duty officer. She and her husband started planning out their future in more detail: he would separate, she would stay in for 20 years, they would eventually have children, they would move up to Boston and she could finally go to MIT (a dream she had since she was 19), and she could continue painting at night. And then she got pregnant with their daughter.

“As soon as I had my daughter, everything changed. And about two weeks after she was born, I was like, ‘This is not the plan for me.’ And so I resigned the day I got back from maternity leave,” Cronic said. “I realized I couldn’t do everything, and I obviously wasn’t going to stop being a mom, and I definitely wasn’t going to stop painting, and it was just that the military wasn’t the lifestyle that I really wanted, and moving all around, and all those things. And I realized that the more I was running from painting, the more I needed to have it in my life.”

After resigning in January of 2017, she rejected MIT’s verbal admission offer, obtained a civilian job in sales, and focused on her growing family. Caleb also left the Navy that year—as the couple had previously planned— and he was fully processed out in July.

While navigating their transition back to civilian life as individuals and as a family, their life was disrupted once more. The weekend after Kristin was processed out—and six weeks pregnant with their second child—Hurricane Irma flooded her family’s home along Pottsburg Creek, and everything seemed to fall apart.

“We were both dealing with this huge identity crisis from, you know, the only thing we had known for 10 years was the military, and all of a sudden our house was destroyed, and it was dealing with that. I didn’t really thrive in my sales job, and I was pregnant, so there’s hormones,” Cronic said. “And so during that time, I kind of hit rock bottom, and I would honestly say between all of those things, the transition was the hardest part, because it was like I didn’t know who I was outside of the uniform, and I think a lot of people can relate to that feeling, and there’s words I don’t know, there’s this culture that has existed parallel to me that I don’t know, and I’m not in it.”

Two months after Irma, with her family still undergoing renovations and living upstairs, panic attacks started waking her up at night. So Cronic did the only thing that never failed to lift her spirits: she painted. By the time she had her son in May 2018, she was ready to embrace her future as a full-time artist.

Money was tight, as her family primarily lived off of one income. She started painting home portraits for realtors. Over the next two years, as she stepped into her new lifelong career, she booked a couple of solo shows and made a body of work for Twisted Compass in Fruit Cove. She also worked on separating and further establishing the military side of her art: Easel on Stribling (aptly named after the main brick pathway that runs through the heart of USNA to Bancroft Hall).

"I think [Stribling is] this really cool thread that connects generations of people, but everyone has their own flavor. So I'm trying to capture these universal moments that can tie us together, "Cronic said. “I’m hoping that when people see the paintings, they can talk about their experience, and if it wasn’t a good one to work through that. Because it was a very formative time in life—we’re all like 18-22, maybe a little older—and it’s an interesting way to come of age, and it’s important to talk about it. So I hope that this can facilitate some of these conversations, but also to remember some of the good times, too.”

For those who are transitioning back to civilian life, having to discover what’s next can be intimidating, and starting a new business is no different. According to Cronic, it’s important to be passionate about whatever industry you’re considering entering. It will likely take a couple of years before you get back on your feet, depending on how far away that dream is from your military background.

“Have a plan. For me it was always, ‘Okay, I can keep doing this for six more months, and if I get to the end of six months and it hasn’t brought in this amount of dollars, I need to get a job,’” Cronic said.

It’s also important to build up as much savings as possible before you dive in (Cronic recommends 3-6 months), connect with others in the industry, and find mentors to guide you. As Onward to Opportunity’s Patty Piazza told Liberty Life, you don’t have to navigate life after service alone; there is a network of people and organizations who want to help you thrive.

To connect with Cronic or to explore her gallery and USNA-inspired gifts, visit EaselOnStribling.com.