Judy Chapel is experiencing a bit of déja vu.
It started when she became an artist. All the joy she found in painting and drawing as a kid came flooding back to her. Art was what she did to have fun with her friends and family. It was what she took classes in when she was a teenager in Ohio. And it was what was missing from her life for many years.
For most of her adult life, Chapel was a teacher. Though she loved art as a child, it never crossed her mind to become a commercial artist.
“Basically, my parents—and everybody’s parents—would discourage it,” she said. “I knew you had to get a job. Being an artist was too frivolous.”
So she pursued teaching. She attended Kent State University. When she graduated, she took a job in the only school that would hire her and her two friends. They all moved to Santa Maria together, planning to quickly rent an apartment. They ended up living for several weeks at the Santa Maria Inn. Now, 35 years later, Chapel will be spending time at that inn again—but this time, she’ll be there as an artist in a one-woman show.
Chapel has won several awards, including Best of Show in the San Luis Obispo Art Center’s Brushstrokes 2000 show. She’s been juried into two Central Coast Watercolor Society’s Aquarius shows. The accolades have been validating, but the Santa Maria Inn show seemed to her like coming full circle.
“It’s nice to be able to go back,” she said.
Chapel focused on art after retiring from teaching. She pursued art classes, and when she took a Bob Burridge class on art marketing, she realized she not only liked to paint, but liked the commercial aspect of art as well.
She said teachers like Burridge and John Barnard have inspired her work and her development as an artist.
“Those two use lots of color, and they are very free artists,” she said. “They always say, ‘Try something new.’”
Even though she’s shown and sold her work at several solo shows around the Central Coast and dual shows at the Call Booth Gallery in Paso Robles and the Village Art Gallery in Arroyo Grande, it’s the emotional side that appeals to her most. Chapel said creating her work is relaxing and almost like meditation for her.
“When I go to my studio to paint, I feel relaxed, and I tell myself I should do this more often because of the way I feel,” she explained.
She favors florals and monarch butterflies for her paintings. Chapel enjoys working in watercolor, collage, mixed media, and acrylics, which she creates with bright, bold, primary colors and lots of green.
“I guess it’s because of my love of nature and living by the beach,” she said.
The creative process she employs while developing a work of art stands in sharp contrast to her work as a teacher, which left little room for freedom.
“As a teacher, you are always kind of structured,” she said. “Now I’m not really structured at all.”
That lack of rigid boundaries is apparent in her style—though she doesn’t swear allegiance to any particular category or label. She prefers to paint whatever strikes her fancy.
“Someone came into my house and looked at my paintings and said, ‘You certainly are an eclectic artist,’” she said. “And I think I like that, being an eclectic artist.”
Arts Editor Shelly Cone is an eclectic writer. Contact her at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 2, 2009.