The Many Faces of Coco Chanel

I am always amazed at how I can paint from a similar pattern with the same three faces at the same time and each face comes out just that little bit different.

This is especially true when I am painting Coco.  Everyone of her paintings are so different.

Viva la difference!

It is so much fun painting each of my ladies to see the personality emerge as soon as the eyes are painted.  In pencil form, they look the same but as soon as some color is added, things begin to change.  After 7 years of painting the Priscilla Mae "girls", it's still a thrill to see this metamorphosis.  

I love the differences now but that wasn't always true.  The first year of Priscilla Mae, I went to Gift Shows and retailers would put in their orders for the season and I'd go to back to the studio with 500 pillows to paint in two months.  Money was good but the fun of the business wasn't there.  Because the retailers ordered from brochures, they assumed and rightly so, that the "woman" they ordered would look exactly like the one in the brochure.  She was pretty close but I was not a factory.  I didn't enjoy the wholesale process like this.  Now my favorite retailers give me the leeway and what I do in return, is create a pillow that follows their color schemes and decor but the women don't have to be copies of each other.

The fun of my business is that each painting I do is unique and reflects my own choices.  I don't feel like a factory anymore.  I can't wait to get up each day to go to my studio to see what will emerge that day. Creativity unleashed.