“I just loved to draw, but as I grew up I felt that making a living was more important. I’m sure a lot of people go through this,” Jeanne recalls. She went on to major in business at college, although she found herself taking art electives at every opportunity. Eventually she became a controller for Marriott, and worked for quite some time in the hospitality business. “But you know,” she says with a smile, “it never gets out of your system. Art is always a part of you if you really love it.”
When Jeanne’s job took her to El Paso in 1985, she felt the need to further explore the basis of her true passion: art. She quit her job and began studying at the University of Texas at El Paso. “That’s when I realized that painting could never be a hobby for me. It had to be my life because it took so much of me and my mind. It could not be part-time for me.”
Struggling to carve out her artistic niche, she returned to the hotel management industry until about six years ago. Over lunch with local interior designer, Fran Timbrook, Jeanne’s career in art gathered its wings. “I asked Fran if she thought there was a market in El Paso, because I was seeing a lot of this faux finishing and trompe l’oeil, and Fran said, ‘Definitely!’” Inspired, Jeanne began her art training again. “I went to Denver and San Antonio a few times to study. Finally, it seemed like maybe it was an avenue. It wasn’t fine art, but it was something I could be creative with and use my business background.”
Two years later, Jeanne took the leap and decided to make the career change from hospitality worker to full-time artist. “I decided if I didn’t do it then, I would never be able to do it. I was in my forties and thought it was time. Was I going to wait until I was sixty-five? With the physical demands of the work, I had to make the move.” A year after making that decision, Jeanne is now blissfully busy all of the time. Her business includes creating mostly residential works of art. Glazing, Venetian plaster, trompe l’oeil, murals, furniture, cabinets, and children’s rooms are a few notches on her belt of expertise. Her resume also includes a mural created for the First Step Clinic in Las Cruces as a part of a Junior League of Las Cruces charity project. She even inspired her husband to change careers. Smiling she says, “Well, he was in the carwash business for years. Now he’s just completed a school for concrete finishes.”
For Jeanne, the biggest surprise about her business is the fact that the job is so much more than painting. “It’s wonderful to have one-on-one conversations with people and to see them in their homes where they’re most comfortable. Meeting with clients, working samples, using my creative process, planning and organizing...there’s a lot more to it than I expected.”
In the future Jeanne would like to try her hand at gallery work and is hoping to set aside a day a month to begin exploring the blank canvas again. Yet, she realizes just how lucky she is to have her dream job. “I get to explore many different parts of art, whereas maybe I wouldn’t if I were on my own. I would just be struggling to find this certain...thing. And I don’t know that I would have been able to go on and paint fine art, or to get into that world. That’s a huge transition, and trying to make a living is, I assume, difficult.”
For now, the physical labor of carrying and climbing up and down ladders, troweling walls and sanding wood takes the place of a quieter and less physical form of studio work. The large spaces that are Jeanne’s “canvases” are, in a way, freeing for her, and always have been. “I’m not afraid to work big. Even when I was studying art my canvases were 6x8 feet. My natural want is to work big and I work pretty fast; it gives me room to move, which I enjoy a lot. It frees me and helps to expand my vision.”
Jeanne’s grand visions won’t disappear any time soon. “This is a whole new world for me,” Jeanne laughs, “and I look forward to every project.”
After years of seeking out an existence where her passion pays the bills, Jeanne Dellamarco has proven that it’s never too late to live out dreams.
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