Today we’d like to introduce you to Michelle Solberg.
Michelle, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I have always loved art since I was a kid; I was always drawing and coloring, especially during vacations; I used to stay stayed until 3 am sketching. One of my first contacts with art was with my grandfather who used to paint beautiful landscapes. I studied marketing as a career where I thought I could develop all my habilitates and skills. On those times I thought that even I loved art, it was more like a hobby. During my 20’s, I started taking painting classes on several workshops. The years passed and I was getting depressed because I didn’t feel complete in any of the jobs that I was hired. So that was the moment that I realized that art was really what I wanted to do during my whole life. So I decided to take it seriously and started to take more professional art classes. At the beginning of my career as an artist, I was really focused on human figures, but on the other hand, I have always been an animal lover; especially dogs, I have always owned at least one dog since I was 7th.
I feel a special connection with them. I have learned a lot about spirituality and real love from my pets. I said this cause I had some very tough years that now I realize that I couldn’t handle without their emotional support. So, in those years, I owned two golden retrievers and a white and brown cocker spaniel, they started crossing the rainbow to the dog,s heaven and it hurt me so much that I started painting them; suddenly during the COVID lockdown, I decided to turn my style and focus almost 100% on painting dogs, cats and other animals as a way to honor them, too. Omni I ate that we need to respect them not only as living beings, as very spiritual and evolution as beings that they know how to love without judgments. On the past years, I have been invited to show my work every November in the Month of the Jaguar, One of my goals with my work, it is not only doing and living from what I love to do, it is to help and work with people who wants to help animals, as dog shelters, animal conserva y organizations, etc.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I don’t know how smooth or hard it has been my journey compared to other artists. I think that changing your lifestyle to start a business is always really hard. But in my case, I think it’s being harder in the way that I didn’t grew up in a family of professional artists, so I didn’t have any contacts in the art world, so that makes it really hard in the way you can get a place in a serious gallery, and during the way sometimes you can meet people that would try to take some advantage of this vulnerability. At the beginning, my family was not very happy about my decision, I was sometimes criticized by them in a very meaningful way. But now, I think they were just really scared of my decision because nowadays they recognize me as an artist and support me.
And the other thing that I think happens to the majority of artists it’s envy. But at the same time, that envy is good because it is telling you that you are going into the right pad, even though your colleagues are trying to imitate you, copying your ideas, giving cheaper prices, etc. Because at the end if you are doing art besides being recognized and focusing on a goal that goes beyond being recognized and working for you and for helping others, none of the above matters.
So, at the end, I would answer that all of these words tang I wrote, I wouldn’t mention them as a hard way, I would say it is part of the knowledge that life gives so we can complete and reach our mission in this journey.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My work is based on painting (oil and acrylic on canvas). Realistic dogs, cats and other animals with a pop and co temporary style, based on colorful backgrounds filled some of them with dots and others with geometric figures, looking to provoke a visual game on the eyes of the audience. I am known more because I am a dog lover, which you can see reflected in my work. I don’t like to compare my work with other artists as a sign of respect for all of us, but I think the answer is the effort, the quality that I put in my work, the expression on the eyes of the animal that I paint, I try to reflect their souls on the canvas, and the mission that I want to communicate and accomplish with my art.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
The quality of my work and the details that I paint on the animal. You, as an artist, can paint a dog in 5 hours or in a week, it depends on how far you want to go in your career. I am a perfectionist so I think if you want to go far and big, you have to. Do stunning and amazing things. Maybe your way is gonna be full of struggles, or you slower but at the end, I think it is gonna be much more worthy.
Pricing:
- 80 usd digital
- 200 usd pop style as start depending on the size of the canvas
- 500 usd realistic style as start depending on the size of the canvas
Contact Info:
- Website: www.solbergarts.com
- Instagram: @solbergarts
- Facebook: @solbergarts
- Twitter: @solbergarts
Image Credits
Beni Lucky the Dalmata Koby purple golden retriever Tobias Golden Retriever with hat Balam the Jaguar Sizzles the Cat Rulo
