A Visitation with Crystal Despain

Segullah’s journal has the pleasure to highlight the works of one of our 2019 Visual Art Contest winners, Crystal Despain. Crystal’s vibrant and shimmering painting “Visitation” stunned us with its luminosity, implied action and technical skill. Here’s our conversation with Crystal about being an artist and a Segullah sister.

Segullah: Welcome, Crystal! It’s an honor to get better acquainted with you! Let’s start out with some basics. Where are you from? And tell us some about your family.

Crystal: I’m a 5th generation Coloradan, and – had I spent more than two weeks in the Early Education Program in college – I would have also been a 5th generation teacher like all three of my sisters. I’m the odd duck. I would say I was raised to be smart, respectful, hardworking and nurturing. I try to live up to it. Except on Thursdays. I’m not great on Thursdays.

Segullah: Fair warning. What was growing up like for you?

My grandparents taught me to be spunky. Or rather, they encouraged it. My childhood was creative, wonderfully loving, and carried high expectations. I was lucky to live in a small-ish town where summers were spent on bikes and in lakes. My family hiked and camped regularly. My parents put a lot of effort into making sure we were raised in the sun.

Segullah: I love that your grandparents encouraged your spunkiness! This sounds like a pretty ideal childhood – assuming you used sunscreen.

Did you know early on that you wanted to be a visual artist?

Crystal: My parents always encouraged me in the arts. They weren’t sure if I would ultimately focus on art, oboe, or writing. I on the other hand thought arguing for money sounded like a good plan and wanted to be a lawyer.

My parents gave me part of the basement for my first studio in my senior year of high school when I started thinking about art as a future. I used to spend hours down there trying to learn how to paint glass and lace with the Winsor Newton watercolors my mother bought me. She had been a good artist before she set it aside for other passions.

I attended BYU-I (Ricks at the time) for a few semesters and transferred home to finish my degree at UNC in Greeley. I also spent a semester teaching English in north western China.

Segullah: THAT sounds like an exciting adventure! When did you decide on visual arts as a profession?

Crystal: My professional education really began in earnest after I had my first four children. They came within 5 really crazy years. I put away my paints for months, even years at a time. My husband would be the one to drag my paints out for me. He knew I needed them.

Once my twins were old enough and we could afford it, we hired a part time babysitter so I could get some time to create. It helped me feel like myself, but I would have a panic attack at the idea of making it a serious business.

Segullah: That kind of support is invaluable!

Crystal: My husband talked me into doing a big project one year to bridge the gap between needing to paint and not feeling confident enough to charge money.

Segullah: What a guy! What was the project?

Crystal: I spent one year giving away a free painting each week, documenting the process and unveiling my newest piece on a blog. My inspiration came from an influx of letters and photos that hopeful followers would send me. It gave me a great deal of confidence. The website is 52weeksoffreeart.com.

Segullah: I hope all our readers check that out! This is such a creative and communal way to engage with art and an audience. Congratulations on that!

Crystal: Thanks. My first professional, full time artist mentor was Keith Bond. I spent four months learning to paint with oils, and outdoors. Those were two things I had never done before, and I was pretty terrible at both. Despite that, he believed in me, so I believed in me… some. Everyone I was related to believed in me. But to have someone who was out doing incredible work in a field where I felt like a total imposter be impressed with my work – that was big!

Next was a line of workshop instructors that I roped into mentoring me at a distance. Casey Childs, Joseph Lorusso. I’ve also taken lessons from Dan Wilson. I send them images and ask for feedback. I paint with Casey Childs and Howard Lyon whenever I make the trip west. I also have a supportive network of women artists that I adore and exchange ideas with.

I’ve also been incredibly blessed to have recently been pulled under the wings of a truly remarkable group of Colorado artists.

Segullah: Sounds like you both fell into and created a tribe for yourself.

Crystal: I think that some people naturally have total confidence that they know where they are going. I didn’t have that. It took years of being welcomed into the company of really notable artists to realize that they were my people, and I had a place with them. Even if my work wasn’t as developed, at some point a flip just switched. I stopped worrying about if I would make it, and just got to work. That’s still my plan, by the way: “don’t worry about it, and go to work”.

Segullah: Technically speaking, how do you infuse life and glow into skin tones, create atmosphere in your images, discover a satisfying balance between strict realism and lively energy in your work?

Crystal: I work so hard on that very thing, and I have so far to go. I can tell you that there is something very powerful about the space between. Incredible effort and focus goes into creating something that is technically sound, and representational artwork has to be technically sound to speak clearly. But, in the process of painting you also have to let go just the right amount. I think of it as reaching out with my intention. I’m working hard in the peripheral of my focus to be true to form while making space for intuitional flow, plus sort of throwing out to the universe or straight up praying that I’ll somehow manage to do something I want to do but don’t know how to do. Somewhere in the fuzzy cross section of intention and intuition, madness and calm is a happy little spark. That’s what I work at finding.

Segullah: What was your first sale?

Crystal: My Grandmother commissioned me to make custom stationery for her when I was in high school. I got fired when I stopped putting enough effort into it. That was a good lesson. Grandma never bought what she didn’t think was good enough. She’s fantastic.

Segullah: How do you manage the creativity and process of producing art with the business end of the being an artist?

Crystal: I have mostly avoided the business aspect which I am currently learning to rectify. Casey Childs always says “be so good they can’t ignore you.” I’m working so hard on that, but I also have recognized that for me I tend to hide behind education. Reaching towards my full potential means I need to master business, and I can’t keep waiting to be “good enough”.

Social media is such a good, creative tool for marketing. I have some interesting things coming that should help increase my reach and also give more value to the folks who follow my journey. Art business is really all one big experiment when you believe there are many paths to success. I’ll let you know how many eye brows I lose in the process. I expect at least a few things to go up in smoke along the way.

Ultimately art is about connection, and I want to add value to the lives of the people who see, sell or buy my work.

Segullah: On your website you include stories paired with some of your paintings and a link to a blog. Your writing is gorgeous, too. How do you keep that gift and talent vibrant while your focus appears to be on your visual creativity and productivity?

Crystal: So that really came crashing down on my lap. I loved to write in high school, knew I was good at it, but I didn’t realize the power that comes with being able to weave language. About a year ago I was dealing with a very toxic person. Through an agonizing few months I learned just how impressionable and given to other people’s opinions I was… even to a person with a badly distorted take on reality. At one point I just looked at the situation in a new light, saw the absurdity of it all, and sat down to write. It was kind of a revelation to me that I could still write, and that I was funny (well, I think I’m funny). My blog exists because I could use therapy, but don’t want to put the time or money into it… so I write. And I am very real. And even say an occasional, well placed swear word to make my Grandmother proud and my Dad and children horrified.

Segullah: What are the biggest challenges you face in juggling your responsibilities, time, and talents?

Crystal: The voice in my head that tells me I am dropping balls. More like dropping planets. “If you drop that planet/ball, civilizations will end.” I have to remind myself it’s just a ball. I have a couple things I know I can’t mess up, and I’m smart enough to keep them in my pocket. I’ll only juggle things that bounce back. Katrina Berg (one of my smart-girl art-queen crushes) has a great podcast that talks about living at 85%. Gold. (The Candy Colored Podcast episode 24)

Segullah: What’s your own family like?

Crystal: I met my husband for the first time when I was 14. I was at my very first church dance, and he was standing by the drinking fountain with his curly ‘fro and bright blue eyes.

We got really acquainted for the first time fall semester of my sophomore year of college. We got married that April. We were essentially friends who realized one very surprising day that we were meant for eternity.

My husband is very ambitious, always thinking, always loving. His brain goes 1000% faster than mine. We are very much partners in raising the kids and taking care of the house. It’s easier to share roles now that I don’t have nursing babies and he doesn’t have to work crazy hours to support the baby influx.

Our kids are awesome. They are all in full time school for the first time. We have 5 boys (15, 13, 11, 11 ,6). They are really better humans than I can take credit for. They are super cute, and I would say they look like homeless J Crew models. Bathing the younger kids isn’t a juggling ball we just dropped and picked up again. It was dropped last Thursday and rolled under a bush. It’s fine.

I try to encourage all of the boys in art – just to stay well balanced if nothing else. All of them have great potential for art if they develop a passion for it. We keep our art cupboard stocked. I always try to buy the most beautiful books and hang original artwork of different styles around the house (including my kid’s own art) framed right up next to my other prized pieces.

To be honest they probably take it for granted. It’s just been normal to have a Mom who gets to paint with famous art friends, and for them to see themselves hanging in paintings at shows. In fact, they probably find it odd that other adults would find me interesting enough for an interview. It is a little surprising.

Segullah: Do you paint at home?

Crystal: My current studio is not in the home. I work downtown in the same building as my husband. It helps my productivity to drop the kids off at school, go to work, and stay there until school’s out. It also helps the family realize that Mom isn’t at home to pick up the slack with housework during the day.

Segullah: I loved “Visitation” – the image that earned you a prize in Segullah’s 2019 annual contest. Can you share a bit about the process of creating that image and what you were trying to capture?

Crystal: Thank you so much. I usually have a blurry, uncommitted image in my head. Sometime more of the feeling or any number of feelings that I may want to express paired with a general visual target.

In the case of “Visitation” I was actually working up to a piece about the 10 virgins. I felt like 10 was a lot to tackle so I grabbed just a few amazing models who let me take them out in public, dress them in bedsheets held together with chip bag clips and safety pins and ask them to act completely natural. A bag of feathers came into play, and we took about a million pictures. Most of the time it was all pretty funny. Every once in a while everything would come together, and I would get a really great moment on film. I actually had several to choose from. I followed where the pictures led me.

Segullah: It looks like much of your work is painted in Colorado. How do your surroundings impact the content and style of art you create? What other areas of the world would you like to visit to paint in their settings?

Crystal: Oh, I am such a travel junkie. I’m pretty hard core too. I’ve been in a full blown sandstorm on the Gobi desert; followed complete strangers through Moroccan Medinas late at night; narrowly avoided an armed bus ambush in El Salvador; and have thrown up on every single road in Honduras. I’m dying to paint in villages… anywhere. Two of my favorite places to visit were a Muslim village near Pakistan, and a Tibetan monastery. Those are the kinds of places I want to paint. I’ll happily settle for anywhere with the right company. I think that the connections that I make with people that I can barely communicate with, who on paper I have so little in common with, make me a better artist. They have taught me to really see people and given me a desire to use my art to bring people together.

Segullah: What are the strength and limits of using source photographs? If you take the photos that you intend to turn into paintings, do you try to compose your compositions in the photo or just take a snapshot and later craft the composition after seeing what you’ve got to work with?

Crystal: Great questions. If you work only from photographs, you are learning to see subjects through the subtle distortions of the camera. Working from life is a bear when you are used to working from a photo. Artists who learn from life recognize those distortions and harvest only relevant information from photo references. So to answer your questions, I practice from life, and often work from photographs on my larger studio pieces.

Segullah: If you have ever created a series based on one topic or theme, what was it and how was that process for you?

Crystal: Sometimes a series will informally develop based on a group of good photos from a particular shoot, or a topic that has been pressed into my conscience. Last year I painted a couple pictures that grew into symbols of my struggles with postpartum depression. This year I have had the subject of women of power and the feminine divine on my heart. I’m excited about a few pieces in particular destined (hopefully) for shows this spring.

Segullah: What captures your imagination most when deciding on what to paint?

Crystal: Often times it’s a merger of ideas I have been thinking about on an emotional line that couple with technical objectives I am working on. For example, there may be something skill-based that I am trying to learn by studying other artist’s work. While I am studying these images, I am often inspired by my own subject matter and get a general idea from the mixture. Things evolve from there. I try to be inspired by as many artists and types of artwork that I can in order to keep my voice my own. It is dangerous to the creative mind to idolize or identify too closely with one or two artists, exceptional as they may be.

Segullah: Have you done much non-representational work? Abstracts or color studies or whatever? What (if anything) appeals to you about that?

Crystal: I actually love big abstract pieces. I paint them but only for myself, for the big empty walls that need life, but nothing too distracting from the other artwork. I love a good balance of abstract and classical artwork in a home. I’m a design nerd all the way.

Segullah: Besides creating art, what other activities and interests fill your hours?

Crystal: I just joined a pickle ball group. It’s not tennis, but these days it’s as close as I get. It’s a lot of fun. Traveling, movie night with my family, and eating food I didn’t cook also rank among my favorite things to do.

Segullah: What are some of your favorite books? (Segullah readers tend to be voracious readers and are always hunting for good recommendations!)

Crystal: Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis. She’s fierce. I love her. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan was the most gorgeously written book I’ve read in a long time. It was like a painting by the French artist Bouguereau covered in chocolate chip cookie dough. That good!

I’m currently reading The Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes. My all-time favorite book is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, but I can’t remember much of it. It’s time to read it again.

Also, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. We give out copies of this book like cupcakes. We are KonMari evangelists.

Segullah: Thanks for sharing so much of yourself with us, Crystal. Good luck on all your creative adventures!