I was lost. I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going. The old farmhouse I was looking for must have been completely obscured by the many trees surrounding the unfamiliar road I was on. The directions the owner of the house had emailed me were perfectly clear; she had even stated that it was hard to find, but with my far from perfect sense of direction, the task at hand seemed close to impossible. After giving up and turning around at the Bradford Store, a suggestion she made in the email, I finally found the curve of the hidden driveway I was supposed to turn on and with shaking hands, I pulled in.
I was dumbfounded at the glory of the farmhouse. It was straight out of a gushy romantic movie that I would guiltily watch with my girlfriends, sobbing over a bowl of popcorn as two lovers struggle to stay together. It was massive and white and just from the outside, I could tell that the house was full of life. Trees and flowers flooded the landscape of the backyard and seemed to pull me in, welcoming me and settling my nerves. I got out of the car and the artist named Elizabeth Bradford greeted me, suitably with a paintbrush in hand.
“I was just working in the studio,” she explained to me as she invited me in to a smaller shed-type building which was beautiful and painted white to match her home. In the room sat a gigantic canvas she was working on which looked very intimidating in its size, yet she had it already filled with colors and vague shapes. She had been awaiting my arrival and had made homemade popcorn and apple cider which she offered and I gladly accepted. She also offered for me to sit down, which I did, pulling up a stool next to her.
With introductions out of the way, she went on to ask me questions about myself, which I found funny because I was there to interview her. She asked me a lot of questions about school and my art class. She was shocked by the fact that my art teacher was bold enough to assign a project in which we had to get in touch with a local artist, schedule an interview with them, and then write a paper about it. A retired high school art teacher herself, Elizabeth found it hard to believe students would actually go through with such an intimidating task, but there I was. I had found her name on the website for the Cabarrus Arts Council which was a group of artists from my home county. Silly as it may be, I picked her name because it was my own: Elizabeth. I clicked it, expecting to go through a thousand links to eventually find an artist I would want to interview, and was immediately encaptured by the work she had displayed on her website.
I found that she was a painter and her preferred choice of media was acrylic on canvas, like me. Nature was the subject in most of her work. She has a strong belief in preserving the natural world, for she succeeds two generations of farmers. Her use of color was what drew me in to her work from the very start. Vivid hues seemed to erupt out of nowhere, sending my eyes on a frantic journey on which they had never been before. Each painting had a different mood to it and each one took me to a new destination. I immediately fell in love with her work and formed a great deal of respect for her as an artist. She showed me what she wanted her viewers to see: the beauty of the world around them. It was as though all of a sudden, I wanted to ditch domestic life as I knew it and live outside forever, and as a girl who loves her bed and a good warm shower, that was saying a great deal.
And there I was, sitting beside the artist I came to idolize. I asked her if I could record a few questions and with an encouraging response, pulled out a composition notebook and a trusted purple pen. Being my school’s yearbook editor, interviewing was something I loved to do. I loved picking people’s brains and finding inspiration within their words. I loved watching the way some people shift as they start to discover more about themselves after answering questions they had never given thought to before. Needless to say, I was overcome with excitement as I was given the opportunity to explore that experience with Elizabeth.
After asking many questions about her life, one thing she said struck a chord with me. She explained to me that her father did not want her to become an artist at all. He disagreed with art as a solid career choice for the same reason that so many other people do; it is just too unrealistic. The argument that artists make art and not money stuck out to me because it was so familiar to me. All I have ever wanted to do was to make art. When someone would ask me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I always wanted to respond with, “I don’t know. I just want to create.” So I found myself indentifying with Elizabeth when she told me that the reason she became an art teacher was because it was one of the careers she could think of in which she could simply spend every day of her life dedicated to making art.
Her work inspired me greatly, but Elizabeth inspired me more. When I told her I wanted to attend UNC Asheville and study art, she didn’t laugh and tell me, “Well, good luck finding a job!” Instead, she appeared to be genuinely excited for me as she looked at me and said, “I think that’s great. You know, from the moment I met you I knew you were an artist yourself. I’ve taught a lot of students, and you look like an artist. You have the enthusiasm.”
I found something through this experience that I had no idea I would have discovered when I first received the directions for the assignment, and that was the hope I needed to pursue a career that I loved. The interview with Elizabeth Bradford was one of the major driving factors of my choice to pick a career based on my passion instead of how much or how little money I could make. Seeing her home and how Elizabeth has surrounded herself by all the wonderful things she enjoys and the reflection of her happiness as a direct result taught me more than anything I could have learned from an art textbook. Through this experience, I have developed this driving passion to encourage others to make art or to do what they love. After the interview, I became Co-President of the National Arts Honors Society and I found that all I wanted to do was to spend every Thursday afternoon encouraging others to get as excited about art as I was. I want to continue to try and convince everyone I meet to do what they love. I especially want to focus on the promotion of creating art, because I believe there is nothing more productive or rewarding in the world than creation.
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