BY LIZZIE EMMONS
PHOTOS BY MADDIE STEELE

Whether you consider yourself an artist or not, we are all born with a human desire to make and consume art. If you give children space to draw, or to dance to their favorite songs, or to act out imaginative scenes during playtime, you’ll see how art making naturally and unabashedly flows out of them. But as time goes by, children turn into self-conscious and often less creative teenagers, who then turn into busy adults with busy lives who don’t see making art as a useful way to spend time or a viable way to make a living.

Samantha Wood remembers the transition that many of us experience from being an artistic child to being a busy adult. “When I learned about Vincent Van Gogh in third grade, I remember thinking that if I could have any job in the world, I would be a painter. But as I got older, it didn’t seem like a valid career option,” she said as she remembered her artistic spirit being dimmed as she grew up.

It took Samantha years to know what career she wanted. Nothing that she studied the first few years of college seemed to be the right fit, and in the back of her mind, she knew that the only subject she ever had a passion for was art. Not having any painting experience and being well into her college career, Samantha walked into her first art class at Lambuth University as an arts education major.

In the beginning of her teaching career, she felt that arts education was her calling, but as the years went on, she wanted to be more creative than what she was able to be in her teaching. “I found that while I walked around the room watching students make art, I wished that I was the one sitting down instead. I wanted to be at that table, and I wanted to make the projects that I was helping them make.” After years of teaching and self-reflection, an unexpected injury in her immediate family caused her to realize that it was time to be what she had dreamed of being since third grade — a painter.

Every day, Samantha would paint before and after long days of teaching. She would motivate herself daily with a quote by the artist who first sparked her artistic journey as a child, Vincent Van Gogh: “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” Slowly, she built her own portfolio of original pieces and mustered up the courage to contact the Ned Cultural Arts Center for her own exhibition in their gallery. After receiving overwhelming support from friends and family at her first show, she knew that she would have the support to be a full time working artist in Jackson.

If you’ve ever looked at Samantha’s paintings, you’ll immediately recognize them by the bright colors and familiar depictions of things we all often see but usually overlook. She has a way of taking average objects like stop lights or sunglasses or even bowls of broccoli, and helping her viewers see the inherent beauty of the ordinary all around us.

Artists like Samantha make us question and release fixed perceptions of our collective lived environments. Their imaginations expand our awareness and open us to greater possibilities for a better, more colorful world. “It is so important what other people see from us. We affect the world in a major way,” says Samantha. Artists can imagine wildly creative visions and bring them to light in times of need. “Sometimes when the world is needing enlightenment or encouragement in certain areas, artists will have ideas about ways to convey solutions, and provide ways to help move thinking forward or to comfort people,” said Samantha. Samantha dreams of Jackson having a stronger support for working artists in our community, like artist housing and collective studio space. She sees a growing interest from people in and around Jackson in being active participants in making art.

Although there is less infrastructure in Jackson to support working artists than many areas of the world, Samantha has been a trailblazer in making new ways of running her art as her business here. “The key to being a working artist here is believing that you can do it. When it gets hard, you have to apply that same creativity to how you’re going to make money as an artist,” she said. She wants her former students and other aspiring artists to know that it is possible to make a living as a full time artist in Jackson: “It doesn’t matter how good you are at something. It really just matters how much you care about it.”

Ultimately, she aspires for her art to be accessible and enjoyed by her whole community, increasing the quality of life for anyone who cares to take a moment to pause and interact with it: “Life can be so monotonous. Art is just the opposite of that, in the best way.”

Lizzie Emmons is the Community and Projects Manager of theCO. She is a passionate advocate for the arts and culture sector with experience in arts and nonprofit administration, event coordination, graphic design, education, therapy, music performance and visual arts. She is the previous Executive Director of the Jackson Arts Council and currently serves on the Board of Directors for ArtsEd Tennessee as the Board Secretary and the vice-chair for the City of Jackson’s Public Arts Commission. Lizzie has a Bachelor of Arts in Music and a Master of Science in Education, both from the University of Tennessee at Martin, and a certificate in Arts Management from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Maddie Steele is a writer and photographer who recently graduated from Union with a degree in journalism. She works in marketing at Leaders Credit Union and runs her photography business on the side. She is passionate about telling real and authentic stories from behind the camera or on the page. In her spare time, she loves hosting people, traveling, and baking cakes.

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