Art coursed through Tina Garrett’s soul since childhood, but she never thought she could make a career out of it. So, she took what she thought was the more practical and secure route, studying graphic design and illustration. But when the industry she worked in started to be replaced by digital art, she knew it was time to reinvent.

For Tina, that meant two options: dental school to become a dental hygienist or get back to her lifelong passion of studying art. She chose the latter.

From there, it seemed the stars began to align. Tina secured a scholarship to the Scottsdale Artist School, which did more than teach her the art of oil painting––it opened up a world that she never knew existed. In relatively short order, Tina honed her skill and her voice, using her paintings to share the nuanced stories of women she encountered. Regardless of age, status, profession, or even how they view themselves, Tina can see the innate strength and beauty in women and paints them in a way that reflects that in a subtle yet powerful way.

“I just love telling stories about women,” she said. “The introspective inner world of women, their transitions in life, their emotional connections with themselves and each other, and how they maneuver through life’s challenges. I just have always felt drawn to that.”

But Tina also doesn’t limit her subject matter. Whether landscapes, animals or people, her work centers on emotion and mood, using dramatic light or atmospheric effects to connect to the heart. You might even find a hidden object or two in her pieces.

In this interview, Tina shares how she got her start in creating art professionally and how she incorporates storytelling into her pieces.

Q&A with Tina:

When did you know art was your calling?

I’ve always known it was my calling. Ever since I was a little child, I’ve been making some sort of art, usually drawings. I started doing a little gouache and watercolor in high school with a really awesome high school art teacher, but I didn’t start oil painting until 2012.

How has your creative journey evolved?

I had been a graphic designer and illustrator for many years for a publishing house, and I had illustrated all kinds of preschool through 12th grade school curriculum for a long time. But then kids put away the scissors and glue and started using iPads, and digital art kind of took over the publishing industry that I worked in.

I had to decide to reinvent myself. And it was either become an artist, which is something I’d always dreamed of doing, or go to dental school to become a dental hygienist. I decided to stay an artist, and I got an incredible scholarship from the Scottsdale Artist School in 2012 to learn from Romel de la Torre, who is my master teacher. At the time, I didn’t know this whole world even existed. So I learned in that moment who he was, what the fine art world was, the gallery world in realism, and who Richard Schmid was. I’ve continued learning in that same vein from all of those great teachers who were either highly influenced by Schmid or students of his. And I felt like I had found my people.

How do you find subjects to paint?

I’ve always wanted to paint the women in my life. My very first art show was all women––ages four to 82––that I knew through various aspects of my life, whether the Girl Scout cookie girls or my neighbor who was 80. And I just love telling stories about women, the introspective inner world of women, their transitions in life, their emotional connections with themselves and each other, and how they maneuver through life’s challenges. I just have always felt drawn to that.

What do you love most about the creative process?

I lose track of time when I’m creating. I completely lose time and space, and have this out-of-body or what I call an “underwater experience” where I can’t really hear what’s going on around me. I’m really immersed in what I’m doing. I know the outside world exists, but I’m so happy sometimes I’ll actually startle myself out of that state by laughing out loud. To me, I feel like it’s a way to connect with the deepest part of who I am. Some people might call that God, some people might call that the universe or humanity, whatever you want to call that. But I really feel like when someone is genuinely creating, that’s really the closest connection you ever really are to yourself.

What has been the most meaningful response to your work?

Probably the thing that gets me the most excited is when I get to paint someone who’s about 10 or 15 years old. They’re in that awkward stage and feel a lot of pressure from outside sources, like the media or even friends, to look a certain way. And when they see that an artist wants to paint them and then they see the painting of themselves, you can see something come over their posture––their sense of self-worth changes. I’ve seen it happen in children and grown women.

One of the very first portraits I ever painted was of this gorgeous woman, who, to me, looked like a Greek goddess. I thought she was so beautiful, but she couldn’t understand why I wanted to paint her. I said, “Trust me, artists know why they want to paint you.” When I gave her the painting, she handed it to her husband and said, “See, I am beautiful.” It made me wonder what’s going on in our culture where they don’t know their own worth or their own beauty or their own value, and even the closest people to them aren’t reinforcing it for them and with them.

So as an artist, I get to kind of hand out these awards or permissions to feel confident about yourself. When I give a painting to a child that I’ve painted and they see themselves through my eyes, I see the change on their faces and I think it’s something that stays with them their whole life. It’s like this little prize they’ve won––I am beautiful enough that a great artist wanted to paint me.

As an example, this painting titled “Ever After” taps into that idea of turning towards yourself, knowing what you want for yourself and being your own best counselor, essentially. And there are bits of poetry hidden in this painting, a couple of animals, and a few other symbols and numbers. One says, “Let your strength be your guide.” It’s written in the sand beneath the subject. I love that I can hide little Easter eggs in my paintings and years later, people who’ve bought them will tell me they discovered different objects. It’s so sweet.

What brings you back to the Celebration of Fine Art?

I had traveled to teach in five countries in three months, and I had just gotten home from Australia. I was four days in Kansas City before I needed to be out here to teach at the Scottsdale Artist School, and I was musing to [Celebration of Fine Art artist] Jerry Salinas and his wife that I had been painting a lot of demonstration paintings and teaching a lot, but not giving myself enough time to stay in one place physically and make any kind of real work where I was spending any real time on it. He said, “Why don’t you come do the Celebration of Fine Art with me next season?” And it was like a light had gone.

I really needed a community and a place to be in my work but not be isolated in my studio. And as soon as I said it out loud, Jerry mentioned the Celebration of Fine Art. So, last year was my first year in the show and the first day, I got 99 new best friends and an entire beautiful community of people who patronize the show. It really is a beautiful ecosystem that I walked into and it would be hard to leave once you’ve really experienced it. It would be very hard to not want to be here because the energy and the community are so solid.