Meet Anne Greenstreet of Boulder

Today we’d like to introduce you to Anne Greenstreet.

Hi Anne, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I have been an artist since I could hold a crayon. My parents fed the obsession with an epic craft cupboard of popsicle sticks, oven-bake clay, and drawing supplies. School dioramas weren’t assignments, they were artistic and engineering challenges. I once built a clay figure with a stick coming out of its back so I could animate it from behind the box.

As I was coming of age, I fell in love with math and physics. That love, and a passion for overachieving, carried me to Johns Hopkins for Chemical Engineering and eventually to a Master’s in Computer Science from CU Boulder. I took art courses when I could. For the next decade, I built enterprise APIs by day and took classical oil-painting classes, figure-drawing sessions, and even animation classes by night. I simply couldn’t turn the art impulse off.

My husband has always been a great supporter of my art, and he encouraged me to try going all in. I left tech with savings, a growing portfolio, a trickle of commission work each year, and some encouragement from a coffee-shop show I’d done that nearly sold out. In hindsight, I jumped before the business engine was actually running.

At first, I behaved like an amateur, spending tons of time on skill building and taking ages to finish commissions, so that my earnings per hour became vanishingly small. I relied on inspiration to make work, despite knowing that you must show up even when not inspired. Eventually, I looked around and asked, “who do I know who is truly making a career out of this?” I studied one artist in my coworking studio who was selling enough work that he could barely make enough work to keep up. He was doing festivals. I bought tent walls, built systems to tame the crazy mess of art pieces, and went all-in on juried shows.

Woody Allen was right: 80% of success is showing up, and that means both to the easel and to the crowd. Do it consistently over a long period, and it snowballs. That’s what I’m doing now, and I can feel the momentum.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Goodness no, but all the bumps have led to a set of good systems I now have in place.

The hardest leap was graduating from acting like a talented hobbyist with occasional sales to treating my work like the real business it is and taking concrete action to get my art in front of people. Another real wake-up call was running the numbers after my biggest original sale yet and calculating how many of those I’d need to replace a salary.

Marketing consistently while still making new work is its own marathon. Pricing conversations, rejection from shows, learning to say no to $200 commissions that might be fun but will eat an entire week are all lessons that artists must learn. This past summer layered pregnancy on top of festival season, and extreme heat and other restrictions forced me to withdraw from a couple late season shows. I relied heavily on my husband and parents for the intense booth setup.

But every challenge forced better systems: I now keep standardized operating procedures for everything from building wooden panels to navigating Colorado’s crazy sales tax laws. My inventory spreadsheet and to-scale visual system tracks over a decade of work. Systems are very necessary. What my artist brain deems “finished” on the easel is only 60% done. Scanning or photographing the work, signing, varnishing, framing, pricing, packing for shows or shipping need to be completed as well. If I don’t keep up, the backlog before a show is massive.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a professional artist who focuses mainly on oil painting, but I also do whimsical illustration, among other things. My most active oil painting series revolves around the mountains and snow, and those in-between moments that define our best memories.

I am most proud of both painting and selling my large “Anticipation” piece, which is a huge multifigure composition of a lift line. I have always wanted to create a multifigure composition like the great painters before us but was intimidated for years to attempt something like this. I am proud to have completed it even though it took months to create, and so proud and grateful that it found the perfect home.

I think what sets me apart from others is probably my long mathematical and engineering background. Not only does it make me want to understand and master the elusive things that make us love the artworks which have stood the test of time, but it also influences my use of materials, composition, and the way I operate my business.

Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
Generative AI will continue to flood commercial and decorative markets with fast, cheap imagery. This is great for restaurant menus and Airbnb walls, but it will only make authentic, human-made work more coveted.

We’ve seen this before: digital painting exploded and is very helpful for certain use cases, yet that does not take away the need for physical, original art. An oil painting’s texture, brushwork, layering, and sheer physical presence can’t be replicated on a screen or in a print.

I’ve seen reports of researchers building painting robots. As a former engineer, I get the appeal of building a painting robot. It sounds like a fun problem. But the output from that robot is just a novelty. Having a neat mechanical music box doesn’t stop me from wanting to attend a live concert. We should also remember that a significant portion of an artistic exchange is often a human connection between buyer and artist.

In person events and viewing will continue to be the most compelling way for people to interact with an be introduced to art, and true craft will become more valuable than ever.

Pricing:

• Please inquire if a piece catches your eye
• I generally price by size
• Inquire about availability for custom work

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.annegreenstreet.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annegreenstreetart/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annegreenstreetart
• Twitter: https://x.com/annegreenstreet