Creativity is calling. In the quiet when the littles are down for a nap or on the daily commute. It calls during the in-between, those moments on the edges of work, and laundry and sports practice.
Douglas County artist, teacher and entrepreneur Jeanne Oliver wants you to listen to that calling, and let creativity be a source of joy in your life. All it takes is a daily practice of discovery.
For the past 20 years, Oliver has owned an online art school with her husband, Kelly, and has hosted dozens of artist retreats on their Douglas County property. Oliver spends several weeks a year teaching workshops abroad in such dreamy art havens as France, Italy, Scotland and England.
Oliver’s creative life began as a kid in rural Illinois. “I was always writing — really bad love stories and poetry and plays — and creating with paint, anything, really. I was a very creative kid.” So much so that she planned to study art after high school but the well-meaning advice from the adults in her life steered her into a more practical field of study. “As a kid, I thought that meant I wasn’t any good as an artist. I thought these adults were trying to tell me in a kind way that you aren’t any good, you need to pick something else up.”
As a young wife and mom, Jeanne re-discovered her artistic life in that kitschy, almost-mandatory mom craft of scrapbooking in the early 2000s. Scrapbooking led to handmaking journals and other papercrafts, commissions from friends, then selling her items in local boutiques. Scrapbooking had become her in-between that led her back to her art.
“Nothing felt as much as breathing as when I started creating again,” Oliver says. “We just recently re-watched ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,' and the children in the movie remembered how something used to be. That’s what it was like for me. I remembered how creating used to be. It was an unfolding of who I was, remembering how much it meant to me, how I processed the world, the joy it brings.”
Oliver encourages everyone to create every day. Don’t know where to start? Spend 10 minutes today writing poetry in a journal. Or throw a sketchbook in your work bag and try your hand at contour sketching during lunch. Create solely for the pleasure of creating, Oliver says. And consistency will build skills and a body of work.
“It goes back to living the creative life. Most people are busy. You’re a young mom with kids at home or teenagers, you’re working full time. I think there’s a belief that as soon as this stage is over I’ll start creating, and before you know it, we’re in our 50s, 60s and so on. If we don’t learn to create in the in-between, we will never create.
“Creativity was given to us as a processing tool. In the quiet of making, we are able to process the noise of this world. In my own making, I have found new ideas. I have also processed things, forgiven other people for things, forgiven myself. I’ve found gratitude for things. Being quiet has allowed me to think. And we all need that.”
The Olivers’ online art school offers downloadable, on-demand classes in subjects such as drawing, oils, paper crafts, encaustics, as well as lifestyle workshops on entertaining creatively. The Olivers’ three children — Jack, Madolyn and Benjamin — all grew up helping with the business, putting together supply kits for classes, interacting with guests and serving food at in-person workshops.
The Olivers also teach a course for creative business owners. They start by asking students what they want their lives to look and feel like, then build their creative business to fit that vision, not the other way around.
That’s how the Olivers have built their own life. They chose to homeschool their children, made travel and art a priority. They honor a weekly Sabbath to physically and spiritually recharge and keep their faith the center of their lives. Jeanne Oliver says this has also meant saying no to opportunities that are good, but not aligned with their currently life goals.
Oliver has said no to a second book to follow up her “The Painted Art Journal” published in 2018. She’s turned down invitations to teach workshops for 2027 so that she and her family can spend extended time in Florence, Italy, honing new art skills. The Olivers also made the decision to stop hosting retreats when they moved two years ago to a mid-century home that they plan to slowly update.
Instead of home retreats, they spend more time in Nashville, Tenn., where all three of their young adult children have ended up. Their oldest two are in the music industry there, and their youngest is about to start studies in film and photography.
“We have to admit that success doesn’t look the same from one family to another. Success to me means time with my family, freedom to come and go, to travel, to make,” Oliver said. “I think the hardest things to put down are the things that actually work, but you need to put them down to make room for where you want to go next.”
Creativity was given to us as a processing tool. In the quiet of making, we are able to process the noise of this world.
Jeanne Oliver is an artist, business coach, teacher and author. She is the founder and co-owner with her husband, Kelly, of an online art school that offers downloadable, on-demand classes ranging from more traditional art lessons — Abstract Expressionism, Drawing Faces, a study in the work of Pablo Picasso and Francoise Gilot — to creative lifestyle topics such as Curated Entertaining At Home, Art As Worship, The Art of Wintering.
The Olivers' podcast, The Jeanne Oliver Podcast, centers on business, art and lifestyle.
“The biggest calling when teaching other people as an artist is to get people to make, to do what they can with what they have, see what happens when we show up and practice," Oliver says.
Find more at jeanneoliver.com.