Zazie_blue

You began painting in March 2026, having already published poetry and children’s books. What drew you to painting at this particular moment in your life?

I actually have a really sad story. I worked for a private school, and I had hoped to be there until I retired. It didn’t happen. They fired me unfairly and didn’t give me a chance to prove that what they were stating was wrong. But of course, being at a school with an at-will contract, I didn’t fight back. I figured that God would take my side and justice would be served. I left quietly a month before my students’ graduation and before they received their awards. My former student, who was also my editor-in-chief for the school newspaper, encouraged me to take the oil painting class, which I said I would take, but then I decided that I didn’t have the money at the moment to do it. He was disappointed when I told him that I had changed my mind, and I feel that I tried harder on his behalf to make him happy. For me, my entire career was in teaching, and this was one of the most devastating events to happen in my entire career. I fell into a deep depression, and attending the very challenging oil painting class was a way of alleviating this pain and emptiness, and I worked really hard at it.

What does the name zazie_blue mean to you, and how does it relate to the person you become when you create?

Zazie_blue was always there, but in the past she was my poetic muse. I love France and Zazie is Isabelle in France. Blue because in my poetry writing, I hid the dark part of my thoughts and it existed in my poems because my diary was read by my ex-husband in the past. With poems, it could be cryptic and no one could distinguish whether it was real or not. I love the colors pink and black and it shows my true nature. Most of the time, I am bubbly and pink, and at other times, when something devastating occurs, I become the color black, and then it almost seems like zazie_blue comes around to inspire me to work on the artistic part of my personality.

You describe Isabelle as your first painting that “felt worthy”. What happened during its creation that changed the way you saw the work—and yourself as an artist?

My Isabelle was a creation that was produced as a reaction to my anger at what had happened to my career. I worked so hard to get my degrees in college, staying up until 2 AM with a newborn baby in my lap. I couldn’t take my charcoal sketching class to learn the basics of charcoal sketching with my oil painting teacher, so I decided angrily that I could do so without him, and I worked hard by watching YouTube and borrowing books. Initially, I couldn’t work with the messy charcoal, and I realized that I couldn’t do the oil paint either but had to do acrylic instead, and there was so much to research and experiment with that it drove me crazy. At one point, I gave up on her because she looked hideous to me, and the eyes were the most important aspect of any painting to me. My oil painting teacher said that the best thing is to work on shadows and light and work from the background, and I had a really hard time. I almost abandoned her out of the momentum which was building, but instead I chose to ignore her for two weeks. First one eye and then the other emerged, and then she seemed to look right at me, begging me to finish her.

When I did, I got so many compliments about her beauty. I decided to enter her into the Paris exhibition and was accepted on the first try. After that, I decided to enter her into more and more exhibitions, and so far she is now being showcased in New York, London, Amsterdam, and Italy.

When oil paint did not produce the results you wanted, you turned to other materials. How did this decision change your understanding of what a painting could be?

In my mind initially, I felt that I should do the oil painting, although it was so brutal and very difficult, and the cleanup was always so messy. But after I researched and found out I couldn’t do collage and Mod Podge and it didn’t mix well with my acrylic paint pens and my colored pencils, I decided that the closest thing to oil paint was Cray-Pas oil pastels. After that, I started researching what other artists did and realized that oil painting was just one option, and I see amazing things that other artists do with watercolor and even just colored pencils.

The portrait you shared combines a face with fragments of printed text. How do you choose these fragments, and does their meaning matter as much as their visual texture?

I’m an English teacher, so I am always in love with words. I got the printed texts from a woman’s health magazine. I wanted to have words which were encouraging and empathized with women on the whole. It does add so much to the picture. I compare the two often: the one before I added the collage and the one after. The difference is like 180 degrees.

How does being a poet shape your approach to painting? Are there experiences you can express through an image that you find harder to put into words?

I find beauty in everything, especially in nature. Art is expressed in painting, in clothes, in cooking, in music, in everything. I love being a poet; I love being able to immortalize my love with my words. My paintings are, in essence, me, but through a visual experience. I love that question. I think it’s the opposite, though. I am more expressive vocally, visually, openly with my words, especially in telling someone how much I love them, and so my upcoming poetry book showcases my feelings of vulnerability. In painting, I can sit there for hours and sometimes it comes out not the way that I envisioned, and I feel confused, but I keep painting and adding to it.

Alongside exhibitions, you hope to create individually painted greeting cards. What appeals to you about making an artwork that becomes part of a personal exchange between two people?

My name, zazie_blue, was actually the one that I created for my poetry and eventual greeting cards. I still want to pursue that lifelong dream. I want to put my poems inside my painted greeting cards like an old design called Flavia, which my mom absolutely loved. I think that greeting cards mean so much because I love them; they are very personal, and when people can’t express their feelings fully, they can turn to a greeting card with nostalgic moments or romantic moments.