Careers To Go

Art On The Move
By Beth Koestal

American Beth Koestal has turned her passion for all things artistic into a career that turns her, each summer, into tour guide and teacher, taking students in the footsteps of Monet and Picasso when she is not teaching her expat students in Brussels.

Beth remembers how special she felt at 10 years old when she received her first art commission - a poster for a local hot dog supper, but serious recognition of her work started with her one-person show fresh out of university. Amidst a major recession, her actions made quite a statement. Fine Art is not something you can turn into a 9-5 livelihood, so Beth thought getting a teaching certificate for 12 different grades would give her a hefty cushion to fall back on. Sadly, this did not turn out to be true. It appeared that every time in that she has been in a position to search for employment - regardless of country or language, the buzzword has been 'Recession'. Although she is always the first to put her artistic foot forward, she has had to rely on the additional skills she picked up along the way.

"It has been pretty easy to laugh at self doubt created either internally or externally,' she says. 'My guidance counselor in high school wrote in my yearbook that 'you're a nice package even though slightly untied - and my poor husband referred to me as Home Alone Five, when the first movie came out...It took me a while, but I found I am perfect for this expatriate stuff - another country, another job, three languages in one sentence and actually seeing other people that understand me!"

Beth's recession-proof formula is to stay productive. Her early exposure and awards in competitions, garnered a steady stream of commissions and has gradually evolved into an international following of private individuals and corporations. She turned the uneasy feeling she had applying for nine to five position to support her art habit into a goldmine that travels wherever she wants to take it, whether for a year, a week, a day or a couple of hours. She just used her downtime to put together a one person show and suddenly it was on the road travelling for a year. It was after entrepreneurial success in her gallery and frame shop, that she moved to New York which gave rise to what she calls her 'guerilla survival skills'. Everything that could happen to a young, naive southern Bible-belt woman, did. She found out only too quickly how much better it is to sign a lease with a roommate than to be ousted on the streets in a city with 2% vacancy ratio when her building turned co-op; how she had never thought about about an employer's sexual orientation until one checked hers unexpectedly; followed by a bonafide employment agency setting her up to be a concubine as a personal favour for a friend of his in Italy!

"I was not your average trailblazer. I was too occupied with getting myself out of dilemmas to even think about going back to my southern roots. I stayed and got tougher by the minute. They were my glory days - when all of my worldly possessions could fit into one van! This was artist mecca and I was dogged about finding my place in it somewhere."

"I was so shocked at the cost of living, I ate slices of pizza for 88 cents and drank water for weeks, while walking 56 blocks a day to the two non-artist jobs to which I had reluctantly 'succumbed'.

Living in Manhattan, her work attracted the attention of Wally Findlay, who acquired one of her pen-and-inks for his private collection and represented her work in the gallery network bearing his name in Manhattan, Beverly Hills, West Palm Beach, Chicago, and Paris. With continued perseverance she created other opportunities to introduce her work in Europe with other galleries, found solace in buying her own co-op, after landing an outside sales position with a Wall Street territory, including the Twin Towers.

After moving to Brussels by way of Amsterdam and Dusseldorf her life became a series of accidents and coincidences: An acquaintance visited her house and admonished an oversized drawing, gloating over it for several minutes, blind to the fact she was talking to the artist herself, due to signature being in Beth's maiden name.

"It was so uplifting after all those language lessons to hear so many positive comments in my native language - I would have let her talk for days!" Beth laughs. Then her visitor announced, "if you ever teach I want to be in your class!".

This remark was to be the catalyst for Beth's next metamorphosis. She had heard comments about art teachers the same week from disgruntled expatriate adults. She devised a course that has now grown into a 42 page website, offering the three forms of activities - all related to her passions for art and art education.

Innate to fine art and art education degrees, Beth trained in several media, but her expertise evolved as her waitlist stabilised. She tallies watercolour, pen-and-ink, pastel, oil and calligraphy as the media most popularly requested for subjects such as portraits of people and homes or landmark buildings, still lifes, and landscapes. Her most sought after class is the one she considers by far the most important - that of basic drawing and composition. She relaxes any need for rigid prerequisites but encourages people to take this course as a foundation for her other courses. She now offers the basic drawing and composition course not over several weeks as initially, but in a one week format. This is the only course where the instruction in the first day sets up the structure for the following day. It breaks the process of learning to draw into four easy steps. The fifth day shows the student how to put it all together and then Beth steps back to watch the light come on in the lives of her students.

Beth is against the idea that you should only take an art course if you demonstrate a natural talent. She believes that everyone has the ability to draw realistically and it is only personal desire and basic development that differentiates people who stay in stick figure mode from those who move on. "I used to look at modern educational models with such disdain. Now I love their deficiency in developing only the brain hemisphere dominant in analytical, syntactical traits. Its this oversight and neglect to develop both hemispheres that leaves my teaching market wide open. I truly believe that any person of sound mind can not only learn to draw and increase their creative thinking capacity through acute observation, but should! Kids that learn to see like an artist and sharpen their creative skills often find other subjects come to life and gain a new type of learning confidence. And what is so amazing is that art is a matter of development, not intellect nor a magical gift. I teach parents and children in the same class with remarkable results and create a healthy support mechanism at the same time."

Looking back, Beth feels fortunate that her teaching career did not really blossom straight off and that she was forced to continually promote her work and look for commissions right from the start. She has never had a time in my adult life that has not called for marketing skills. She is also indebted to her Calligraphy skills, which paid for my college spending money and got her through some tough times in the Manhattan. Now living in Brussels, Beth fills commissions four days a week and then dedicates an average of one day a week to teaching to a very appreciative expatriate community. She keeps her skills sharp by having to explain and demonstrate the technicalities of producing various kinds of art.

"It is a very satisfying feeling to see a person who has the desire to draw learn to do so in just a week and then take this pastime with them wherever they go."

Beth has a portrait of a princess slated for the next year, posthumous honour and several architectural subjects scattered among an array of courses to be held locally and abroad. She invites you to visit her website dedicated to her activities. Her website address incorporating a Dutch word meaning Art ('kunst') News ('krant') details her many activities with a common artistic thread.

http://www.dutchnduchess.com provides a complete listing of all the pages available.