Today we’d like to introduce you to Lindsay Archer.
Lindsay, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I’ve lived in the South too long to make a long story short, but I’ll try. In 1976, I was born into a very creative family. On my mother’s side, there was my grandfather. He was a very successful architect when I knew him, but he had also been a true Montana cowboy and a World War II bomber pilot. He painted nose art on the planes and says those ladies saved his life. His work has been preserved at an Air museum in Colorado. He was where my love of art and horses began, and I’m not the only one in the family. I have a cousin renowned for her photography, Noelle Wood Studios. One uncle is a published author and inventor. But we also got a sense to not only create but to create a better world, so I have another uncle who started the International Deaf Education Association in the Philippines, and an Aunt who works with Loveway doing equine therapy. On my father’s side, my grandmother was a piano teacher and very musical. My father, who majored in math, is a skilled craftsman who taught me woodworking. We worked together with my engineering brother to make a 2-story castle for my daughter. So, I have been exposed to several forms of creating, which while I love the multifaceted aspect, I also have too many irons in the fire, and just saying that makes me want to take up black smithing.
My grandfather was my main art instructor. I would spend my Summers in Montana, horseback riding on the ranch, or we would pull out the watercolors that he was so skillful using. Some of my fondest memories are of Montana days with my grandparents. My grandfather would take me on drives through the country, and we would find a herd of cattle on the side of the road, stop, pull out the paints and just paint from life. My grandmother, a petite demure lady would buy me craft supplies and I would often sculpt with her and back them in the oven. While my grandfather tended to be in the limelight, my mother says I remind her a lot of Grandma Betty. She was very ladylike, but she could also clean your spark plugs, and when my brother shot a rabbit, she cooked it and forced him to eat it. The lesson was you don’t kill unless you are going to eat it. No life was not to be taken lightly. I suppose encounters with the Blackfoot Indians growing up had some influence. My mother was a sociology major and worked as a social worker for many years, including on a Blackfoot reservation. But her training probably was put to the test most when I was a small child and had seen my first mural. So, I thought drawing on the walls would be a keen idea. Instead of getting mad, and possibly crushing my artistic spark, she convinced me that paper was a better media for art. Although when I got older, she did let me paint murals on my walls in my bedroom. I painted it to look like a fantastical countryside filled with horses and unicorns. When we sold the house. The painter who was hired to paint over it saw that I was only 12 years old at the time. He was amazed and refused to paint over it, and quit.
Throughout school, I was largely self-taught, but I was always knowing I wanted to be an artist and I wanted to sell prints. In third grade, I was in “REACH” for gifted children. I would pull out a folder where I had made art and used my dad’s photocopier to make copies. I’d sell them for 10 cents to a quarter a piece, because there was something I wanted to buy very badly, and that was a horse of my own. When I was very small, my parents told me that I could have a horse when I could afford to buy one myself. I took them at their word. I saved my money and at the age of 15 I bought my own horse and named her Destiny. I even wrote a children’s book about it, just need to finish the art.
Later I went to the Art Institute of Atlanta where I majored in 3D Animation, a degree I have not used much since I graduated. My friend Howard Scott, was producing his own role-playing game, called Legendmaker, and while his girlfriend was doing the cover art, he needed another artist to help with the interior. Suddenly I was illustrating gaming books, and didn’t realize that would be a large part of my career for years to come.
That is all the lighter side of things, but it hasn’t all been a happy journey. People say I am very lucky, but that includes bad luck too. Twice I married the wrong man and gave them the wrong finger. The first lasted short of a year, he did some very bad things, but the worst happened while I was painting. He grabbed me mid stroke. I still shake if I drop a brush. I was tied up and Disney version, did many horrible things with the intent of killing me. But when he was placed at the scene of the crime, he cried up some crocodile tears instead of feeding me to the crocodiles, which was his plan. He served a life sentence of 12 years and is now out of prison.
Afterwards, art was much harder to create, but I threw myself into it all the more. I had survived, and I wanted to live and to have purpose, and I found that in art. I started going to shows and selling my work. In 2003, I was one of Larry Elmore’s first students. Soon I was illustrating for Margaret Weis Productions working on role playing game art for Dragonlance, Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural, and Cortex. Those were pretty much the golden years, traveling the company, selling my work, and making a decent living doing what I loved. I had the opportunity to embarrass myself in front of many celebrities, as I act just short of a fainting goat in their presence, and even shared a booth with Felicia Day and the Guild at San Diego Comic Con. For a while I did storyboarding for local film producers. I collaborated on a tutorial book with Walter Foster on how to draw fairies in color pencil that is still available on Amazon. It’s been a hard road, but it’s worth it to hold a book in your hands and say, “I did that!”
I had a daughter in 2009, with husband number 2. It slowed down some of the momentum being a mom, but Morgan is by far my greatest creation and a promising artist herself. Very recently I divorced my second husband after some very difficult and painful times. I was pressured to quit art and get “a real job”. But the art has been a Godsend. Literally the day we decided to divorce, I got my first coloring book gig. I have done 3 for Colouring Heaven in the UK and hope to do more. My most recent work was for WizKids on a card game called Maiden’s Quest, that continues to sell out at shows.
In truth, I did get a real job. During the day, I care for horses at a dressage stable. It’s not the fun part like riding. I get the grunt work, and honestly, I’m okay with that, because I’m surrounded by horses and it helps pay the rent. Besides, I prefer horses cause their crap comes out the right end. Art is still a part of my life, despite PTSD triggers and life’s ups and downs. But it’s a life, and maybe one day I’ll take up black smithing.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
When it comes to art, I work in multiple mediums: digital, watercolors, oils, colour pencils, pencil, clay, stone, wood, etc. In addition, I tend to do varied subject matter as well. As an illustrator, I don’t always get to choose the subject, but I like to experiment and try new things, so when I got the art order for Metamorphosis Alpha and was suddenly doing mutant badgers, it was a new and different. I enjoyed it and had fun with it. For my personal artwork, I made a name for myself doing fantasy artwork, and was told by a prominent artist that it was saturated in estrogen. Perhaps I am best known for the emotional content of my work. I read somewhere that you photograph what you love, and I think that is true with art as well. But I am not limited to what is around me, but can render what is inside me. When others view my work, I hope they connect with it and their emotions.
Do current events, local or global, affect your work and what you are focused on?
The market and economy have a huge effect on artists. When it comes to extras that people cut out of their budget, art is the first to go. We have a fast food culture where people think things are always available and ready immediately. They don’t want to see you quit art, but they don’t want to buy it either. But if people don’t buy art, artists can’t afford to make it.
As for politics, my ex-husband was very involved in local politics. At one point, my original of “Return to Me” https://lindsayarcher.com/wp/product/809/ was hanging in the Georgia Capital building. However, the closer I saw politics, the further I wanted to stay away from it.
One of the things that I do while painting is listen to documentaries. History and Psychology are my favorites. I see a lot of the current events happening now, are very similar to ancient Rome. Hadrien’s wall, and change immigrants to barbarians, coming to a new land in search of a better life, and you have Julius Caesar. But the Greeks and Romans valued art, even if they stole a lot from the Etruscans. It is a mark of civilization. Although Sparta is fascinating, one of the first things that it did as a warrior society was to ban all art. It was extreme, and though glorified in the movie 300, it was ultimately a failed social experiment.
The world would be terribly empty without artists. We would lose a lot of our pop culture in movies and books. creativity is what keeps us from being simply machines who go to work and fill our role.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
In the past I was often found at Sci Fi and Fantasy Conventions as well as Renaissance Festivals. I hope to be able to do that again in the near future. For now, the best way is electronically. My Patreon account can be found here https://www.patreon.com/Lindsay_Archer and my personal website is https://lindsayarcher.com/wp/. On my website you can find prints for sale and see an archive of my past works.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://lindsayarcher.com/wp/
- Email: linzarcher@gmail.com
- Instagram: lindsay_archer
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtOfLindsayArcher/
- Twitter: @LinzArcher
Image Credit:
MizzdStock mermaid model. Mutants from Metamorphosis Alpha RPG published by Signal Fire Studios.
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