About the Artist
Gabrielle Edwards grew up in beautiful North Carolina with her larger-than-life siblings. At an early age, she was creating stories and acting them out with her siblings. Together, they traversed the vast lands of their living room, occasionally turning it into a lava floor or a spaceship.
Even though she has always been imaginative, she had a shame about being called an artist. She hated the looks she got from strangers and loved ones when she said “Oh, I’m an artist”. That “oh sweetie” look began to haunt her, so in order to appease people, she would always sugarcoat it until she got a relieved smile from them. But that’s no way to live. It wasn’t until her fall semester of 2019, her final year in college, that she realized that painting is what she was meant to do with her life.
But, to be honest, painting frightened her. She allowed her fear of failing with color to hold her back from color her entire life as an artist. For years she was solely a charcoal and graphite artist. It wasn’t until she began to destroy the fears of her life that she finally decided to take a chance and create with color.
“You can’t erase color! It's not like a stick of charcoal or a graphite pencil, it’s permanent! And truthfully that freaked me out.”
-Gabrielle Edwards
It was bold, powerful, and full of life. Then she discovered the Milan Art Institute, and her life was forever changed. They taught her how to be a world-changer and how to turn her passion for the arts into a full-time career. Their teachings were centered around the fact that being an artist is a gift that everyone has the ability to tap into if they work hard for it. It is not something to fear, but to take pride in knowing that you have the ability to transform a blank page into something exceptional.
Through their teachings, Gabrielle was able to create visually compelling works of art that had a strong dreamlike state. She expected to be transformed artistically but not mentally and spiritually too. What she didn't realize was that getting to the core of who you are is part of the process of discovering. Being an artist is the culmination of your life's experiences, values, deepest suffering, and deepest desires. It showed her that she is fearless, powerful, and alive. Gabrielle learned that her bold and confident temperament came alive when she painted and It taught her that she has the ability to transform the way people see the world she decided that they would see beauty, wonder, and joy whenever they saw her work.
Her safe haven became the delight of creating beauty from something as chaotic as a series of slash marks or the scribbles of a painting pen. The vast expanse of her imagination wasn’t something that intimidated her either. In fact, she saw it as nothing more than a blank canvas waiting to be filled. Of course, her passion for crafting fantastic adventures stemmed from a childhood spent watching more superheroes, Star Wars, and science fiction films than Barbie movies, but that's fine. They assisted her in seeing the vast expanse of unexplored adventures and journeys waiting to be discovered.
In her paintings, space is not just about planets, stars, and nebulas, though those are intriguing as well. It's about using discovery and adventure to expand your imagination. Gabrielle’s paintings allow her to create a completely new, adventurous, and colorful world. She is able to express her own originality and experience tiny moments of enlightenment with each place she creates. She'd like to inspire everyone to build their own adventures as a form of self-discovery and self-realization.
So, if you ever need her, she'll be the one behind the easel working on her next adventure.
Check out Gabrielle's first artist interview!
Life & Work with Gabrielle Edwards - VoyageRaleigh Magazine | Raleigh's Most Inspiring Stories