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Angie Huffman was born and raised near Dallas, Texas, and obtained a BFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of North Texas. She has since lived in Eastern Iowa for over a decade. Her award-winning works have been included in solo, juried, and invitational exhibitions throughout the United States. Pieces can be found in the permanent collection of the Yellowstone Art Museum, and in private collections in Iowa, Illinois, and Texas.
Published on March 2nd, 2026. Artist responses collected in months previous.
Was pursuing your creative work a calling for you? How do you define calling within your practice? Share a concise definition and a moment when this felt most true.
I suppose so. I have always been compelled to do things and before I went to college I decided that art would be the area I would focus on the most. Several years have gone by since and despite not becoming wildly famous or affluent from spending a large portion of my time on this earth creating, I still find myself driven to do so.
I would define calling as the drive to make the work ideas I have into realities. This has felt true when I have focused on how to create dice roll paintings and waste plastic plexi-box works. Both were new to me and I had to figure out the parameters of their creation and existence. There was no external entity pushing me to do so. The driving forces were all internal to myself, my life circumstances, thoughts, and desires.
What does a successful career in the arts look like to you today? Describe how you measure success now and note any shifts from earlier in your career.
One longstanding component that continues is meeting a minimum output quota each year. I do not feel comfortable considering myself a professional artist if I go a lengthy amount of time without completing work.
One thing that has changed is the necessity of being in as many art shows as possible. During college I had limited opportunities to show my work and afterwards I needed to see how it would be received beyond that environment. I prioritized applying and am grateful I was able to meet my inclusion goals both in regards to solo and group shows. As I have continued to work to find a balance between art and other areas of my life, and as I have begun to explore directions beyond photorealist portraiture, my ability to apply for solo shows has been restricted as I cannot say for sure now what my body of work will be 2+ years in advance. Because of this, and because I do not mind spending less time traveling to deliver work, my emphasis on applying for shows has lessened for now, and creating new kinds of work that I consider successful is my present primary metric of career strength.
How are you kind to yourself in your art practice? (Include one or two concrete examples such as boundaries, rest, or studio routines.)
Looking back, I was not kind to myself previously. My standards are incredibly high and I forced myself to work long hours to meet them. During those hours my standards for what media I ran while I was working were also a source of stress for me. I am grateful now to have collected a strong stable of things I can run that keep my brain from spinning out from self-applied pressure. Between kind DJs on Twitch and multiple soap operas that are now streamable at any time, I stay a lot less on edge and even get to experience joy. Another change has been focusing more on keeping similar bedtime and wake time hours from day to day. I used to stay up as late as was necessary each day to complete whatever part I was working on in a painting, but due to new health issues that is no longer an option. I now proactively stop myself early if I suspect I might otherwise run long and focus harder on not letting myself feel bad about it.
What impact do you hope your work has on others? Name the response you hope to spark and who you most want to reach.
With my paintings, there is not one specific response I want to evoke. I want people to be drawn into them, to think, and to feel. I want them to have an experience outside of what they normally have. I want to reach everyone I possibly can. (Which may admittedly be too broad and aspirational of a demographic, but why choose just one?)
With the plexiglas box pieces I want people to think for a second about all of the single-use plastic in their lives and of the waste each of us generates each day with little thought. I realize most people are aware of this to some degree, but it is one of many things that I believe society could change if there was the desire to do so on a massive and collective scale. Each person deals with so many systemic issues and has only so much energy to resist. If I reframe waste in a different, clean, shiny, and transparent way, hopefully it will grab the attention of a few individuals at least for a moment.
Do you have any rituals or spiritual practices that you integrate into your daily life as an artist? If relevant, mention frequency, timing, or how the practice supports your work.
Each time that I paint I prepare the mineral spirits. I have multiple glass jars of it and rotate their use. I pour the clear liquid out of whichever jar was used the longest ago into an empty second jar, stopping before also pouring out any sediment that had settled at the bottom. I then pour that sediment into a third jar where such excess is collected each time in hopes that one day I will have enough to make it into paint again as Gamblin does with their Torrit Grey paint tubes each year. I then wipe down the now-empty first jar so that it can be the next fresh receptacle when the cycle begins anew.
This practice supports my work from a functional standpoint but also is a small opportunity for me to upcycle and decrease waste amongst the greater process of oil painting that sadly generates other unavoidable waste. It also provides a point of interest as the sediments collected from each session vary in color based on what paints were used that day, and the paint thinner itself shifts from clear to more of a yellow over time.
Was pursuing your creative work a calling for you? How do you define calling within your practice? Share a concise definition and a moment when this felt most true.
I suppose so. I have always been compelled to do things and before I went to college I decided that art would be the area I would focus on the most. Several years have gone by since and despite not becoming wildly famous or affluent from spending a large portion of my time on this earth creating, I still find myself driven to do so.
I would define calling as the drive to make the work ideas I have into realities. This has felt true when I have focused on how to create dice roll paintings and waste plastic plexi-box works. Both were new to me and I had to figure out the parameters of their creation and existence. There was no external entity pushing me to do so. The driving forces were all internal to myself, my life circumstances, thoughts, and desires.
What does a successful career in the arts look like to you today? Describe how you measure success now and note any shifts from earlier in your career.
One longstanding component that continues is meeting a minimum output quota each year. I do not feel comfortable considering myself a professional artist if I go a lengthy amount of time without completing work.
One thing that has changed is the necessity of being in as many art shows as possible. During college I had limited opportunities to show my work and afterwards I needed to see how it would be received beyond that environment. I prioritized applying and am grateful I was able to meet my inclusion goals both in regards to solo and group shows. As I have continued to work to find a balance between art and other areas of my life, and as I have begun to explore directions beyond photorealist portraiture, my ability to apply for solo shows has been restricted as I cannot say for sure now what my body of work will be 2+ years in advance. Because of this, and because I do not mind spending less time traveling to deliver work, my emphasis on applying for shows has lessened for now, and creating new kinds of work that I consider successful is my present primary metric of career strength.
How are you kind to yourself in your art practice? (Include one or two concrete examples such as boundaries, rest, or studio routines.)
Looking back, I was not kind to myself previously. My standards are incredibly high and I forced myself to work long hours to meet them. During those hours my standards for what media I ran while I was working were also a source of stress for me. I am grateful now to have collected a strong stable of things I can run that keep my brain from spinning out from self-applied pressure. Between kind DJs on Twitch and multiple soap operas that are now streamable at any time, I stay a lot less on edge and even get to experience joy. Another change has been focusing more on keeping similar bedtime and wake time hours from day to day. I used to stay up as late as was necessary each day to complete whatever part I was working on in a painting, but due to new health issues that is no longer an option. I now proactively stop myself early if I suspect I might otherwise run long and focus harder on not letting myself feel bad about it.
What impact do you hope your work has on others? Name the response you hope to spark and who you most want to reach.
With my paintings, there is not one specific response I want to evoke. I want people to be drawn into them, to think, and to feel. I want them to have an experience outside of what they normally have. I want to reach everyone I possibly can. (Which may admittedly be too broad and aspirational of a demographic, but why choose just one?)
With the plexiglas box pieces I want people to think for a second about all of the single-use plastic in their lives and of the waste each of us generates each day with little thought. I realize most people are aware of this to some degree, but it is one of many things that I believe society could change if there was the desire to do so on a massive and collective scale. Each person deals with so many systemic issues and has only so much energy to resist. If I reframe waste in a different, clean, shiny, and transparent way, hopefully it will grab the attention of a few individuals at least for a moment.
Do you have any rituals or spiritual practices that you integrate into your daily life as an artist? If relevant, mention frequency, timing, or how the practice supports your work.
Each time that I paint I prepare the mineral spirits. I have multiple glass jars of it and rotate their use. I pour the clear liquid out of whichever jar was used the longest ago into an empty second jar, stopping before also pouring out any sediment that had settled at the bottom. I then pour that sediment into a third jar where such excess is collected each time in hopes that one day I will have enough to make it into paint again as Gamblin does with their Torrit Grey paint tubes each year. I then wipe down the now-empty first jar so that it can be the next fresh receptacle when the cycle begins anew.
This practice supports my work from a functional standpoint but also is a small opportunity for me to upcycle and decrease waste amongst the greater process of oil painting that sadly generates other unavoidable waste. It also provides a point of interest as the sediments collected from each session vary in color based on what paints were used that day, and the paint thinner itself shifts from clear to more of a yellow over time.
Find Angie Huffman on Instagram
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