Meet the artist

From doctor to artist

When a natural talent develops, is it worth it to pursue? Carolyn Texera had to ask herself this when she realized she had a natural ability to create.

Texera found her skill young, but never pursued a career in art. She became a doctor. It wasn’t until her 40s that she began painting and drawing again.

Texera quit her job and has been painting full-time for 25 years. “I realized you couldn’t just mess around for an hour on a Saturday,” Texera said.

She grew up in California and went to medical school there. It wasn’t until after graduate school that she moved to Michigan. Texera took art classes at Lansing Community College and from other artists.

Because she became an artist later in life, and learning other mediums takes time, she stuck with oil painting as her sole art form. Conveniently, oil painting is also her favorite.

“The things I like about (oil painting), others say are the reasons they don’t like it,” Texera said. “I like that it doesn’t dry right away, you can come back to your painting after a day and the paint is still wet.”

She also has a favorite subject. “My favorite thing is to paint people,” Texera said. “If you’re going to paint them, you have to go out and find them.”

This cover was first a photograph she took at the Lansing Fourth of July parade in 2014. “I took about 100 pictures of people,” Texera said. “I looked at the pictures on a computer and the one of the couple waving the flags looked fabulous. I can’t say it looks exactly like the photo. I changed up the background, there was a chain-link fence and ugly weeds. That's the nice thing about painting, you can change it up.”

Texera’s major career choices are wildly different from each other, but she said it wasn’t a struggle transitioning from doctor to artist. “The biggest transition was I didn’t have to get all dressed up for work anymore,” Texera said.