Conversations with Jennie Traill Schaeffer

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennie Traill Schaeffer.

Hi Jennie, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I’ve been a working and teaching artist since I formally established TraillWorks out of my Boonton, NJ bedroom. There’s a circuitous route to this starting in my senior year, where I studied painting and art education at Syracuse University, My painting professors cornered me at my senior art show and told me I shouldn’t pursue a career in teaching; they wanted me to be a full time painter. That comment was both humbling and mind blowing, because as a young woman artist, I didn’t think I had the knowledge, skills or resources to risk living as a full time painter. I also was jazzed about changing the world through educating kids through art.

So, I took a job in a public school in NJ and taught for two years in a system that I didn’t fit into. I left the world of public education in 2003, and started working at an art store, while I began painting again. I considered attending graduate school to earn a masters, but after being denied a letter of recommendation by a former professor, I dropped the pursuit and decided, along with my partner’s support, to build a business as an artist. I formally registered my business in 2005, and it began with a solo show at a cafe, followed by picking up art students that I taught at home, and gradually renting two different spaces that led me to grow my teaching practice, my own studio space, and eventually representing the works of 25 regional artists in Newton, NJ.

After five years of growing my business, and also being a first-time mom and primary caregiver to my oldest son, I was burnt out. My husband was traveling for work, and commuting long hours every day – we needed a change, so that helped us decide to sell our first home in northwestern NJ, move closer to his job and close my rented studio space. Since then, I’ve worked in my home studios, and rented studio space or taught in private art schools.

Fast forward, 2021, 16 years later, we moved yet again from NJ to Durham, NC for my husband’s job. I’ve been slowly renovating a 3rd floor home studio where I’ve set up space to create and teach, and I’m on a path to explore the growth of my artwork, deciding where I might like to offer workshops, and show my work in the Triangle.

Would it have been a smooth road, and what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I think most of my challenges are mostly tied to being a woman artist, who also chose the path to motherhood. I was not at all prepared leaving art school for life as an artist, and was certainly in the dark about managing a family while also pursuing life as an independent artist. I’m wrestling now with understanding my own choices, and how different decisions have changed my trajectory as an artist. When I opened my first retail space, I was operating under the myth that my son would come to work with me, and I might continue to work with ease as he fell into the rhythms of that life. Little did I know that his needs might be different than I expected, childcare was far more costly and difficult to realize. We lived far enough from family that they couldn’t help as often as I needed, so we invested in childcare. A lot of money went into that investment, along with investing in employees so I could have the energy to keep up with both mothering and my work. It wasn’t sustainable after five years. A miscarriage, exhaustion, and the inability to pay myself caused poor work and family life balance, forcing me to close the space.

We moved twice more: once after I had my second son, and most recently from NJ. As my children aged into school, there was more support needed for neurodivergencies, pushing me to become an advocate, in addition to an artist mother. Through this arc of childbirthing and rearing, loss, moving, and advocacy, I’ve also been sorting through my own health needs which are finally improving. In the end, family and health have taken my path in directions much different than expected.

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My own work over time has ebbed and flowed in productivity and scope, and has surely been influenced by the space it was created in, as well as the demands of my family at differing times. Now, with our third move, I was set back with the reality of the trauma and struggle of uprooting my family from the northeast and moving away from family to the south. Now that we are getting settled, things are getting easier, but I didn’t anticipate how difficult it might be for me to set up and start working again. My health was impacted and I’ve spent the better part of a year, easing up and taking care of myself.

I’ve tried for years to tie my teaching to my art – and they actually are, as I’ve found experiences with students influential in my own work. Artists need space and time to work in solace, but there’s a myth that we need 100% isolation, and that is far from my truth and many artists I know. We feed off inputs from the world and people around us.

But, in the end I still need to talk about the two separately. Let me start with my artwork. I am a painter, through and through, trained in oils, and also working in watercolor and mixed media. My paintings are mostly non-figurative, but strive to embody figurative energy, vibrant colors and the use of paint as the vehicle of expression, with linear drawn elements. I was known and probably still am, for my paintings venerating kitchen appliances, and now more for my current body of meditative work featuring chairs in landscapes where I have found peace. The work has always been a space for me to explore deep questions about my own life – whether it be gender roles or mental health. It is now both a medium for me to find presence, and convey ideas about meditation, isolation, and peace. Chairs have been a constant thread throughout my work since art school.

I’m proud of the way I can handle paint – I’ve been told by many artists that I really need to just paint, to do the work, and that I can paint. I’m not sure if I’m accurately conveying this idea, but they see something in me. This was also my experience in art school. I’m also very good at working with clients to create commissioned art that ties to my own bodies of work. I can take their ideas that are often tied to significant memories, and develop a painting that gives them even more than what they imagined, and often leaves them in tears of joy upon receipt.

Regarding my teaching, I’ve received countless testimonials and feedback on how working with me has fundamentally changed and improved a student’s life. I’ve worked on portfolio prep with many teens who followed me after my moves to continue their study. I’ve continued to work with adults remotely from my time in NJ. My style of teaching employs nurturing and guiding, without being dictatorial. Both yoga and meditation have informed my teaching, coupled with the many teachers who have come before me. I’m able to help students find a voice, but also learn how to use their materials, and help tie their work into the context of their life and the broader world. I’m as much a learner as they are – I help flatten the playing field.

Being able to move myself and others through my teaching and my art making, that my work makes a difference in someone’s life keeps me creating.

How would we have described you growing up if we knew you were growing up?
I was born and raised in Easton, PA, home of Crayola Crayons (where I did work as a college intern). I was a constant creator and mover. I played hard – I’m very nostalgic of the play of the 80s – running from yard to yard, climbing trees, digging in the dirt making moss pies, reenacting Little House in the Prairie in our backyard playhouse. I played sports – socially however – golf, tennis, skiing, and I danced through 8th grade. There was a creative vibe to our community and I come from a family of artists and musicians, so making was encouraged and supported. I sang in our schools’ choirs, performed in musicals, and learned the piano and then later played the alto sax in our high school marching band, and continued into college.

But, I was also a perfectionist, and I now know, riddled by anxiety. This has had a huge impact on my art, my art making, and my overall health – which I’m now fully understanding and supporting. I’m a voracious reader – about mental health, spirituality, mindfulness, art, creativity, motivation, habits. I crave information, and find that that often spills into my work, and helps it get started.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.traillworks.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/traillworks
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/traillworks
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/traillworks

Image Credits
Photos by the artist, Alex Cena, Jim Horton