Art has been Charlotte Steinman’s lifelong passion. This fact is evident through her clear dedication to her work. Beginning in middle school, Steinman took gifted and talented art classes, and has continued to take art classes every year since. Today, she is in AP Studio Art, working with her classmates to produce work for their portfolios.
For Steinman, art class has provided her with a sense of community, many of the same students have been in her class from her freshman to her now, junior year. She has made a lot of strong friendships through art, and in class this really benefits their individual progress. As students are able to help, critique and

inspire each other to become better artists.
“Since we are so close [as a class], we really feel comfortable being honest with each other, and it helps us improve our art because we aren’t afraid to tell each other what we need to fix.”
Yet, even with the amount of work and time it takes to commit to all this art, Steinman still loves it. In the future, she plans to pursue art as a career. However, this conclusion was something that oddly enough was not an easy decision to make. Despite the discipline it takes to be an artist, it is still a career path that can be considered impractical. This is something a lot of young artist’s struggle with, and it can seriously discourage people from doing what they love.
“At first I was torn if I wanted to go to art college because you always hear about ‘starving artists,’ so when I thought about college I was so stressed out because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. But this year I came to the realization I might as well do something that I love for a career, and since then I’ve been more excited to go to college and live my life,” Steinman said.
A large part of the art process is actually deciding what to create. Steinman finds inspiration for her art in every aspect of life from nature to social media. Over the summer, Steinman traveled to Colorado and found inspiration through the beautiful environment and scenery. All of the breathtaking, larger than life, mountains heavily inspired her work. She was also captivated by the interesting, very artistic people who reside there. In particular, Steinman describes the very carefree artist she had met.

“Personally, it was really inspiring to see someone doing art for the pure love of it.”
When Steinman is not travelling,

she finds social media inspires her. “It’s a great place to find artist from all over the world because I can explore a lot of different styles of art and I can always find something new or interesting.” Steinman said.

As a result of this, Steinman’s favorite thing about art is trying new mediums. She works in almost anything but her mediums of choice are pencil, watercolor and marker. She is currently experimenting with acrylic and o

il paints, which can be quite challenging. However, for Steinman this is just something new to explore.
Looking back on her art, Steinman has improved dramatically, and will only continue to improv

e. For young artist out there just b
eginning their journey, Steinman advised “to continue to practice, and improve in your art and ignore that people that say you can’t have art in a career, if you h

ave enough drive and you work hard you will be set.”