Like a Pro

Spencer Plumlee is here. She’s been here. She is a professional artist. And it’s not by accident. At only 25, Spencer has been professionally pursuing her passion for more than a decade now. Selling her first art piece at 14 during the Blue Dome Arts Festival in Tulsa was bigger than a blue-ribbon moment for the artist. “Wow, I can actually make money from this and keep doing it. And it funds the art,” she tells ASLUT.

The path was there. “Painting was almost like breathing, so I just kept doing it over and over until I compounded it into what it is now,” Spencer says.
Spencer’s parents didn’t question it. She didn’t question it. “I’m lucky. It was normal,” she says.

Angel Baby. 16 x 20 oil on canvas.

Her talent isn’t normal. Neither is her dedication. Art has been and continues to be her life. It’s what she pursued at Rogers State University, earning a BFA. Before even being on campus in Claremore, she was featured in group and solo exhibitions. Countless days of her life have been spent transporting, setting up, and displaying her work across Green Country, the rest of the country, and even Italy.

All of that experience, exposure, and reality have rooted the free-flowing aesthetic in the style of psychedelic figurativism and portraiture she has developed.
“I've been just trying to get something that I've never seen before, but still synthesize through everything that I have ever seen. Make it mine,” Spencer says of her work. “That's kind of what I've been after for a long time, and it keeps changing. I've gotten more and more into trying to pair observational with surrealism, that's just getting more and more intertwined now as I am this
age.”

Witches Sabbath Copy. 16 x 20 oil on canvas

She knows that art and its pursuit is more than a romanticized calling.
Spencer works so she can create. She has three jobs now; she recently added instructor at her alma mater on top of being a Pinot's Palette bartender and her commission work. Four, if you count the occasional gig painting walls white. She does what she has to. ”Capital,” Spencer recognizes it as an obstacle. ”Just trying to make more so I can focus more
on studio time and not three jobs. I think that's what everyone who is 25 has issues with: having more money to have more freedom.”

Spencer is confident in her ability and her pursuit. “Art has this weird magnetism for me and my experience,” she said. “Just the more that I make, the more cool shit gets brought to me, the more doors get opened, and the more people I get to
meet and encounter.”

Relax .14 x 17 pastel on paper

The young artist’s work has become a time capsule for her already long career.
“I've had all of this, and it's changed so drastically every single year, just like everything in the world and everyone around you know.” Spencer says. “I feel very thankful that I've been so well received here and I love Tulsa, and I think that shows in the work, or at least I want it to, and I think it's also a special place where if you love it, it'll love you back. I felt that the entirety of the
time that I've been just putting myself out there trying to make work, whether it be about Tulsa or not.”

Spencer will continue to be here. She will continue to be a professional artist. She’s too dedicated and too talented not to be.

You can support Spencer by purchasing her available work or commissioning a portrait online at spencerplumleeart.com