Jackie Battenfield is an artist known for her luminously colored paintings and prints of natural forces which explore her fascination with the most abstract qualities of landscape--storms, clouds, brushfires, and water ripples. www.jackiebattenfield.com

From 1981-89, she worked as the Director of The Rotunda Gallery, curating thirty-six exhibitions, and overseeing its development from a tiny, fledgling space to a stable, dynamic arts organization. Jackie left the gallery shortly after realizing she could apply the skills she had developed running it to her own career. She's never looked back.

Combining insights into the art world from both a gallery director's and an artist's viewpoint, Jackie sought out exhibition and sales opportunities throughout the country. She began with a memorable trip to Washington, D.C. accompanied by a three-month-old baby in a snugly with a backpack full of diapers and a small painting under each arm. In time she built up a network of support for her work around the United States and abroad. She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner award, and a Warren Tanner award. For nearly twenty years, she has made a living from her art and is a popular lecturer on the challenges of sustaining a successful career in the visual arts.

Jackie teaches professional practice classes for visual artists in the graduate program at Columbia University, The Artist in the Marketplace Program (AIM) at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and through the Professional Development Program at the Creative Capital Foundation. Through these programs she has mentored nearly two thousand artists.

The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love will be published by Da Capo Press for release Fall 2008. It is based on Jackie's art career and the professional skills classes she has taught for over fifteen years.

Interview of Jackie Battenfield by Christopher Howard, editor of CAA News
Good Business Is the Best Art: Artist in the Marketplace
CAA News, Newsletter of the College Art Association, November 2005