Buffalo Grove resident Marilyn Weisberg recently welcomed dozens of visitors, who came to the Buffalo Grove Art Festival earlier this month, into her “alternate reality,” she said.
After spending the past 25 years doing full-time work as a health care writer and researcher, Weisberg now works part-time, freeing up opportunities to regularly dive into her artistic work – painting.
She said she uses oil paint to create contemporary impressionist scenes of flowers, portraits and abstracts. And she recently displayed her own artwork during the Buffalo Grove Art Festival in early June.
“I don’t know what it is about the painting,” Weisberg said. “It’s almost like speaking. It’s like an inner conversation with myself, and I’ll wait to see what comes out.”
Weisberg said she grew up in a creative family and started painting while studying health care at the University of Michigan.
In her 20s, she started her own greeting card company, and her cartoon-like products appeared in gift stores across the country, she said. But she later found a career focused on maternal and pediatric health, Weisberg said.
Q: This summer, what can Joe Tourist and Sally Festival-Goer do to not be part of the next communicable disease outbreak?
A: They have to follow all kinds of guidelines for health and safety. The scariest thing is you get back to the immunization issue. As a culture, public health people are very worried about the Ebola virus and the viruses that mutate. And then, when you’ve got an administration that’s talking about reducing funding for NIH (National Institutes of Health), we are in a lot of trouble.
Q: You described your greeting cards as cartoon-like. Do you pay much attention to comic strips these days?
A: I’m not a big fan of newspaper cartoons. Greeting cards, they’re not as big as they were. I met Sandra Boynton at a trade show in New York in the ’70s. Sandra Boynton became quite big.
Q: The internet has changed the art business as much as any other field. Do you have online profiles, or do you stick with the traditional shows?
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A: I’ve sold through Ebay. I’ve sold through Fine Art America. I started an Etsy shop, but I haven’t posted anything there. I hired a marketing coach in Denver, and she’s helping me. And then, I’m on Pinterest. I was just talking with someone about Snapchat.
Shout Out is a weekly feature in which we introduce our readers to their fellow community members and local visitors throughout suburban Chicago.