Unveiling the Creative Journey: A Conversation with Vanessa LeVesque - Mixed Media Artist and Recovering People Pleaser

Potentially, you could go to school, get a degree in underwater basket weaving, come out of college, expect to easily make $60,000 a year and do just about anything. Just because you had that piece of paper saying, look at me, I did a four year degree.

And coming out of college, it became very apparent to me that none of that was real.

You're listening to the Real Estate Sessions and I'm your host, Bill Risser. With nearly 25 years in the real estate business, I love to interview industry leaders, up and comers, and really anyone with a story to tell.

It's the stories that led my guests to a career in the real estate world that drives me in my 10th year and over 400 episodes of the podcast. And now I hope you enjoy the next journey. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 410 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast.

As always, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for telling a friend. Today we have something a little different, a little unique, a little artsy. Yeah.

I'm going to be talking to Vanessa Levesque. Vanessa is an artist here in St. Petersburg that Cindy and I discovered at a little festival, art festival in Gulfport, which is a whole nother story.

Well, if you've never been to Gulfport, let me know and we'll take you down there. It's. And it was a really cool vibe that was coming from her booth. She had these amazing pieces of art.

I don't want to kind of spill the beans on any of that yet, but we've, we've since purchased a few pieces and I wanted to have her on the podcast to talk about what she does because I love finding out things about people, especially very interesting people. So let's get this thing started. Vanessa, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me, Bill.

It's going to be a lot of fun because, and I know that because I've seen your art. It's very fun. And we're going to talk about that later.

But the first thing I want to cover is, as I always do, just I want to talk a little bit about your childhood. I know that you're from New England, right? You're up there in the. I don't know if.

Were you a Patriots fan when they were killing it because you're from that part of the country.

I'm sad to admit that the. I am not a football person. I was a huge Red Sox fan. Huge Red Sox fan, but I never got into football.

All right, we'll talk about that in a minute. Where'd you grow up. What part of. What part of New England? That's a big area. There's a few states up in there.

So I'm from Wallingford, Connecticut. Not too many people know about it. However, you might know about it now because a lot of times when you get the. Those as seen on TV, buy this now.

They'll have a P.O. box in Wallingford, Connecticut.

And a lot of that stuff gets shipped out of the industrial area where I learned how to drive stick shift when I 15 years old. So that's. That's all you need to know about Wallingford.

Well, is there a hill at least to make it difficult to start off in, you know, first gear in a hill when you're learning how to drive a stick? Or was it there?

Is one of the biggest hills I've ever seen in my life. It's so big. My husband was quite the daredevil, and as a kid, he decided to go down it on a skateboard.

And he said the second his feet lifted off the pavement and he started rolling down, he immediately knew he had made the worst decision of his life.

Did he bail early or did he stick with it?

There was no bailing. You just had to stick with it and hope for the best. Wow.

All right, well, obviously he did. He's still here. He's still with us. All right, so true or false? Connecticut. Connecticut, people. What's it. What is a Connecticut? Connecticut.

Nutmeg.

What are you?

We're nutmeggers, I guess.

Okay, we'll go. We'll go. Okay. Nut, Nutmeg.

I don't know.

Connecticut. Is it true that Connecticuts think they have the best pizza on Earth?

I would say it's not true that we think. I would say it's just true that we have the best pizza.

Yeah, I've got a couple of buddies who listen to this podcast who are going to go, yeah, I need to talk to her. All right, good. How about sandwiches? Is there something about sandwiches in Connecticut? Like they were invented in Connecticut?

You know, I don't know too much about that, and maybe Connecticut folks would get kind of upset with me, but I gotta say, I think. I think Publix has got Connecticut beat in the sandwich department.

Yeah. A pub sub. Yeah.

You can't beat a pub sub.

I love it. You. Typical childhood for you. There's, you know, nothing crazy, just kind of brothers, sisters, all that kind of.

Stuff, you know, I used to think that I had the most typical childhood ever. Two parents, happily married, a sister, the big beautiful house, on the hill.

And the more that I have spread my wings and met people, I'm beginning to think that I had the most untypical childhood because none of my friends had childhoods like me.

Yeah, yeah, you. Yeah, that's. That's a great way to look at it, because. Typical. The definition of typical. That works. But no, you won. You won. All right. That's good.

I like that. Give me. Give me your. Your. What's your favorite part of growing up in Connecticut?

I think for me, my favorite part was, and granted, I'm. I'm aging myself here, but I grew up in the last generation before the Internet and before social media, and none of that existed. I was.

I'm not now, but I was growing up the biggest tomboy you'd ever meet. I loved playing in swamps. I caught frogs and snakes. I was in streams. I was knee deep in mud.

And I think that that was the greatest thing that I lived in an area where we could get on our bikes in the morning, go to the neighbor's house, get some freeze pops, ride around all day, come home when the street lights came on, and that was wonderful.

Wow, that's great. Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely a win. Give me your biggest. What you feel is the biggest misconception about Connecticut.

You know, when I came down here and people learned that we are from Connecticut, I never. I never really thought about what people thought about people from Connecticut before I left Connecticut, oddly enough.

But I think the biggest misconception was that everyone from Connecticut was rolling in mad amounts of cash. That seemed to be the misconception. And that's not the truth about Connecticut at all.

Plenty of people are, but plenty of people are on the complete opposite end of the spectrum.

Yeah, that makes sense. I think that you do kind of think that you think that that's where. Oh, that's Westchester County.

Then you go a little farther north, you get to Connecticut. It's all the same. Yeah. Okay, so what was 15 year old Vanessa planning on doing or becoming? What was. What were you doing? And you're in high school.

What was the road? I.

Boy, that's tough. I knew a couple things. I knew that I really didn't like school. I knew that I never.

At that point in time, my father was going through a really rough point in his life with his career, and he was very fearful of losing his job and not having a college degree. He felt very much stuck in his job because he was very well paid. He was a driver for ups.

So he worked very hard to make sure that my sister and I had lots of opportunities. It was never a choice if I was going to go to college.

It was, I will literally quit my job and walk you in every single day into your college classes, so you better go. So I. I tended to look at things like I didn't know what I wanted to do.

I didn't think that being an artist was possible because that didn't exist in my world. There were no art shows where I came from. No one was making it as an artist. I never saw that.

But watching what my father was going through, it just made me realize that I never wanted to be in the position where I hated going to work every single day of my life.

So where did you end up going to school?

I went to Roger Williams university in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Okay, and what was your focus on your area of study?

My area of study was art.

Was art a part of your first job out of school?

It was not, because I also, when I was going to college, the thought and the way that it was presented to me was that you can go to college and you could get a degree. And this was literally said with underwater basket weaving.

I've never met someone with a degree in underwater basket weaving, but potentially you could go to school, get a degree in underwater basket weaving, come out of college, expect to easily make $60,000 a year and do just about anything. Just because you had that piece of paper saying, look at me, I did a four year degree.

And coming out of college, it became very apparent to me that none of that was reality.

Right. So what did you end up doing? What was the first gig for Vanessa?

It was, you'll laugh at this one. I sold it. The most uncreative job that an artist could ever have.

I did customer service on the phone for a company that sold valve tags, pipe markers, road signs, construction, safety equipment. It was a horrible, horrible job.

How long did that last?

Not long, I think. I think I made it about 10 months.

You know, the thing that really got me, like, I couldn't deal with it was I had this one customer, and it was odd because I worked in a call center and there was probably another hundred people working there. And for whatever reason, I would always get this call when this man called in. And the first time we placed an order for his tags.

And this company was unique in that the manufacturing department, we would have to walk through where the products were manufactured to get to our desks. So his order was done incorrectly.

And he called back a couple days later and he was upset, and he's like, hey, I need this for a project, and everything's wrong because it's all OSHA and it's gotta be done a very specific way. So we went over everything. I thought I put everything very clear in the notes and sent it off to manufacturing.

And lo and behold, a couple weeks later, I get call from this guy again saying, hey, this is what's going on. It's incorrect.

So, long story short, after this guy had gotten his order wrong a couple times from not just me, but other people, I reached out to a supervisor and said, hey, listen, I know exactly what this man wants. Can I just go into the manufacturing warehouse and just talk to the person that's making these tags and we can get on the same, you know, the same.

Same side here. We can just see what's going on and where the miscommunication is. And they said, no, we can't allow you to get up from your desk.

And I said, that is the most ridiculous thing. The amount of money and time that we are wasting when I could just literally go do.

Go back there and talk to Sherry and say, hey, Sheri, this is what we need, and they would not have it. And I said, you know what? I can't do this. This is not for me. And that was it. I was done.

So what did that lead you to next? Because I have a feeling this is going to be a cool path to the world of art.

That led me to next feeling like a failure, and that I was slowly starting to see that corporate, Corporate America and I do not play nice in the sandbox together. So shortly after that, I moved to Florida because I didn't want to get too rooted into the cold weather and tying my roots.

I didn't want to be that person, that. And nothing wrong with this, but for me, it wasn't an option.

I didn't want to be the person that grew up somewhere and stayed there for the rest of my life. I wanted to get out. So I was like, you know what? This job's not working. Let's go down to Florida and see what my options are there.

I love the sun, the swimming, all that stuff. So I came down here, had no direction, didn't know where I wanted to go, and I started waitressing because it was, you know, I was a good waitress.

It was a safe bet, paid the bills. And over time, I ended up getting, like, little creative jobs here, here and there. In addition to the waitressing, I eventually ended up taking a.

An artist in residence program at a pottery studio. Because when I Was in college.

I had taken some pottery courses, really liked it, really enjoyed that, but quickly realized I have a lot of neurodivergent issues, and one of them being textures. So it was really hard to be a potter when you can't touch the clay because it bothers you so much.

Okay.

But it got me into the art community down here and what ultimately wound up getting me, because after that, I ended up working for a publishing company. My boss ended up being a complete lunatic. So that didn't work out, but that's a whole nother story. And just a couple other things. An accounting firm.

I really enjoyed bookkeeping, but again, it was just. I was absolutely miserable. I never liked what I was doing. And finally, the.

The thing that really got me into the arts was I ended up getting into a horrific car accident. It was really, really bad.

And it was so bad that I could no longer work for the accounting firm because to see, sit, and move my neck, it was just bad. So I ended up having to quit that job. I was doing tons of physical therapy for, like, a good 18 months.

And it got to the point that I needed to get out of bed, I needed to work, but I needed something that was very flexible.

And one of my friends that I had met at the clay studio, whom I'm still very close with, she was working at one of the paint and sip places, and she said, why don't you just work there? They pay really well. It's part time. You basically choose your own hours. And at that point, I was not a painter. I. I hated painting, to be honest.

But I was good enough as an artist that I was like, I can teach the general public, and got into that, and that's kind of how I got into the arts.

Wow. By the way, my wife calls it, I think it's more paint and guzzle because it. There's no sipping going on there.

That's very true. And you can tell at the end of the class who's been guzzling and who's been sipping when you look at the painting.

Oh, my God. There's a great story. I'll give you the real cliff note version, but her and her friend Natalie in Scottsdale at a paint place.

There were the three margaritas at the. The Mexican place next door before they got in. Then there was the wine, and it's starry, starry night. One of them had, like, a thousand swirls.

They just kept doing. They liked the swirls. They just kept going. They were everywhere. Sorry.

I want to, you know, you and I have had conversations, and I know that you're ready to make the next move. Right. So you got here, and we're going to talk a lot about that. But while. And this.

This is the little real estate part of the real estate Sessions podcast right here. Right. You're currently fixing up your home like any good seller should do. Right.

Getting all the things ready for the maximum amount of money you can get. And. But talk about that part of what you're. You told me why you're doing this. If you have a. You have kind of a schedule that you're on and you're.

This is time. This is your time.

Right. So there are so, so, so many reasons for. For the move. One of them being a big one.

With all of the hurricanes and everything that we had, it got way too close for comfort. We're in flood zone A.

Our house never flooded, but the water came up into my neighbor's garage so that he had to gut his garage, and the water went right. It surrounded our house, basically. So we had, you know, it was way too close for comfort.

And it's just seemed like each time it's gotten a little bit closer, a little more frequent. We got a quote for flood insurance for $14,000 a year, which is just astronomical.

We bought our house initially under what we could afford because we just wanted to make sure that it was always affordable. And since we've bought, our mortgage has more than doubled, and it's in insurance.

So we're essentially paying on our house what we would if we bought a house four times as much as our house. Wow. And it's. It's just. It feels like we're constantly clawing no matter how far we get ahead. Well, costs go up, and it's just enough is enough.

So many reasons, but that was a big one.

Yeah. And you're leaving the sunshine to go where?

Well, when I do stuff, I never do stuff in the middle. I have to go big or go home kind of deal. And I decided if we're going from the weather, because it's also. I love being outside.

And I've gotten to the point, I don't know if we've, you know, just how I am or whatever, but I can't tolerate the heat anymore. It's just gotten to me.

So in my grand scheme of things, I thought, well, let's go to the complete opposite end of the spectrum and do it with the cold. We've got three kids. They've never seen the seasons change. They've never seen the snow. So my Husband and I decided to make this move.

And he said, I'm willing to go anywhere in the country as long as we have a house that we love and a good area for the kids. And I. I told him because both of us still have our parents alive. I said, I don't want to leave the East Coast. Let's stay on the East Coast.

So we kind of started looking, and for whatever reason, we ended up going with New York. And we grabbed a suit snowfall map and looked at the snowiest places in New York, and now that's where we're looking to move.

So can I assume there's lake effect snow where you're going to be living? Probably.

Oh, my goodness. That would be such a good assumption.

On your part because I know that's where all the snow is. Oh, my gosh. Okay, good. So good. Let's talk art. I can't wait. I. My wife and I saw you for the first time in Gulfport. You were at that. Cool.

It was a cool little show. It was really neat. And we saw. Trying to think of the one that we got for our son. Oh, yeah, I do.

But I probably won't mention it here, but I was laughing. I was showing my wife Cindy, and we had a blast. And so that was our first purchase from you. We shipped it to Kevin. He loves it.

I think you've met Kevin, because Kevin and Sarah came by another show. Right. So. And I know you're going to be at some. You're. You're going to be here in St. Pete in the month of February or. Yeah, it's in February.

Localtopia. That's it.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's a great show. It's massive. There's all kinds of. I usually get a couple T shirts from the same vendor every year. I know he.

He's probably working somewhere here in St. Pete, but I don't know why I wait till Localtopia to do it. But let's talk about your art.

When you talked about the pottery, it made sense to me because there's three dimensions to what you do. It's not just a canvas and something. It's really cool.

The layers and levels and I don't know what you call finding the right size jar to catch urine and making it a pot. I'm just saying. Right. Am I right there? Talk about what. What was that driving force for you? What made you think about the.

The way you create your pieces? The, the. The. The use of resin, which is super cool. And then, you know, you do all kinds of different Things the way that.

I create now, I never went out with the intention that I'm going to be an artist, and this is what I'm going to create. It was a very organic journey. Part of it is in all of this, I am.

I like to refer to myself as a recovering people pleaser, because I spent pretty much the majority of my entire adult life with the mindset that I need to go and get a job and put in my 30 years and get that pension and do everything the way that I was raised to do everything. And that never worked out for me. I always felt like a failure. I never felt any type of gratification.

And I'm not saying most people go off and skip to work every day, but I also felt like I shouldn't want to throw myself in front of a bus every day on my way to work, and that's where I was at. So even when it came time to go into the art and pursue this.

This desire to create, when I first started, I approached it with, well, what would most people like me to create? And so I started painting landscapes because I'm like, everybody likes landscapes. It just felt safe.

But, boy, I never sat down thinking, oh, I'm excited to paint this. I still stand by what I created. I think I made some really beautiful pieces.

I still have some of them hanging up in my house, but it never felt right. And I ended up having this idea.

Oddly enough, when the pandemic was happening, it seemed like America kind of got into the Netflix binging, and the big thing was the. The Tiger King series. Ridiculous. Yes, absolutely.

Right here in Tampa, Florida. Beautiful.

Yes. So I had watched that series, and just like everybody else, what the hell is going on? What am I watching here?

And everybody was talking about it because we had nothing else to do.

And one day I was sitting, sitting there, and I just had the thought that wouldn't it be funny if I painted Joe Exotic and his husband as the American Gothic painting, But instead of American Gothic, it's American Exotic. And I felt like it was a little bit of a social commentary on the craziness in America and what we were doing.

And I was like, yeah, this is weird, this is ridiculous, but I'm going to paint this. And I don't know who the hell would want this, because here's this guy with his AR15 instead of pitchfork and his glittered vest.

And it was the most ridiculous thing I've ever painted. And it sold immediately. Like, immediately. And I just remember looking at it and just having this. It was Ridiculous.

But, like, the second sense of pride for this was clever and it was fun and I even looked and nobody else had ever done it. And I was like, okay, I. This is. This is kind of fun. And then I started allowing myself to do more of this weird stuff. And it just.

People responded to it. It resonated with people.

You have a. Yeah, it's a very. There's a no filter approach. I will definitely call it that to what you do, which I think is hilarious.

Obviously, it's not for everyone. I don't know if I've asked you this before. Have you ever had somebody come by at a show and go, oh, I would. This is disgusting.

Or how can you do this? You ever, like the pearls get in a bunch kind of a lady or.

Usually I would think, yes, yes. I actually, I used to.

I had one person come by and tell me that some of the stuff should be covered, which to me is ridiculous because a lot of what I do, it's plays on words. I had a lot of criticism when I was in art school that I was too literal. And I think a lot of that, there's neurodivergence, that.

That's just how my brain works. I have two children on the autism spectrum. And you cannot use figures of speech with them because it's just so they don't get it.

Everything is very literal. And so I really embrace that. And a lot of what I try and do, it's just how I see the world. Social commentary.

It's not trying to be offensive for the sake of being offensive. It's salty sweet, it's playful, it's sugary. Let's look at things a little different.

So, yeah, I've gotten, on occasion, people that clutch the pearls. I actually made a pair of socks, sunglasses, and I spray painted them black.

So if you got offended, you could put these glasses on while you were in my. While you were in my spot.

But it was weird because I think one time I had someone come into my tent and this was during a show and I had a painting of a wet kitty cat. And you can use your imagination with what that was titled.

Sure.

And he was looking at it and a couple other pieces, and he goes, what's your most offensive piece here? Like, you could tell this guy was very antagonistic. And I said, well, I don't really find anything offensive. I said, you can see it.

And he's like, yeah, but I want to know what you find the most offensive because I'm interested in it. And I just thought, not Here trying to be offensive. This is just. This is just me. So his art was not. Or my art was not for him. And that's okay.

But yeah, it's.

Aside from that, the only other thing I've ever had, which I thought was very weird was an older man came by me and did the sign of the cross as if I was the Antichrist.

Nice. That's. You got to catch that on video next time. You got to be ready. So we have a couple pieces now hanging here, which is awesome, but my favorite.

And as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it because one of the things I. I guess I can almost say preach or really talk to our sales teams about, because my role in.

In sales enablement is to make sure that they have the right tools to be successful.

I think, you know, that being curious about other people and being listening, you know, with intent and really understanding what they need is a way to maybe get them to use our services as opposed to having a pitch and just burying them and stuff. And so. So I talk about curiosity all the time.

In fact, it was just a couple episodes ago, I talked about curiosity and building relationships, how you make it better. And so just so people know what. How I'm going down this path is. Curious George was in my childhood. That's really. Dating me might have been.

You know, it was in my childhood. So you created a piece called Furious George and the Cowboys Hats there with a lot of blood.

Right.

It was awesome. So right away, yeah, we. We put our. We got to do what people get to do with you because. Because you have a couple of emails that go out a week. You.

You blog regularly on a website. And those are great things because you, you keep us in the loop on what's going on. You know, you'll have shots of something showing, little hints.

And so I was able to acquire that one before it even was finished. It was great. So, yeah. Yeah. If people want to see what you're doing, give. Let's.

Let's make sure we're saying where they should go, what are the places they should go to see that stuff, and how do they get onto your email list and all that? It's probably all the same place, right?

I would say the best place. I need to get better about regularly posting on Instagram.

I tend to, when I, when I get myself there, I do a lot of, like, process videos, things like that, explaining things, and people tend to enjoy that. So if you're looking to see video, time lapse video of painting in the process. That's a great spot to go.

And my username is Vanessa V A N E S S A Leveque L U H V E K so it's Vanessa Levesque. That's me on Instagram. But I'm much better about my newsletter, that has become.

It's weird because when I started doing that, I hated doing it and it felt like pulling teeth. And now I feel like I'm walking outside with no clothes on when I don't write my newsletter. Like, it just doesn't.

It feels like something I need to do. I want. I shouldn't say need to. I want to do it. I enjoy it. So my newsletter, if you subscribe, subscribe to that. That's on my website.

It's LeVeque L-U-H-V-E-K.com and as soon as you go on to my website, you get a little prompt if you want to subscribe to my email. So that's how you would do that.

And you can also see a lot of the works you've worked on in the past, some things that you're working on now. It's really cool. I think it's. I think it's just awesome.

Thank you.

What advice would you give a young man or a young woman thinking about doing what you're doing? How does one, you know, do you have advice, having gone through these things?

That's weird that you asked that, because as I was driving today, I was literally just talking to one of my good friends about that and my advice and again, take it with a grain of salt.

I don't have all the answers, but if I could go back in time, knowing what I know now as a working artist, I don't think I would have gone to art school. I think that I would have been in a better spot had I gone to school for business and. Or marketing.

So maybe a major in business with a minor in marketing, or vice versa. I.

I truly believe that we're at a time in this point in history or current or whatever, that art is so accessible to anyone and even learning how to do different things. You can just hop onto YouTube and figure out whatever the heck you want to figure out with your art.

I think the biggest thing, though, is to find your niche and really, really zero in on that.

Don't try, try to just make what's trendy, but really focus on that niche and get so concentrated that you become an expert in whatever the heck that niche is, and people are going to seek that out. So my Advice would be art school or not. Take that with a grain of salt. Yes, it's, it's great. Yes, you learn a lot.

But there's plenty of self taught artists that are amazing and then maybe some business and marketing, because I don't feel that you really get that in art school.

I love the way you put that.

The friend of mine from Connecticut, Anthony, a guy I play golf with every Sunday, one of his beliefs, and he's a realtor, is that all he really needs is a small, viable audience. And that, that's what you need. If you're going to do a niche, you don't need to go have millions of people, you need hundreds who like what you do.

I mean, right. And it ultimately. Yeah. So it's pretty cool. Wow, that's great.

And so this is going to be the fun part, Vanessa, because no matter who the guest is, no matter what they're. Because I have fun with my podcast, I go often to different places, but this is the same question I've asked every single guest for 10 years.

You ready?

I'm ready.

All right. What one piece of advice would you give a new agent just getting started in real estate?

Who? What one piece? Geez. All right.

Well, I guess like anything, I, I would say to know why you're going into it and what your goals are for going into it and not just making wads of cash, but just remembering why you're starting. I think with anything that you can get into, you can go in with. I'm going to help people and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that.

And over time, the shininess and the funness can kind of wear off and you kind of find yourself going down a, a different path.

So I would say, like anything, really think about where you're starting off, why you want to do what you're doing, and just remind yourself that, that this is. This is why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Awesome. Look, in 410 episodes, that's the first time that answer's been used. So congratulations. Awesome.

I told you we think a little differently here.

All right. This has been great. I can't thank you enough.

I know we, I've asked you about this and we've, we had to finally get our schedules together and this has been fantastic. I can't wait for the response. Please go to go to leveque.com and I love the. By the way, it's L, U H V E K lovek.

It's phonetically how you pronounce her name. But how is it really spelled? Vanessa?

It's really spelled L E capital V, as in Victor, E E S as in Sam. Q U, E. Yes, I figured. No one can pronounce it. No one can spell it. No one will ever get to my damn website. So here we go.

Yeah, lovec. So go check it out. Thanks again, Vanessa. This has been great.

Thank you so much, Bill. Always great to talk to you. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to the real estate Sessions.

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