to spot and smile at, as is her trademarked and legendary eyewear. But her story is in many ways no different thanmany others who set out to be artists, and her sensation today was certainly not overnight. Born in Indiana, Lovegrove graduated from the Ringling College of Art and Design. Upon graduation, however, she found that finding a job as an artist wasn’t as easy as just filling out an application — even when she would illustrate the answers to questions on the application, to showcase her talents. “It got me an interview,” she recalls, “but I didn’t get the job.”
Instead, she set out to find any and every opportunity to put a sketch pencil or a paint brush in her hand — including delivering morning papers in Dayton, Ohio (it gave her a lot of free time to be creative), illustrating a book on art, painting murals at elementary schools and a hospital pediatric unit, landing a job at Indiana University instructing high school art teachers, even painting signs for companies and car dealerships along U.S. 41. While that journey consumed seven or eight years, her opportunity to explore more serious art arrived when her husband, a Navy pilot stationed in Texas, retired — and she
began “to paint with zeal.” The zeal thing worked, as she gained representatives in major markets, distribution to upscale retailers and enough work to require a warehouse. Chalk up another five years. But Florida kept calling her back, and one fateful day about 20 years ago she and her husband took a wrong turn — thinking they were on the right route to property in Boca Grande — and found themselves smack at home for the rest of their lives, in tiny Matlacha. “It was a fishing village then, a little rough,” she recalls. “We’ve traveled all over the world, but we knew this was the place we wanted to be.”
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