If you take in a jazz concert at Chateau Chantal, you’ll see more than musicians jamming. You’ll also see an artist painting the musicians while they perform.
Lisa Flahive sets up with an easel and watercolors in front of a jazz combo. As they play, Lisa moves to the music and makes pencil sketches of the musicians. She then adds big swashes of color to the paper before brushing in the detail work. Flahive began painting jazz musicians in front of an audience about a year ago and she never would have guessed she’d be doing her artwork in front of so many people.
Lisa says, “This is the last place I ever thought I’d be – standing on a bandstand and actually being part of the action and painting. I was so shy about putting my easel anywhere to do a street scene I would back into a corner where nobody could see me. This has been a huge evolution.”
It began about 3 years ago when Lisa’s mother took her to see jazz musician Jeff Haas at Chateau Chantal. She had never really listened to jazz before but she was instantly hooked. Lisa started drawing the musicians right away, privately in a sketchbook. Lisa says her first sketches were “horrible” and you could hardly tell the difference between men and women.
Lisa says, “I was very afraid to show the musicians, if I had messed up their nose or something. I didn’t know if they’d even enjoy being drawn.”
When she first started doing the artwork as the musicians played, Flahive figured it would take a full ten years of practice before she was good enough to show and sell her work.
She says, “At every opportunity I took my sketchbook into every airport or doctor’s waiting room or every live music venue that I could find and I drew and drew and drew.”
The practice paid off sooner than expected. Lisa was asked to paint live as Jeff Haas and his combo played. Haas just finished a season playing at the Cambria Suites in Traverse City. He just started a new season at Chateau Chantal. He says the musicians accepted Lisa’s live artwork right away.
Jeff says, “It brings a heightened sense of creativity to the room. I love having her in the room. I set up the bandstand so I see her out of the corner of my eye and she’s moving to the music and creating to the music.”
Flahive was an art major but never thought she could make art for a living. For a vocation she chose something about as far away from the art world as you could get. She entered law enforcement. Lisa almost backed out of the police academy after her brother Scott was killed in the line of duty in 1994. Lisa spent her years as a cop in Las Vegas: a real culture shock since she grew up in the small town of Grand Haven, Michigan.
Lisa says, “I saw heroin for the first time and I realized they really do use spoons (laughs). It was better than reality television. It was just fun all the time.”
Lisa recently retired from the police force. She moved from Las Vegas to Traverse City last year.
She says, “As scary as it was to cut the cord and be a starving artist, here I am and I’ve done it for a year now and I’m actually surviving.”
One way she survives is by selling her work at concerts. Stan Verhuel frequents the performances. He owns four original works by Flahive.
Stan says, “I’m not an art critic so I can’t do that kind of stuff but just watching her do it, she does it alive and we love having it on our wall.”
When Lisa stands at her easel she has one knee perched on a chair. She recently had ankle surgery to help repair a leg she broke years ago. She broke it on duty in Vegas while chasing a purse snatcher.