Jessie Sibert

By: Tobin Bennison

Article Category: Skilled Labor

Drawing and painting have always come naturally to Jessie Sibert. You might even say that his artistic talent is God-given.

At least that’s how the self-taught Merritt Island artist sees it. “I truly believe that whatever talent I have comes from God,” he tells me. “In many ways, He’s been pushing me to paint throughout my whole life. I think that 90% of it is Him and the other 10% of it is just me getting up in the morning to pick up my brushes.”

Sibert says this with a curious mixture of steely confidence and disarming humility, a trait he might share with his creative idol, Michelangelo. And though he’s quick to invoke both the Italian master and the Supreme Being as prime artistic inspirations, Sibert is no wide-eyed holy roller. Because as willing as he is to attribute his success to divine intervention, he’s also just as indebted to some very earthly instigators for his relatively late and very impressive appearance on the local art scene.

Born in Virginia and raised in California until the age of 16, Sibert moved to Brevard in 1988. By the time of his relocation, he’d already dabbled in sketching, recalling that one of his first pictures had potential as soon as he’d finished it. “But the more I refined it and worked on it,” he adds, “the better it looked. I worked on it some more and it looked really, really good. After that, my pictures just started to get better the more I worked on them. I knew I had something right from the beginning.”

With very little formal training, apart from some rudimentary high school art classes he did passably well in, Sibert abandoned art for more reliable work — and steadier paychecks. “Around the ages of 18 and 19, I stopped caring as much about art. I never thought I’d be able to make anything out of it. I didn’t see much of a future in it at the time.” As a result, he says he still has a modest collection of “name tags and hairnets” to prove that other more traditional occupational options didn’t offer much else in the way of financial stability.

After working on and off for his extended family’s construction business, Sibert, at the behest of his wife Lisa (an accomplished artist in her own right), took up his pens, pencils, and brushes just four years ago for another stab at his heart’s passion. “Before that, I’d sketched from time to time and would often see striking images in my dreams. Whenever I put pen to paper I was amazed that I hadn’t lost it. I was in the middle of doing a picture of Superman and I remember thinking that if anyone can make any money out of doing art, I’m going to find a way to do it.”

Sibert’s first formal personal challenge was a painstaking acrylic amalgam of some 23 different frogs, culled from various photos cut from magazines. “I really just wanted to see what I could do if I got serious about painting,” he remembers. “The first frog came out impressively, but both my wife and I thought that it may have been some kind of fluke. ‘Keep going,’ Lisa told me. ‘If the rest of the frogs look that good, then you’ve definitely got it.’” Seeking still more confirmation, Sibert approached two artists in booths at the Space Coast Art Festival in Cocoa Beach back in 2005 for their advice.

“I figured I needed to get some guidance from someone in the business; someone who’d made it work for them,” Sibert recounts. “I went up to one of the best I’d seen that day and asked him if it was really his full-time job. He told me he’d put four kids through college with his paintings and encouraged me based on the work I showed him.” The second artist wasn’t quite as encouraging, but still offered Sibert a grain of hope. “He gave me some really solid, sound advice, but told me not to quit my day job.” But after adding that he’d only made about $125,000 during the prior year, Sibert didn’t need much more convincing. He’d heard enough to make the leap into art full time. “‘Sign me up,’ I remember thinking.”

Since his re-induction into the art world, Sibert seems to be making up for lost time. Within four short years, he’s amassed a huge portfolio of canvases, murals, sign work, drawing, sketches, and interior design pieces.

And while their number is impressive, considering the short time it’s taken him to produce them, even more startling is the diversity of their visionary subject matter. Comic book-inspired imagery holds some sway, but each is matched by an even larger number of inventive abstracts, impressionistic studies, still lifes, portraits, and works of uncanny photorealism.

Still though, Sibert is always ready to deflate any perceived pretensions in his work. “I don’t consider myself so much of an artist as much as a human Xerox machine,” he says. “Real art is in the beauty God has already created. I just try to mirror it.”

When he’s not busy building up his portfolio and increasing his output at an alarming rate, Sibert is busy setting higher and more demanding goals for himself. “If I haven’t painted it yet,” he avows, “I will.”

You can see some of Jessie Sibert’s art online at: www.sibertart.com. He’s also available for commissioned work, including murals and signs. Contact him by calling (321) 987-6107 or by emailing jessiesibert@yahoo.com.