ARTISTS IN PORTRAIT : San Diego Artist’s Double Life Has Become a Tale of Two Cities

No matter where a conversation with Gillian Theobald begins, it invariably leads to the subject of her commute. For 3 1/2 years the artist has led a double life, holding a managerial job in San Diego during the week and painting in a downtown Los Angeles studio on weekends.

“It was suggested by my L.A. dealer,” Theobald said over dinner at a local sushi bar, “that one part of the work is doing it and another is being part of the structure of the place where it is shown.”

Though initially put off by the political sound to the idea, Theobald decided to try it.

Ultimately, she has come to agree about the need to establish a presence in the American art scene’s Western capital. But career ambition has motivated her less than personal growth and the nourishment such a dynamic city can provide.

“L.A. is powerful,” Theobald said. She compared it to a lotus emerging from the mud. “The mud’s there, but, on another level, there’s so much blossoming and happening. It’s just a matter of what you want to look at.”

The city, she feels, is giving her an education in selective and critical vision.

But after four 10-hour workdays, even a blossoming lotus doesn’t look very inviting if getting to it means a two-hour drive. Often Theobald questions her ritual, and wonders whether she should settle back in her car seat yet again after finishing the week as manager of Art, Etc., San Diego State University’s art supply store.

But every Thursday night she makes the trek, and, by mid-afternoon Friday, when the distractions have cleared away, she’s always glad she did.

“When I get there, there’s a great sense of being home,” a feeling of “centeredness,” she said.

The nighttime drive affords her a period of transition between her two roles and her two homes.

“My life is very full. The ride is a time of stillness, a time to have perspective and clarity in my life. That time is very simple.”

The moods and scenery she encounters on the journey also have a subtle relation to her elegant, visionary landscapes.

Though access to peer-group structures and opportunities to visit galleries and museums are more scarce there than she had imagined, Theobald’s work is thriving in Los Angeles. Her third solo show there closed just last week to positive reviews, and invitations to participate in group shows are frequent and steady.

What Los Angeles hasn’t yet provided her is the sense of camaraderie and connection she enjoys in San Diego.

“Here, I’m supported by relationships,” she said, drawing a fairly clear line between the professional nourishment offered by one city and the personal growth afforded by the other.

Theobald started the SDSU store 10 years ago, after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art from the school, and she said the job has become even more valuable to her as time goes on.

“It feels like the heart of something. There’s been a lot of idealism there, but it’s idealism that works. It’s been very growthful for me on a human level.”

For more than a year after she started her commuting ritual, Theobald maintained a studio in San Diego, in addition to the loft in Los Angeles, but the combination proved unfeasible. Now she rents a room from a friend here, and expends her creative energy in Los Angeles, which she said is itself a resource of spirit and energy.

The unusual situation pays off--professionally, but not financially. Her salary doesn’t quite cover the expenses of keeping two homes, but sales of her work put her over the top. Even given the tenuous nature of the balance, Theobald refuses to worry about sales.

“I don’t want that ever to be a primary concern. That’s why I earn my living doing something else.”

The job at SDSU provides her with a pension plan and a sense of security that are rare luxuries for emerging artists. Without these, she said, she would simply “have to trust. I really do believe that the more you trust the universe, the more it supports you.”

Theobald, 43, is philosophical about her life. Her art has been an important instrument for attaining self-knowledge and spiritual “centeredness,” she said. More than just an emotional outlet, and “something more positive than cathartic,” her work, she frequently suggests, is irrevocably entwined with her own growth. As with most younger artists, her path toward artistic maturity has had its rough spots.

“I started out as a girl artist,” Theobald said. “I didn’t know it, but I was going to start slamming into walls. You can get embittered by it, and it doesn’t just happen to women. Everyone goes through it--rejections from shows, bad grades.”

Up against these walls, Theobald was forced to come to terms with her work. “Do I get embittered and throw in the towel? Or listen more carefully to the work? I didn’t start out a person committed to the work. Now I am.”

The obstacles an artist faces, Theobald concluded, are no more than “generic walls.”

“I feel I could do the same thing with my life if I were a dishwasher. It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. If I were a dishwasher, I’d have similar walls, they’d just have different labels.”