I met with Deonna Craig, artist and president of The Eighteen Art Collective on November 3 in We. The Culture: Works by The Eighteen Art Collective at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. There was a steady flow of guests walking through taking in the exhibition, enjoying the sunny afternoon. Deonna and I sat on the modular seating just a few feet from her large, colorful abstract painting and talked about her decade and a half-long journey from insurance fraud investigator to full-time artist, and everything in between.  

I started with an easy question.  

Emily Sogard (ES): Tell me about yourself. 
Deonna Craig (DC): I was born and raised in Indianapolis. I am the youngest of four, I have a sister and two brothers. I am catholic-school-raised, pre-school through high school, then a private school through college. I am a free spirit. I love animals, documentaries, and traveling.  

ES: Have you always been an artist?  
DC: Not exactly, I studied communication and sociology at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN. I thought I was going to go the journalist route or work in television, but my first job out of college swayed me from that. I worked for Jerry Springer and quickly decided I didn’t want to work in TV anymore. 

ES: Then what?! 
DC: I worked in insurance for 15 years as a fraud investigator. State Farm and American Family for the longest. So, when people set their cars on fire or blew up their houses for insurance money, I was Johnny on the spot to investigate if it was real or not!  

ES: Did you like that? It’s giving me FBI vibes! 
DC: I loved it! It was like FBI with less pressure. It was always different, something always going on. But on the side, I was making art. It helped me decompress after work. Eventually I found myself starting to fit my art around my insurance job. The bigger my opportunities got, the less I cared about insurance.  

ES: So how did you take the leap? 
DC: There was an opportunity that came up and my job just didn’t allow me to do it. It was at that point I had to decide. I thought, “What if I go out on my own? What if I really do this?” I had to choose. I chose art and I didn’t look back.  

ES: You haven’t looked back, but that must have been a hard transition to make, tell me about it! 
DC: It was hard, but I learned a lot about art, the art scene, and the art business by grinding and doing it the hard way. Some people asked, “You gave up your career to become a starving artist?” And I was a starving artist for a while, I had to make changes on a lot of different levels. I started over. I rebuilt a new career from the ground up. I wouldn’t have chosen this journey, because it is so scary, but in hindsight it was perfect. 

ES: On to your work. If you had to describe it generally, what would you say? 
DC: I work primarily with paint. Acrylic, oil pastels, mixed media, usually large-scale, often as tall as I am. My work is abstract and a bit whimsical. I like my work to be teachable moments, and to open conversations that are hard to have, but in a positive way. 

ES: What about Existence (Coordinate of Life) the piece you have in We. The Culture? 
DC: This piece nods to ancient art and petroglyphs. I blend contemporary art with ancient art, hoping to transport people through time. As an artist, I think about art, then I think about the people who make it. How did they view the world? When you look at ancient art, you are not just looking at art, you are looking at ancient people, cultures, I hope my painting encourages those conversations about history and our current day.  

ES: Do you consider your painting activism?  
DC: Yes, whatever the topic is, I want my paintings to spark conversation and self-reflection, help people understand why they feel the way you do, and maybe why someone else feels the way they feel. If everyone did that, we may have some solutions. 

ES: Do you have anything exciting coming up that people should know about? 
DC: Yes! I am so excited to have received a Creative Renewal Arts Fellow grant from the Indy Arts Council that will allow me to travel internationally to see ancient artwork, including petroglyphs to continue to develop this body of work. I will be traveling in 2023, while We. The Culture is still up! 

You can follow along with Deonna’s work and travels by following her on Instagram at @deonna_heartbeat. She is also a contributing author to the November 2022 Discovering Newfields Newsletter, you can read her piece about the formation of The Eighteen here. Learn more about her and see more content at discovernewfields.org/wetheculture. While Deonna takes her research and painting internationally, come see her work in real life at We. The Culture: Works by The Eighteen Art Collective in the IMA Galleries, open now through September 24, 2023.  

Exhibition Credit:
We. The Culture: Works by The Eighteen Art Collective is presented by Aaron Wealth Advisors, Gary & Hannah Hirschberg. Lead support is provided by Rachel M. Simon & the Herbert Simon Family Foundation and June McCormack. Associate support is provided by IceMiller and its Racial Equity Solutions Team. Additional support is provided by Judy Donner, Nathan & Deborah Oatts, and Emily A. West. 

Image Credit:
Deonna Craig (American, b. 1982), Existence (Coordinates of Life), 2022, acrylic, oil, pastel, paper on canvas, 61-3/4 × 50 × 2 in. Loan from the artist. © Donna Craig.