Rochelle Walden is a painter of People, and a few other things. But mostly people.
Rochelle has been painting on canvas since 2017, and it began as a stress-relief activity . At the time, she owned a small business in Bellingham WA training and booking face-painters to regional parties and events which she had done for about 14 years. In her earlier career, Rochelle was a buyer and merchandiser for a large kitchen and home goods retailer in Colorado. She has also coached small-business owners, staged products for magazines, and taught classes in retail merchandising.
As a face-painter, Rochelle has painted thousands and thousands of kids with her groups at area markets, festivals and parties. Body-painting developed out of face-painting and included live body-painting stage performances, weddings, print-advertising, private gala and fundraising events, Halloween contests, and world naked-bike rides. Rochelle has won a number of awards in face and body-painting competitions , and was an artist rep and online instructor for a facepaint distributor, Facepaint Forum Shop.
Canvas painting was a surprise love that developed out of a time of enormous stress from raising teenage kids and dealing with the horrifying reality that an authoritarian, bigoted grifter,( and now of course, treasonous insurrectionist,) was elected to the highest office in our democracy. Portrait painting rapidly became a new focus, and now commissioned work has become Rochelle's mainstay, although she loves to face-paint at local events when she can find the time. Currently, in 2024, Rochelle is concentrating her efforts in the political arena to support the game-changing work of Heather Cox Richardson and to bring attention to pro-Democracy candidates and issues.
She is a former member of the Puget Sound group of Northwest Artists, a featured artist and retailer on Fine Art America, has held a solo show at Locus Wines in Pioneer Square, Seattle , and winner of two recent awards including the Judge's Choice Award, from the Contemporary Art Gallery Online. She is the enormously proud mother of two remarkable humans, Campbell and Brinkley, and currently lives in Seattle with her indulgent husband of 30 years, John, her gang of street-smart urban chickens, and a pair of sibling rescue cats from New Orleans, June-Bug and Dupree.
