Ellington

Natchez inspires Vidal Blankenstein. She says that growing up around all the visual art there molded her as an artist. "Art was never anything that anyone talked about, but it was always there," she says. "It was everywhere."

Blankenstein comes from a storytelling family and learned at a young age that all art has a story. In a small-town setting where everything was "over the top," it was easy for her to harness her creativity in her painting.

She describes Natchez as being very aesthetically sensitive, and a place where one can truly appreciate being a part of the environment. "It's possible I see more than some people. I see the irony in what's happening, and I try to paint it," she says.

This awareness of her surroundings lends Blankenstein's work its narrative quality. She says her work is both psychologically narrative and narrative in nature. Her paintings are rife with symbols: those of trees, hands, seeing-eyes and animals.

Blakenstein, 52, is not just an artist. She's also a businesswoman, an innovator and a problem solver. Using the logical left and artistic right sides of her brain in her art, she believes, is what makes her a creator.

On one hand, Blankenstein paints pieces described as having a "dream-like" quality. On the other, she heads her own design business, Imaginary Company.

Blankenstein's company specializes in all aspects of advertising, design, broadcast, Internet and communication consulting. Imaginary Company produces complete branding packages that take advantage of the full range of media options, from print ads to broadcast to a high-impact Internet presence.

Her business influences her artistic work, Blankenstein says. She has spent her life thinking about effective communication and its connection to imagery.

"I begin to paint when I run out of things to say," she says. "When there are no words to express some of the beautiful aspects of life, I paint."

Her work in fine art is never planned, she says. The paint has its own voice. "The way it interacts with other paint, and the way it moves are testaments to the fact that the paint has a mind of its own," she says.

Blankenstein has lived in Jackson's Belhaven neighborhood for around 30 years. She likes the area's small-town feel and gothic intrigue. Her neighborhood reminds her of her hometown, in that right.

She loves her company, but Blankenstein, who graduated in 1982 from Louisiana Tech with a master's degree in graphic design, says she will never stop painting. She hopes to balance both kinds of art, using both halves of her brain in tandem.

Vidal Blankenstein's work is in the permanent collections of the Mississippi Museum of Art, Meridian Museum of Art and the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art. Additionally, her work has exhibited as part of a juried international traveling exhibition throughout the United States and Europe including: Washington, D.C.; New York City; Atlanta; Berlin; Belfast, Ireland; and Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey. Her business website is imaginarycompany.com.