Outside the Office - Painting With Colyn Wibbenmeyer

For 46 years, Colyn Wibbenmeyer of Sikeston, Missouri, has been working as a hairstylist. She cuts, colors and creates works of art using her scissors, professional hair dye and a blow dryer.

Wibbenmeyer wakes up in the morning excited about the day ahead and looks forward to visiting with the customers that sit in her chair, many of whom have become good friends. Whatever style her customers ask for, she does her best to create it, viewing their hair as a blank canvas, an opportunity to make something beautiful.

But when the world shut down in 2020, Wibbenmeyer was forced to stay home.

“They told us we weren’t essential, so we [Shear Perfection in Sikeston] shut down the shop,” Wibbenmeyer said. “I went berserk. I’m not good at staying home.”

Her seven sisters suggested she get a hobby. Wibbenmeyer dabbled in oil painting, but found that the oil took too long to dry. She tried watercolor as well, but was frustrated by the movement on the paper. In addition, she discovered watercolor wasn’t vibrant enough for what she wanted to create. She wanted to play with bright, bold colors.

It was only through trial and error that Wibbenmeyer landed on acrylic painting, her medium of choice, which she notes is “fast, fun and can be sped up with a blow dryer.”

Following a tutorial on Pinterest, Wibbenmeyer says she enjoyed the process of painting hydrangeas, which she’d feature in her first acrylic piece. She gifted the painting to a co-worker and began painting portraits, houses, landscapes and other forms of nature. With time on her hands, she signed up for a five-week course in acrylics. With the step-by-step instruction and constant practice, her skills improved.

“I wasn’t very good to start,” Wibbenmeyer said. “I didn't have the knack yet. But, I just kept trying. I’d look for a picture online that I liked and think about how I could paint it a bit differently.”

When another co-worker asked for a custom piece — their family dog on a piece of wood — Wibbenmeyer wasn’t sure she could do it, but said yes anyway. It became her first paid piece, helping to build her confidence as an artist.

Eventually, like the rest of the world, Wibbenmeyer went back to work and was happy to do so. But she didn’t want her position as a hair stylist to nudge out the new passion she found in acrylics. Instead, she found a way for them to work together by moving several of her finished pieces into the shop and using them as conversation starters with her clients.

“I think it’s brought me further out of my shell,” Wibbenmeyer said. “The more I create, the more I talk.”

Three years later Wibbenmeyer has logged close to 300 paintings of all shapes and sizes. She’s participated in several craft fairs, including MayFest in Perryville (her hometown) and the Dogwood-Azalea Festival in Charleston, Missouri. Last year, her artwork was on exhibit during a two-month period at the Sikeston Depot Museum. Friends, family and community members were invited to view her work and attend a reception in her honor.

With each piece of art taking three to five hours to complete, Wibbenmeyer spends quite a bit of time in her home studio with music turned up. If she is painting “something wild,” she says she may stand up while painting and crank up the country music. Sometimes she says the painting process calls for music on Disney Radio or songs by John Denver.

When she gets stuck on a piece, she walks away from it for some time or asks trusted family members for constructive criticism. She says her husband Kevin and grandson Eli are great critique partners.

Between custom artwork orders and her work as a hairstylist, Wibbenmeyer stays busy, but still makes time to learn new techniques and paint personal pieces just for fun. She enjoys the fact that she’s “gotten a little bit faster and much better.”

While a few of her finished pieces are kept in the home, most are given as gifts and everything else is for sale. The process is a blessing for her, but the product is her blessing to the world.

“I look at a painting and know I don’t have to keep it,” Wibbenmeyer said. “I love when someone looks at something I’ve created, loves it and wants it. I get the joy of painting it and seeing the smiles it brings to their face.”

Down the road, Wibbenmeyer would love to do a Christmas show and try her hand at bigger canvases. Until the right opportunity comes along, she’ll keep perfecting her craft at the hair studio and at home, knowing she will need her blow dryer for a little bit of both.