Mentorship: Artist Zoë Pawlak is crafting success with the help of her studio assistant, Christina Bowe

Many words have been written about Zoë Pawlak’s illustrious career as an artist. Vancouver-based Pawlak has been covered in most local outlets you can name. She was dubbed a Designer of the Year by Western Living. Her work hangs in the homes of revered former Canuck Trevor Linden and actress Cobie Smulders. Walking into her studio, you’re immediately met with a dizzying array of colours that somehow blend seamlessly together once they hit a canvas.

And yet, when Pawlak describes herself in five words, it’s both simplistic and completely fitting. Pawlak was on the lookout for a new studio manager when she visited an old mentee and ended up meeting her assistant, Christina Bowe. “I don’t know what happened,” says Bowe with a smile. “But the next time she came in, she was like, ‘I want you to work for me.’ And then she poached me.”

Pawlak has a wry grin on her face when she confidently speaks those five words: “I like what I like.”

Pawlak’s business is vast. She sells her paintings to galleries, individuals and organizations (the Canadian government has been a client) and often travels to Toronto and New York to meet with prospective buyers and to showcase her work. She credits three mentors—Robert Genn, Nancy Crawford and Don Li-Leger—with helping her along the way in both her artistic and business journeys.

All three of those mentors have since passed away, but Pawlak hasn’t forgotten the lessons they taught her. Genn, who had a studio in White Rock, where Pawlak grew up, was instrumental in helping her negotiate contracts. Crawford trained her in traditional realism. “That deeply affected the beginning of my career,” Pawlak says. “While you see a practice that is largely based on abstraction, it’s rooted in a formal, rigid training, the way you would imagine a really strict ballet. It’s like I understand the architecture of anatomy: I studied the nude rigorously for 20 years. I understand the architecture of things and then abstract from that place as a departure point.”

Li-Leger demonstrated what it’s like to provide for a family, something that Pawlak, who has two kids of her own, took to heart. “He had this insanely beautiful studio and was also human,” she says. “He let creative work move through him and monetized that in a way that had pros and cons that I observed from the inside.”

Bowe, a model and artist, has been working with Pawlak for over two years. “I feel like I do a bit of everything here,” Bowe says. “Sometimes I help with theory if she’s having painter’s block—come in with fresh eyes. But it’s anywhere from paying the bills, making appointments, scheduling Zoë’s travel, closing sales, pitching people on Zoë’s work. When one of us is up, the other can be down and vice-versa. It’s just us. We both kind of do everything.”

Pawlak says her goal has always been to pair creativity with commerce. “And I think a way that I exemplify that for emerging or mid-career younger artists is that I show that it’s possible. As a studio, we embody that. I believe that, when you’re creative, there’s a way in which that can remain a hobby. And when I mentor, I want to step into the capacity to start to create bodies of work, look into the meanings of it, how it’s connected. And then look at more practical things, like pricing, sizing, shipping.”

Just like Pawlak received from Li-Leger and her other mentors, Bowe now is getting an inside look at the things she may or may not want for herself in the future. She likens her time with Pawlak to getting a master’s degree in business and art.

“She came out of it paid and not having debt—just the debt of her time, energy, blood, sweat and tears, that’s all,” says Pawlak with a laugh. “She gave a piece of her soul. It seemed like a good exchange.”

Bowe doesn’t regret the price. “I’ll happily give away my soul to something that also feeds it and makes it grow. I feel like I’ve expanded in ways I still haven’t comprehended… it’s changed everything in how I saw my life before I started this job. I started modelling when I was 15… but Zoë cracked me open and showed me that I’m more than what I am on the outside. She made me see the substance that I have inside and I want to explore that and connect with the narratives in my life and translate that into physical artwork.”

Pawlak has had staff for over a decade and has seen the transformative impact she’s been able to have on the people who have helped her. “We don’t mentor enough,” she says. “There’s this gap between being 18 and 23 and 30. There’s not enough skill share and transfer of knowledge. It indicates to me that there’s a lack there.”