Glad's Art

Gladys Jimenez has been a creative person all her life. Growing up she loved to draw.  Her favorite days in school were when an art docent would visit her class and she could create art.

By the time Gladys was a senior at John Marshall high school she was creating the art for the theater department, the posters for the art production department, and she also did the mural on the street corner of Griffith Park and St. George Street, in Los Angeles in 1981. Gladys had 4 art classes in her senior year, and her teacher Ms. Kathy Lee, kept most of her artwork to show as examples to her future students.

Although Gladys went to work for in importing and exporting company after high school, she used her creativity to do logo designs for the company she worked, and all types of creative projects were assigned to her.  One of them being an Iron Wall meant to keep a building safe, but at the same time to artistically enhance the building. Her work can still be seen on 1660 Riverside Drive, in Los Angeles.

Gladys was greatly influence by the art of the masters, after a trip she took to Europe in the summer of 1985. She was able  to explore the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Louvre museum in Paris, and other great art museums in Rome and Florence, Italy.

When Gladys returned to Los Angeles she knew she had to paint. She bought oil paints and canvases and began to paint without any painting classes. Gladys' first art exhibit was in 1985 at the Barnsdall Municipal Art Gallery in Hollywood, CA, were she exhibited her first oil painting "Francavilla", based on a house she recalled from a little town in Francavilla, Italy. She had a buyer for it the first day of exhibit. 

Gladys was also active with photography after taking hundreds of photographs during her trip in Europe. Photography Forum's Magazine awarded Gladys the "Photography Excellence Award" for her published photographs in the "Best of Photography Annual" in 1984, 1985, 1988, and 1989.

After her first child was born in 1991, Gladys took time off from working on her own artwork consistently. When her second child was old enough to go to kindergarten in 1998, Gladys began to volunteer as an art teacher at Orange Glen Elementary school and continues to do so currently.

Gladys founded Happy Scribbles Kids Art Site in 2000, so children can have access to art lessons through the internet. The site has won several awards and some of the material from the website was published into a book, and used in schools to help meet their art curriculum requirements.

In the summer of 2009, when her first born left for college, Gladys began painting again consistently. She realized that others enjoyed her art as much as she enjoyed creating it. Since then, Gladys has been sharing her art with the public through a few local art galleries and her website, making it easy for others to own original artwork. In 2011 Gladys also began to take art lessons to learn the fundamentals, as she believes in continuing to improve her skills as an artist. She is currently working on her BA of Visual Arts and Education at CSUSM.

In 2011 Gladys founded Boldly Creating Life Foundation, a non-profit organization that brings art back into the public elementary school classrooms that do not currently have an art program. 100% of the profits made from this website will go to support the foundation.

Gladys' other passions are travel, and spending time with her loved ones. She currently lives in San Diego, California with her two dogs and cat.