Jenn Veal on Trusting the Process, Finding Your Voice, and Building a Life in Art
Updated: 8 hours ago
For Jacksonville artist Jenn Veal, the creative process is not a straight line toward certainty. It is a practice of listening, adjusting, stepping back, and continuing, even when the work has not fully revealed itself yet.
Jenn Veal has spent more than two decades building a life in art. A fine artist and muralist from Jacksonville, Florida, the 904 as she proudly calls it, Veal has developed a practice rooted in portraiture, tribute, movement, and the emotional weight of people’s stories.
In recent years, that practice has moved beyond the studio and into public space. Since first picking up a spray can in 2020, she has expanded into murals, festivals, and large scale community work while continuing to think deeply about the balance between making art for others and making space for herself.
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FROM FINE ART TO THE WALL
Veal’s transition into mural work did not begin as a rejection of fine art. It began as an expansion of it.
“I just picked up a can and started playing around and figuring it out,” she says. “I made a really nice transition, I think.”
For Veal, the shift was less about abandoning one discipline for another than learning a new medium through observation, friendship, and repetition. She watched other artists, took in their methods, and allowed herself the room to experiment. The timing mattered too. When the world slowed down in 2020, she used the pause to give mural making her full attention.
Her work at Osceola Arts’ ArtisNOW Murals program in Kissimmee became one example of how personal history, public space, and community can meet in a single image. Working within a community with a strong Latina presence, Veal found another route into understanding her own Caribbean and Puerto Rican roots.
As an adoptee whose parents have passed away, that connection carried real meaning. The mural was not simply a commission. It became a way of honoring community while continuing her own search for belonging.
“It’s about giving myself a voice and being able to connect.”
TRUSTING THE PART OF THE PROCESS NO ONE SEES
A mural can look effortless once it is complete. What audiences do not always see is the heat, the lift, the long hours, the pressure of deadlines, and the uncertainty of the early stages.
Veal is honest about that uncertainty. When a work is still forming, she has learned to take a walk, break the project into sections, and give her eyes time to reset.
“Trust the process,” she says. “Which is easier said than done.”
That phrase can sound simple, but in Veal’s hands it becomes practical. Trusting the process means accepting that a piece may look worse before it gets better. It means knowing when to step away before overworking a wall or canvas. It means giving yourself permission to return with fresh eyes.
“Less can be very much more,” she says.
That restraint is part of her evolving artistic language. Veal is drawn to realism, portraiture, and tribute work, but she is also beginning to imagine a looser and more expressive direction, one that brings more brushwork, roller work, flow, and movement into her future series.
She is still building, she says. That is not a weakness. It is the work.
BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE CREATIVE LIFE
Like many working artists, Veal knows that talent alone does not sustain a career. Opportunities, grants, open calls, networking, visibility, relationships, and business knowledge all matter.
“We went to the painting classes, but we didn’t get the business classes,” she says.
That gap is familiar to many artists. The creative career is often taught as though the work ends in the studio. In reality, artists also have to learn how to seek opportunities, communicate their value, build portfolios, enter new markets, and recover from rejection.
Veal’s advice is direct: use the tools available, make new connections, support other artists, and keep moving.
“It’s hard,” she says. “It’s not for the weak.”
Rejection is part of the process. So is the decision to keep applying, keep making, and keep putting your work in front of people. A concept may not align with one project, but it may be exactly what another call, city, curator, or community is looking for.
COMMUNITY IS PART OF THE PRACTICE
For Veal, public art has created a different kind of connection. Studio work may be intimate and inward, but murals meet people where they are. They bring art outside of spaces that can often feel inaccessible.
“Not everyone can get into a museum,” she says.
That belief is central to public art’s power. A wall can become a place of recognition. It can hold culture, memory, tribute, and neighborhood identity in plain sight. It can also create conversations between artists and the people watching the work come to life.
Veal speaks with equal appreciation for the festival scene, where paintings may be temporary but the experience is lasting. At Suwannee Music Park, she returns year after year to paint alongside friends, work under a deadline, and watch people interact with what the artists have made.
“Get your picture, get in, get out,” she says with a laugh, but beneath that is a real understanding of impermanence. Public work can be changed, painted over, tagged, weathered, or simply exist for a brief moment. The artist still has to release it.
THE TAKEAWAY
Jenn Veal’s story is a reminder that trusting the process is not passive. It is an active commitment to keep learning, keep creating, keep applying, and keep making room for your own voice.
For some artists, creative recovery comes through collaboration. For Veal, it often begins with solitude: quiet, peace, and enough space to let an idea arrive. What matters is learning the conditions that allow your work to become honest.
The goal is not to have every answer before beginning. The goal is to continue long enough for the work and the artist to reveal what comes next.
“Keep it moving forward, and something’s going to click.”
CONTINUE YOUR CREATIVE JOURNEY
Jenn Veal’s journey reflects what many artists are navigating right now: building a portfolio, finding the right opportunities, growing beyond one city, and learning how to turn creative ability into a sustainable life.
Listen to Episode 2: Jenn Veal, Trusting the Process as an Artist on The Open Palette Podcast.
Where art, culture, and community come together through real conversations.
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