Artist Spotlight: Cindy Berry Sullivan Makes Art at Live Concerts

Cindy Berry Sullivan isn’t a metalhead – or a musician, for that matter. But after attending a show at the Gothic Theatre over the summer, the Parker-based artist couldn’t help but appreciate the intensity that the metal bands created that night. She captured the lively scene in four digital drawings of the acts on the bill: Axeslasher, Enforced, Municipal Waste and At the Gates.

“I gave myself more artistic freedom to make my pieces reflect the energy of the crowd, of the musicians. With heavy metal, even though it’s not my choice personally, I really dug drawing to it,” she says with a laugh. “Some of it had really good energy to draw to. It’s just not the same as drawing from a photograph. I actually start to feel like I’m playing with the band.”

Sullivan, who moved to Parker in 2020 after her husband’s job brought them west, is known for her in-the-moment pieces of performances, a practice she began and honed while living in Annapolis, Maryland. Her drawings of bands and musicians possess a movement, or “joy in movement,” as she likes to say, that just isn’t inherent in other artists’ work. Born with a hereditary essential tremor that causes her hands to shake slightly, Sullivan initially thought her condition would make being a full-time artist nearly impossible. Instead, it’s helped her develop a signature style.

“I asked one of my friends, ‘Do you think I can do it with my hands shaking?'” she recalls of the first art class, which she took in West Palm Beach, Florida. “I just tried it, and I had a teacher pull me aside, and he said, ‘If you think you’re wasting your time here, you’re going to be selling your stuff within a year.'”

Sullivan historically deployed oils and pastels on canvases as a more traditional studio artist, but music would eventually work its way into her paintings, especially during one particular all-nighter that she spent with the King. “One time I drew Elvis until dawn. I had too much caffeine. I thought, ‘This is the most fun I have ever had. He deserves to be big.’ It was for no practical purpose, but I did a six-foot oil painting of Elvis while listening to his greatest hits. That started me using soundtracks when I painted. I just liked the inspiration. When I painted Marilyn Monroe, I listened to the Rat Pack,” she says. “So I did draw to music before I started digital. I just enjoyed it. People would say that they liked the movement in my work. I laughed, because it was the shaking.”

Discovering the unencumbered nature of using an iPad for digital drawing allowed Sullivan to move about more freely, which is when she started directing her artistic eye toward the stage.

“I tried it as just a fluke. I didn’t like it as first because of my shaking. The screen was too slick. The one thing I really liked about it was that I could take it anywhere. I found that whenever I was drawing live in a setting, it was just the best. Three or four hours would go by like nothing,” she explains.

Since then, Sullivan has attended concerts in Parker and Denver whenever she can, and works with bands and musicians to sell her pieces. All of her art can be found and purchased on her website. She offers commissions, including live-event paintings, as well.

Sullivan, armed with her iPad, became such a prominent fixture around Annapolis that officials there presented her with a City Council Citation recognizing her contributions to the local arts scene as a going-away gift. “Since you arrived in Annapolis, you have made this beautiful City your colorful muse. We in Annapolis have been the beneficiary of your talent, your energy, your enthusiasm, and your gift,” the citation reads.

Sullivan was touched by the gesture, including a farewell party that included many of the bands she drew over the years, but that’s how she embedded herself into the community. Colorado is no different in that regard.

“It was sad to leave them, but it was also a way I got to know the community. Through all the live music, I would also draw scenes around town. I decided when I moved to Colorado a year and a half ago that I would approach it the same way. I just jumped right into Parker and started going to the live-music venues here,” she says, adding she’s recently enjoyed venturing into Denver, as well.

Like a performer, Sullivan still gets butterflies before she starts drawing at a live event. “I always think, ‘I don’t know if I can pull this off this time,’ even though I’ve done hundreds of them. I think you need to have the fresh humility and not be formulaic about it,” she says.

But that’s just part of the process. She quickly falls into a groove and always captures the sacred experience of watching live music in her one-of-a-kind pieces.

“There will be a part when I’m drawing a live band that I’m like, ‘I just got them,'” Sullivan says. “It’s the one place that I can let my brain run free, because I have a very ADD brain. I don’t do it in a logical order, but I do the black ink first and place everybody in proportion and get the composition right. If you don’t have that, you don’t have anything. Part of my brain will say, ‘You should maybe do one person at a time.’ I tell my brain to shut up, because it just works, the jumping all around. It’s kind of like letting the wild horses out when I draw. I can let my brain do what it wants to do. I get to let my hands do what they want to do.

“I like that it’s unique,” she concludes. “If somebody said, ‘We can take away your tremor tomorrow,’ I would say, ‘No, thank you.'”

See Sullivan’s work at cindyberrysullivan.com.