Mary engelbreit net worth
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Q&A: A Conversation with Mary Engelbreit
I climb to the second floor of a Maryland Plaza building and start looking for Mary Engelbreit's office, digging in my briefcase for the suite number. Then I glance down the hall and start laughing. I see brown door after brown door, then a yellow one with a bright cherry, her hallmark, painted on the glass!
Engelbreit's one of the most beloved illustrators around, especially for her gawky, bespectacled Ann Estelle alter ego, who often appears inside black-and-white checkerboard, her bright colors Magic Markered over black outline and balanced by wryly profound quotes. Engelbreit's real life has not been the "chair of bowlies" she once sketched for Ann Estelle; she's fought for her business and suffered the almost unendurable pain of her son's death. But she understands inspiration.
Did you even like cherries?
Nope. I don't like tea, either [glancing pointedly at a painted teapot]. But I do like Scotties!
Ah, so your dog's a Scottie?
Nope. A rescued Alaskan Eskimo dog.
How do you keep your charming drawings from crossin “A Vast Empire of Cuteness.” Mary Engelbreit is first and foremost an artist, but the industry she created around her artwork truly makes her a legend of the business world. She continues to receive high accolades, being called a contemporary Norman Rockwell by People Magazine. Her “vast empire of cuteness,” as dubbed by the Wall Street Journal, began at an early age and has continued to this day as she churns out an amazing number of original works on a yearly basis. In the early 2000s, the “cute empire” had sales of around $100 million a year. Mary Engelbreit was born on June 5, 1952, and grew up in St. Louis. Her artistic abilities began early, where by the age of eleven she was already producing works of art. Her high school guidance counselor at Visitation Academy encouraged her to go college to become a teacher, but Mary had already decided what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. She ignored the advice and skipped both college and design school to begin working immediately on a career in the art American artist Mary Engelbreit (born June 5, 1952)[1] is an artist whose illustrations have been printed in books, cards and calendars.[2] She was born and lives in St. Louis, Missouri.[3] Engelbreit attributes her beginnings in art to getting eyeglasses in second grade and being able to see details of the world around her clearly for the first time.[4]: 6 After meeting her first artist, at age 9, she became convinced she needed her own studio space, which her mother helped set up in the family linen closet.[4]: 8–9 Engelbreit began working for a local advertising company, Hot Buttered Graphics.[4]: 7 Hoping to work as an illustrator of children's books, she shopped her portfolio around New York without success. She began working on greeting cards and her first nationally distributed greeting card featured a malapropism that played off an old saying, "Life is just a bowl of cherries", showing a girl lookin
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ARTIST, ENTREPRENEUR
—Wall Street JournalTHE EARLY YEARS
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Mary Engelbreit
Biography
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