Jackie Green of Wheat Ridge is a lady who takes things to extremes. She has always had an artistic bent, but about 15 years ago her phone began ringing incessantly and hasn’t stopped since.
That’s when Green found her passion – painting faces.
At street fairs, private parties, weddings and bar mitzvahs she’s called on to transform cherubic young faces into monsters and madmen, princesses and pirates. From the simian to the sublime, Green uses her palette of water-based theatrical paints to create face-creatures that leap out from the crowd.
And from a crowded competition.
In May, Green’s peers nationwide recognized her talent. During the Face and Body Art International convention in Orlando, Fla., Green won first prize.
Green’s 22-year-old daughter, Jessica, modeled Green’s ethereal work of body art, designed for the “Mid-Summer Night’s Dream” theme of the competition. A picture of the young woman sprouted on program covers, ID badges and T-shirts all over the convention. She also won a third-place award.
In whatever venue Green works, she keeps up a running conversation with her subjects. Parents and children alike are mesmerized.
“Sometimes, they line up for as long as 4 1/2 hours to get their faces painted,” she says. “It’s absolutely amazing to me.”
With brushes and sprays, she adorns her young charges with an array of designs.
“I literally dream up many of these designs at night,” she says. “I’ll wake up in the morning with all new drawings I’d like to do.”
She usually completes a complex face design in about four minutes. Sometimes, youngsters ask Green to paint something she finds uninteresting, like skateboards. She invariably talks them into letting her paint something a little more extreme.
“They’re never disappointed,” she says. “I love that moment of ‘reveal,’ where I let them see themselves in the mirror for the first time. I always get a big smile or a hug. That’s very rewarding to me.”
The corporate world has discovered Green’s body-painting talents. She has recently painted faces and bodies at trade shows and corporate events. Once she painted the female entourage for former NBA star Dennis Rodman at a promotion put on by Captain Morgan’s Rum.
“That was interesting,” she says.
Green began painting faces about 15 years ago, when her daughter was 7. One day, Green came home with a face-painting kit. As she transformed Jessica’s face into that of a fuzzy bunny, Green was hooked. Today Jessica often serves as a model for Mom’s body-painting business, A Change of Face Inc.
Green now employs a five-person staff and will soon team up with a friend who’s moving here from Dallas to become a partner in the business. “If you do it right,” says Green, “you can easily turn this into a six-figure income.”
She has a full-time job elsewhere as a bookkeeper/accountant. But she says she makes more with her weekend business.
“I’m a workaholic, I guess,” she says.
So if you ever find yourself startled at a bizarre painted face leering out of a street-fair crowd, or wondering if “morphing” is more than a digital trick on a computer screen, Jackie Green, extreme face-painter, may be somewhere nearby.
9News anchor Ward Lucas can be reached at 303-871-1499 or ward.lucas@9news.com.
