El Dorado artist debuts art in Dallas, to host art workshop

Jeanette Odom poses for a photo at the Pancake and Booze event in Dallas' Deep Ellum district in September 2019. This was Odom's first exhibit.
Jeanette Odom poses for a photo at the Pancake and Booze event in Dallas' Deep Ellum district in September 2019. This was Odom's first exhibit.

Jeanette Odom was a little lost until her divorce in 2016.

After the papers were signed, she finally had time for her art.

She hopped in her 2010 white Chevy Impala and drove to Hobby Lobby. Odom piled 4’x3’ canvases in her trunk (with the backseat down of course) and followed it with “Basic Acrylic” paint, which is the brand she still uses today as an art teacher at La Academia de Estrelles, a charter school in Dallas.

“I actually went through a really awesome therapist who helped me through my anxiety and (post-traumatic stress disorder) after the divorce,” Odom said. “My art was a huge part of what got me through that time, which is why I take my job so seriously because I know that art can be a significant outlet for people that are struggling, and I work with teenagers.”

Odom, who was raised in El Dorado, will host a workshop at the Texas Art Teachers Conference in Galveston Nov. 14-16. The workshop follows her debut in the Dallas art scene at the Pancake and Booze art show event in Dallas’ Deep Ellum district in late September.

All of this, though, stems from a change in Odom’s perspective and mental attitude, something she tries to teach her students everyday.


Pastor Bill Odom walked into his backyard to check on his then 4-year-old son Michael and 2-year-old daughter Jeanette.

“Of course Michael’s over here, typical boy, playing with his cars and trucks,” Bill said. “Then I look over here and here’s Jeanette, she’s two years old, and real quietly, she had taken some blades of grass and woven them into this real intricate design.”

She had also drawn a design in the sand nearby. This was Bill’s first clue that his daughter had an affinity for art.

The second was when Bill picked Jeanette up from elementary school and her teacher met him by the curb.

“Her teacher said, ‘Mr. Odom, can I see you in my office,’” Bill said. “I’m thinking ‘uh oh! What did Jeanette do today?’”

All she wanted to show him, though, was Jeanette’s drawing assignment from the day. Instead of drawing a simple landscape with the sun in the sky, Bill said his daughter put details into the leaves on the bushes and trees.

He said there was a real sense of symmetry and balance.

Soon after, Bill and his wife got Jeanette art lessons.

Bill said his daughter was always drawing in school. In junior high, she would draw comic strips and sometimes get in trouble for not paying attention to her teachers..

When she started at Barton Middle School in 1998, she met art teacher Helene Lambert. Jeanette said that’s when the love of art was instilled in her, along with the skills to express her feelings and what she saw in her mind.

“A lot of people have a natural affinity for something but if you don’t practice it, if you’re not trained in those skills, it won’t ever really go anywhere,” Jeanette Odom said. “She had a really good hold on me, I had her for three years and then I was just hooked. That was all I was doing, that was my free time.”

Lambert said Jeanette was one of those students that you just knew was special.

“She was a quiet child. She paid attention and she wanted to learn more all the time,” Lambert said. “She was just that kind of child where you knew she was going to do something with her life with her art.”

Lambert, who worked at Barton for 31 years and recently retired, said she mostly just coached Jeanette. She simply helped her along with her skills.

She said Jeanette had a deep understanding of what was being taught in class.

“Some people you can’t forget — she was one of those kids you couldn’t forget,” Lambert said. “You couldn’t just get out of your head the kind of talent she had.”

Lambert said she’s proud of Jeanette and the work she’s done, and keeps up with her artwork online.

“She’s very ambitious,” Lambert said. “I love her very much.”

After high school and art classes with Pat Johnson at El Dorado High School, Jeanette studied art for two years at Southern Arkansas University. She said, though, that she wasn’t super impressed with the program and didn’t click with her professors. She also said she wasn’t sure what she was going to do with an art degree in south Arkansas.

That’s when she ended up taking off of school to be a wife and a mother of three kids. Even though she loved being a mom, she said she was left a little unfulfilled.

“I had my kids so close together that I felt like I was losing my mind (not being able to do art),” Jeanette Odom said. “I love being a mom, it’s my whole world but that’s what it is, it was my whole world.”

Jeanette said being able to do art became more like a chore — it had to be the right time and day, she had to have the right amount of energy.

“I kind of lost it, I wasn’t able to do much,” Jeanette said. “I didn’t realize how much it was affecting me until I started doing it again.”

When her children were 3, 2 and 6 months old, though, she decided it was time to go back to school and become a teacher.

Three years later, she graduated with her degree and began teaching in a regular classroom.

Jeanette said she was able to do some art on the side and would enter her art in fairs every once in a while, but found it difficult to get into the art scene. Two years into teaching, she became an art teacher. Her divorce soon followed, which allowed her time to invest in her art.

Jeanette said she painted a self-portrait where she was covered in birds on a 4’x3’ canvas. She said she wanted to paint something that felt empowering.

“It just showed that the full focus after a 10-year crazy, unhappy, abusive marriage, I’m going to focus on me, including my art and my mental health and everything,” she said.

She said she never finished the painting, though. She said it sat in her room and she would look at it. Eventually, though, she wanted to change styles, and she really wanted to paint something on a 4’x3’ but didn’t have the money for another canvas.

So she painted over it.

“I don’t regret it because as I was painting over it, it also felt like I’m closing that chapter. I’m ok,” Jeanette said. “It was just time for me to move on and it kind of reflected that… I was trying new things and I was moving on. That one’s hanging in my living room, and the portrait’s kind of under it.”

She said she even gets compliments on the new painting.

After her experiences, though, Jeanette said she’s taken classes on understanding behavior and its relationship to art. She said it helps her understand her students and affects her curriculum — instead of teaching them what to do, she teaches them the how.

She said she teaches them how to be an artist and what that means — how to carry themselves, how to speak like an artist. She gives them the tools to perform artistically and how to express themselves in a way they need to.

“Art, to me, every time you pick up a paintbrush or a pencil, you’re about to create something that has never existed before,” Jeanette said. “When I tell them that, it’s more powerful. You have a lot of power in your hands, you’re about to create a brand new piece of art that no one’s ever seen before. That’s why it needs to be so you and so original.”

Jeanette also said she decided this is the year she wanted to get her art into the public eye, and changed her thinking from “why me?” to “why not me?”

That’s when she applied to the Pancakes and Booze art show in the Deep Ellum district.

She said she now tries to teacher her students the same thing.

“Every word that comes out of your mouth, you’re speaking your own thoughts into existence,” Jeanette said. “You have no idea the power it has on your own subconscious and your perception of the world.”

After her first exhibition, Jeanette said she’s waiting to hear back from a few other applications and is working on new pieces of art to sell.

Now, though, she has a Ford Explorer and can fit a few more canvases in the back.

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