Peggi Kroll Roberts confirms her identity in art. She says, “The ultimate purpose of painting and drawing is finding yourself. Otherwise, you’re an artist stuck in someone else’s format.”
Kroll Roberts will never be stuck in a stranger’s format. For six decades, wanderlust and curiosity carried her near and far for jobs and experiences.
She began as a fine arts major at Arizona State University. From there, she followed her mother and studied fashion illustration at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena.
A trip back to Arizona changed the trajectory. She took several drawings to Goldwater’s department store for feedback. Management offered her work on a catalog. “Sick of being poor and ready to go,” Kroll Roberts said yes.
Wanderlust hit again and led to Wisconsin, where her parents lived. Kroll Roberts designed newspaper ads and handled illustrations and window displays for a department store.
Next came a job illustrating fashions for a discount chain, then to Milwaukee as a compositing artist where she combined images for a design firm.
After a brief stint back in Arizona, Los Angeles beckoned. Kroll Roberts laid out theater ads for movie posters. It was “quick money” but “awful,” she says.
Her next job, “the best staff job I ever had,” was making storyboards for an ad agency. She says, “I drew everything you could imagine, pulled all-nighters and worked really hard for them.”
Her career shifted when she married Ray Roberts, three weeks after their introduction. Soon came a baby. She wanted to stay home and started freelancing. She and Ray got agents and worked at their home studio in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Their three-week courtship led to a marriage that endures after 41 years.
After 13 years of freelancing, Kroll Roberts changed direction. A live drawing class reignited her love of human figures.
“It was so rejuvenating,” Kroll Roberts says. “We met likeminded people who had a commercial background but had left to become painters and do their own thing. I thought, uh-oh, now we just want to do our own thing. It was scary because the kids were little and we were changing our way to make a living.”
The couple started doing outdoor shows—they’re practitioners of the plein air style—and took illustration jobs until gallery sales and exhibitions paid the bills.
Now both artists have been full-time painters for 40 years. They teach classes in person and online. They own a 20-acre ranch in Angels Camp. Recently, Kroll Roberts was featured in an exhibition at PBS KVIE Gallery.
Today, she’s “exploring as many ‘isms’ as I can—abstracts, collage, I got a kiln to do ceramics. I’m exploring so much more than I ever did. It’s pretty terrific. With art, it truly has to be fun or I don’t want to do it.”
One constant for Kroll Roberts has been her way to stay inspired.
“I like to work in series. I won’t reach that intuitive state if I do one-offs,” she says. “By the 10th, 15th, 20th one, that’s when my intuition and aesthetic sense start to emerge… Then, if the effort starts to feel glib or it doesn’t have my full interest, I stop right there and see what would feel fun and make me excited again.”
For information, visit krollroberts.com.
Jessica Laskey can be reached at jessrlaskey@gmail.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
