When Joey Luzar traveled with family through the United Kingdom this spring, she was always taking photos, capturing inspiration for her acrylic paintings.
The Iowa native and Newburgh, Indiana, resident began painting after she retired as a pricing and feasibility manager at global media measurement and analytics company Comscore, Inc., in 2021. Her painting began to move forward quickly in early 2022 after she was gifted acrylic paints and canvas from her neighbor, Eleanor.
“I just sat down and I began learning,” she explains. “Once I started, I had to paint every day.”
It’s a schedule she still attempts to keep. She started by showing her art at First Fridays, Funk in the City, and Myriad Brewing Co. Eventually, she submitted pieces to exhibits, including donations to Easterseals Rehabilitation Center’s “Inspiration Through Art” display. “Canning,” an acrylic on canvas depicting a woman canning in the kitchen, was included in a 2025 Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana exhibit, “From Scratch,” put on by Urban Seeds. “The beautiful thing here is that it was from an old black and white picture of my grandmother carving a turkey in a farm kitchen that I was able to adapt … which was a first for me,” Luzar says.
Her work “Bewildered Barn Owl” — depicting an owl standing on a rock, decorated in feathers and floral painting, among a field under a cloudy sunset — earned honorable mention in a 2024 Wesselman Woods art exhibition. Using dark shades of green and ruddish red among brighter blues, oranges, tans, yellows, and pinks, she makes objects pop, even though they follow a similar color pattern. “It honored me even more that Wesselman Woods accepted my donation and that they continue to display it,” Luzar says.
Despite sourcing ideas from everyday scenery, machinery, people, and animals, Luzar describes her style as abstract and whimsical. She incorporates several techniques, including tinting her canvas before painting, drawing her subjects with chalk, charcoal, or paint beforehand, or painting with multiple layers. Her work comes out with bold strokes and vivid colors in a storage shed-turned-studio off her home patio. Although she creates whatever image comes to mind, her work is open to interpretation.
“I paint my interpretation — the way I see it artistically — and generally leave it to others to interpret the way they see it, but if they ask, I share the painting’s story,” she says. “I come from a world of numbers and statistics; now I get to be my emotional self.”
Right now, she is working on a series of acrylic portraits of women for an anticipated show in 2026. “I want to elevate women,” she says.
Luzar credits the artist community — including fellow painters Lesley Nelson, Lori Rivera, and Cynthia Watson — for guiding her self-taught endeavor. “I am not a joiner, but artists here are supporting each other … everybody is so kind in helping you on your journey,” she says. Her advice to emerging painters: “Learn the rules … all the other elements that make a good painting, so … you have a foundation to create what you really want to create,” she says.
