Text by Joseph M. Schuster • Photography by Mike Jensen

Linnea Riley’s passion for art is the result of both nature and nurture. Her mother was artistic; her maternal grandfather helped create a nature-study art course used by the Field Museum in Linnea’s native Chicago. “When I was a girl, I spent hours at the table, doing those lessons.” By the time she went off to the University of Illinois, she knew she wanted to be a painter and decided to study art. Halfway through, she changed her major to advertising and journalism. “I got nervous about being able to support myself as a painter,” she admits.     
   After graduating, she returned to Chicago and did illustrations for Montgomery Ward home furnishings ads before she and her husband, Michael, moved to California, then to Holland and England. “We wanted adventure; we wanted to see the world and live somewhere we hadn’t been before.”
   Eventually, they landed in Aspen, Colorado, running an import store for winter tourists. “But what do you do for money when you have two daughters to provide for and it doesn’t snow and there aren’t many tourists?” Ironically, to gain financial stability, she went back to her first love, art, and began the annual series of poster calendars that have become her trademark.

(a) The muffled cat (b) and the holiday-hued pencil come from two of her whimsical Christmas cards. “The green half of the pencil says ‘nice,’ while the red says ‘naughty.’ Notice that it’s more worn down.” (c) Linnea manages the business from a home office, but does her creative work on “a beautiful upper patio filled with flowers overlooking Lake Washington.”

(d) An illustration from the 2007 calendar reflects Linnea’s fascination with wind-up toys. (e) Her book, Mouse Mess, inspired a children’s activity box. (f) An impish bear skates across a Christmas card.

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