Carrie Bourdeau’s surprising new canvas

Lianna Sapien

Monday, Aug. 15, 2011 | 3 a.m.

Even the most successful businesspeople need balance in their lives. Carrie Bourdeau, an assistant general counsel at the Clark County School District, is a perfect example of that. Bourdeau is a high-level attorney, but to bring balance to her life, she took up what had become on of her long-lost hobbies: Painting.

“I realized after doing only law that something was missing from my life,” Bourdeau says. “I was married, I had a child. I was pretty secure in my job. The rest of my life was falling in line, but I still felt something was missing. That’s when I realized I should start drawing and painting again.”

So, Bourdeau began taking art classes at the City of the World Gallery in 2009 and immediately, she says, felt more complete. Listening to her speak confidently about her art, it’s apparent this businesswoman is content.

At first, painting was just a hobby. That is, until her clients began to show an interest in buying her work.

“After I did a piece at home, I would take it to my office and hang it on the wall,” Bourdeau says. “People would come in and ask me how much I was selling it for. I had no idea how to price my art.”

It was then that Bourdeau called on Roz Knight, City of the World Gallery founder, to help her do what any responsible saleswoman would do: Learn how to properly price her products. With Knight’s guidance, Bourdeau was whisked into the art world and presented her first paintings in the gallery.

In the artistic realm, Bourdeau says she’s found a second family. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity here,” Carrie says of Las Vegas’ art community. “It’s not old-school. Here, you can get your art in galleries and you can meet people who are gallery owners with out a lot of trouble.”

Bourdeau has been featured in numerous art shows and is on the Board of Directors at City of the World Gallery. She has developed her own distinct style of painting. Most of her pieces, she says, have a sense of playfulness. “I don’t do a lot of nudes or edgy material. All that has its place in art. It’s just not what I’m drawn to,” she says.

Bourdeau loves being an artist and a lawyer and she’s not expecting to leave either one in the dust. To her, art and law are the perfect yin and yang in her life that create that elusive balance. Though happy with her legal work, Bourdeau remains wistful. “If I was the next big thing in the art world, I’d totally leave the law behind.”