This Writer and Artist Is Celebrating Female Runners Through Inspirational Paintings – runnersworld.com

Jacqueline Alnes’s is like a personal art gallery where its main focus is to celebrate the lives of your favorite female runners.

There’s a painting of six-time Olympic champion accompanied by her powerful words, advocating for the rights of pregnant professional athletes. Below Felix, there’s an illustration of the late middle-distance runner , who died from cancer earlier this year, with a rainbow over her head next to her quote, “A life lived in technicolor.”

Keep scrolling and you’ll find a sketch of a sandcastle alongside a quote from : “Training is like building a sandcastle, every grain of sand is important even if you can’t see them all.”

, a professor of creative writing at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania, has discovered joy in celebrating the voices of female athletes through her small-scale watercolor paintings. What started as a personal motivation on one particularly hectic Monday has evolved into a weekly practice of sharing inspiration with others by celebrating the figures who move her.

“Tiny art is a way of celebrating someone who adds something bright to the world. I think that it’s a really meaningful thing for me to engage with every week,” Alnes told Runner’s World.

The 27-year-old never considered herself an artist, but she discovered she had a knack for painting when it became a form of meditation during a challenging time in her life.

“I’m pretty sure I got a B- or a C in high school art. I always thought I was terrible,” Alnes said.

After she graduated from Portland State in 2015 with an MFA in creative writing and creative nonfiction, her mom bought her a watercolor set as a way to “de-stress.” Alnes immediately embraced her artistic side by setting aside time each day to paint.

In the fall of 2015, she started her Ph.D. program in creative writing at Oklahoma State University, where she experienced a number of exciting, yet challenging moments in her life. As a student, Alnes was writing her memoir—named Well Developed Female in No Acute Distress, which details her experience with a neurological illness in college that ended her career as a Division I athlete. It also shares how she found joy in running again years later—as well as studying for exams, teaching, and attending class.

Whenever she felt overwhelmed by her chaotic schedule, Alnes turned to sketching and painting for much-needed personal motivation and meditation. On April 23, 2018, Alnes posted her personal artwork for the first time on Instagram: a painting of an inchworm on a ruler next to the words, “Just keep inching along.”

Every Monday since, Alnes has shared a painting on Instagram along with the hashtag #minimotivationmonday. Some images feature insightful quotes from literary figures, but most depict inspiring words of female runners and athletes. To prepare the artwork every week, Alnes sets aside an hour to just listen to music and paint.

“It makes me really happy to celebrate other people who inspire me,” Alnes said. “I feel like when I’m spending time with these quotes and making this art, I’m engaging in a deeper way than I usually do. It kind of forces me to slow down.”

Alnes picks her subjects based on timeliness, the impact they’ve made in the sport, and words they’ve said that spark inspiration. For example, she chose to paint Felix after she wrote a groundbreaking opinion piece in The New York Times explaining her experience fighting for maternity protections as a Nike athlete. She has also painted epic and heartfelt moments in women’s running, such as when Desiree Linden and Shalane Flanagan helped each other during the miserably cold and rainy 2018 Boston Marathon.

Inspired by Grunewald’s fearlessness and openness when it came to battling adenoid cystic carcinoma, Alnes painted her for the first time in June 2018 with her quote, “Being brave for me, means not giving up on the things that make me feel alive.” A year later, she painted Grunewald again after she died on June 11. This time, Alnes wrote her own interpretation of what it means to “Be Brave Like Gabe.”

“I think it’s beautiful what she [Grunewald] did for other people, showing her vulnerability,” Alnes said.

Touched by her tribute, many people in the running community requested a copy of Alnes’s painting, which prompted her to create an store where she has since sold 105 “Be Brave Like Gabe” prints. All of the proceeds—over $1,000 so far—from the paintings are donated to the , Grunewald’s nonprofit that supports rare cancer research.

Now about a year and a half into sharing her paintings on Instagram, Alnes’s ambition for her “tiny art” has evolved. What started as a way to give herself a boost has developed into a celebration of female runners, in all their outspokenness and bravery. Through her artwork, Alnes said she wants to honor their voices, which often transcend the sport by inspiring young female athletes on and off the track.

“There are so many interesting things happening with women’s sports right now, and I’m trying to uplift women’s voices in a different way,” she said. “It’s really special to feel like you’re that tiny boost that someone needs to make their day a little bit better.”

Taylor Dutch is a freelance writer living in Chicago.