While most college students experience stress, many do not have a healthy outlet to channel their anxiety. Manship graduate student Stazhia Pleasant, however, paints through her pain.
Pleasant began painting last summer as a way to use her creativity to cope with the stress of graduate school.
“I bought some canvas, and I just started messing around with the colors and patterns,” she said. “It was calming to me.”
Taking the advice of some of her friends, Pleasant started selling her paintings on Etsy.
“After spending a whole summer making them, I realized I had a whole apartment full of paintings, and I didn’t know what to do with them,” she said.
She is selling 11 of her paintings on the website for $10 each, identifying most of her clientele as “poor college students.”
Pleasant said when people ask her to make paintings for them, they are truly doing her a favor.
“I play with the colors because it makes me happy and I enjoy it,” she said.
She has designed almost a dozen different color schemes to use for her paintings. Pleasant said she decides what colors complement each other by mixing different colors together with her paintbrush.
All of her paintings are named after people who inspire her and are special to her. One of Pleasant’s greatest inspirations is Billie Holiday because of Holiday’s ability to cope with her problematic life.
“African Americans don’t always address how we deal with our life and how we cope with things,” she said. “We are all just people and dealing with what is inside.”
With painting as her creative outlet, Pleasant said she believes it is important for others to find a coping mechanism as well.
“I would get off of work from Kolache Kitchen and I would just paint,” she said.
Though her business on Etsy is slow, Pleasant said she paints because it helps her get through the day.
“I don’t consider myself an artist, I just consider myself someone trying to get through life,” she said.

Gallery • 8 Photos

Haskell Whittington

LSU Manship graduate student Stazhia Pleasant paints as a way to relieve stress and sells her work on Etsy on Monday Nov. 14, 2016, in the LSU Union.