Bibby Gignilliat has been creative since she picked up her first crayon. She started private art classes at 10 and put her art career on the hold at 11, after being criticized by her art teacher.
Turning her adult creative talents toward cooking, Gignilliat became a marketing manager for Williams-Sonoma and then decided to go to culinary school. From there, she offered interactive cooking classes which evolved into the company, Parties That Cook, with satellite offices in Chicago, Seattle and Portland, Oregon. The business was successful, but Gignilliat had an epiphany when, as a panelist at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, she heard her company described as a “lifestyle business.”
“I realized I had been pushing so hard, that I had left my own lifestyle behind. I had forgotten what I loved,” she said.
And what she loved to do was paint.
Coming full circle, Gignilliat sold the business and shifted her focus to becoming a full-time mixed media artist, working at the ICB Building in Sausalito, California. She is self-taught, unconstrained by the formal training of art school. In 2021, her work was chosen for the DeYoung Open at the DeYoung Museum. She also teaches in her studio and has an online class with over 700 people from around the world.
