When Passion Comes First
Caprice Hogg on Designing a Life Around Her Art
“I never skimp on art lessons or art supplies. Or books. I never skimp on books.” — Caprice Hogg
If you step into Caprice Hogg’s mountainside home in Kimberley, British Columbia, here’s what you’ll find:
Canvases on every wall. Paintbrushes and paints scattered on tables. Art history books lining bookshelves and stacked in corners — everything from Monet and Cézanne to contemporary Canadian painters. A gallery at the front of the house doubles as a teaching studio. Out back, the shadow of the Rockies stretches across the yard.
The house isn’t big. It was built in 1942 and still creaks in places. But it holds everything that matters to her.
It’s not a home built for status. It’s a home built for art — because from the start, Hogg made a decision most people don’t: She built her life around what she loved — not the other way around.
Since starting On Fire, I have talked to dozens of passionate people — some famous, many only known in their niche worlds. But fame has never been my barometer: I’m drawn to people who have unapologetically built their lives around the thing they love most. The ones who’ve kept that passion alive for years, even decades — not because it’s easy or always enjoyable, but because they can’t imagine living any other way.
There’s an energy that comes from people like this. It’s almost cliché to say that passion is contagious — but clichés stick because they’re often true. When Hogg and I connected over Zoom, I could feel it coming through the screen. Months later, I still can.
Hogg may not be a household name outside of her corner of the art world, but she’s a successful artist by any measure. She’s made a living from selling her art and teaching what she loves for decades.
Her story started in her early twenties, when Karen Hersey — an art teacher and friend of her mother’s — happened to stop by her family home one day and offered to teach her. Hogg had never picked up a paintbrush and had never even been interested in fine art. But the moment she tried it, she knew: art would be her life.
“When she handed me that paintbrush there was no turning back,” she says, a big, toothy smile spreading across her face.
Almost overnight, her days filled with painting, art history, and endless conversations about composition, color, value, theory.
“It opened up such a huge world… it became my life. Everything is art-related now. Everything.”
But the real turning point came a few years later, when she and her mom visited a small mining town in the Rocky Mountains.
“I did three paintings in two days,” she says. “The paint was just flying.”
She’d always wanted to live in the mountains — and mountains were what she loved to paint most. Her parents were splitting up, so when her mom suggested they just move there, Hogg jumped at the idea. Six weeks later, they packed up her art supplies and went.
“Just boom. I’m living in the mountains… living the dream.”
With her passion in place, she focused on how to make it work. Her first show sold out on opening night. Later, realizing the gallery world wasn’t for her, she and her mom opened a studio in the front of their home, welcoming visitors every summer until Covid. When the pandemic hit, she leaned into teaching — which she found as rewarding as painting.
“I absolutely love it because people pay me to talk about art, which I do endlessly anyway,” she says, laughing. “They get excited because I’m excited. And I love that.”
She’s faced her share of challenges: a wheelchair since she was young, the devastating loss of her mom in 2017, tendinitis in her shoulder, and two rounds of breast cancer. But through all of it, the art kept her going.
“Never,” she says when I ask if she’s ever had a plan B. “I live very simply. So I think that helps. I didn’t have to make a ton of money. I buy in thrift stores. I’m not a big consumer. I don’t eat out a lot. I don’t buy a ton of lattes.”
But she’s never skimped on what mattered: art supplies, lessons, art-filled trips to Italy.
“And books,” she says. “I never skimp on books.”
(Here, I can relate. I constantly claim that “book money doesn’t count.” To me, they’re one of the best investments a person could ever make.)
Hogg has always been clear about her priorities. The end goal was always to put the thing she loved front and center. The rest was just logistics.
“It’s just always been about the art for me,” she says.
And that’s what I think so many people get wrong about passion. They build the lifestyle first, then try to fit passion around it. Hogg shows there’s another way — put your passion first, then figure out the rest.
Not everyone will want to live this way, of course. For some, stability and comfort matter more — and there’s nothing wrong with that. But for those who can’t imagine a life without the thing they love most, Hogg’s story is proof that another path exists.
It’s not an easy path. It demands trade-offs, patience, and a willingness to live outside the usual script. It’s full of highs and lows.
But the reward is a life built around what you love, instead of bending what you love to fit the life you’ve been given. It’s a choice. And one we can all make — if we’re willing to let what we love come first and trust ourselves to figure out the rest.
Gosh. I would love to meet this gem!