THOMASVILLE — Internationally acclaimed decorative painter and Chalk Paint inventor Annie Sloan visited The Hare & The Hart on Monday evening for an engaging conversation on her life, sustainable design, and creative living.

Amy Hart, owner of The Hare & The Hart, was thrilled and filled with emotion as she welcomed Sloan.

“This has always been a dream of mine,” Hart said, wiping away tears. “My journey with Annie and her paint began in 2013, and I first visited her store in Oxford, England, in 2016.”

While at her store, Hart presented Sloan with a painting, which she still holds to this day.

As Hart began to learn more about Sloan and her revolutionary paint, she knew she wanted to carry Sloan’s brand and to give artistic souls and designers the same feeling she got when she stepped into Sloan’s store.

“She has been so influential to me in so many aspects of my home, my shop, and my business,” Hart said.

Sloan’s story in the paint business is not a traditional one.

She attended an English university, studying the fine arts, but upon graduation, joined an all-girls cover band known as Moody and the Menstruators.

“I loved singing and being on stage, but I realized I didn’t want to actually do this as my career,” Sloan recalled.

She went on to hold jobs in Journalism and teaching, always feeling that her true love was painting.

“In art school, I did a lot of stuff that was conceptual, but all I really wanted to do was learn about paint, so that’s what I did,” she said.

While learning about paint and designing, Sloan said she found herself always doing faux finishes on furniture. She began studying original faux finishes and learned that most of the furniture was painted by decorators, not true artists who had studied fine arts.

“They were not artists; they were not trained,” she said. “They just had a formula.

Sloan studied these faux finishes, but found she did not like the way the paint reproduced on the pieces in her home. So, she began researching paint. However, this proved more difficult than she anticipated.

“You often hear about painting, but miss out on what kind of paint it is, so I started researching,” she said.

As she studied and tested a variety of paints, Sloan realized the market did not offer what she was looking for. She then set out to create her own paint.

She first shared her vision with a man in England, who told her it was simply impossible.

Not to be deterred, Sloan heard of a woman in Belgium who owned a paint factory. That is where Sloan connected and began her empire, which is now found today in 62 countries and 1,500 stores.

“It took a little bit of going back and forth,” she said. “I had certain tests I did. It had to sand right, it had to absorb wax, and had to be able to add water to it.”

The company took Sloan’s tests seriously, and after working together, the team created 12 colors for the initial batch.

Sloan’s paint is now offered in 52 colors, but she doesn’t plan on expanding beyond those colors, noting the colors have no black in them and are easily mixed.

As the paints became overwhelmingly popular, Sloan was approached about becoming a franchise. Upon reading more on franchises, Sloan didn’t believe creative individuals who truly understood the spirit of upcycling through paint would purchase a franchise. However, she did like the idea of stockists.

Her first stockist was a friend in the Netherlands, before stockists appeared in England.

As Sloan’s paints began appearing stateside, Hart’s store became a stockist for Sloan’s Chalk Paint and has now been named a Flagship Store.

To celebrate this and the 35th anniversary of Sloan’s revolutionary furniture paint, guests were given a copy of Sloan’s latest book, “Colourful Living,” and invited to sign up for The Joy of Painting Master Class, hosted by Tristan Merriam, Sloan’s brand ambassador and artist-in-residence.

To conclude the night’s events, Sloan signed copies of her book as Merriam hosted a Q&A session with the renowned author.