About Connie Desaulniers Williamsburg, VA

About

The joy of embracing

my neurotic side.

Since I was 10 years old, I wanted to be an artist. I majored in art at William & Mary, and under the guidance of my business professor father I also prepared for (his words) "a real career". Business classes and part-time jobs gave me some necessary skills, and after graduating I landed a full-time marketing position at Busch Gardens. Fourteen years later, I had the nerve and resources to start my own marketing business.

Small business comes with its league of stresses. So I embraced my neurotic side, and started

painting again as a form of innovation and stress therapy. Business boomed!

The delirium of success and ultimate burn-out eventually inspired me to shutter my then13-year-old marketing firm and become a full-time, neuroses-embracing artist.

In 2012, I joined my newly-retired chef/husband Marcel Desaulniers in a new adventure: a chocolate cafe' appropriately named MAD about Chocolate. We served Marcel's decadent desserts and lunch, plus the cafe was my personal gallery. Talk about having cake and eating it, too.

We sold MAD about Chocolate January 2016, so Marcel could retire for a second time (he previously owned The Trellis Restaurant in Colonial Williamsburg's Merchants Square, and authored 10 cookbooks, including the award-winning Death by Chocolate).

Now I have more time to create original art, fine art prints, scarves and more in Williamsburg's thriving art scene.

Alter-egos just wanna have fun.

From "Eat, Drink and Be What you Want".