Wichita speed painter creates art in less time than you can read this story

Give Annika Wooton a few minutes and she’ll make you a masterpiece.

The Wichita woman is a speed painter, producing works with acrylic on 4-foot-by-5-foot canvases for audiences, usually competing against the clock to complete her art.

She’s already performed in 19 states and recently returned from her first foreign country – Malta.

“Already to be touring the country and now the world as a speed painter, making my full-time income through my art,” she said, “I have to remind myself sometimes, because I am very ambitious, that that is incredible and I’m lucky to be doing what I’m doing.”

Born in the Kansas City area and moving to Richmond, Va., during her school years, Wooton was equally into visual art and theater. When it came time for entertainment for a school assembly in her senior year in 2012, her theater mentor suggested she perform speed painting, where she created three musically related pieces.

“That was the genesis of everything,” she recalled. “I think I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it and that it combined really all of the things that I love.

“Being in theater and arts class were where I existed,” she added. “To put those two things together on stage made complete sense, and I probably would never have thought about that myself.”

Returning to her home state as an illustration and animation major at the University of Kansas, Wooton entered the Miss Kansas pageant in 2018 with singing as her talent. The next year, in an effort to try something different to stand out to the judges, she revived her speed painting prowess.

It worked. She was selected as Miss Kansas 2019 – with her reign expanded for a year thanks to the pandemic – and was in the Top 15 for Miss America that December.

The talent portion created a challenge – how was she going to condense her eight-minute speed painting performance down to 90 seconds?

She practiced and, using Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as her subject matter, learned to complete the work of her inspiration in a minute and a half.

Ginsburg’s trainer showed the justice, who died in September 2020, a video of Wooton at work and was amazed when the artist turned it upside down to see her portrait.

“Oh my gosh, how did she do that?” the justice reportedly exclaimed.

It still stands as the highlight of her artistic career so far.

“The entire production, from the painting itself to the music track, to her actually seeing the painting. That whole experience is hard to beat,” she said. “I’m still waiting for the moment that kicks it off first place.”

As Miss Kansas, in her extended two-year term, Wooton traveled the state painting mascots for school assemblies and local landmarks for civic organizations, always knowing what she was going to paint and have the colors ready before she walked in the door.

By 2023, she decided to be a touring performer.

“I just took it to another level and decided to go all in,” she said.

Her touring as taken her to halftime shows at WNBA games, NCAA basketball tournaments and, earlier this year, to Wichita State and Emporia State hoops halftimes. Her audiences have included Bill Murray, who praised her work at halftime of a DePaul game on New Year’s Day, 2025.

She has made plenty of Kansas stops as well, including the Pancake Festival in Liberal last week.

“Some of the most special moments don’t happen on the big, fancy, flashy stages. They happen in small, rural towns where they invest in bringing the artform out,” she said. “It’s really special that people find me, first of all, and then make the intention to bring me out to their event. Especially in these days of AI, to see art created right in front of your face from start to finish and all the energy that goes with that is something I’m really proud to do.”

Wooton gets her acrylic art supplies from home improvement or craft stores, and her recent flight to Malta – which doesn’t have a Home Depot or a Michaels – forced her to haul all of her paints, wrapped up three times and placed in freezer bags for safety and non-spillage.

Keeping the glitz and glamor from her pageant days, Wooton often performs in “stilettos, big hair and a sparkly jumpsuit” to precisely timed music.

“I learned too much from my time in pageants – some that’s tangible, some that’s not – but I think that presentation, performance, networking, public speaking has built a role in building the platform that I have today,” she said.

What audiences don’t see, she said, is the practice that her art takes.

“The less time I have for a performance, the more I practice,” she said. “It almost gets down to a choreographed piece of knowing how much of the painting needs to be completed at different points of the music track. But 15 minutes is kind of my sweet spot, where I always have a plan and always know what I’m painting.”

Wooton said she’s usually too involved in her performance to realize the beauty of her work.

“There’s definitely times when I step back and I’m like, ‘I really like this.’ Not that they don’t turn out well, but when I am painting, I’m inches away from the canvas and it’s a 4-by-5-foot canvas designed to be seen from really far away,” she said. “Truly I reveal the painting and it’s typically not till I get offstage that I really take in how it completed itself.”

Wooton, who turns 32 next month, works part-time as marketing and development director for Ballet Wichita. In April, she married Jesse Bourque, a fitness and nutrition trainer who moonlights as a musician and actor.

She has a tentative performance date lined up at New York’s Madison Square Garden later this year, and wants to tour bigger and more venues, as well as collaborate with a musician on works that could be on stage at performing arts centers.

“I’m someone who dreams big and works incredibly hard to make those dreams come true,” she said.

Wooton does find time for occasional “slow painting,” usually watercolors on much smaller surfaces. She said other visual artists are not impressed with her speed as much as the fact that she performs in front of thousands of audience members and not the solitary existence they’re used to.

“It’s the perfect blend for me and where I come from, but it’s not for everybody,” Wooton said.

She said she’s used to the skepticism about her unique talent.

“Especially in pageantry, there’s a lot of criticism of speed painting. It’s, oh, they’re just filling in a paint-by-number,” she said. “Even if that’s the case, some people have more help than others when it comes to painting. There is still talent to the speed and the creation and the process of getting to that moment that can’t be quantified in 90 seconds.”

She estimates she is one of about 20 artists – five women and 15 men – to perform speed painting professionally.

“I think that there’s a lot of opportunity for this kind of art, and I really am at the forefront of the group of folks who are paving the way for speed painters,” she said. “So the sky’s the limit. I’ve got a lot of big ideas, and it just takes a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck to make it happen.”