There are countless types of artists — from geniuses to nepo babies, technicians to expressionists.

After years of 100-hour work weeks, Baltimore’s Cynthia Daignault knows exactly who she is: “a grinder.”

“I’m a reliable, old workhorse, like old Susie in the field who you can always count on to hook up to the plow,” Daignault said on the phone from her Remington studio. “So I’m happy to be that. I’m happy to be here.”

“Here” is a career on a national rise, as evidenced by the 47-year-old painter’s strong showing at Art Basel, the art world’s Super Bowl-like trade show, this past weekend in Miami Beach. Daignault’s two new works — “Sunrise, Everest” and “Details (America)” — were sold to private buyers for more than $110,000 total, according to her representative galleries.

“There’s so few people that get to make a living doing their art full-time,” she said. “I feel like I won the lottery.”

“Sunrise, Everest,” which had a list price between $70,000 and $90,000, per Night Gallery in Los Angeles, is a series of six panels of Mount Everest as seen from a base camp.

Upon closer look, the colorful oil on linen paintings are split “between abstraction and figuration,” Daignault said. The canvas’ bottom halves are a figurative take on the mountain range while the top halves are contemplative color field paintings of blue and purple hues.

Daignault, who has hiked to Everest, said she often uses painting to explore how time passes and how the human consciousness experiences the world.

“The mountain is unchanging. The mountain is solid,” she said. “But there’s an infinity of light and color and humidity and weather that passes through. And that’s metaphoric for life.”

Meanwhile, “Details (America),” another oil on linen work completed this year, sold to a private U.S. collection for $42,000, according to Olney Gleason, a New York gallery. The series is 10 tiny slices of American nature, each measuring only 5 inches by 3 inches.

While five-figure sales are undoubtedly a good thing for a professional artist, Daignault said the headline-grabbing payday doesn’t go as far as people may think. The gallery takes half, she said, and then there are costs for materials, shipping, her studio, utilities, health insurance and any staff members — not to mention taxes.

“At the end of the day, even when somebody’s selling a lot of work, it’s not a very lucrative career,” said Daignault, who drives a “very uncool” 2016 Chevrolet Bolt. “It’s a middle-class career when you’re doing really well.”

While that’s the case for now, her stature looks set to grow in 2026. Daignault, a graduate of both Friends School of Baltimore and Stanford University, has a big year ahead. In February, Olney Gleason will host a monthlong solo exhibit before Daignault’s “first major museum solo show” debuts at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston from Aug. 27 to Jan. 18, 2027.

The Boston exhibition marks Daignault’s return to large-scale U.S. landscapes after a 10-year break. They’ve made her deeply consider the human connection to nature, particularly in times of divisiveness. She’s interested in the universal things that bind us together — consciousness, love, death.

“Landscapes are a way into those bigger topics,” she said.

The Boston show will also briefly overlap with another solo exhibit by a Baltimore native: Derrick Adams’ “View Master,” which runs from April 16 to Sept. 7. Daignault recently ran into Adams, and they reflected on “this really exciting” time for artists from Charm City.

“Derrick and I are both pretty excited about that moment, which is a testament to the fact that it’s a great time to be an artist in Baltimore,” she said.

This article has been updated to correct the model of Daignault's car and to clarify she hiked to Mount Everest but not the mountain itself.