Category Archives: personal

here’s to finding my joy!

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i just posted about this on my art instagram page but figured it was worth blogging about as well. i’ve been working this past week on a free taster course (yes, yet another one) this time from artist louise fletcher, who is this lovely british woman and brilliant painter who is about my age and only recently in the past several years became an art teacher and successful artist and now teaches this yearly online art course about (re)discovering your joy in painting (or whatever medium you create with). i have thrown financial caution to the wind and signed up for the full course.

if you’ve been following my art insta or reading this blog then you know i’ve been listening to louise’s podcast art juice (which she does with artist alice sheridan) for quite a while now and i joined louise’s monthly art subscription group called your art tribe about six months ago. louise offers so much free content on you tube and via art tribe there are monthly masterclasses on various topics and techniques, art challenges, studio tours from members of the group, and there is a very lively facebook group specifically for members. it’s been well worth the monthly subscription charge and being an art tribe member got me a good discount on the 12 week find your joy course, which made it easier to take the plunge.

my biggest issue with my art is that i’m too much in my head about it and i psyche myself out a lot, i think. i can’t get out of my own way. which, frankly, has often been my problem in life in general. and a lot of what louise’s course is about is mindset and just remembering what it was like as a child to play with abandon with paint, to learn how to keep that free-ness and suspend self-judgement and not allow that negative voice in your head to limit you. and that is exactly what i need.

as many of you know, i’ve been a maker and creator of various kinds of art and craft and design for most of my adult life, having finally in college come to the epiphany that i didn’t need to be innately gifted with artistic talent (by societal standards) to be an artist. i will forever be grateful to my art professor marilyn murphy for that and for setting me on what would be my lifelong journey as an artist.

i’ve had varying levels of success with different things i’ve done. i’ve sold a LOT of work over my lifetime and have had a lot of people support me, for which i am so grateful. but in the past few years i’ve felt like i came to somewhat of an impass and though i’ve kept painting and making art off and on, trying new techniques and styles, i haven’t been satisfied with any of them and haven’t really felt like i’ve had anything worth saying with my art. hell, most of the time i don’t even finish what i start working on. it’s been an endless process of trying new things, starting pieces but not finishing very many of them or not being completely happy with what i do finish. and frankly, most of the time, not really knowing what it is i’m trying to accomplish or say with my art.

so i have decided it’s time for some help. i’ve done so many free online classes over the past few years with various instructors and while i’ve learned a lot in fits and spurts, i need a deep dive. when i did the paid spark course from art2life last year, i thought that’s what i’d be doing but it wasn’t deep enough for me apparently and i couldn’t afford the more expensive CVP class that went deeper following spark. so i’ve been puttering along. when louise’s free taster course came up, i knew i needed to do it to see whether i thought her longer course would do me any good. i didn’t go into it thinking i would take the longer class. but, after just the first exercise, i was ready to sign up! no hemming and hawing this time, no worrying about how i will pay for it (i mean, i am worried but i didn’t let it stop me). i just signed up and i’ll figure out how to pay for it in due time.

i’m still trying to complete the exercises from the 8 day free class as i was dog sitting last week and wasn’t able to spend time in the studio as i normally do. but i should have time in the next few days to finish that up and get to the pre-work for the paid class, which officially starts on the 18th. so stay tuned as i’m sure i will keep posting about it either here or on my art insta as the 12 weeks progress.

and as i mentioned in the insta post, if you feel moved to support me on this journey, there’s a ko-fi button on this page or feel free to just use venmo or paypal. i’ve already taken the financial plunge so it’s not dependent on people supporting me but i know i have folks in my life who like to support my creative journey so if that’s you, i will humbly accept any financial support anyone wants to offer.

here’s to doing scary things! whew!

follow up…

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just a quick follow up to my last post to present my final piece from the 5 days to jawdropping art program that i mentioned. it took me two weeks because my work schedule had me out of sorts (and out of the studio), but i finished it! and even framed it, which i never do. (it’s hard enough for me to even feel like a piece is finished; i never get to the point of thinking about framing.)

quick explanation: the first day prompt was to journal all our fears about our art/art making and then make a physical embodiment of that. so the piece i made to start out with was much bigger than this, on bristol board (paper), and basically used up all the leftover paint on my palette from the last thing i was working on. i scribbled a lot with pencil and oil pastels but it was basically just a big jumbled angsty mess that was pretty garish. and i wrote out a lot of my fears, the negative crap i tell myself about my art and process, onto it. the next few days prompts asked us to use various kinds of alchemy to transform our piece – i won’t go into all the details but for me, i ended up tearing my piece up and removing all the bits that had all my fears and negative talk on them, and then reassembled the piece without those into a smaller piece. in order to do this i had to affix it to cardboard. i had masked off the edges originally so that helped me when reassembling. i then outlined in white all the places where the pieces came together, so you could see how it had been put back together. each day we were to do something else to keep transforming it; none of my subsequent days were as dramatic as tearing it up and reassembling it, but i did make changes each day and finally ended up with this, which i am happy with and will make me remember a lot of the internal work that i did through the week. i even miraculously found a frame in my house that was the exact perfect size for the final piece, so now it will hang in my studio to remind me of this experience.

though i am clearly someone who is receptive to these art class sales pitches, in the end i have decided not to join jessica serran’s keep your ass in the studio program, the 4 month deep dive. i thought long and hard about it and even crunched numbers in my budget, trying to figure out ways to afford it. i could have thrown it on a credit card and hoped like hell i could figure out a way to make back the money, that the course would result in me getting back in gear and being prolific making finished pieces i could sell for higher prices than i usually do. (i do know my pricing is ridiculously low and i intend to change that going forward.)

i think when i finally got a peak inside her program, which she offered today on a live zoom call as it’s the last day to register, i had the realization that while i liked the 5 day challenge and all the internal work and journaling and i do think it was productive for me, i don’t know that i can maintain my interest in that level of introspection for 4 months. and if it took me 2 weeks to do 5 days of prompts because of my work schedule, knowing what my next few months look like and that work always ramps up during the holidays in november and december… i just know i can’t commit and i don’t want to commit to something that is ultimately just going to add to my stress level and make me feel bad because i don’t have the time to devote to it. i don’t doubt i could get something out of it but it is not the right timing and maybe even not the right program for me.

there’s another free teaser course coming up at the beginning of september that i want to do though i have no intention of going on to pay for the longer course that follows it, for many of the same reasons i mentioned above. but it’s a chance to try out another artist’s style and have an excuse to be in the studio more. i’ll be dogsitting that week so it might end up being on a one-week delay for me, but most of these things give you a little bit of time afterwards with the materials to finish if you weren’t able to keep up, so i will be hopeful.

i am also setting the intention that in between dog sits and busy periods with my job, i will do more painting and i will finish some things and have stuff to sell this year during the holidays. i’ve let the holiday selling season slip by too many years in a row and i intend to partake this year, even if it’s just a handful of small paintings or another studio clear-out of old work, or both. maybe this is the year i finally plunk down the money on a really good printer so i can make nice prints of my work to sell. a lot of artists make a good income selling modestly priced prints, which also serves to make the originals more unique and valuable. i need to do the research on that but that might be a better use of my money-that-i-don’t-have than paying for an art course.

i guess we’ll see. hopefully i can maintain and build upon this bit of momentum i’ve had and keep going. that is my intention. i’ll keep you updated!

my week in art

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i haven’t had much to report artwise for a while, but this past week had some activity that i want to share.

this week i did two things i want to celebrate myself for: the first was that i entered a few pieces into the art2life international online juried art exhibition. yes, at the very last minute, literally, but i did it. an online art show might not sound like a big deal but actually following through and entering anything in any show is a big deal for me. i’ve had several shows this year i’ve wanted to submit to that have come and gone, mostly cuz i didn’t feel like i had anything that was “finished” that i felt good enough about. well this time i just said fuck it and i entered some pieces anyways. i’ve been part of the art2life world for more than a year now and i just missed out on entering it last year so i figured, why not? it was $40 to enter up to 3 pieces; sadly i couldn’t settle on a third and get it photographed in time so i only sent in 2. (serves me right for waiting til the last minute.) but dammit i did it. (pat on my own back.) i certainly don’t expect to win anything (there are cash prizes and it is juried by a gallerist from NYC) but who knows what might come from it. maybe nothing but it was a baby step and i took it. so yay.

these are the two pieces i chose to enter. i’ve posted both on my instagram before but haven’t put either up for sale. at the time i made them, i wasn’t really sure i liked either and wasn’t sure they were done. but they’ve been sitting in my studio for several months now and when i scanned the room for recent work, they just jumped out at me.

untitled blue – acrylic on canvas board (10×10″)
releasing guilt – mixed media on bristol board (14×17″)

the second thing is that i did yet another free taster online course from another online art guru that has a longer expensive class. this one was called 5 days to jaw dropping art. jessica serran who is based in prague is the artist/coach and she takes you through a lot of self-examination of your fears around why you aren’t making the art you know you want to/can. it’s kind of more art therapy than art instruction – there’s a lot of journaling involved – but the prompts were interesting and thought-provoking. i tuned in live all 5 days but have only managed to complete the first 2 days of exercises; thankfully i have more time with the replays and a partially completed piece so i guess we’ll see what happens. but when i signed up for it i wasn’t even sure i had the time to tune in every day cuz this has been a busy work week. so i’m patting myself on the back for watching the lives and trying to engage and wanting to follow through. hopefully i can get through the rest of the week’s exercises this weekend when i have more time.

where my jaw dropping art piece stands now – acrylic on bristol board that’s been torn up and glued back together onto a piece of cardboard (14×18”)

i like taking these free teaser courses because, well, they are free. but also because each artist-teacher has a different approach and conveys some different – and many of the same – nuggets about making art, having an art practice, overcoming your inner critic, developing a style, and creating an art business. i guess i keep hoping that if i hear these things enough they will sink in and i will make some progress. today was the last day of this one and as they all are, the day’s live was mostly focused on selling the paid program. hers is a 4 month deep dive with a step by step plan and regular coaching calls and some bonuses for those who sign up early. it’s around $2k for those 4 months and she has a bunch of payment plans. (i’ll add that none of them are as good as paying the full amount up front using paypal credit which gives you 6 months interest free to pay it off, which is how i did the art2life spark program last fall.)

i also keep hoping that one of these teachers will resonate enough with me to want to really invest the money that i don’t have to try one of these longer programs, to see if it would help me break through whatever my blocks are to build my art business back up. i liked nick wilton (art2life) enough to do the short (and cheaper, around $500) 3 week spark class, and i did feel at the time like it helped and gave me some momentum. i learned a few things but mostly it kept me in the studio every day with exercises that helped loosen me up and get the creative juices flowing. you’ll probably remember i applied for a scholarship to his CVP program, the longer 3 month course that cost around $2400, but i was not selected. and i just couldn’t justify that amount of money at the time when my pet biz was really slow and i was barely making ends meet.

i’m in a little different place right now financially – despite my dogwalking schedule thinning, my petsitting schedule has been in overdrive for the past many months so i’ve banked some savings – but $2k for jessica’s 4 month keep your ass in the studio program still feels hard to commit to – especially when the pet biz is so busy. and until i go back and watch the replays of the last few days’ lives and finish the exercises, i won’t know if i feel like i really resonate with her style. so i guess we’ll see after this weekend. but i’m still really glad i managed to do what i’ve done with the free 5-day class.

ok, so i guess that means it was “good” week in the studio? i dunno. it was definitely better than it has been recently. i’ll take that as a win. hope y’all had a good week and happy weekend!

new books about art & creativity

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since i’m just beginning to listen to one of these and have the other one on hold at the public library, i can’t give you a review yet of either of them. but both of these books have been the subject of numerous podcasts recently that i listen to, and seem right up my alley so i thought many of you might be interested in them too. i just wanted to share my excitement about them both. i’ll probably end up buying them as hardcovers eventually but i think i will listen to them first.

the first is your brain on art: how the arts transform us by susan magsamen and ivy ross. (buy on amazon or bookshop.org. or do what i did and read or listen to it from your library. if they don’t have it, suggest it to them!)

i first heard about it on nicholas wilton’s art2life podcast where he interviewed both co-writers of the book and discussed how the book came about and the concepts of neuroaesthetics or neuroarts. as someone who has had brain surgery, which is a traumatic brain injury (tbi) in and of itself, and had to go through a long recuperation which involved re-learning to use my vocal chords (well, one was/maybe still is paralyzed) and how to swallow, dealing with double vision and droopy eyelids, as well as a host of other fun body issues, i’ve been acutely interested in learning more about how the brain operates and how i can continue to help it heal post-surgery. i am also getting older and want to understand how to keep my brain nimble as i age. and, well, as an artist, i’m always interested in creativity and the process of art-making and how that impacts or is impacted by your brain. so this book seemed like a – pardon the pun – no-brainer.

i’m only on the first chapter but already i’m very intrigued and want to do the exercises they recommend. it’s hard to participate in them while listening to the book driving around or while walking a dog, so i’ll have to go back and re-listen when i’m at home and can grab a pen and a notebook or journal to play along. but the concept of neuroplasticity – the ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections, especially in response to learning or experience or following injury – is super fascinating, and i’ve seen it in action in myself with my own brain. so i want to learn more, particularly the role creativity or art-making can play. i’ll try to remember to post a review after i’ve finished listening to it or have had some time to digest it.

the second book has a bit more popular appeal due to its author, rick rubin, who is a famous hip hop (and other musical styles) producer. the creative act: a way of being (buy on amazon or bookshop.org) has gotten a lot of media attention and rubin has been interviewed on a host of radio shows/podcasts. i think i first heard about it on debbie millman’s design matters podcast – she did a great interview with rubin.

it’s not a memoir but rather a rumination on the act of creativity and what it is to be an artist. it does draw on rubin’s lifetime of working with all kinds of artists, in helping them express themselves and tap into their unique creative voice. i was honestly surprised when this book came out, seeing all the rave reviews and the very philosophical slant of it; i didn’t expect that from the founder of def jam records. but when i thought about it, it makes total sense, as rubin has worked with so many musicians over his career and his job as a producer is to get the best out of artists, help them be true to themselves. i’m very much looking forward to reading this one.

are there other new/recent books about creativity and/or art that you are reading? if so, please share them in the comments!

(i just signed up as an affiliate for bookshop.org and started my own art/creativity list that i will keep adding to as i think of titles. i’ve read some of these books and others are on my wishlist to get to eventually. i’m working on a similar list for amazon and will post the link when i have it. if you make purchases from my links, i’ll get a little kickback that will help defray the cost of this blog and/or art supplies or whatever. it takes time to write all these posts and i’m just looking for easy ways to monetize that don’t involve advertising.)

on disappointment

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well, after not really sleeping all weekend and having serious anticipation anxiety, waiting to hear if i got one of the scholarships for the CVP class i mentioned in the previous post… i just got the email that told me i did NOT get in. “overwhelming amount of scholarship applications” blah blah blah. i find it so hard to believe considering how hard it is to even find out that there IS a scholarship for this program. it’s not listed anywhere on their website and they never mention it. i only found out because someone said something about it in the chat during a live call – and even then the official response was just “email us.” but at the same time, it’s no wonder they have a kajillion scholarship applicants because the course is really quite expensive, putting it out of the reach of most working class and/or low income folks. i guess it is geared to those who do have the money for it, as they are a business with a lot of staff and expenses to pay in order to keep the whole a2l empire going. i get it. nick and the whole team are great and deserve to make a good living doing what they do, inspiring artists to overcome their fears and create. i’m just sad to not be joining in the 2023 cohort. it sucks being poor.

i hope the other artists i’ve made facebook friends with who applied got in. many of them are on disability or are retired and living on a fixed income. i’m not, so i get it. but the timing is definitely not right for me to go $2.5K in debt right now so oh well. maybe i’ll try again next year.

it does however i guess free me up from what i was already thinking was going to be an insanely busy spring. not that i’m going to stop painting – i won’t, in fact i’m thinking i’ll go back over the spark videos again and see if i learn anything new. but i do have some busy work weekends of petsitting coming up and i’m trying to scheme my way for a weekend trip in april and festival season is almost upon us. spring in new orleans is a very busy time of year. so i guess i won’t have to forego all of that, as i’d previously thought if i were to be in CVP.

maybe the universe has other plans for me.

i know it’s ok to be disappointed. this too shall pass. back to the proverbial drawing board… or sketchbook.

winter 2020 update + artbymags face masks!

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I guess I haven’t updated here in a long time. I always forget I have an art website because I don’t use it for direct commerce – it’s mostly just a blog. And my art/design biz has been on hold these last few months so I haven’t had anything to write about. But the quick update is: I had brain surgery (really) October 13th and I’ve been in recuperation mode ever since. I have not been working and have been focusing solely on my health – a privilege I’ve had thanks to my sweet friends setting up a GoFundMe for me prior to surgery and literally hundreds of folks in my community and networks chipping in to support me during this time. I am so humbled and grateful, and trying to take all the time I need to get back to normal.

I am making a very strong recovery, despite being left with a few nerve-related deficits. (My benign tumor that was 100% removed was on my brain stem and entwined with my 10th cranial nerve, or vagus nerve, which controls things like breathing and swallowing and speaking.) So I’m battling double vision and paralyzed vocal cords, but making slow steady progress via physical and speech therapy. It’s just a waiting game for the nerves to repair themselves, but I hope to be back to business as usual after the holidays.

My post-brain-surgery self hasn’t had a lot of physical/mental/creative energy to make art or do any actual printing, but sitting in front of a computer isn’t that taxing for me. So the wonders of technology have enabled me to set up a bunch of my designs on print on demand site Teespring, and now you can get some of your favorite artbymags designs on cloth face masks!

https://teespring.com/stores/artbymags/collection/face-masks?page=1

*I have ordered a sample to check for quality but it has not arrived yet, so I can’t tell you anything about the quality of the mask yet. Sorry! I will update when it arrives. But I’ve generally been pretty happy with everything I’ve gotten from Teespring so I’m hopeful they will be great!

I’ve also been adding all kinds of new weird products like pillows and fannypacks, as the designs allow, to my regular store. Not every design looks good on other kinds of merch, but if you visit my artbymags store on Teespring you’ll find lots of new stuff with old designs, in a ton of different colors. I’m still updating so check back often!

https://teespring.com/stores/artbymags

I’m hoping to get back to the making of art soon, but I’m having to slowly re-integrate various activities so as not to do too much too soon. But overall, I’m doing pretty amazing after such a major surgery so I’m trying to have patience with the process and just go with the flow.

Thanks for checking out my site and supporting my creative work.

Happy holidays, everyone! Be safe!