Hi, this is Susan delicate and welcome to episode 2 of the studio Insider art podcast today. I talked a bit about the evolution of my creative Journey about maintaining creative momentum as an artist and developing a consistent practice. I hope you enjoy the episode. In these episodes I'll bring you deep inside my art studio practice and how I run my business as a professional artist. I'll be sharing loads of useful information about my tools my materials and of course my mindset but most of all this podcast is about the ups and downs in this karada crazy Life as a professional artist so welcome inside my studio. I hope my journey can help you feel a bit more at home. Looking your own in this first season of the podcast. I'll be coaching my good friend and Studio assistant Laura day through the process of preparing for her first solo exhibition. We talked about everything from how to finish paintings and a cohesive body of work to finding your own style to wrestling with all those big emotions that come along with putting your work out into the world. There is something here in this first season for every emerging artists. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm thrilled to be back and it was lovely hearing all of your feedback on our very first episode last week. So thank you very much for returning. I'd like to also welcome back my studio assistant Laura J to the podcast. How are you Laura? I'm good. How are you? Susan? Good. Thank you and just to fill you in in case you didn't catch last week's episode. Laura is joining me on the podcast for season 1 and we are taking the opportunity. Her to ask me any questions she has in any way that I could be helpful to her in the lead up to her first exhibition it she's having in a couple of months. So, what did you what questions do you have for me today? Laura? Well, it's a two-part question. I think would be helpful for the listeners to learn about how you started your painting Journey. I've heard a little bit of a but I'd like to hear a little bit more because I'm sure I'll learn. Something new in our conversation today and then something that I often get stuck with is about keeping your momentum going. So, you know, we start on this painting Journey. We do a workshop. We buy our beautiful art supplies. We get really inspired, but then it's figuring out how to fit it in our life and how to keep those ideas fresh and that enthusiasm going and all of that so Those are the two questions today lovely. Okay. Do you want to start with how it all started with out with you did with me? Well, you know like everyone it's a it's a start that took place for over several decades as a kid. I was really creative and I loved creating things but I wasn't one of those kids that decided that they wanted to be an artist when they grew up. I don't know. I think there was one stage. I wanted to be a gymnast all kinds of Random. Some stuff but I do remember when I was 15. I read a book at school called. My name is Asha Loaf and it was about an American Jewish artist growing up in Brooklyn in the u.s. In the 1950s. And it's this story. It's fictitious but it felt so real to me this story of this boy growing up and becoming he was like this child prodigy artist and I was just transfixed and I learned about this artist that lived in our town. Her name was Ellen Michelle. I believe she's still alive. I really should make contact with her again who was a painter and she was the still lightful lady. She was so effervescent and she took these private painting classes in her Studio at her home and I begged and begged my parents to let me go and do classes with her and to my surprise. They actually let me which I have to really give them credit for because this was this was back when you know, they didn't have a lot of money. I was the final child of four children. It was for them to Fork out for art put oil painting supplies was actually a pretty big deal. But so I'm forever grateful to them for allowing me to do that. And so I learned painting with Ellen. I learned oil painting in the tradition of tonal realism, which is a School of Art here in Australia part of the Heidelberg school, I believe and I painted mostly black and white paintings because the whole methodology behind painting in that tradition is all about tone. So we painted a lot of we painted so many black and white paintings before we even arrived at color. But anyway, then I sort of got to your 12 and I had to kind of focus on my studies and my VC and I didn't do as a subject in my final year of school and I ended up graduating and going to University and while I didn't study art at the University. A city I studied at history for six years, which was all absorbing for me. I found they lives of artists to be so fascinating and just I learnt so much back then than I am grateful that I know now such as just the simply the lives of the artists and understanding that they were human that they had all of the same sort of stumbling blocks that we have and you learn about these things when you You read their letters and read books about their lives and what they went through. So it was a really wonderful experience doing that. And then I did a complete 180 from my University career. I was I got to the point where I was lecturing and tutoring at University and I was doing my masters and I was decided I was going to do a PhD and become an academic and then I just decided I didn't want to do that because I'd been getting very crafty at home and creative and so making all kinds of things and making jewelry so had been the very crazy decision to leave uni, and I ended up via a route of making jewelry becoming a fashion designer and opening a shop in Melbourne and running a clothing label in Melbourne, which has been around nearly for 20 years now, which was a wonderful experience, but it was also something that burned me out big time by the time I was I think 37 38 I was just done I had to do IVF to have a baby and that is very stressful. And in the end. I doubt I downsize that business and I moved here to bail her out which is where both Laura and I live and I had a baby which was a wonderful experience and then I have another one really close after that which was not planned. It's my miracle baby and I was in that wonderful. And that you get when you become a mother where you step away from work for a period of time and you have space to dream and you have time at home to steal moments and you really sort of in the paint and the creative things with small children. So you kind of start to double again and I felt the bubbling up of that whole dream re-emerge for me during that time and Yeah, I just grabbed hold of it and didn't let go of it. But I also in that period between the clothing label and the having kids I was doing a lot of coaching of creative professionals and teaching them how to run businesses using all the skills that I learned in my clothing business. So I had basically the business equivalent of multiple personality disorder. I had a clothing label. I still actually sell pieces from it's called Mount design if anyone chooses to look at it don't judge me by my ancient website. It's ma in QE design.com today you and I have another business called creative conversation, which is pretty much evolving into what we're doing now with the art business and then I decided to pursue art. So I came to this point where I really had to make a decision and a commitment about what path I was. Following and I also came about some health challenges around that time after my children were born which meant that I needed to really take time out for myself to heal which is we dipped a little bit into this conversation last time on the podcast and I kind of instinctually started creating and painting my way through it. Like I just I came to the art as the Fulfillment of like there was definitely that That's right. I followed from being a teenager and being really fascinated by our an obsessed with this notion of being a professional artist. Like I was really interested in it to coming to this point in my thought when I was 39. I think when I really made that solid commitment to myself that this was something I really wanted to devote time to and pursue. Yeah, and I once I made that decision that was it for me. I just sit went for it. So Did you see in that healing journey and when you started to use painting as sort of your therapy or or your your way to express yourself? Did you see it evolving into the business that it that it is now hell's no there's absolutely nothing predictable in any of the twists and turns of my business Journeys there have been many. why I could never have predicted how any of it was going to unfold and I really followed it because I felt like with my clothing label and with the fashion Journey that and I think this is something that a lot of people probably confront if there are creative kid going up when you when you have to decide. What am I going to do with my life in making decisions about University Etc. There was always this emphasis on in my upbringing on will howdy, how can we be practical about this? Like I was really always aware that there had to be aware could make money from it and when Was in Academia of a sudden I got a scholarship. So I was earning money from that when I created the clothing label when I did that I skipped the whole bit where I did loads of markets for years. I lugged around clothing initial Ray and very Grassroots level built my business and it became quite successful and I am Got to a place with it where I that was the place you're meant to want to be with your flagship store and my warehouse or within a city Melbourne. It was all very funky and groovy, but I was miserable and I discovered the hard way that You couldn't take your creative dream and you can turn it into a cage. It's it's easy to do and I proved to myself that I could do that with the clothing label. So their art was always about keeping it pure and keeping it as a space for me to evolve and unfold my creativity and my healing and all of those nourishing beautiful things. So from the outset that has always been the core of it for me. And I've been very Mindful and very gradual and very considered in the way that I've crafted my business around the Arts so that I maintain that core Integrity that it's there to feed me and to bring Beauty to the world, but they're very high lofty goals I have for what I intend from my heart with my heart. So yeah, I don't even know if that answers the question I said it's mine as you were talking. I was thinking like it were there people that you were looking towards or how did you learn to evolve your painting style or absolutely I went to Art School online is yeah, we all do these days. Yeah, so I know I didn't go to art school, and I went to I did I learned about history and did that whole academic side of it, but I never went to Art School. So everything that I have learned has been from other artists that have either shared their skills with me in person or it has been a class that I've taken online over the past seven years of my life. I think it's so amazing. What is out there these days what other artists so generously make available to us in sharing their knowledge and their expertise and their style and their creative unfolding with us. So yes, I went to school online. Fine and in various different places some I've learnt from wonderful women such as flora bolli and Faith Evans Sills and maybe Rose McDonough. Oh and ah numerous others. Mmm. I'm sorry if I've forgotten your name awesome. So yeah, that's where I looked and then I had a very rigorous art practice and I was really prolific for the first few years of My art making and I documented the whole journey online and social media and that is how my business began simply mostly through Facebook actually and really just I didn't have a business page. I was just posting on my personal page and if they were very it was just hey, this was what I made today and people responded and some people wanted to buy things and that's how it just all yeah evolved from that very organic level. And when did you start to why's that it was shifting from like this healing, you know, creating, you know personal work to hey, I can make money and people are really liking this and this could actually be a thing that could take over from your fashion business and make you money. Yeah short. I mean I am a really entrepreneurial person by Nature. So I very rarely do anything for very long without asking myself the question of how Can I monetize this so it was always in my mind. I want to make this work because I want to keep doing this and there are certain Financial realities in life. You need to have that period around I did very fortunately had that period around having my children where I had a little bit of space to be able to create without the pressure of needing to make income. But I knew that that would have to change if I wanted to continue to do that. So. Yet very much. So from an early stage. I knew I wanted to monetize. I just said yes to everything. Yeah. If someone said I wanted to buy that I didn't think too hard about that just put a price on it and I sold it to them all my commission's were styles that I guess I would consider now to be outside of my own but I wouldn't have known what my style is if I hadn't painted those so they're part of that journey, and also I think with commission work once people see that Doing commissions people know that they can ask you for one. So that in itself Fed Up itself, which has become one of the biggest income streams in my business, but it has been very gradual and I don't want to give people the idea that it was like, you know, I woke up one morning and suddenly I was making a living from being an artist because it's been an enormous process over the last four years for five years building to the level where I am now and making gradually making decisions and also taking my time more than I did with my previous businesses because It's been a healing process for me the making of the art. So I've had just it's there's been lots of stops and starts and realignments and checking in with myself. If this is really the direction I want to move in and yeah, yeah and back to the question. I asked at the start around keeping momentum going. I mean like for me I feel like there's times where I do get stuck and I do like it really inspired, but then it's like You know, how do I keep keep going and capable moving and keep creating and be consistent. I've seen you working in the studio and working alongside you and it seems like you've got it ingrained within you and things just flow quite easily. So I'm not sure if you'd like to share a bit about how you've come to that place of He's and flow and and being quite prolific with your creative output. Yeah. Okay. Well, I guess the first part to that is that I really do regard painting as a practice in the same way that a yoga practitioner regards their yoga practice as a practice and I love that word because when you practice something it means you're practicing you're learning you're refining your in process with. Thing that's in evolution all the time. And one of the great gifts that my education in art history gave me is about that. Very thing all artists all great artists that have you know, not that I aspire to be an artist that's in the history books. But when you read through their stories, there is always a Common Thread of it is a practice for them. They are a hundred percent committed to their Journey probably a little bit. It obsessive I am sure I am like she would agree which probably helps and hinders in some ways as well. But the point being that it's a practice. It's something that is a discipline. So and the difference between it with the practice and discipline is that you do it regardless of how you're feeling. So even on days when I'm not feeling it I try to do some small thing that is creative and that might not even be picking up a brush. Might be cleaning my studio and arranging beautiful flowers in there. Like it's something that's supportive of my art practice. But I'm there. I'm in the studio. I'm doing something. and the other part of it I guess is the other train at the other extensive training that I've done after University was as a life coach. So I no longer coach people in a professional context, but When you become a coach you have to be coached. So you do like to become quite a disciplined person. So I've learnt a lot of tools along the way that helped me to stay focused that help me to move through difficult moments in my own creative process or my own mind search blocks. And yeah, I've found a lot of different strategies for moving through those and Dad, I have to learn to lot from other artists through what they've shared through their genes as well. Yeah, so it is it's about taking action and figuring out like what works for you what motivates you and what can be your rituals. It's a prank keep you inspired and it's getting in there every day. Well not every day. It can be every second day. I don't whip myself with it if I really need a day off I take a day off because that's just not supportive of my health, and I've learned better than to do that. Hmm But And I'm reasonably comfortable with being uncomfortable if that even makes sense know like the stitches. There's a certain isn't that as a certain discomfort and uncomfortable element to being an artist and there are many moments that are very uncomfortable and unsure like we were talking through last week about you know, how do I know how to finish a painting? That's so it could be such a wrestle. Mmm. So those kinds of moments your relationship with those kinds of moments defines. How how productive you are with them and for me one of the biggest secrets is I just keep painting. I make a lot of work. Hmm. I make a lot of work and it's the there's something about the swiftness and keeping moving through it that gives me the freedom to move through those moments because not everything hinges on the if this one painting works or not. So when I am in front of the one painting like, you know, it's Condition for a client but does matter mmm I can muster up those feelings of it's okay. It's just another painting and I can convince myself of that for the time that I need to convince myself that she complained that painting. Yeah, and that works for me. Yeah. Mmm another question that's linked into this. Is there any resources or books or things that have helped you along your creative Journey? Oh, yeah, they've been so many. Gosh, I think one of my favorite and possibly the most formative for me and I know it's been a really formative for a lot of artists is Julia Cameron's the artists way. Have you ever done that? Yeah, I've never completed it to I think the soldier but the morning pages are amazing. Yeah, and maybe explain if people don't know what the morning pages are as well. Yeah short so it's so Julia Cameron. She is an American Author its 12-week program. For artists in recovery. So she talks a lot about confronting any of those Early Childhood wounds like a fatty tart teacher told you art was rubbish and shut you down and then you try to move through years of kind of self-criticism as a result. She kind of teaches you processes and mindsets for me and practices like a riding practice, which is the morning pages that you write every morning stream-of-consciousness three pages about anything to just loosen up your creative muscle and so it's this 12-week program of recovery for Creative people. Yeah, so that's an absolutely wonderful book. I think another one that was super helpful to me in the early days of said o'clock when I realized I wanted to become an artist and wanting to make an art business Lisa condon's are Tink was really great. So I haven't read that. It's actually really practical and really good. In terms like I learned how to set up my files. Hmm on my computer through suggestions in that book. She also does a lot of artist interviews in there. And yeah, it's a really good. It's a really worthwhile read if you if you really wanting to make a business of your art and your in the early stages of it. And then I think another one that I found hugely helpful particularly around Like transforming negative beliefs and moving like, you know, when you have those really big blocks that you come to on and on your art Journey like there can be some really big blocks along the way I found Joe dispenza really helpful. He has written a number of books. One of the ones I really loved was called breaking the habit of being yourself. So it's not strictly an art book at all. It's more I guess in the self-help sort of Arena, but really brilliant. Look for helping to transform those negative beliefs into a more positive mindset and I really like how he explains how that occurs on a biological level in terms of our brains. It's really important. We understand and respect our biology that's part of the process. And yeah, I found those three to be really good and you recommended his meditations to me too. And they've been really helpful. Yeah, visualizing and imagining myself stepping into this role as as artist and a painter. Oh, that's great. Yes movies those two and they came the ones that we've been doing came from his latest book is you are the placebo know having super now becoming Supernatural. Yeah. Yes. We read some interesting things don't we Laura but yet anything Joe dispenza has written I find Brilliant and I think the both of us it's been also because he it's not just about creativity and moving into what you want to be. It's also really been helpful in our healing Journeys as well. So yeah, well, there's some great resources. I think they'll help people awesome. Yeah. Well you've answered my niggling questions. I'm not sure if there's anything else you'd like to share. I think that's enough about me for today. It's been amazing. It's been really good, and I did learn some new things for awesome. Thanks, Laura. Thanks everyone. Bye. We'll see you next time. Bye. Thanks for joining me for the studio inside a podcast. You can always see more of my art over on the Susan netiquette.com. And if you're interested in learning for me or checking out the podcast link, so you can find those on my education website at Susan Advocate studio.com. I love hearing your comments and feedback. So feel free to Leverage. On iTunes or find me on Instagram at Susan netiquette. Catch you next time.
In this episode Laura asks me about where it all began for me on my art journey. I talk about the winding road that led me to being a painter- from art history academic to fashion designer, to creative business consultant and and finally professional artist. We also talk about how to maintain momentum as an artist and how to develop a consistent practice. Laura also asks me about some book recommendations for emerging artists and I talk about three of my favourites. You’ll also learn about my philosophy on the value of a consistent art practice and what that means. We also chat about why being productive is so important to the evolution of your style and the value of allowing art making to also be a healing journey  Thanks so much for joining us this episode, to become a Susan Nethercote studio-insider, receive our newsletter and loads of FREE goodies to help you in your art business: www.susannethercotestudio.com/free-resources  People  Laura Day:  laurajaneday.com Instagram Facebook Susan Nethercote:  Instagram  Facebook  susannethercote.com For Susan's free education resources:   https://www.susannethercotestudio.com/free  For Susan's art website:  https://www.susannethercote.com  Books  Julia Cameron- ‘The Artist’s Way’ Lisa Congdon- ‘Art Inc’  Jo Dispenza ‘Becoming Supernatural’, ‘Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself’ and ‘You are the Placebo’ 