Tag Archives: art practice

spring has sprung!

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i guess i’m averaging one blog post a month this year, which is better than nothing but not as much as i’d hoped. this will be my 2nd for march though, so yay.

now that cvp has officially begun and life has slowed down a little even though it’s spring in new orleans and that means there’s always something going on, i’ve been spending more time in the studio. we’ve been in prep mode for cvp with a few welcome and immersion zoom calls last week, and folks have been getting their journals set up and prepping their wood panels for the course.

i already had a journal going since the first of the year – nick and louise have got me in the habit so even before i realized i’d be taking cvp, i set myself up with a new art/life journal to paint and sketch in, take notes on various things, make to-do lists, record my daily gratitudes, and write for myself. i briefly considered starting a new one just for cvp but decided, nah, just keep going in the one i have until i fill it up and then move on to another. (no shortage of blank journals here as i have a bit of a problem collecting them.)

i had about 8 of the 12″ x 12″ wood panels left over from last year that i didn’t use, so i’ve gone ahead and prepped those with gac100 and gesso. i will likely paint over some of the boards i did use last year as none of them were really keepers. and i also now know that i don’t have to do some of the exercises on boards, i can do them in my journal or on paper. so i don’t think i’ll need to order any boards this year for the class unless i decide that i want to scale up to 18″ x 18″ for the final series. but i have lots of time before i have to worry about that.

before i forget, big thanks to the 3 folks who signed up for cvp using my affiliate link! (you know who you are.) assuming y’all stay in the class past the 21-day money back guarantee, i’ll get enough to pay off the class, finish paying off my mechanic bill from january and help defray some of the costs of adopting my new cat Lily. (and i really need it since i cut back my dogwalking schedule to have more time for art.) she’s had one thing after another health-wise and i’ve already had to pay for one vet visit and it’s only been 4 weeks tomorrow since she came here. so thank y’all! i hope you love cvp as much as i did last year!

speaking of spending time in the studio… ever since i watched bibby gignilliat‘s online mixed media class in january, i’ve had about a dozen pieces i started working on but never finished sitting around my studio. with all the new energy for cvp, i guess, one of them kept calling to me last week so i *think* i’ve finally finished it. it’s a 14″ x 14″ cradled panel and i’m calling it “what a good time…” it’s a little busy but, hey, i like busy. when i posted it in the fb group we have for the class, bibby herself remarked “it is really dynamic!” not sure if that’s her nice way of saying “busy” or not but i’ll take it as a win. lol thanks so much, bibby, for sharing your knowledge and process with us.

after i finished that one, i started poking around with a few of the others and i think i am almost at a finishing place with one or two more. i’ll post them on my instagram when they’re done. considering the 3-word mantra i’ve chosen as my intentions for this go-around with cvp – focus, flow, finish – it felt really good to start cvp by actually finishing something from the last class i took.

ok, this is long enough so that’s all for now. as always, if you want more timely updates about what i’m doing in the studio, please follow my art insta @artbymagsdotcom cuz that’s where i post more frequently. happy spring everyone!

wtf 2025?

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this year has started out weirder than any other year i can remember. first new orleans starts 2025 in literally the first hours of the first day by having a domestic terrorist attack in the french quarter. many people killed, even more injured, by a radicalized military vet from houston driving his truck onto bourbon street full speed at 3 in the morning while new year’s eve revelers were still partying, running people over. thankfully the bombs he planted didn’t go off or there would have been a lot more casualties. it was an awful way to wring in the new year and we all woke up so stunned and saddened that morning.

then of course the inauguration of a fascist president, which thankfully was overshadowed here in new orleans by a once in a lifetime weather event – a blizzard across the gulf coast. we got 11 inches of light fluffy snow at my house and many places around the city measured 12-13″ even though the official count out at the airport was only 8″. the city was shut down for 3 full days – no work, no driving cuz we don’t have the infrastructure to clear roads quickly, just playing in the snow, being vigilant about our pipes and water pressure, trying to stay warm, and watching all the local meteorologists have the best days of their life. it was magical and cold and nerve wracking all at the same time.

the snow has melted and the rhythm of the city has gone back to normal. the last few days have been about digesting the flurry of awful coming from the tyrant in the white house. i’m not going to give much space to talking about him or his administration, but the reality of what this country has voted for is starting to settle in now sadly.

as for me? well i smartly made a choice to go on a break with one of my afternoon clients while the other one was in puppy training camp so i could have my afternoons free to be in the studio. it’s worked well in general though i didn’t get much done with all my extra free time during the blizzard cuz the snow was just so distracting. but for the most part i have maintained several hours of working on various art projects each day. well except for the week that i decided to switch phone carriers and had a clusterfuck of issues that required me to be on the phone with customer service every single afternoon for almost a week. and then there were the few days right before the pussyfooters blush ball – the mardi gras ball i attend every year that always has a theme which requires some crafty accessorizing – when i was working on pink-and-orange-ing shoes and belt buckles and cowboy hats for this year’s western theme. but still, i’ve done well this month with art.

is anything finished? no. but i do have many new pieces in process which i hope to finish soon. i took bibby gignilliat’s mixed media online course as it was a self-paced, low $ investment offering that i hoped would give me some tips and tricks for dealing with collage as the basis for mixed media painting. and it did! honestly there wasn’t a whole lot more info than one can glean from her instagram reels but the lessons were more fleshed out and you get to see her make some pieces from start to finish. i just love her style and energy and while i don’t want to be “copying” her i do want to use some of her techniques and build upon them for my own interests.

above are two of my mixed media pieces on wood panels that are in process. i kinda like where they are now in a minimalist way but i think they need more to make them interesting but i haven’t figured out what exactly. i thought sitting with them for a few days would help but honestly i now wish i’d just kept going as i think this kinda mixed media work is intuitive and all about energy and i clearly had some good energy flowing the day i made these. now i’m a little stuck in that don’t-want-to-mess-it-up place but i need to just do something to get back into these.

simultaneous to working on about 7 different mixed media pieces like these i also started playing around with some small 6″x6″ collage pieces, since i had all my scraps out. i was covering up old canvas board tiles i call them, ones that didn’t work or i just didn’t like. and i had an early success or two so i thought i was onto something… but similarly, i seem to have lost the energy for them as i went on to try to make several more and they aren’t coming out as good as the ones that i just did spontaneously.

above are the first two spontaneous ones that i really like. i kept it to a limited palette of black, white, red, kraft paper/brown bag and newspaper print. the black and white really pop in contrast to the muted browns and beiges and the red adds some interest/energy. hopefully i’ll be able to salvage the other 3 i have going so there’s a little set of them. they are good exercises in composition.

the month is almost over and i’m not sure how i’m feeling about possibly losing my afternoon studio time, or some of it. i have some pet sits coming up which will eat into that time as well. i welcome these warmer days post-blizzard though because it’s very hard to motivate myself to get in there to work when it’s 30-40 degrees outside cuz it’s not much warmer in the studio, even with the space heater on. so hopefully this will be a productive week.

this is already a very long post so i’ll stop for now. more later. i have more on my mind to share beyond this little catch-up session.

and just like that…. cvp

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sometimes you get to a crossroads in your life when you know in your gut that you have to make bold moves, take big steps, into the scary unknown…. do things that maybe terrify you. you have to just trust your gut, go with your intuition, let the universe guide you, because, well, as they say, it’s later than you think.

this is actually the second time in a year that i’ve made such a big decision. to invest in myself. to keep propelling myself forward instead of allowing myself to stagnate, flounder. to take a chance, bet on myself. to keep going. persist.

last fall i took the big scary leap of taking louise fletcher‘s 12-week find your joy online art class… and though it was challenging, it was totally worth it. i learned a lot, i pushed myself, i took risks and was vulnerable, sharing my progress as the weeks went on via my instagram account. i didn’t come out of it some kind of artistic genius with an instant art career but i definitely made progress and (re)learned some valuable and necessary art theory principles and applied them to abstract painting. and i certainly found joy.

i also learned i do better with some structure and instruction; it helps me feel more connected to what i’m doing and forces me to show up in the studio every day. and i really like having a community of artists around the world going through the same things i am, so we can share our wins and frustrations. i learn a lot from other artists, and also how my challenges and disappointments are not unique to me.

well last week i took another free 5 day class, this one from art2life‘s nicholas wilton, who i’ve taken courses from before. (i’ve taken two previous free classes and paid for spark, a 3-week class.) this freebie was the marketing instrument for his 12 week online course called cvp – creative visionary program. you might recall i really wanted to take it last year (it’s only offered once a year in the spring) but the price seemed undoable and this was before i took find your joy so i also wasn’t sure i was really ready for such an intensive art exploration. i applied for a scholarship nonetheless but did not get one. i was disappointed and moved on but then when find your joy came around in september, i jumped in since it was considerably cheaper.

so this year, the 5 day art2life freebie reminded me what drew me to nick and art2life to begin with. there’s an infectious energy and positivity – one could say woo-woo-ness – to his instruction methods and the community he’s built around art2life. i really respond to it, get energized and inspired by it. so though what was being taught last week was pretty much all info i’d heard from nick before, i tuned in every day and painted along and tried to soak up that energy. and i knew the sales pitch for cvp was coming and i still really wanted to take it but initially thought since i hadn’t yet paid off the last class (though i will by the end of this month) and hadn’t made as much progress as i’d hoped in terms of making art that i can sell, that maybe i shouldn’t sign up for cvp. maybe i should just wait til next year.

on the last day of the freebie, they open enrollment for cvp and i saw that the price was pretty much the same as it was last year; it hadn’t gone up, which was refreshing. part of the sales pitch is they show you a little preview of what it looks like inside the portal where the lessons take place and… i dunno, i saw that and realized, hey, i can do this. i did find your joy and cvp is basically the same format, just more intense. i got a lot out of fyj. i made 80+ pieces of art in 12 weeks! i know how these programs work and though my next three months have some blips in them – overnight pet sits, a beloved coming in town and staying with me, jazzfest, etc. – everything is recorded and i can work around these things. i’ve learned how to make art in 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there. i can do this. and besides, you have the materials for a whole year. (i still have the find your joy materials until september!)

the live call on friday when enrollment opened lasted for several hours and i stayed til the end. but i didn’t even need all that time. it was like the universe was guiding my hand and before i knew it, i’d signed up! it just feels like the right time for me, to keep my momentum going. to keep building on what i’ve learned and keep pushing myself.

so i did it. i just fucking did it. and you know what? it felt great! i had the slightest tinge of second thoughts about the financial investment but then remembered they have a 30 day money back guarantee, no questions asked, so i have that much time to figure out if i’ve made a huge mistake and get my money (credit) back. but i really feel like this is the time for me to do this. i need to keep my creative momentum going to see if there’s really any there there. if after this class i still feel lost and like i don’t know what i’m doing, well then maybe i’ll just stop pushing myself so much and definitely stop spending money on classes. but i really feel like i do so much better when i’m taking a class, and i love the way these classes are set up with online communities where you can interact with all the other students from around the world. you post your art, you get feedback from them, you get feedback from the coaches involved in the class, you get any of your questions answered, you see other people’s art that ranges from beginner to accomplished professional – it’s great, especially for introverts like me who don’t really want to go take in-person classes. at least not yet.

so there you have it. i’m taking cvp this year! it’s the preeminent online art course – nick is the OG of online art gurus. there were over 100,000 people taking the free class! so far there are around 1000 signed up for cvp. (enrollment is open through wednesday of this week, i think, so maybe there will be a few hundred more by the time it closes.) if you are someone who spends any time looking at art on instagram, you will have seen artists who’ve been through this program, who started there or who went through it almost as a rite of passage. many artists take it every year to keep refining their craft. (you get a 75% discount as an alum of the program.) it’s akin to taking a college level course all crammed into 12 weeks. it’s a LOT of information. a lot of exercises. a lot of inner work. we’ll work in both a journal/sketchbook as well as on 12″x12″ wood panels. this is intensive. i know i’m going to get behind but i’ll do my best to hang in there and at least show up for all the live content, even if i have to go back through the whole thing once it’s over.

i know some of you will think i’ve lost my mind, that i’m making bad choices, that i’m getting myself further in debt. maybe i am. but i’ve had this dream since i was young that i wanted to be an artist, i wanted to make my living and my life making art. and in many ways i have done the latter – i’ve made a lot of art and craft over the years, however inconsistently – and i’ve even done the former for spurts of time. but not in a way that i could sustain myself and my practice, and not always in ways that i felt deeply connected to. that’s the goal. i’m not getting any younger and i won’t be able to walk dogs for forever – my body is already having a hard time with it and i’m burnt out emotionally with the work. i have no partner or children to take care of me, no savings or retirement money coming to me other than a very small social security which will not be enough to live on, so right now, this is the best idea i’ve got – to focus on my art, hone my craft, and start making money from it, make it a business that will hopefully bring me more income than i currently make walking dogs, so i can pay off my debts and ease into a “retirement” that looks like making and selling art until i die. if i can pull that off, i might actually live longer. and be happier.

but mostly, i really want to feel connected to what i’m creating again. i want to feel less haphazard about my process, gain more clarity about what direction i want to go in with abstract painting. i want to make some work i’m really proud of, and get to a place where that comes more easily.

so. i’ll be posting on my instagram as the weeks go on and i’ll be trying to find ways to raise money to pay this class off. if you want to support me, i still have a studio full of art from the class last fall, from the past few years, and from even before that – i’d love to get some of this stuff out of here and make a few dollars from any of it. let me know if you wanna come over and look around. or if you’re not local, keep an eye on my etsy shop – i’ll keep adding to it as i have time. (there’s also a ko-fi button on this page for direct donations.) maybe i’ll try to come up with some new sticker and t-shirt ideas to fundraise. who knows.

and if you’re someone who’s been with me on this journey over the years – thank you for always supporting me, financially, emotionally, and otherwise. i hope i’ve brought some joy to your life with stuff i’ve made and i look forward to continuing to do so with even bigger and better art. and if nothing else, i hope my quest, my ongoing artistic journey, my chasing of my dream however inconsistent, i hope it inspires you to keep after your own dreams… before it’s too late. we only have so much time in this realm and the clock is always ticking. do the thing… now, while you can. so you have no regrets.

jump and the net will appear – that’s what i’m doing. it’s scary… but also exhilarating!

making art my business

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hi everyone. now that mardi gras has come and gone, it’s time to get back to the business of making art, and working on the actual business of my art.

to that end, i just finished a free online class from jessica serran who is an artist and coach who does various online courses throughout the year. i took another of her free offerings last summer called “5 days to jaw dropping art” and i felt it was pretty helpful and i made a piece of art that i still love. so when this one popped up in my feeds, i decided to sign up. i can use all the help i can get! and, well, i love free!

this one was called “artists on the rise: a 5-day deep dive to discover what it takes to create your epic art career.” (yes, her class titles are a bit wordy.) the class actually goes for about 3 weeks if you include the pre-class exercises and the post-class sales pitches for the paid course. like most of these online art courses, it centers around a facebook group where everyone who signs up can interact with jessica (the coach), the artist support team (artists who have taken the class already and help manage the facebook group), and each other. each day of the challenge you post your responses there as a sort of accountability, but also cuz there’s a prize giveaway at the end as motivation if you complete everything. sadly, i did not win any of the prizes. lol

but a lot of what jessica teaches is really great, especially if you are someone who has struggled to figure out how to turn your love of art and art making into a business that can support you. not everyone has this goal, and i only half the time think i do, which is probably why i haven’t ever really achieved it. i’ve never fully committed. i came the closest when i was a crafter and in the new orleans craft mafia, in those years post katrina when all that insurance money was flowing and folks were really wanting to support each other and rep new orleans as it rebuilt. i had become burnt out on my music journalism and DJ career even before katrina, so focusing on making things was both fun and therapeutic in that high-stress time. though i made a good deal of money during that time selling my wares, most of it was eaten up by “commuting” back and forth between louisville, ky and new orleans for three years, and a few years after i moved back home to new orleans, my personal life fell apart and i had to kind of abandon my creative stuff in favor of trying to build my pet business into something that could sustain me. (my ex-partner had been supporting me; i had no “real” job at the time.) the pet biz obviously worked out, for which i’m grateful; but now all these years later as time keeps on a ticking and i grow older, i feel like i’m running out of time to find out if i really could be an artist full time. (i’m also feeling very burnt out on the pet biz and my body is less able to keep up with the physical rigors of the job, which i fear will only get worse as i age.)

sometimes i feel so certain that it’s the dream i’ve had all my life, since college, when i first fell in love with painting and printmaking and photography. and sometimes i honestly feel like i would be happier if i didn’t have this urge, this compulsion, to create things and try to express myself AND SELL THESE THINGS. that maybe i should just keep my art to myself, for my personal self growth, and not complicate things by trying to sell stuff. i mean that’s kind of what i did for the past decade or so anyways; when i started the pet biz, i went several years without creating a damned thing, just working all the time and building my pet biz up and enjoying having a steady income. and then slowly over time, the urge to create kept nagging at me, so i started to make stuff again. and then cuz i can’t stop myself, i started posting online about what i was making. and people were encouraging and said they liked it and offered money, and boom, suddenly i’m back in the game of making stuff and selling it. but it’s been sporadic, and as a business, my art biz hasn’t made a profit in a really long time.

so for the past few years as i’ve ramped up my art practice again to be something more consistent, i’ve felt like i wanted to try to make the art biz turn a profit. and then i get caught up again in the dream of it being my life, my sole job, which is appealing since i’m so so burnt out on the pet biz now at the 14 year mark. but trying to make a living doing nothing but art is not easy. many people fail at it. and many successful artists still have their day jobs to pay the bills. cuz being “successful” as an artist doesn’t always translate to consistent sales.

all of this led me to be interested in jessica’s free class. on the first of the five days, she challenges you to come up with what your throughline is with your art – regardless of medium or discipline or subject. why do you do this and what is it that comes through in everything you make? figuring out what that is can then help you when writing an artist bio/statement and so the challenge is basically to do that, write a future-you artist statement. this exercise was really hard for me and i still feel like i need to go back and really figure that one out.

the second day was all about money, examining our relationship with money in our past and what we want it to be in our future. the exercise was to set some future-you money goals and then reverse-engineer how to do it, i.e. i wanna make x amount of money a year selling my art, so how many pieces of art do i need to sell at x amount to achieve that? and she pushes us to realize selling fewer larger pieces is easier than selling a ton of smaller pieces or prints, and that we are most likely undercharging for what we make. that we need to let go of the starving artist mentality and replace it with the well-resourced artist, making good money for our creations. that one just felt like fantasizing, frankly – i still see no real way for that to happen anytime soon. like maybe after 10 years of being super successful, but not now. because my friends and supporters are used to my prices being accessible/low, and i feel that bumping them up a lot would alienate a lot of the folks who’ve been with me for a long time on this journey. but i do also see that i can’t make a business plan out of selling $50 original paintings. so i’m going to try to be better about charging rates for my original work that are more fair to me, while not being outrageous either.

the third day was a challenge to reach out to previous buyers of our work and ask them why they bought it, what do they like about it, what does it do for them? i reached out to a few people; one replied. another friend volunteered when they saw my post on IG. we were supposed to have three but i never got any more responses so i just had the two. but they were both great. and honestly, i already know the answer to those questions for most people who buy my work, because they tell me all the time. my work brings them joy, makes them smile/happy, and the works that have words/messages on them serve as reminders to themselves or affirmations. no one said this but i’d venture to say some things i’ve created also help give buyers a sense of community or self-expression. these are all wonderful things to know that my work does for people – it’s really all i’ve ever hoped to do with what i make. make a connection, spread some joy and happiness or offer a message or an affirmation, channeling the light of the universe. it’s simple and kinda hokey but it’s true. (these things are basically my throughline in all the work i’ve done since my 20s.) but the point of this exercise is that these things that my art does for others, it’s worth something, has a value, that i should be charging for accordingly.

the fourth day we took an inventory of all the unsold artwork in our studios, gave them new prices (the higher, you-are-worth-it numbers), and totaled it up. mine came to about $8K which was low compared to most in the class but i didn’t get through all the paper pieces i made in the FYJ class and in the past year or two. (and i probably didn’t adjust the prices high enough.) and then the second part of the challenge is to list 33 ways you can start selling all that work TODAY. things that would take less than 10 minutes to do. i thought it would be hard to come up with 33 but once i got going it was pretty easy, as most of it was listing things in various places online. but the first was listing it all on etsy and then the others would be listing the etsy shop in a million places. there were other things, like starting a mailing list and posting online to get signups, which you may have seen me do last week. (there’s also a signup form on this page to the right.) now nothing guarantees if i list everything for sale that it will sell, but the concept is that action/movement invites the universe to support you, and you certainly aren’t going to sell any of it as it just sits in your studio gathering dust. so i am going to spend the listing fees to list as much as i can in the coming weeks as i have time. listing fees are for 4 months on etsy and i figure that should be enough time to see if it’s worth giving etsy another shot. (i do eventually want to have an ecommerce store on my own website but that will take much longer to figure out; etsy was the easy and fast option.)

on the last day of the 5 day class, the “inspired action” we were to take was to do 3 things from the list we came up with the day before, and then to note how it felt and what, if any, response there was. for me, i did make a signup form/link to my future art newsletter and posted it out to facebook, instagram and twitter… and the response was that a few people signed up. (now a week later, about 20 of my actual friends signed up but a bunch of random strangers and possibly bots did too so now i have more than 100 on my email list, which was my goal to have before i write an actual newsletter. i want to get a few things listed on etsy before i write the newsletter though, so that’s the homework for this weekend.) so that action felt good to do and great to get a response to.

the second action i wanted to take was to list 3 things on etsy, which i have started to do but since i have neglected my etsy shop for so long i realized it is outdated, so requires me going in and overhauling my profile and settings. also etsy is a lot more glitchy than it used to be so it’s certainly taken me more time than 10 minutes to get even one thing listed. but i will keep at it this weekend.

and the third thing was to check in with a few folks who’d expressed interest in some paintings i’d posted on instagram a while back, which i haven’t yet done but i will do so this weekend.

all of these are/were good exercises to do, and i will keep going over them as i move on. i took notes throughout the class on my ipad so i printed them out and pasted them into my studio journal so i’d have an easy reference to look back at.

i actually thought long and hard about whether to try to find a way to pay for jessica’s coaching program. the total amount ($11k for 12 months) is overwhelming and even the monthly payments of $1k/month felt ridiculous for me, as that’s more than i pay in rent each month. and as i am right now, i barely make ends meet paying my bills. i could charge one or two months on credit cards in hopes that working her program and buckling down could net me the money to cover it, but once i got a look at what her workbooks look like, the pace of work contained in the course month by month, i just realized i’m not ready to commit to something like that, especially considering my day job and all that i already have planned for the next several months. and i’m just not there yet with my current art work, like i am still just in the playing-with-paint phase of all this abstract stuff and i like being here, i don’t want to be rushed because i have to figure out how to sell it.

i’m sure what she does is great for people who are ready for it, who want a coach and a step-by-step program to advance their careers. it’s like a bootcamp for artists. or i guess in entrepreneurial terms, it’s an accelerator program. but i’m just not there yet and i have to trust my instincts. i’m not sure i’ll ever get to a place of wanting a program like that, but i’ll stay on her mailing list and keep it on the back burner and see where i am in a year. i’m grateful for the kick in the ass that the free 5 day challenge gave me and feel like that will keep me busy for a while as i continue to paint.

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!

sometimes life (and work) happens.

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i was doing so so good on my daily art practice through the first three months of this year. i really felt like i’d managed to create a new habit. it was coming pretty effortlessly and i hardly even had to think about it. i was having my coffee and breakfast in my studio first thing and then jumping right in usually on some playtime in my sketchbooks. and when my work schedule was slow and i had downtime in between clients later in the day, i’d come home and pick right back up where i left off. some days i could get several hours of painting in. but even if all i could do was 30-60 minutes in the morning, it felt like i was keeping a creative thread going.

and then april came. the first weekend of the month i was away on a quickie 4 day trip to visit beloveds in north carolina. it was a long awaited reunion with many faces i hadn’t seen for a long time, since before the pandemic. it felt really indulgent to take this trip even though we managed to do it as cheaply as possible. (since we split hotel, gas, and park-n-fly and flew spirit/breeze with no luggage, it ended up being less than $300 all total, though i had the added expense of a catsitter 2x/day.) but i knew it would be good for my mental health and my heart. i needed the hugs and the socializing, and just to get out of new orleans for a few days which i hadn’t done since the summer of 2021. so it was all totally worth it.

i came back to two of the busiest work weeks i’ve had since before the pandemic. so many petsits! i really needed it financially. some of my clients paid up front and that money is what got me through the end of march and paid rent so that i could even go on the trip. and then having the other petsits on top of my dogwalking schedule gave me enough to cover all the bills that happen at the beginning of the month.

if you’ve followed my pet biz commentary online, then you know i lost quite a few longtime clients last year – many who had been with me since i started my business and most of which were 5-day a week walking clients, which really affected my income over the trajectory of last year. even though i did manage to pick up a handful of new clients, they weren’t paying for as many days or services as the previous clients, so despite still having 5 or 6 walks a day on my schedule, i was making less than half of what i had been making before.

this all came to a sad culmination in january and february, when all the christmas bonus money and extra holiday petsitting income ran out and i was left with basically half my former income. i raided my hurricane emergency fund and started putting things like groceries and gas on credit cards, just hoping things would eventually resolve. over the 12 years of this business, i know it ebbs and flows and sometimes it’s feast or famine; i just wasn’t accustomed to the downslide being for so long without a rebound.

but finally, i am seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. the last two weeks of crazy petsitting got me caught up on bills. one of my 3x/week dog clients that i actually tried to quit back in january (because he was more than i could handle physically) has come back onto my schedule after he got some training and is maybe aging out of some of the worst of his hyper puppy behavior. (we’ll see, but he’s back for now.) and one of my other 5x/week clients whose dogs both died (in august/december) and who swore they weren’t going to get another dog anytime soon texted me last week with a picture of the cutest puppy ever! (i’ve since started visiting/walking her 2x/day!)

so all of this feels like the tide is turning back to a place of equilibrium, at least financially. sure it will mean less free time to paint, but i also won’t have to keep looking around the house for things i can sell to make money to pay the bills. the petsitting is slowing down for the next few weeks so i will just have my dogwalking schedule, and i did manage to buy one ticket to jazzfest each weekend thanks to a generous friend who i will be doing some petsitting for in june. so hopefully i can start getting back into the flow and pick up that art thread where i left off at the end of march.

i do really feel like i’m so close to figuring out what i want to be doing next. there are so many things i’ve been exploring – collage, image transfers, layering paint, creating textures with paint and patterns, exploring color mixing, new media like paint pens and oil pastels and colored pencils, new (recycled) paints, as well as new tools for applying paint – it’s all been so fun and now i feel like it’s just about figuring out how to use all this new information i have in service of what i want to be creating. i know i want to do some pieces about my friend nita that died back in september. i always want to do pieces about my mom and lately been feeling like my dad too. but i also want to just do some pure abstract stuff that doesn’t have much of a meaning beyond the materials and the brushstrokes and the exploration of what paint can do. as always, i don’t know where to start and feel overwhelmed with all the ideas i have. but i know i just need to pick something and do it.

anyways. this is just a rambly update to catch you up on what’s been going on for me in the art life. oh, i almost forgot – as some of you might have seen, i did a quickie flash sale on instagram for 2 days of older work that has been on the walls of the studio, taking up space. i thought i wanted to hang on to some of that stuff for a while but i realized it was holding me back. i often feel like i need blank walls to not clutter up my brain when i’m trying to come up with new work. if i have stuff up that i still like, then i don’t have the motivation to make something new. cuz always, for me, part of my motivation is making something that I WANT to hang on my own walls. so thank you to all who participated and snapped up some of those pieces. i offered 18 and i sold 8, so not bad. if you missed out, hit me up to see what’s left.

i hope to have something new to show you soon! stay tuned!