My Art Journey Part 2: What is an art career?

For years I let myself neglect my art, as I waited for the universe to conjure up “more time” for it. Then in 2019, I experienced pain and grief and was forced to pivot in a way that finally changed my perspective and turned my art practice into a non-negotiable part of my self-care.

That is where we begin for part 2:

In early 2019, I was in Kenya with my family collecting data on baboon mating tactics for my dissertation research. We planned to stay at least a year. One morning I woke up and went to work and for hours things didn’t feel right. A few odd things had happened in the preceding days and my intuition was trying to get my attention. Isn’t intuition an interesting thing?

My story of Trauma with a capital T is foundational to the second chapter in my art journey, but much of it is not mine alone to share. What I will share is that my life changed abruptly; my day-to-day, my future outlook and plans, and my relationships. I had to reckon with an all-encompassing shift in identity as well as challenging daily stressors. It was the most distinct experience of Before and After I have ever had, a transcending dividing line in my life.

Prior to this abrupt shift, I had thankfully already opened myself slightly to the many ways a future could look (an improvement from the stubborn and determined planner I had been most of my life). A few years into graduate school I decided I didn’t really want to be in the ‘academia world’, where you surf around precariously as a post doc making very little money and hoping to one day land a tenure track job and find stability at last. But that job could be anywhere. I realized two things about myself: I crave stability and family is extremely important to me. It didn’t seem worth it to have the ‘dream job’ that everyone had been insisting I needed to ‘fulfill me’ my entire life, but live alone in some faraway city with no support network (and a kid) and there was no guarantee of it all, even if I had the PhD. I also saw how hard professors worked and how hard some of my peers worked, and it sort of seemed like they were missing something. Fellow students were always in the office working but they weren’t really any more productive than I was, and I spent time out birding with my husband or running or even painting sometimes. It just felt like a badge of honor to be busy with “important work” and I didn’t want that badge.

Given this slow revelation and the traumatic disruption of my dissertation research, I made the decision to leave my PhD program with a Masters. Shortly after I made that decision the Covid-19 pandemic began and it was cemented that I had indeed made the right decision at the right time. Still, it took me almost a year to get there. I had to grieve the end of my research that I was so passionate about and I had to open myself to the possibilities of what else my future could be. Part of my healing process in all of this was painting.

After a few months home from Kenya, I was still struggling big time. I was really angry. I was lost. I was not myself. That is when my love suggested I start painting again. I whined that all my supplies were in storage in New Jersey. So, he bought me new supplies.

The rest is history…

I started painting again and I never stopped. I was painting almost every day, while my daughter napped or at night. I was doing small paintings and acrylic paintings in a sketchbook. I was learning new ways of painting just for the fun of it. I was painting more abstractly, which is something I had tried to dip my toe into in the recent past but I’d never ‘had time’ to really dive in. It became a part of my self-care routine and something I couldn’t just set down on the back burner the way I had before. Yes, I’ve taken months off at a time in busy seasons, but I never completely set it down and I always have ideas simmering even when I am not physically in the studio. In 2019, I turned my art practice into a nonnegotiable, rather than first on the chopping block.

I used to consider myself an ambitious person and, at first, I transferred this way of thinking to my art, because I didn't know how else to transition into a completely new life. I had suddenly lost my work, the work I was so passionate about, and I felt had nothing else. So, I made art my new thing. I worked hard and feverishly at improving my skill and then later as the paintings started to pile up and I had no other plans, I poured myself into creating an art business and selling my work. And I am so glad I did. I needed that distraction and I needed something to work toward.

My very first art fair in 2020, the week before everything shut down at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During 2020, that weird year for everyone, I had already been in the weird floating, fearful, ‘the world is different now’ stage for a year. So, I took that time and I put everything into my art business. We moved to Canada, I couldn’t work anyway, so I made art and I started selling it. I created a website, I learned all sorts of things about business and marketing, I bought a bunch of stuff to display my work at markets and exhibitions, I learned to make prints of my work and began selling those. I dove in and loved every bit of it; the learning, the creativity, the connection.

But at some point, things shifted.

In 2021, I got a full-time job to support my family. To be completely honest, Instagram changed and became a lot less fun and over time I felt less and less connected there. I found myself more and more yearning for balance. I journaled about it all the time. I still loved making art, more than ever, but I wanted to be curious and explorative and playful in my work and the pressure of selling or pleasing the algorithm made this much harder. I decided to scale back on my efforts in the art business, in favor of spending as much time as possible developing my artistic voice.

One of my favorite podcasts, 10% Happier with Dan Harris, interviewed Christina Wallace, Harvard professor, entrepreneur and author. She discussed what she called “the cult of ambition”, and I found her perspective refreshing, “I’m not anti-ambition. I’m just against the “cult of ambition” which I define as the pervasive hustle culture mindset that you must always be striving for more”.

The word ‘striving’ became my antithesis after hearing this interview. More, more, more is the root of so many of our personal and collective problems today. Capitalism has just about burned this thing (the earth) to the ground already and still we want more, more, more! More stuff, more, money, more time, more expectations of ourselves and others, as if infinite growth in every direction is possible.

No.

So, as a daily practice I try to remember to be aware of striving, in me and around me, and to be curious about it. And instead of ambition, hard work, traditional measures of success, I am shifting my values to focus on things that matter more. Not to strive to achieve something measurable but to put energy into things I care about: connection with others, with myself, with our earth. Connection was my 2024 word of the year and it guided everything I did each week, and continues to do so. I still work hard at things, but I measure a good week by how connected I feel, how I showed up for others and myself.

And here we are. I still have ambition but it is much different for all parts of my life. My art career is important to me but I have no desire to rush it. My art practice will be with me for the rest of my life and I know I will continue to grow and evolve and reach places I can’t begin to imagine. With connection centred, my art practice stays true to my values and also requires that I keep showing up bravely and sharing my art with others. And that is all I need to know. Just keep painting! (sung like Dory) and keep sharing.

Thanks for coming along for the journey.