How to Cultivate Trust in Your Artistic Voice

Antrese Wood: Hello, hello, hello, welcome to another episode of the Savvy Painter Podcast. If you are new here, welcome. I am your host, Antrese Wood, and I am so glad that you have found me. If you've been listening for a while, welcome back. I'm so glad you're here.

This is part two of a four-part series from a live event that I gave a while back. If you haven't listened to part one, you can still listen to the episode and I will link to part one in the show notes so you can get to it easily. But feel free to listen to this one first if you're in the mood for it now, it's perfect. I did worksheets for every single one of these events. So if you want the worksheet, check out the show notes for this episode. I will link to it there. Highly suggest you do those because it is a very transformative experience. Okay, this is a replay of a live event. Let's just jump right in.

So welcome to Growth Studio week. This is day two. Today's call is focused on trust. One of the most important things that you can cultivate for your voice as an artist is trust. You all probably know who I am. I'm Antrese Wood. I am the host of the Savvy Painter Podcast. I am an artist. I'm a life coach. Those are two things that I'm most passionate about. Like the Reese's Pieces peanut butter cups, it took two great things and I merged them into something that's even better.

My goal is to help as many artists as I can to grow into confident and powerful voices. People think I'm really kind and really generous for doing that, and I am. I'll take it. I am, but it's also kind of a selfish act because I think that the more people who are out there connecting with the world and connecting with each other in the way that I think only artists can, it makes life better.

I want you to be bold and confident and powerful with your voice so I can climb up to the top of my mountain and I can sing my song, but I think it's so much better when we are a chorus and that there's a lot of voices up there. I truly believe that artists are the healers in this world and I can't think of a single corner of the world that doesn't need a little bit of that. To me, it's urgent. We need you. We need you creating your work.

In order for you, my friends, to do that, to create your best work and to show up as your most powerful and amazing self in your studio, you need to cultivate trust. Trust in your voice, trust in your process, and a fierce and powerful trust in yourself, the artist who creates the work.

When you create that for yourself, when you cultivate trust for yourself, you basically take the microphone away from the inner critic and you hand it off to your higher self. That wise and wonderful part of you that has been so patiently, sometimes shyly waiting for its turn to speak, that's the voice that we're all waiting to hear.

I know a lot of you, maybe some of you don't think that you have a voice and that is absolutely not true. You do have a voice. It's just been told for a very, very long time to be quiet and to be sure before it speaks, to wait until you know enough, to wait until you're talented enough, to wait until enough people notice you.

Your voice has been taught either explicitly or implicitly that there are rules to follow and that other people know better than you do, people who are more talented than you so that voice of yours has had, it's just thought like, “Better just lay low until it's safe to be heard. Besides, people might not like what I have to say. There might be other people in this world who are more eloquent, more skilled, and more talented. On top of that, they're better looking, they have six-pack abs, and they have children, dogs that behave themselves.” That's what our voices tell us.

I have some good news and I have some bad news. Not everybody is going to like what you do. There are artists out there who are better skilled than you are at some things. There are people out there who are better looking and have six-pack abs and whose dogs and children behave. But here's the good news, that doesn't matter.

You've been led to believe, I think, all of us that there's some sort of a competition or that we are in a race, and there is no competition. There is no race. When you pull back the camera and really take a look at it and what we do and who we are—we are—all of us, scared little monkeys clinging to a rock that's spinning out in outer space.

Just think about that. I want you to envision that. Really use your vivid artist imagination to make that image real because A, it puts things to perspective, but even better, it's actually really funny when you imagine yourself like that. All of us, these shrieky little monkeys clinging to a rock spinning around in outer space.

Your inner critic totally believes that we are all in this competition, but we're not and I promise you, life is not a zero-sum game and we all get to the same finish line. We all are ending up in the same place. I'm a huge fan of Stoic philosophy. If you haven't heard me talk about that yet, you will, you probably will at some point. The Stoics were really fond of keeping a talisman, a Memento Mori, which was a reminder that we are all here on borrowed time, and they didn't keep that as a fixation on death, it was a reminder to live and to be grateful and to focus only on what truly matters to you.

What I think is cool is you see this Memento Mori throughout art history. It's all over the place; in Renaissance art, subtle nods and still lifes with the fruits, little bits of rotting fruit, little bits of leaves that are falling off, flowers that are losing their petals, or more overtly with skulls, things like that that they put into the still lifes.

A lot of people, when they see those images, they tend to fixate on the dead rabbits or the skull, and they miss what the painting is actually about, which is a reminder that we are here now, and our job is to live our life to the fullest and to be very, very deliberate with that. I think our inner critic has a lot of similar tendencies in that it focuses on the things that we're doing wrong, everything that could go wrong. It's kind of merciless in its judgment and its criticism.

We all experience that. I mean, most of us have experienced our inner critic that can be pretty brutal. I mean, for most of us, the inner critic will say things that we would never say to another person. We would never allow another person to say that to somebody that we love, and yet we will continually say it to ourselves. Have you ever wondered why? That's the really interesting question, because you know it's not true. Why would you do that?

Your inner critic is there for a reason, and it criticizes you so harshly because it thinks that it's protecting you. It will do anything and everything it can to beat everyone else to the punch by criticizing you first so that nobody else can. That's usually the thought process. Your inner critic, believe it or not, has really good intentions. It's just misinformed. It's mistaken. It's very trigger-happy when it comes to hitting the panic button.

Today, we're going to gently take the microphone away from your inner critic. Say, “Thank you very much.” Give it a little pat on the head, say, “Thank you so much for protecting me. I love you. I appreciate you. But we're just going to hand the mic over to our higher self, to the voice who is the creator, to the voice who has something more important to say beyond the sky is falling, and we're all going to die.”

This idea of trust, and I know like many of you yesterday, some of the things that you said that you wanted, and I'm seeing it again today, or you want the confidence in your work, you want consistency in your work, you want that freedom in your work, every time we choose that purposely, we're basically telling that inner voice, that higher self, like, “I see you, I hear you. I'm paying attention to you now. I'm not paying attention to that other voice. I'm paying attention to you.”

Imagine that this is a person, that your higher self, your inner voice, this is a person, and this person has consistently been told, “Shh, be quiet, sit in the corner, you don't know what you're talking about, other people know better than you.” They would just slowly just stop talking. So every time you choose it on purpose, you're saying to it like, "Hey, I'm listening," and it starts to trust you more. The more your inner voice, that knowing higher self inside of you is heard, the stronger that voice becomes.

So for those of you who think, “I don't have a voice. I don't know what my painting voice is,” this is where you start to get really intimate with it and start to really become friends with it. Who read The Little Prince? It's the fox. He tamed the fox. How did he get the fox? Very slowly, very carefully, very kindly. Didn't say like, “You don't know what you're talking about. What do you know, stupid fox?” It just very carefully and kindly became friends with it. That's what we do with our inner voice.

What happened is then the fox started to trust the little prince. The more you listen to your voice, the more you say, “Yes, I hear you. Not only do I hear you, I am going to take your advice. I'm sorry, what did you just say? You want a big, bold, red paintbrush right across, diagonally across this painting? All right, let's do it.” It knows. It 100% knows.

Even if you cover up that big, red brushstroke, you make the stroke and then it says, “Yes, and now we're going to do this, and now we're going to do this, and now we're going to do this, and then we're going to put another brushstroke here.” Maybe pretty soon by the end of it, there's only little pieces of that big giant red brushstroke, but you never would have got there if you hadn't put the giant brushstroke down and then followed that instinct and kept going with it.

The inner critic, that other part of you is going to be like, “Whoa, are you kidding me? Are you crazy? Are you nuts? You've already spent four hours on this and now you're going to put a big giant red blotch down the middle of it?” “Yes. That is exactly what I'm going to do. Because I'm listening to my higher voice. I'm listening to that part of me that says, ‘This is how I paint, this is how I am.’” Yes, and.

Who here has done improv? I haven't, but I would love to, but I love the “yes, and” in improv. As I understand it, again, I haven't done it, but I'm so fascinated by it, whatever happens on the stage, the next person that comes up cannot deny it, can't say it didn't happen, they have to just go with it. So whatever just was, they have to say, “Yes, and now I'm going to add my piece to it.” Your inner voice is going to give you some things to do and you're going to say, “Yes, and what else? What happens now? Where else are we going to take this? Where else do we want to go?”

That's how you build trust. It's scary at first because you're going to feel like you're out of control. Trust your inner voice, just trust it. When I don't trust my own process, when I don't trust my inner voice, I start to doubt what I know. Then I start to look outside of myself for answers. If you're constantly telling your inner voice, “You don't know what you're talking about. This isn't how we do it. This isn't how it's done,” you start to look outside of yourself for answers. You're looking outside of yourself for answers to your own artwork.

Think about that for a second. We do that all the time and when you say it like that when you really think about it, you are asking somebody, like you're asking somebody else who you are. When you do that, when I do that, I second guess what I know already and I'll look to somebody else. When I do that, I don't even give my creative voice the opportunity to answer.

That means I never make the mark that my instinct is telling me to make. It means that the marks I do make are really tentative and unsure because they're not mine. It sets me up for conflict. My inner voice, my higher knowledge is nudging me in one direction, and I'm taking another.

So there's like this push and this pull that I'm going to have in my thinking, which causes me to feel incapable of making a decision because your higher voice, this part of you is saying, “This is where you're going to go, stay over here,” and this other one saying, “No, no, no, no, over here. This is how it's done. This is what they say. This is what the rules say. You don't do that in a painting. You didn't do that last time. Why would you do that now?”

When you have that push and pull and that push and pull, you start to feel like you're incapable of making a decision. When I'm in that position and I'm feeling like I'm getting that push and pull, and I'm not aware of what I'm thinking, it causes me to feel incapable of making a decision so I either won't make a decision, or I will go back over the one that I just made, I'll just go back and forth, “Here, maybe there, here, maybe there. Is it here? Maybe it's here? I don't know, I'll just do this one.”

I'll just keep doing that multiple times and that's how I end up with a painting that's overworked. I just keep changing my mind about who I'm going to listen to back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, this, that, maybe that. Now this other person told me this and this other person told me that. I've left the painting. The artist is gone. Elvis has left the building.

Overworked paintings, it's not because of your skill level. You create an overworked painting because you're not trusting yourself so you don't commit to a decision and you do that back and forth and back and forth until you make a decision out of exasperation rather than conviction.

What you create on your canvas is a direct reflection of what is happening in your mind. You can make the same decision, the brushstroke goes here, but if you're making it without trust, without trust in your process, it's going to look very, very different than if you made it with full conviction.

You guys experienced that, you know what I'm talking about? You can see it in the artwork. You can definitely, definitely see it. We've all heard that phrase of [inaudible] the canvas. So when you make these really tentative, barely there marks, you know what I'm talking about? We make those marks when we lack conviction. Your thoughts are absolutely visible in the marks that you make on the canvas. Your doubts show up in your brushstrokes.

This is what trusting my process looks like for me, trusting my process, trusting my voice, not just on the canvas, but in my practice. I noticed that I have an ebb and a flow, that I have periods where there's a high amount of productivity, a high amount of creativity, and then there's an ebb. I noticed that I have creative seasons and instead of fighting against that, I've come to accept love and appreciate the wisdom in how I create.

If I know that I have that ebb and flow and I trust my voice, I trust myself, I have that trust with myself and I'm in a high creativity mode, then I'm going for it and when there's that ebb, I trust that too. I trust the wisdom of how I create.

I've stopped looking at other artists for how I should do things. I still look at other artists, every single one of those that you all listed, all the time, I still look at them and I love them as they are, for who they are, but I don't compare my own process or my skills to theirs.

I've learned to take the inspiration and leave the judgment. I've learned to take the inspiration and not use that as a weapon against myself. I've also learned to recognize when I need a physical break, when I need to step away, versus when I need to change my thinking.

Sometimes you do need a physical break. Sometimes painting is physical. Sometimes you do need to sit down, have a cup of coffee, have a cup of tea, have a glass of water, go play with the dogs, whatever. Sometimes what I need is to recognize, "Oh, there's my old friend again. There's that judgment. I'm doing that thing again.”

That's the moment when I can decide, “I'm going to trust. I'm going to trust myself. I'm going to trust my voice.” Trusting my process means allowing more playfulness and curiosity so that I can dive deeper into where my creative voice is leading me. I'm going to cultivate that. I'm going to make sure I'm going to be aware. What are my thoughts? All those thoughts and ideas that you guys were putting in the chat just now. When you are actively cultivating those, you'll notice, you'll feel it in your body, you'll see it in your breaststrokes, you'll know when you're out of that, you'll know when you're out of integrity with your higher self.

You'll start to recognize the signals for it and all that is, is an invitation for you to center yourself again, and pull yourself back into those moments. Pull yourself back into the playfulness. Pull yourself back into that fearlessness. Pull yourself back into the courageousness. Pull yourself back into that knowing, “This is who I am and the only way that I create the work that I am here to create is by staying with myself. I don't abandon myself or the painting while I'm making it.”

Do you guys know painting was this hard? It really is a mind game. It really, really is. But once you're aware of that, that tool that you have, this tool right here is infinitely more powerful. You have so much power in your brains, so much. I don't even have words for it so we paint. But seriously, human beings are just so amazing. The brilliance that we have, the creativity that we have, the vision that we have, the ability we have to connect, to empathize, to change our environments, to change the world, that starts with us.

That's the part of our brain that brings us creativity. It's the part of our brain that connects with each other. It's the part of our brain that understands the wholeness of things. That's what we're connecting to when we create our art. So many of us, humans on this planet, have completely detached from that side of us. There's no funding in schools, art isn't a good career, all the things.

We have to carry this torch. I'm a little bit passionate about it. Keep your torch lit. Share it with the world. Share it with anybody who will listen. This is why we are here. This is why you are here. I don't care if you do it full-time. I don't care if you do it part-time. I don't care if you do it 20 minutes in the morning. It is why you are here.

It matters so much. Trusting your voice means accepting and loving what you say and how you say it no matter what else is going on in your life or on your canvas. Step one is awareness. Start to cultivate awareness of what you're thinking, and what you're feeling. Just be aware. Don't judge it. Just be aware. Just notice. Like a cloud in the sky. Just like, "Oh, look at that. That's interesting." Judgment.

The word "should" is usually a lie. When you find yourself saying that to yourself, that's a little flag for you. It's a signal. To me, especially if I'm painting, if I'm writing if I'm creating anything, whenever the word “should” comes up, it is a clear signal to me that I am not trusting my voice.

Trust requires courage, but it enables curiosity. Curiosity is the gateway to creativity. In the most simplistic terms, it's an opening. I like to ask myself, “Am I feeling open or am I feeling shut down?” That's about as simple as it can get.

We listed a whole bunch of, earlier when I was asking you, what are the feelings that you associate with that? If you find yourself getting caught up in like, “Oh, is it really discouragement or could it be frustration?” Just ask yourself, “Is it open or closed? Am I opening up or am I shutting down?”

If you are shutting down, you're not listening to your inner voice. We don't shut down when we hear our higher truth. We don't shut down when that divine inspiration comes to us. It is an opening. It is a cracking open. It is expanding. That's your clear signal.

My true voice, my higher self is always, always open. It will never shut me down. It will never say, “No, you can't know. No, you shouldn't. No, you won't.” That is the clearest signal I can articulate for you. If I'm responding to fear, or if I'm shooting at myself, I know that that is not my voice speaking, that is somebody else.

Step one, start to cultivate that awareness. Just start paying attention. Open or closed. Step two is to start cultivating curiosity. I'm going to give you three starts to questions that you can ask yourself.

Number one, “How can I…” You fill in the blank. This is more an answer to that question. These three words are so powerful, “I can if…” Fill in the blank. Whatever is going on in your canvas, whatever is going on in your studio, whatever is going on in your life, and your brain says, "I can't,” “I can if…"

Then the third question that I think is really helpful in this situation is to cultivate curiosity, “What do I already know about…” Fill in the blank. My drawing is not working. What do I already know about drawing? Clearly, I know something or I wouldn't even be aware that it's not working.

What do I know? What am I seeing? What do I know about color? What do I know about space? What do I know about trees? What do I know about [fill in the blank]? That's going to focus your mind in the direction that you want it to go, instead of the inner critic grabbing the mic from you and starting to have its own little party. You want to keep that microphone in the hands of your higher self, curiosity is your gateway.

Then the third step is to take action with trust. Sounds a little awkward because I really wanted a T there because then it's an act and then I can remember it. Take action with trust or you can just put trust, but take action with trust.

When you're aware, then when you cultivate curiosity, you develop trust. Over and over and over, you're telling that higher voice of yours, “I hear you. I see you. I'm responding to you.” This is how you rewire your brain. This is how you amplify your voice by following it.

Nobody knows your art better than you do, full stop. Nobody knows your art better than you do. Your brain likes to tell you that you should go ask somebody else, you should go Google it, you should go look somewhere else. You know the answer to that. It could be, by the way, this isn't to say that you never need to develop your skills, that you never need to do anything else.

But what it does mean is you know your art is better than you do. You know what you're trying to do. You know what you need. If you recognize, “What my art needs is for me to be able to draw in this very particular way,” then you go find the answer to that question versus, “It's not working. I need to draw better.”

When you're really specific, then you have something to work with. Okay, so here's the tricky part of this, you just have to be really on to yourself. A lot of times we try to delegate our questions to somebody else. There are times when you really, truly don't know. When you really, truly don't know, and you have an idea of what the answer that you're trying to get, it's the difference between going to somebody and saying, “Here's my painting, what do you think?” versus, “Hey, you know what? I'm working on this painting, and I can see that the jawline is not correct and I think that the reason is A, B, or C.”

Now you have something to work with. But if you develop, I call it a lazy habit of just saying, “I don't know,” and it's so tempting to just be like, “I don't know. I want somebody else to answer this question for me,” you're also not giving your brain the opportunity to problem solve, to figure it out, and to work its way through those artistic difficulties.

I think the artists that I watch go through this, it is such a different process to say, “Okay, this is the question I have.” It's specific, versus, “Something's wrong with my painting. I'm afraid it might be everything, so I'm going to go take a poll or I'm going to go ask somebody else.”

Valerie, sometimes I feel myself in that place, but two minutes there. Then I think of myself being arrogant. I thought that was my inner voice, but maybe it wasn't. Okay, let's be really clear about what arrogance is and what it is not. Arrogance is me saying that I'm better than you.

Arrogance is me raising myself up at your expense. Arrogance is me building myself up by cutting other people down. That is arrogance. Your inner voice is not going to do that. That's insecurity. That is fear that does that.

When you have that full trust in yourself and in your inner voice, it means I can admit that I need help and it doesn't hurt my ego. I can admit there's something wrong with the painting and I can ask for help with that. It doesn't make me a terrible painter. It doesn't mean I don't know anything. It doesn't make the person that I'm asking better than I am in any way, shape, or form. It just means that they have different knowledge than I do.

Like if I say, oh, this will be fun, I love saying this to a group of artists. I love this so much. Okay, all of you, I want to just think to yourself about yourself, I'm going to say it about myself right now. Let's do this. “I'm an amazing artist.” Can you say, “I am an amazing artist.”

You are an amazing artist. You are out there, you're creating, you're building your abilities to paint. I'm not saying, “If I say I'm an amazing artist,” let's just play with this idea. I'm not saying I'm better than Gary. “I'm an amazing artist” does not mean “And Gary isn’t.”

That's the idea that I started with. We've been given this line that we're in a competition, we are not in a competition. I am an amazing artist. Melissa is an amazing artist. Carrie is an amazing artist. Melissa being an amazing artist does not take anything away from me. Gary, you are an amazing artist.

Yeah, it doesn't take anything away from me or anybody else in this room. Steve, I see you, you are also an amazing artist. Sheila, all of you. If anybody has a copy of the artist rulebook that says who gets to call themselves an artist and who doesn't, and that also can predict the future and know who you're going to be at the end of this process of becoming and being and doing the work that we do, there's no book. There's no art police. Nobody's coming after you.

That is, I think, one of the biggest lies that we have been taught, and conditioned to believe, all of those things. Lots of people will argue with me on this. Lots of people might get really pissed off that I would say something like that. I'm standing by it. Happy too.

Questions I would have about that are, in whose best interest is it to be the art police or to decide who can and cannot? Who wins? It's not me, it's not you. Why is that a thing? Who does it benefit? Really think about that.

But what I think is even more important than that is why do we care about them. Seriously, I don't know who these people are. I've never met them. I don't know where they are. I know that they're out there. I do get that, but why do I need to live my life according to their rules?

It's okay if they want those rules for themselves, they can have it, it's fine. Why is this a thing? I'm trying not to get on my soapbox and start yelling and screaming right now, but it has no bearing on what we do in our studios. If you are out there, if you have a studio and your studio is the two feet of your kitchen table that you work on every day, then you have a studio and if you're creating art, then you are making art and you are an artist.

Back to how I started this whole conversation, we need a lot more artists in this world. We need all of us to pick up the torch and carry the torch. Where that whole argument completely falls apart for me is like A, the whole thing about who wrote the rules, but B, the other thing is like, who am I to tell you wherever you are that you cannot continue to make the art that you make?

Who am I to tell you that you will not continue to get better and better and better and to continue to make art that inspires people, that moves people, that brings people to this place where they are just in awe of what they are looking at? Who am I to tell that person who is in awe of a painting that “No, no, no I understand you're in awe, but not that one, that's not actually good art.”

If the art is creating the emotion and somebody is responding to it and loving it and loving creating it, who am I to tell you you can't do that? Who am I to tell you that you should just stop now because I have a crystal ball and I know for a fact that you're not going to step into your greatness.

I'm trying not to swear right now, but I think that's a load of BS. This is where the trust in ourselves and that fierce protection of our inner voice, don't let anyone take that away from you. It's not theirs to take. It's yours, it's been given to you, it is your gift, and it is yours to protect.

You've already spent way too long listening to your inner voice telling you that you can't do this. I don't think we have any five-year-olds on this call, but even if you're five years old, and you've been listening to your inner voice for five years, it's way too long.

All right, what else do we got? I told Mia this thing once, once upon a time, there was an art instructor who told a student that that student would not make it. It's a devastating thing to hear. What I think, I think that professor, that instructor was just confused. Tony is confused. Whoever the art teacher was, the third-grade art teacher, the art teacher in college, whoever that was that told anybody, “You're not going to make it,” they're just confused. They just don't know.

Let's end it with this, imagine what it will be like for you when you show up to your studio with that full trust in yourself. With that full trust in yourself when you paint, that full trust in yourself when you submit your work, that full trust in yourself when your work gets rejected, that full trust in yourself when your work is accepted, when you tell somebody the price of your work when you offer it for sale.

Those are the moments. It's not just on the canvas. Those are the moments. It is full trust in yourself always. Trust that you can experience any emotion because what's on the other side of that is bigger than any emotion. I wanted to invite you, all of you to join us in Growth Studio.

You can do that by going to savvypainter.com/join because if you want different results, you're going to need to think a little bit differently. This is what we do in Growth Studio all the time. Our thoughts create our feelings, our feelings drive our actions and our actions create our results and they require us to be very thoughtful about what results we want to have. Otherwise, we just get what our inner critic offers us.

The common thread that runs through every single piece of work that you create, all of it, the common thread is you, your voice, your ideas, your intuition. When you cultivate trust in your voice and you know that you have your own back, because you're willing to feel any emotion and not make it mean anything bad about you, your voice grows stronger.

Every single time you allow that little whisper inside of you, that impulse that says, “Get that bright red paint out,” even if it doesn't make sense right now, every time you hear that voice, it tells you to do that thing and then you do it, you dip your paint in the bright red paint and you make that mark, that voice grows stronger and bolder and that voice is priceless. You cannot ignore it.

This is what we cultivate inside Growth Studio. This is what we are all about, empowering you to trust that voice, to listen to the whisper. You'll learn to turn up the volume on your true voice and to turn the volume down on the doubts, the fears, the second-guessing, all of those things that tend to take over.

When your true voice is given the microphone, I guarantee you it's going to have a lot to say. It’s been quiet for a very long time. As long as you listen to that voice, you won't have problems with consistency. You'll stop hesitating and you'll stop second guessing and you'll stop overthinking.

You'll go into your studio and love the artist who can be so bold and who paints with such conviction and that bold conviction, I'm telling you, it is contagious. It spreads. People will respond to it.

All right, my friends, that’s what I have for you today. We're going to have a light session tomorrow. Tomorrow we're talking about money. We're just going to talk about money, the easy conversation. Can't find anything stressful about that. That's what we're doing tomorrow. I hope to see you all there. Talk to you soon. Ciao, ciao, everybody.

Oh, and if you are ready to join Growth Studio, head on over to savvypainter.com/join, it is that easy. I want to share with you something that one of our Growth Studio members, Jack Ray said the other day in a coaching call, and it just warmed my heart. Jack is a phenomenal artist out of Oregon, and here's what he has to say about being in Growth Studio.

Jack Ray: I'd like to add that I'm really impressed with Antrese’s ability to create a space to practice talking about art. I think that's one of the biggest things I got, and I'm getting to think that everybody is so accepting and helpful, and it's so scary to talk about art. This has just been really fundamental in building that skill. Thank you, Antrese, and everybody.

Antrese Wood: Hey, if you want to take what you are learning here on The Savvy Painter Podcast even further, join us in Growth Studio. This is where you will take what you've learned here on the podcast and apply it, practice it, and take these concepts from just good ideas that maybe you'll do someday to habits that become part of your practice. Growth Studio is a unique community of artists. We meet multiple times a week for live coaching, critiques, and demos. Just go to savvypainter.com/join.