Exploring Your Art Without Overthinking or Overwhelm

Antrese Wood: Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Savvy Painter Podcast. I'm your host, Antrese Wood. If you're new here, welcome. I am so glad that you found me. If you've been listening for a while, welcome back. Savvy Painter is the podcast for artists who want practical, tactical tips to create a meaningful art practice that is fulfilling and supports you.

This is part of a new series of podcasts where I brought together a roundtable of artists from Growth Studio. What I did was I picked several topics I thought you might be interested in hearing about and I asked Growth Studio members to come on the podcast for a deep-dive discussion. Each episode is a standalone, so don't worry if you're coming in now, you do not need to listen to them in order.

Today, I'm talking with Sabrina Setaro, Alyssa Marquez, and Jess Fredrick. In this episode, we're talking about what I call the experimental phase. If you're not sure exactly what I mean by that, don't worry, I've got you. I find it helpful to organize the phases or stages that we go through as artists.

Real quick, we have the exploratory phase, which is what we're going to talk about in this episode, but it's a period of exploration, discovery, and play. From there, we go into the production phase, where we focus on an idea and create a body of work. Oftentimes, the production phase comes directly from the exploratory phase. Maybe you're playing around with a lot of work, and then you notice that you're super curious about this one piece and you find this thread and you take that thread and create a body of work from it or a series of paintings from it.

In that stage, I would say that you're in the production phase where you're focused on a specific body of work. Then next we show the work. That can be studio visits, art fairs, expositions, galleries, or showing your work online. In its simplest form, it's letting other people see the work somehow. From there, we go into selling it. Whether we are actively selling the work ourselves or we are working with someone else like a gallery or a dealer to sell the work.

Then finally, there is the rest phase where we recuperate, we recharge our batteries, and let ourselves digest all of the things that came before so that we can connect the dots. When we go back into the studio, we have this whole new view. We go right back into the exploratory phase. These phases are cyclical. A common question I get about them is, “How long should I be in each phase?” My answer is, it really depends.

I don't think there's a set time for any of these, and they are not generally equally divided. Meaning it's not like you're going to have three months of the exploratory phase and then three months of production and then three months of showing and selling and then three months of rest. In certain times of your career, you might need six months of exploration, five weeks of production, one month of showing and selling, and then two months of rest. Then maybe the next round, maybe you just need two weeks of exploration and then that's followed by a year of production.

You can see it really depends on you, it depends on your process and what you need at that time. But regardless, I find it helps a lot to understand and identify where you are at. The clarity that you get from naming where you are helps you to avoid over thinking and overwhelm. Neither of those things are helpful at any stage. They're just, ugh. That's just to put this episode in context for you.

In this episode, Sabrina, Jess, Alyssa, and I are going to talk about the whole exploratory stage. We're going to talk about what they do in this stage, what these artists do in this stage, how they play with techniques, how they balance play and exploration with a purpose and how they create spontaneity and how these artists play with constraints so that they can avoid overwhelm and overthinking while they're in this playful discovery phase.

Okay, let's start with some introductions. Sabrina, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Sabrina Setaro: Yeah, so I live in South Carolina, in York in a rural area. I'm originally from Germany though, but yeah, since several years, I lived there in a small town, probably like a lot of people, and I paint mainly in gouache and watercolor, and I would say my work is more on the abstract side, for sure, even though you could maybe always argue a little bit, there's also things in there that you can explore, but more on the abstract side.

Antrese Wood: Alyssa, how about you?

Alyssa Marquez: Yeah, I am in California, also in a rural area close to the town of Bishop. We're just smack dab in the middle of the Sierras and the White Mountains. I'm from the other side of the Sierra in the foothills where gold was discovered. My artwork, I'm in all sorts of different mediums right now. I'm working in oils and watercolors, mixed media, inks, wood, found objects, put it all together and make it abstract and that's my art.

Antrese Wood: Love it, beautiful, and Jess.

Jess Fredrick: I'm Jess Fredrick and I am a born and bred New Yorker. I'm currently living in Brooklyn. My work is primarily focused on animals and objects with an emphasis on a line between figurative and abstraction and the depictions of them. I'm fascinated by the gesture and what we can know in a gaze about our subjects.

Antrese Wood: Beautiful. I love it. The topic for this conversation, we're going to talk about the exploratory phase of your artwork. The way that I tend to think about how we create art is that there's a couple of phases of the art and of what the artists go through while they're creating the work. The first one is the exploratory phase and that's where we are playing around and discovering and doing all sorts of things which we're about to talk about so I won't go too detailed on it right now.

But then once we've played around and explored a little bit, then we go into, and I don't have the best phrase for this but I talk about it as if it's the production phase where we might decide, “Okay, so I've played around with this idea. I've found this thread that I want to pursue with this idea that I have so now I'm going to do a series of work.”

From there, we tend to go from producing the work, creating a body of work, and then showing the work, and then selling the work. Then finally, another very important phase of the art process is the rest phase, is the pause phase, is where what I like to call the percolation phase where all of it comes together and we recharge our batteries. But for this episode, what we're going to focus on is just the exploration and the play.

First question I have for y'all, I would love to hear from each of you what exactly does it look like for you, or what are some of the things that you do in your studio when you are exploring in your work? Jess, we can start with you.

Jess Fredrick: I find the exploration stage really messy because I feel like usually, you have to start with just, I usually start with almost like a meditation or a mindset to it in that usually, if I can't think of anything to draw but I'm bored with what I'm drawing, I will draw everything around me from bottles to people to shoes, strings on a carpet, whatever is laying around just to see what will start to spark, and sometimes that can go on for a really long time.

It can be a really frustrating beginning to things, but then all of a sudden, if I don't critique it while I'm doing it, something will set me off onto a different path. That's usually how I'll find a subject, or I'll start from a concept of “Why am I painting this?” is a big part of my exploratory phase once I've established my subject.

But then there's also a lot of questions about the medium, what happens if I mix this and this, how do I create motion or movement, or how do I get a similar effect in ink that I'll get then in acrylic? Usually, I'll start from either the technical side or the exploration of subject.

Antrese Wood: Nice, yeah, fun, very cool. Alyssa, how about you?

Alyssa Marquez: Yeah, it's interesting because, I mean, I'm a fairly new artist or early in my career and I feel like I'm constantly in some sort of exploration stage because I have been trying so many different mediums. I think just part of the exploratory is because I didn't have an education in art. So every medium that I pick up is just exploratory.

As I move along in my career, it's interesting to think about when I've learned more about how certain mediums work, how the exploratory phase will change, and it might have to be more purposeful because right now it feels very just organic. I'm like, “What is this? Let's try this out.” But if I was to think about purposeful exploration, honestly, a lot of it comes from textures or shapes that I find out when I'm hiking, when I'm out working and hiking.

I'll often take things back. I'm not quite sure, “What can I do with this object?” I'm not quite sure but I like this shape. I like this texture. Sometimes I'll just bring it back and it'll sit there for a bit and a month later, I'll be like, “Oh, I know what to do with you. I'm going to shove you in some plaster over here.” It's just really spontaneous and organic. I guess I like to leave these objects around or these ideas around so that I see them, then they come together when they need to. It's very fun. I love the exploratory phase. Yeah, it's great.

Antrese Wood: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I love this idea of, I mean, from both of you just bringing in whatever's around you and just allowing your environment to take part in the creative process. Cool. Sabrina, how about you?

Sabrina Setaro: Yeah, I can relate to a lot of what also Alyssa said, and I'm also very early in my painting career and feel like every painting is exploratory. I noticed that is what draws me to painting so much to the exploration of it. But when I think about, okay, when I'm just basically playing with something new, I notice that I look at it more in terms of experimentation.

The difference there for me is sometimes, when there's too much variety, I can get overwhelmed and then I don't know what I'm really doing and I really like when I'm experimenting to only do a little bit and to keep what I'm doing, but maybe switch up just one thing or another thing. It's almost like an experiment in the lab where you keep everything the same and you control for one single thing.

I noticed that is my type of exploration. It's more of an experiment to see, “Oh, I want to learn how this color, this new medium, how this works,” in order to do that, to not get frustrated and overwhelmed with too many variables, it really helps me to get in experimentation mode and then try this one single thing and introduce it in what I'm doing. Yeah, that's more what I do when I'm in the exploratory phase or experimentation phase.

Antrese Wood: Yeah, I love it. I mean, I think this group that I have here right now, what I love about it is that we've got different types of art, different types of media, completely different thought processes. I love that I didn't realize you were so rural, Sabrina, but I mean Alyssa, I know because we could have been neighbors if I'd stayed in Mammoth. I know the area that she lives in really well. Then Jess smack dab in the middle of New York City, basically.

Our environments, I think, couldn't be more different and the levels of play I think feed into that. When you're experimenting and when you're playing around, do you have a sense for when you want to take it further or when you are just simply in that, it reminds me of a nightmare before Christmas, like, “What's this? What's this?” in that phase of just absolute awe and just like, “Oh, my gosh. I wonder what this is going to do and what is this going to do.” Anyone have any thoughts on that? I want to open it up so that you guys can riff off of each other.

Jess Fredrick: It's funny because I find one of the things that I really struggle with is getting to that place of play and if I'm feeling only the curiosity about the medium or the subject or something, then I actually know that that's the moment that I need to continue doing exactly what I'm doing and not stop to think maybe this will be a series or maybe this will be this. I have to let that, that is what creates the riff for me.

That's also for me, the hardest part of the exploratory phase is allowing myself to stay there in exploration without getting into the “What's next? Now I need to do 10 of these. I need a finished piece,” because so much of exploration is not having a finished piece and having things that you hate, things that you love as well, but being comfortable with, “I've just wasted a lot of paint,” or “I feel like I've just wasted a lot of paint,” or “I've wasted a day feeling frustrated by it.”

As much as it's this very fabulous zen place to be in playfulness with paint and ideas and animals and objects and all the things that fill my head, it's also an incredibly frustrating place because I naturally default to “Where am I going with this? What's the meaning of it?” I know that I have to stay out of that place in order to actually find a place that I'm going if that makes sense.

Antrese Wood: Yeah, totally and I'm wondering when you are in that phase of “I'm just playing around,” what are some of the techniques or thoughts that you use to stay the course, to allow yourself to be okay with this idea that, “Yeah, what I'm making isn't resolved. Who knows, maybe I'll come back to it much later, but for now, I'm just playing and I'm going to just let it be whatever it is?” There's that desire with it. Then there's that wanting to make it mean something. What are some of the ways that you keep yourself on track if you have any?

Sabrina Setaro: Yeah, I make it easy for myself knowing that these thoughts will come up, “Oh, I wasted time and I wasted paper and paint.” I make it really easy on myself and go small. That helps me to stay in this, “Okay, there's nothing to lose here. There's nothing to lose. It's not going to cost a lot of money. It's not a ton of time. I can just try it out. Then I can try another one until maybe I see something happening, or until I'm getting bored with it, and then move on to something else or let it sit.”

But allowing myself to know, “Yeah, that is a normal process. That is just what it is, it is learning by doing and making it really easy to not get frustrated with myself or thinking about it as a product.” If I start really small, it helps me to not think about something, “Oh, this is a piece that I'm going to show or sell.” I think that that helps me to stay, yeah, just up front to stay on track, and not, as Jess said, it is so easy then to get frustrated because often when you experiment, it doesn't really come out in a shape or form where it's like, “Oh, this is perfect.”

It is something that you move on to, but then I try to focus and think about, “Okay, what are the pieces that are working? Is there something in there that I want to keep taking to the next painting?” That's how I go through that. Then just see what comes with me along. If after a while, I notice, “Oh, yeah, this is still with me,” then I know I'm on to something, or maybe, yeah, this is something I tried, but then I see myself not doing it for a while. It might come back also to a later point. But this is a little bit how I approach and help myself to stay out of the frustration phase while exploring.

Antrese Wood: Nice. Alyssa, were you going to say something?

Alyssa Marquez: Yeah, after Sabrina was talking about finding things within a piece of artwork that you like, that really resonated with me because I feel like that's how I deal with making a bunch of bad art that doesn't look good, was nothing like I wanted to do, or yeah, just not happy with it. But I don't think I've had a single piece where there isn't something in there that I was like, “Oh, that was cool. I really like that mark that I made or that color combination or [inaudible].”

Sometimes maybe you find something and you just don't like it. But yeah, so that's the fun part. That's the fun part of what's the one thing that I do like and that I can carry over to the next project and just looking at it as it's just one more thing that I got out there and I'm that much closer to making that thing that I want to make and just being happy that you spent that time putting whatever on paper or whatever art you're doing, just being happy that you did that even though it looks pretty bad.

Antrese Wood: Yeah. One of the things for me that I really enjoy about the exploratory phase is not having any attachment to it. I will play back and forth between—and it's a similar thing—but speed and quantity of being like, “How fast can I do this?” There are a couple of things. One is “How fast can I do this? Can I do this in 15 minutes?”

It keeps me from getting too precious with whatever it is I'm doing when I say someone, “Okay, I'm going to see how many of these I can do in X amount of time.” Usually, that size because like Sabrina, I will also go through these phases where I just do these tiny little paintings. But then I'll find myself sometimes wanting to take it to another level and getting more detailed than I'm intending to.

I think in those moments, it's these constraints that I put on it will start off being, okay, I'm going to do it small so I do a whole bunch of them, something in quantity, just get a whole bunch of them done and see how many different ways can I say this idea if I'm thinking about the exploratory phase in terms of an idea, just like, “How many different ways can I approach this?” It's almost like, “How many different ways can I sing that song?”

But then there are other times when I'm playing with texture or something like that. Then I think it's more of a quantity question for me, but yeah, I'm just thinking of all the different ways that I'll put constraints on and/or keep myself from getting into just wanting to finish the painting or wanting to make it mean something and just letting it be what it is. I've got a sketchbook. Sometimes I'll flip through them and I'm like, “That is really interesting. I'm glad I didn't cover it up.”

Jess Fredrick: It's funny because I know that if you work fast and you do a lot of them, yeah, something shows up and I can see that in a lot of drawings, but somehow for me in the exploratory phase, that as the thing I need to do like, you need to make 20 of these, yes, it does actually help, but it causes me such panic. I don't know what else I'm supposed to do here.

It actually often will have the opposite result for me that sometimes I have to let myself obsess. I have to just get all the little details in there or whatever it is. It's such a balancing act. I'm listening to you guys and you guys are so much nicer to yourself about this stage than I am.

I feel like the thing that I have to learn in addition to working faster, because that's the thing I've heard my entire, “You need to make more output, more output, more output,” to find the idea is also just this ability to pause in exploration and be actually like, “You're obsessing, just take a break, walk outside.”

Antrese Wood: I mean, just because one artist tends to work with speed, and I don't always work with speed. I mean, you guys have seen me paint, it's slow. It's glacier slow. It's a really slow process, but I think what it is, there was this guy that I used to love. Oh my gosh. Wow, I'm about to really date myself because Bush was president. Just go back to how long ago and what technology was like. But there's this guy, his name was Ze Frank. I mean, his name still is Ze Frank. But he had this video blog, and this was before YouTube existed, so him even doing this was crazy.

He decided he was going to do it for every morning for a year, he made a video. This is before YouTube, before everything that we have right now. It was much, much more difficult. I still remember it, he did this one video where he just talked about everything is opposite day, where he did everything backwards from how he normally did it. Then he talked about how it impacts his creativity.

It's stuck with me because I like to think about how can we force ourselves to think differently to get ourselves out of a rut that we don't even know that we're in and to play and figure something else out like that. I think that's part of the reason why I'll put these bizarre constraints on myself where I'll just be like, “Okay, it's two-inch by two-inch painting day,” but I mean, that's what Sabrina does all the time, so it's fine. Or I'll do something like open a jar, close your eyes, and grab three tubes of paint. Now make a painting with those three colors that unlikely have anything to do with them other than they're in my jar, so obviously, I picked them.

Jess Fredrick: I love hearing these techniques. I just love it. I just think it's great because it's so important to the process. It's interesting.

Antrese Wood: Yeah. Left-handed drawings or whatever, or some of my favorite experimental techniques, I want to do this again, actually now that I'm thinking about it, I only did it a couple of times. Right this second, I was like, “Why have I only done it-” but regardless, I think what I did was I painted shadows with my left hand and lights with my right hand. I know. I will make up these weird rules and then just like, “What happens?”

It probably came from doing drawings with left hand and then somewhere out of that, I was like, “Oh, I wonder if I can paint that way.” I basically would mix paints and I would mix shadow colors. It was a cross between this idea of separating your shadow colors. If you think about the value scale and if I just cut out the middle parts, I have this distinction between what's light and dark. Then on my palette, there's significantly dark colors and significantly light colors. I've got two paintbrushes, one in each hand. I'm painting with both hands and just going like, “This is madness,” but it's also weirdly Frankenstein fun.

Jess Fredrick: That's awesome.

Sabrina Setaro: I think whatever you can do to get yourself out of the head in putting pressure on you and the piece is helpful because I feel like if I'm sitting there and painting and keeping my mind free of these, then I'm making progress. I know, even if it feels like, “What am I doing?” it leads to a place. I found it leads to a place and just trust it. But the worst for me is always when I start questioning, when I start putting pressure, then I get frustrated with myself, I get frustrated with the painting. Then what happens is I will resist going in the studio, I will resist making more.

I almost feel like you can't really go wrong, whatever you do to keep yourself out of these thoughts is going to be helpful. It's also really fun to do. I find it for myself that I will see relatively quickly, it doesn't take too long to really see, “Oh, yeah, this is going somewhere,” even though I not necessarily was overthinking it.

I can then tell, "Oh, yeah, this is really going somewhere," and that is actually leading to something that works, and that it was a missing piece that I was struggling for so long, and now I found it actually through the experimental or exploratory phase because I feel like for me, it is really when you just notice then all of a sudden, it makes click and then you can move on but I cannot think myself into the click so I need to keep really my brain free from these things from the frustrations of myself and pressure as much as I can. Then it tends to work itself out.

Antrese Wood: Yeah.

Alyssa Marquez: Yeah, I had two thoughts that came up of things that I'm now realizing that I do, one of them is reusing things that I'm about to throw out. I'm like, “Okay, what can I do to this artistically? Because I'm going to throw it out anyways and make this into something,” and it's not something that I want to really put anywhere, maybe it will be, but then it gives that freedom. Then the other thing I do, which I think is just how I am, but I love squatting when I do stuff. I'll have stuff strewn across the floor and it allows me to move in a different way instead of just sitting at a table or something like that.

Something about that mobility makes me feel more like I'm playing or something and just also having multiple mediums going on that I'm experimenting with. I think my most favorite one where I was drawing, but then also trying to do linoleum block printing. I somehow accidentally took a rubbing of fabric on the floor and I got a really good impression. Then I was just running around the house, making rubbings with the rolling pen of like, “Oh, this piece of wood, oh, come here, kitty,” in the house, doing all that.

When you get in that mode where you're just so excited to just see what's going to happen, then that's a good sign. But those are just things that I think that's just how I am, but I guess those are techniques as well.

Antrese Wood: No, they are. It is, it's anything that gets us out of the rut that we don't know that we're in, basically. But, Jess, you do a lot of experimentation, you really do. Just because for example, I'm like, “Oh, okay, so I do these really fast,” and you're thinking like, “Oh, well, compared to you guys, I'm really slow,” what I started thinking was, “Oh, maybe I should do a slow-mo experimental phase and see what happens.”

Jess Fredrick: My experimentation is funny because a lot of it is also just, again, I completely agree, so much of it is about changing the way I move and remembering these things in the process, all of the techniques, like switching hands, or trying something else. But I also find I’m putting up multiple pieces of paper at the same time, so I can move from one to the other.

Yeah, I mean, a little ADD sometimes just tears things apart and putting them back together without any real structure sometimes, but I think also leaning into that idea that maybe I don't have structure and not yelling at myself at the same time for that, is a part of how I end up allowing myself to experiment.

I'll start with a concept and much like you, suddenly I'll have ink in one place and I'll have acrylic in another and I'll have some markers or I'll just have to try all of the things together and those are usually my best experiments. The happy accident.

Antrese Wood: Yeah, and I wonder when you're saying it feels really ADD or whatever, in this context, I wonder if that's just your intuition and your voice getting excited and being like, “Yeah, let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this.”

Jess Fredrick: Yeah, I think that there's always a critiquing voice that says we have to focus or we have to make art a certain way. I think certainly one of the things from Growth Studio that I've taken away is the fact that everyone has their own process. You have to lean into that process in order to really play and be experimental.

That's a lot of what I think I've been trying to do. There's that moment when you're like, “Oh, I think I'm in love” when you find your thing. Depending on what I'm after, some of my best experiments have been made with tissue paper or things that may not last. The accident. The trick for me is finding the accident and then diving further into the same [inaudible].

Antrese Wood: What do you think? What are some insights you've had about your work from this phase?

Jess Fredrick: From the exploratory phase?

Antrese Wood: Mm-hmm.

Jess Fredrick: Most of my exploratory phases are about trying to loosen up my work a little bit more and make it a little more playful to be able to pause. Sometimes there is beauty before we can see it. Knowing when to stop and walk away, which is part of what you teach yourself during the experimental stage or that's a big part of it for me. Then coming back and discovering the beauty of it later.

Recently, I've seen a lot of patterns in my work that I'm definitely ready to break, most of which come from the habit of how I approach a canvas and so a lot of my experimental questions are about “How can I do this differently? Can I start with rather than a line, start with a color? If I start with a color, what does that do? If I work small versus big, if I work on the floor versus the kitchen table.” I'm in the mid-exploratory phase.

Antrese Wood: I haven't figured it out, I'm in the middle of it now.

Jess Fredrick: Yeah. I see a lot of things I would like to change. I just don't know quite where they're landing to the next thing. I would like more spontaneity in my line.

Antrese Wood: Nice.

Jess Fredrick: More of what I'm at. It's the unspoken part if that makes sense.

Antrese Wood: The unspoken part. What do you mean?

Jess Fredrick: I want to say the unspoken part of my work more than the part that I've thought about if that makes any sense. Every artist is unique from their handwriting, from the way in which they approach something. We all have the same materials, but when we get to a canvas, it all looks so much different.

Allowing that is part of what I think what we are discovering in the exploratory phase. What is it in my handwriting that distinguishes my work from your work? I guess that's what I'm after at the moment in terms of that's what I'm exploring to find out what influence that will have on my greater body of work. I'm hoping it will be really large. You sometimes just have to turn it up.

Antrese Wood: Sabrina, you had something you wanted to add.

Sabrina Setaro: Yeah. When I think about the things that I have been experimenting, what it taught me specifically in my work, and what excites me, I notice that I started out more with watercolor or translucent watercolors. When I started adding gouache to the pictures, I just wanted to try the medium out, then I realized that I was really excited about the contrast between translucency and opacity. I could not see the way I painted before because it wasn't in my work on that.

It's something that I definitely realized only through the experimentation of it. It's almost like, “Oh, this was what I was looking for. I was missing this.” Like a puzzle piece that was really missing that I could really tell afterward that it makes a big difference in how the vision what I have in my head and what comes out on the paper. I just really could not do it before. I think this is just one example, but it's definitely something that I noticed consciously. I think my consciousness really said, “Oh yeah, that was the gouache.”

Antrese Wood: I think too if I think back on the work that you're doing now, you're constraining your colors to a very, very limited palette. I don't know if you're aware of this but what I'm seeing is that your use of those colors is getting so much more sophisticated because you're so intimate with them. I don't know how many of these you've done but I'm thinking it's in the hundreds at this point.

Sabrina Setaro: Yeah. It's funny too, that wasn't a conscious decision on my part. I just noticed that I'm overwhelmed when I add too much and my learning process slows down and I want to learn. I want to have a little bit of an “aha” moment and I noticed if I only use a triad and then I experimented with different ones but then I got to this one and for some reason, this triad that I'm using at the moment allowed me to free myself another way.

Whenever I start a new one, I'm thinking, “Am I ready? Nope, I'm not ready yet to move on to another.” You're right. It gave me a freedom and real exploration of what these three colors in combination can do and that they look so different than each other and you almost wouldn't think that those were the same ones and they have different ways they behave with each other.

That really helped me. At some point, I will be ready to move on, but for some reason, these three really work. I do think for me it is important to have a good moment with the piece I made. I do want to set myself up for success up front, to make it just easier to have a learning point. The constraints really, really work well with me.

Antrese Wood: Yeah. Alyssa, I'm curious about you, what are some signals that you have that you might be ready to move on from? I'm thinking of the exploratory phase, but maybe from the subject or the medium that you're exploring.

Alyssa Marquez: Yeah. I feel like maybe I had the opposite issue where I would be following so many different exploratory phases that I would be jumping from one thing to the next very quickly and not spending much time exploring one thing. I realized that when I was showing some art to somebody to get it hung up, they were like, “Do you have any multiples or a series of stuff?” I was like, “What? No, I just make random stuff.”

Jess Fredrick: I hate that question. I do the same thing you do. Everyone was like, “Do you have more of these?” I was like, “No, that was cool.” No wonder.

Alyssa Marquez: Actually, that's what I'm trying to do right now. I just finished up a series of stuff in wood and it's been fun. I think I could take it even further but I also have the desire to just do something totally different. I think I'm just going to do both. I'm going to continue with that idea and also jump off on something new because that is just how my brain works.

It wants to do something new. It likes to have multiple options, which is to go back to the previous question, just the main thing I've learned from exploration is that I need to have a bunch of different options and I used to think that was bad like I needed to just do one thing. I'm like, “No, that doesn't make any sense.” I wouldn't enjoy art if I had to just do one thing. I don't know if I have any good insights on cues to move on because it is just what my brain needs to do. Maybe I'll pass that.

Antrese Wood: Well, what you triggered in me in my thinking as I was listening to you is that in the same way that as Jess described, we're all effectively using the same materials. We're using crushed pigments and something else. We're all using similar things, yet our work is just infinitely different.

It's just such a beautiful expression of who we are as human beings to be able to create this work and to continue to evolve with it. What I'm thinking is within this idea of, “Okay, this is the exploratory phase, and the purpose of it is to play and to experiment and to have fun and to just not have an agenda.” I think in my mind that one of the most important things about the exploratory phase is to not have an agenda other than, “What's this? What's this? What's this?” or, “What about this? What about this? What about this?”

The exploratory phase can be, like you're describing, which is just anything and everything. The pine cones I pick up when I'm out hiking, or maybe I'll use some pine needles as a paintbrush and see what that does and all these different things. This mass, very broad, “What about this? What about this? What about this?” Then there's also the micro level of, “How far can I take these three colors? How many different ways can I do this thing?” I don't know if you see it, Jess, but I feel like your version of that is the line. Your work to me is so, it is so Jess.

I know instantly that's Jess. There's never a question in my mind. Throughout it all, the thread that goes through it is this playfulness and this push and pull of lines, overlapping lines. In the same way, I feel like Sabrina saying, “How many different ways can I use these same three colors and make it interesting? So far we're in the hundreds and there's still more,” I think with you, Jess, it's like, “How many different ways can I construct these lines? What's the limit to this?” What are your thoughts on that?

Jess Fredrick: I think that's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me. I'm flushing. I'm not even really sure how to respond, to be honest. Yes, the push and pull of it is a really important element. I don't know how to respond to that, to be honest.

Antrese Wood: Okay. You don't have to have a response to it.

Jess Fredrick: It's just such a nice thing to say to me.

Antrese Wood: I love it. Okay, here's the deep question of the episode. Anyone feel free to chime on this one. There's the exploratory phase where we're just like, “Let’s play. Let's see what I can do.” We've talked a little bit about, “When do I know when it's time to move on or time to take this exploration and turn it into a series?”

For me, I know it's time to move on when I'm not curious about it anymore when I'm just like, “All right, got it.” Then I think I know it's time to take that and move that into a series when I can't stop thinking about that. When I'm just like, “Oh, I could do this 100 times, and still be curious about it,” then I know that there's the direction I'm going to go for now. The big lead-up to the question is how do you know or what are some signals, or what are your thoughts, how do you know if you're using this exploratory phase as “I'm in deep exploration” or “It's my hideout.”

Jess Fredrick: Your hideout from creating a body of work or your hideout from what?

Antrese Wood: Yeah, your hideout from either creating a body of work or sometimes I've seen people stay in the exploratory phase because they don't want to deal with showing their work. They're afraid to show it. It's like, “I'm still working on it. I'm still working on it. I’m still working on it.”

Sabrina Setaro: I would have said that that is a clue, Antrese, is what you just said. I feel like when you want to hide and not show, that could be a sign that you want to hide behind that exploratory phase a little bit. I agree too. I think I wouldn't want to create a body of work from something that does not excite me. I think the excitement has to be there.

But I do think that the feeling of, “Okay, where are we?” Eventually, I want to show my work. I'm asking, “Where is this going? Does that hold up? Does it give me a meaning? Do I see a threat? Am I now ready to show that? Can I visualize a body of work coming from that?” I think those are good clues, but I'm also curious what others think because I don't have the full answer to that either.

Antrese Wood: Any thoughts? It's okay if you don't.

Jess Fredrick: No, I mean, I'm a born and bred New Yorker. My thoughts have thoughts. First of all, I think that there are some artists whose whole art is in the exploratory phase and that's fine. They just like to play with the medium and with the idea and never have the intention for a body of work or to show it or see it.

They just get their own process high from just pushing things around. More and more I start to build sort of, it's enviable to me, that's where they're comfortable. I like the fact that they're like “Nope, this is the kind of art I do. I just pour paint. I drop things on things and that's my art.” They're quite happy to show it.

I don't think we're ever 100% ready to show our work, and there's always a question about, “Is it enough? Is this good enough?” Especially in the exploratory phase, it creates a little bit of a confidence gap, but then a big part of making art is sharing it and showing it and transferring the emotion that you have depicted to another person and letting them have an experience with it.

I think that that's a very valuable part of what we do or why we do it. How do I know when that moment comes? It sneaks up on me. That's what I was saying earlier, I think making art is a bit like falling in love, all of a sudden you're like, “I don't know why I like this person so much.”

All of a sudden, there's something in your surface, there's something that you have expressed or that I have expressed that I'm suddenly like, “Oh, my God, I don't know where that came from and I almost don't recognize it as mine, but I like it. I don't know why I like it yet.”

If I can find that and it lasts in my work, then I'm okay to show it. Otherwise, it's going in the drawer, it's being dumped in the shower, it's disappearing, something is happening. But there are certain paintings that all of a sudden I'm like, “Who is that?” It makes you blush with excitement. I don't know how to explain it. That inexplicable thing is what I'm exploring for if that makes sense.

Antrese Wood: Yeah. Oh, totally. Was it Georgia O'Keeffe who said, “I paint because I can't express in words what I can express in color”? Something along those lines?

Jess Fredrick: Yeah.

Antrese Wood: Yeah. It makes sense to me when we can't totally articulate it because it's a different language.

Jess Fredrick: Yeah, I don't think we're supposed to. But I think stumbling on it is the moment where you know it's time to make a series or it's time to push it to the next question. Or conversely, sometimes I just have to stop when I'm either obsessive or crying. Just time to move on. Am I obsessing or I'm crying? I have to just do the next thing.

Antrese Wood: What are the other?

Jess Fredrick: What are the other? It's either love, tears, or obsession.

Antrese Wood: Tears of joy, tears of happiness.

Jess Fredrick: It could be a [inaudible].

Alyssa Marquez: The only sign that I could think of is that maybe you're hiding out in the exploratory phase, maybe it's like if you find yourself falling back on whenever anybody sees your art or wants to see it or you show it to them in whatever way, you're like, “Oh, but this is just practice.” Because you can fall back on that, like, “Oh, I'm just exploring, just experimenting.”

Maybe you find yourself saying that to a lot of people. It's scary to think about showing a piece where you did your best and you can't be like, “Oh, just messing around.” I was like, “No, I like that. That’s everything in that painting. I put everything I know how to do.” That could be a sign.

Antrese Wood: I think it is. I think that's a really good one.

Alyssa Marquez: Yeah. That's your fallback.

Antrese Wood: Oh, this one, it's nothing.

Alyssa Marquez: Yeah, instead of being like, “Yeah. I spent a lot of time on that,” or something like that.

Jess Fredrick: I think also sometimes in the exploratory phase, I do feel like sometimes we are blind to it, and showing it is how we discover what it is that we're looking at. But we tend to be like, “Oh, no, no.” I completely understand and agree with what you're saying. It's very accurate.

Antrese Wood: Let me ask you this. The question is, in your process of exploration and playing around, how has being in Growth Studio helped you with that? Or has it?

Sabrina Setaro: Make a hundred of these. That's a good clue. That has helped me really with the permission, especially since we talked about earlier, when you're exploring, you're feeling like, “Maybe I'm wasting time and wasting paint.” Showing it to somebody can really help giving that little bit of permission that you might need to go full in and explore it.

That certainly helped me a lot to say, "Oh, I'm allowed to make a hundred of these little things." It would be nice if I could give myself the permission and I'm working towards that, but sometimes it's just not how it works. Then other people who understand what creating feels can really help. It's not about saying, “This is the most beautiful thing you just made.” But just giving you enough permission to, “Yeah, this is worth exploring,” that helped me a lot.

Alyssa Marquez: Yeah, I think knowing or learning, understanding that exploration can be or is a phase where you're just doing that and you're not trying to do everything all at once because I was having situations where just small little art galleries or hotels or whatever, last minute they’re like, “In the next couple weeks, we have room for art,” and you're like, “Oh, I should show art. I'm just starting. I should get stuff out there.” But then I would drop everything to try to frame a bunch of stuff that was just a hodgepodge together.

Then after being in Growth Studio, I was like, “Yeah, those shows are going to come around again. I don't need to drop everything. This is the phase that I’m in, whether it was exploratory or whatever. I don't have to drop everything and I could just know when it's going to be next year if I actually want to show stuff.”

That was helpful. Then I really loved just learning about all the techniques that we can use to explore because it wasn't really how my brain was thinking about exploration, but drawing with your left hand was so fun. I really loved that so much. Then seeing what everybody else is doing and what they're exploring with and what they're struggling with or having success with, just regularly seeing people doing the same thing. You inspired to do it yourself or you branch off on some things like, "Oh, they did that, but I could try this." Something somewhat different. It's been very helpful.

Antrese Wood: Yeah, I love that. I have that too and I watch you guys, sometimes I'm like, “That makes me think of XYZ and I'm going to try that.” Having that ability to see what other people are just playing with.

Alyssa Marquez: I loved your description of your profile on your Instagram, what you did with the arms and the negative space. That was really cool to see.

Antrese Wood: Yeah. It's fun to play. How about you, Jess?

Jess Fredrick: I think Growth Studio is a really good place to be uncomfortable. From what Alyssa was saying about the exploration stage and showing it and all of these things, Growth Studio is a really important space to be able to be like, "Hey, I have no idea, but here I am."

To be with a bunch of creative people and to guide it is an amazing way to be able to take the next step when you're stuck. The fact that it's there every week where you can just send an email and have people look at a painting, I find it really invaluable to the process.

To agree with what you both said about other people and the ideas that are spawned and even just knowing when to stop and knowing when it’s time to take it to the next place. But I think it's a good place to show up when you don't have the answer and be uncomfortable with not having the answer and looking around like a proverbial room full of people going, “Uh-huh,” and just all nodding at you.

We've all been there. Mostly I think it's an unusual space in that respect, where people are just incredibly honest about both succeeding and failing on services where I'll post things to Growth Studio that I'll be like, don't take this the wrong way, but “I wouldn't show them to anyone else.” I just wouldn't. It's nice to have that kind of place.

Antrese Wood: Beautiful. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much, Jess, Alyssa, and Sabrina. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. You are phenomenal.

Alyssa Marquez: Thanks, Antrese.

Sabrina Setaro: Thank you.

Jess Fredrick: Thank you.

Antrese Wood: A big thank you to all three of you for giving your time and experiences so freely with other artists. I hope you enjoyed getting to know Alyssa, Jess, and Sabrina and having this insight into their painting process. There are a lot of nuggets that they shared with you that you can take into your studio and start practicing today.

If you are ready to reconnect with the playful side of your art and paint with purpose and freedom, and you want to do it with the help and support of an amazing group of artists, join us in Growth Studio. Just go to savvypainter.com/join or find the link in the show notes. I would love to see you there. Until next week, this is Antrese Wood with the Savvy Painter Podcast. Talk soon.

If you want to take what you are learning here on the Savvy Painter Podcast even further, join us in Growth Studio. 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.