How Creative Confidence Impacts Your Artwork

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

With this episode, we are continuing a series of round-table conversations with artists from Growth Studio. Each episode is a standalone, so don't worry if you're just coming in now, you do not need to have listened to them in order. You can just keep on keeping on.

In this episode, you are going to hear from Merrie Koehlert, Andrew Rea, and Alyssa Marquez. We're going to explore ideas around creative confidence, how we shape it, how it impacts what we create, whether we show our work, and whether we do or don't sell our work.

We also talk about how peer support and constructive criticism help build our creative confidence, as well as some of the differences between humility, confidence, and arrogance. I know a lot of artists struggle with this idea of having confidence and whether or not you can have too much. We dive into all of that in this episode. Let's start with some introductions and then we'll just jump right in.

So, Alyssa, what is your definition of creative confidence?

Alyssa Marquez: When I think of creative confidence, I think of, yeah, I guess it's like you said, having your own back or trusting yourself, even when you haven't maybe done something like this before or you don't have all the skills, like you trust yourself to figure it out, or if you go forward and you can't figure it out, you know that you'll be able to go to somebody or I don't know, just having faith in yourself to go forward with a project, even though you've never done it before.

I'm just thinking about a lot of the woodworking stuff that I've done that I’ve never done before, but yet I still delved in because I knew I wanted to learn it and I just knew that I could do it. Then I also think about creative confidence and being just very true to yourself. Yeah, again, trusting yourself enough to express what you're feeling, what you're thinking, what you're interested in, and not holding that back, being worried of what somebody might interpret of it, or even if you don't quite understand it, but still going forward.

Antrese Wood: That's a good one, even when you don't understand it and still going forward.

Alyssa Marquez: So those are the two things I thought of with creative confidence.

Antrese Wood: How about you, Merrie?

Merrie Koehlert: Well, I happened to have picked confidence as my word for the year. I had looked it up and came up with the Latin root which is [inaudible] with and then fidenza, which is faith. Like what Alyssa just said, it's to go with faith, to have certainty in oneself. It's such a simple concept, but it's hard to do. They're your favors even though it's you, it's hard to imagine that you wouldn't go with yourself but yet it's so critical.

I mean, all of the art I've ever created required having faith in myself, having this little glimmer of an idea and having the faith to make it. If I didn't have that, I wouldn't be able to do anything. I wouldn't have a body of art because you have this faith that this vision of this thing that you want to make is going to happen, even though you are struggling and it's not happening and you’re doing everything you can, you still keep going.

Antrese Wood: Yeah. What do you all think about that? Because I think that a lot of the understanding of confidence doesn't seem like we really stop to think, “What actually is confidence? What does it actually mean? What does it mean to me personally?”

But the thing that I love about what you said is the idea of faith, and that being such a major part of confidence, because I think some of the misunderstandings or maybe just assumptions, the internalized assumptions is, for a lot of people, is that confidence means that you've got this almost like a bravado, it's that versus faith is something completely different, faith is believing in something without proof that it exists and without being able to see it. When you really pull it apart and think about what that means to have to really think, consider what it means to have faith in yourself on that level, it's really profound.

Alyssa Marquez: It is really profound. It makes me think about, is that the one thing that people have or don't but actually decide to make the art? Because you want to paint, you want to draw, you want to sculpt, and it sounds amazing, then to make that leap to actually doing it is that's just creative, not just, but that's creative confidence that takes you there.

If I hadn't believed in myself, then I would have never been like, “Yeah, let's take some time to do art, just work on art.” I would never have done that if there wasn't some confidence.

Antrese Wood: Yeah, yes.

Merrie Koehlert: Also a belief that what you have to say is important and that takes confidence.

Antrese Wood: I love that so much. It does take an enormous amount of faith to be an artist and to trust yourself enough to say what you want to say and to have that faith that what you're saying is valuable, it has meaning and it's worth sharing. Those are, I think, hurdles for a lot of artists. Yeah.

Merrie Koehlert: Often the business of life, kind of what Andrew was saying, takes over and at that point, you're faced with these colossal questions, “How do you make a living?” At that moment, well, that's when your faith becomes tested, so you're going to have a day job, but you're still going to do your artwork.

Each time you come upon one of these moments in life where you have to make decisions, to always come back, even though you're taking a teaching gig and it keeps you from making art, knowing that in your heart, you're still an artist, you're still thinking about art, even though you're not making it, or you dream about it, in that way, you are kind of making it.

Antrese Wood: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, by default, we're constantly making art. Maybe that's because I have an expansive view of art, that it is what we create in our studios. I mean, your wife is a dancer, is that right, Andrew?

Andrew Rea: Yes.

Antrese Wood: Do I ever remember that right? Yes. There's the physical art, and then there's the art that we put on the canvas or that we sculpt or however it is that we're creating it. Then I mean, I genuinely believe that our life is the biggest piece of art we'll ever make. The way that we integrate our life with our expression, regardless of what it is, I know that's big and lofty, but I do genuinely believe that. There's Antrese the philosopher.

Alyssa Marquez: I thought we were going to talk about technique.

Antrese Wood: We absolutely can.

Andrew Rea: Perfect. I think this whole confidence thing of, I don’t know, from my own personal experience, I've been involved in some sort of creative endeavor or of some sort of endeavor for my entire adult life, but most of it is not as a painter artist type person. So the idea of being an artist has always been there, but it's never been attainable until recently in the last few years, even the possibility of it happening.

But I was thinking about, “Well, how can I do this? How can I make it work? How do I do this?” I think that goes back to what I was saying before is like confidence is knowing that you can recover from even when you fail. It's also I think knowing like, “Well, I can't get to where I want to go going this way. Maybe if I go this way and go over here and go down there and do this,” and being okay with the fact that “Well, it might not look the way I thought it was going to look. But it looks like this and this is okay. This actually might be better.”

I mean, I can't tell you how many times that I’ve been stopped from doing something that six months or a year or two years later, I was like, “God, I'm glad I couldn't do what I was wanting to do because is what I wanted to do is way better,” and I'm much more happy about doing that.

I guess the other thing too, part of it, unfortunately, I think for me anyway, my experience, it comes with living and knowing and being able to decide day after day or today, this is important, this is not important. This is important. This is not important. This is important. When I was younger, I was like, “Oh, that's important. That's important.” I didn't have the same filter, whereas now it's like 90%, 95% is unimportant. This 5% is important to me.

Alyssa Marquez: Yeah. I like that.

Antrese Wood: Doesn't it sound like he's talking about a painting though? Can you guys hear that?

Andrew Rea: The things that I used to think were important and I would measure my confidence level or now it's like, “I don't even care about that anymore. It's not important to me.” Even now going back to you talking about I'm painting or creating all the time, every day. Even if 99% of the time, I'm not physically doing something, but in my mind, I'm doing something.

I'm thinking, “But well, how can I do this? How can I make this happen?” Or it's like, “I need to hire somebody to do this. Well, if I don't have the money, how can I do this?” And just trying to finagle my way to get to do what it is I want to do. I mean, the other thing too, one of your other questions too is what advice you have if you haven't found your confidence, I personally don't think confidence is something you find. It's something that comes and that grows in you.

The other thing too is like, I think the best way to find confidence is to not even look for it, but to follow what you're curious about and follow that and just pursue that and then continue to figure out, “That's interesting, let's pursue that. That's interesting, let's pursue that,” and then you'll just naturally want to figure out how to do the thing you want to do. It doesn't even become a question anymore, at least for me.

Antrese Wood: Since we started this, we started talking about like, oh, when there's this bravado or this movement we go through as starting out as being really young and our levels of confidence has changed, I'd love to hear how you feel like your confidence has evolved. Alyssa, do you want to start with that?

Alyssa Marquez: Yeah, evolution. Yeah, I mean, for some reason, when I was younger, I didn't consider myself a creative person. I wasn't like a creative kid. I wasn't exceptionally good at drawing. I wasn't in drama or whatever, but looking back on it, all the classes that I loved were the art classes. Even the art classes I took in college, yeah, I definitely did not have creative confidence then because I just had it in my head that I wasn't the creative person like I have science and math, even though I danced too.

So I don't know, as years went by, it just kept coming up, coming up, coming up. I just remember one time being like, “You know, I'm just going to start making art because I want to.” It's just one of those things that kept coming up. So for whatever reason, creative confidence just spewed out right then. I was like, “We're just doing it.” I don't know where it came from. Since then, it's been pretty steady, I feel like where it's been that well of excitement, believing I can make whatever the heck that I want to.

Now I think it's changed a little bit in the sense that some of the confidence is also backed by I've seen myself do it now. It's different, it's not just faith, I've also seen myself do it. It is, I don't know if it's more grounded or not, but it's a little different. The other part of the creative confidence was also just, once I did make the decision to leave the full-time job I had, had saved money and everything and took time to work on art and now working part-time, I really at that point just trusted that if I just was honest with people about what my intentions were, and I just kept following my nose and just followed that drive, whatever I was interested in, I just had the faith that it would work out.

It has proven time and time again, at least in this community that I'm in, if you're talking about being interested in art, and you're just genuine with people, opportunities come your way, you meet people, people start giving you found objects. Now I'm in this spot where I'm working part-time, getting exercise outside in the Eastern Sierra and the other four days of the week, I'm making art, and, like Andrew said, I didn't picture that entirely.

I didn't think this is what I was going to be doing, but it's a really good balance. It has shown me that yeah, if I put my true intentions out there and follow my nose, things tend to work out, not saying nothing will go wrong, but you'll end up somewhere that you want to be regardless of if it's where you thought you would be. Following that flow and being open to living that creative life and just going with what feels right and be interested the whole way.

Antrese Wood: Yeah, yeah, just open and interesting. I love that. I mean, both of you bring this idea that part of that faith and that trust is that things do work out in your favor. We just have no idea how it's going to happen. That's where the faith comes in where it's just like, “Okay, if I keep pushing the ship in this direction, I'm going to get there. The winds might push me in other directions,” but I mean, I've really found that as well.

I'm thinking of all the points that you were making, Andrew. Even when you're convinced you're completely off track, in retrospect, you end up realizing, “No, that was not how I would have chosen it or what I thought it was going to look like, but it was exactly what I needed.” Wish I could tell that to my 19-year-old self. So funny.

Andrew Rea: I just said it's hard, she was just saying, she wishes she could tell her 19-year-old self that, and it's hard to see that, you know.

Antrese Wood: Yeah, you can't see it when you're in it. Yeah, yeah.

Merrie Koehlert: Even if someone told you, you probably wouldn't listen because half the creativity is figuring it out.

Antrese Wood: Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't have understood it. They could have told me and I would have just, but.

Merrie Koehlert: But what I wanted to say, and I think Alyssa was saying is that it almost feels like there's this internal navigational device that we have and it's like you have your true north and you have these different experiences and some of them take you very far to the west, some of them take you all the way to the south and you suddenly are like, “I don't want to go there.” So then you set your course.

For me, I think the jobs that I've had have been so important. If someone had said to me when I graduated, “Here's a studio, just go paint,” I wouldn't have liked that. I needed to figure out what the meaning of art is to the world, what the value is. Somehow, sitting in a studio and painting, of course, then you'd have to sell your paints and all that, but it didn't feel right to me at the time.

Teaching was this incredible avenue where I was getting the confidence of my own voice. I was talking to people about art. Every day, I had to be one step ahead of everyone else, so I was able to study and to learn about all these different materials and techniques and then really stand in front of a room and talk with authority. That really gave me a lot of confidence.

Then moments along the way, like Andrew was saying, when you get those positive reinforcement, sometimes you come up against people who give you the impression like your work's not valuable, but then you find a person, a teacher, someone who says, "You really got something. That's really cool," or "Someone wants to pay for your art," and then that's like a million bucks. So then you set your course in that direction, and then you keep getting more and more momentum.

Then I was also thinking at the point in my life where I had children, the confidence to model for them what was so important to me was really important. I did this series about female artists and I had two little girls and there I was looking at the world thinking, “God, my girls are going to grow up in this world where they go into a museum and they just don't see female artists.”

That gave me confidence through my kids of wanting to communicate and express myself, to make a world where they look around and they see people living their truth, thinking about the things that are important to them and taking risks and going for it.

Antrese Wood: Yeah. How do you all think that this evolution of confidence and your confidence in general has impacted your work?

Andrew Rea: Don't know.

Antrese Wood: Don’t know?

Alyssa Marquez: I couldn't think of one way that I've seen it change my work where I think the longer I've been working, I mean, it hasn't been a very big reach, but the more I've reached out to people to work with me to do stuff, we've had local installation projects here that you can apply for, instead of just applying for it by myself, which I did the year before, I talked to my partner and was like, “Do you want to do something with me?”

So then we start there and then now that I know that I can put a project together, I can complete it, and then I can show it, now I’m like, “What’s something else that I want to do that I can’t really do but I can bring people in?” So it’s almost like collaboration. I’m doing an installation and I ask my partner to make some ceramic beads for it.

Now he's making ceramic beads and I see them and I'm like, “Wow, that is nothing like what I imagined. That's great.” Then I've invited his mom to participate too, because she's a weaver. So now she's weaving. I think it's just fun for people to be in art projects. Maybe they don't think of themselves as artists. Then it's just really inspiring, it adds confidence to me when we get to build this thing together and it comes out to something I didn't even imagine and then people are just so excited to see it.

That's something I see and I hope that that keeps evolving and I'm able to keep reaching out to other people to bring them into work together because it's a lot of fun, surprisingly. I didn’t know I'd like collaboration so much so yeah, it's been fun.

Antrese Wood: I can see that the confidence in that just having seen a piece of your evolution from “I'm not sure if I'm an artist” to “I'm an artist” to “Now I'm bringing all these other people together.”

Alyssa Marquez: Because I think you're an artist and I think you're an artist.

Antrese Wood: Yeah.

Alyssa Marquez: Yeah, it's not like a competition thing or like, “I just want it to be my thing.” I even think about that when I'm building pieces where I'm just using, we talked about last time parts of organic material or sticks and like, “Should I put co-creator [inaudible]?” I didn't just do this, it's like there's so much collaboration that goes on. I think the more confident I get, the more input that I see everybody contributes to what I've ended up making here. That's just one thing that I haven't thought too much about, but I think it's going to evolve as time goes on. Yeah.

Antrese Wood: Yeah. It sounds like you just start to see more and more opportunities and more and more ways into your art that weren't there.

Alyssa Marquez: Yeah, I like that definition of more avenues into it.

Antrese Wood: Yeah. What about you, Merrie?

Merrie Koehlert: I think the way that confidence most recently has been affecting my art is, I think maybe I have to back up and say that at times the lack of confidence made me go over a painting too much, doubt that what I was doing looked good. In one painting, there might be like five or six layers, because I was constantly doubting that it looked good, I kept adding more.

I think that what I'm doing now is that my confidence is giving me the ability to be more efficient and not get in those work loops where I have some thought that it's not looking good and then I go over a bunch of stuff. Instead, I just stop when I have one of those errant thoughts or anxious moment. This is 100% a gift from Antrese and Growth Studio, which is to take those moments and stop and ground myself and make sure that the moves that I'm making with my brush and with my colors are authentically what I want them to be and how I want them to be.

I also have this really great conversation in my head where I know if I make a mistake or if I go over that color that I liked before, I can always go back to it because I made it, it's mine. Just like this healthy conversation and really trying to separate the dark thoughts, it's just helped me to be such a more efficient and confident painter.

Antrese Wood: I love it, I love it. Thank you, by the way. Andrew, were you going to say something?

Andrew Rea: Well, I was just trying to think of an answer to your question. I don't think my life experience of confidence is like a fixed point. There are some things that I'm really super confident in, some things that I'm not so confident in. If you want me to say, "Can you fly this plane?" my confidence level would be really super low. Part of it is do I feel like I have the skills necessary to do the task at hand? That greatly affects my confidence level.

But in terms of art making—and this also goes to you too—I think one thing that's changed my confidence level is that it has given me the ability to imagine art making in very different ways than I did two, three, four years ago. I'm thinking in terms of things that I'd never thought of before. It's allowing me to go into areas that are really super interesting for me.

Antrese Wood: What's an example of that?

Andrew Rea: It's stuff that you haven't seen yet. I've been working on some ideas for the last year or so that are very, very different from anything I've ever done before but my confidence has allowed me to explore other areas that four years ago I probably wouldn't have even thought of it as an idea because I was just like, "Oh, I'm in this representational mode, and this is the road, this is who I am.”

Then some things happen, and I did some experimenting, and it's like, "Oh, maybe this isn't the only way I can go. I can go do other things." It just opened up other areas of creativity and possibilities, whereas four years ago, I don't think I would necessarily have been open to that, so it's cool.

Antrese Wood: It's very cool, and it comes back to having the confidence to follow our instinct, having the confidence to listen to our own voice and our own curiosity of like, “Hey, I'm really curious about this other thing over here and on the surface, it looks like it has nothing to do with the art that I'm creating, but I'm going to go play. I'm going to go play in that sandbox a little bit.”

I was thinking as I was listening to you all talk and you guys have probably heard me say this a number of times, but just in case anyone listening hasn't heard this, I think it is really, really important to distinguish your understanding or our definitions of confidence and self-confidence and arrogance.

As we were talking, a question, I was like, "Oh, this will be a fun question to ask," would be like, "Can you have too much confidence?" I think that when a lot of people think of too much confidence, they equate that with arrogance. Just for the purposes of this conversation, I just want to give a couple of my definitions for those three words, which we've been circling around and we've been touching on it.

But for me, confidence is that root that Merrie described, and it is everything that we've been talking about. Confidence has for me an element of, “I have experience with this, and I've done this before.” I have this evidence to draw in a way, but self-confidence is where we really come into that place of where the faith is, of, “I believe in my capacity even if I've never done this before, even if I've never flown an airplane,” which I have not, but with my self-confidence, I can draw on, “Well, I've learned how to drive a car before, and when I learned how to drive a car, that seemed very complicated, stick shifts and all that fun stuff.”

I have the self-confidence that if I had the proper instruction, if I went and found a person who I trusted to teach me and I put that and I studied, learned, and did all the things, then I could fly an airplane. No, if you put me in an airplane right now, nobody would be safe.

There are those two distinctions for me that self-confidence really is the belief in my capacity to figure it out, to do it, to do something, to have my own back, and all these other things. The way that I interpret arrogance at least is arrogance requires another person.

It requires me to believe that I am superior to that person. For me to be arrogant, another person needs to be involved in that, whether they know it or not. The dangerous part about it is if somebody really is basing their value as an artist or a person or fill in the blank on that level of arrogance, what they need to feel good about themselves and what they need to feel good about their art is there has to be that person who's less than they are or they'll never feel it.

So arrogance to me is like in another ballpark from confidence because of all of those things. Okay, I just took a really long time to set up a question that I want to ask you all to really consider, can you have too much confidence in your painting, in your practice? We've never touched on this, I'm throwing you a curveball. Curious what your thoughts are on that.

Andrew Rea: I guess you can have too much difference, but maybe you can only find out in retrospect. Usually, too much confidence implies that the goal that you were trying to achieve was missed, usually pretty dramatically, so you don't really know that necessarily until after the fact.

One person's overconfidence could be internalized as, “I'm confident in my ability to do it.” Somebody else can interpret that as you're an arrogant so-and-so. I think the confidence that we're talking about in which you described, Antrese, which I totally agree with, it's not really a bravado, it's more about understanding who you are as an individual and what you want to do with your life.

Going back to what I was talking about before, you said, “I know from what I've done in the past that I can find somebody and acquire the skills to fly an airplane,” it goes back to what I was saying before, it's like, “Yeah, I could do that, but do I want to do that?”

Antrese Wood: Totally. Yeah, that's a completely different question.

Andrew Rea: Is this important to me? But it goes back to confidence. Confidence is like, “I know who I am as a person, more or less. I know where I want to go. I know it's important to me come hell or water. That's where that's where I'm going. I'm willing to endure failure. I'm willing to endure disappointment. I'm willing to endure delay or whatever to get where it is I want to go. I'm even willing to allow it to be in the end, not to be exactly what I pictured it to be in the beginning and that’s okay.”

Antrese Wood: Yeah. It’s probably not going to be what we picture because it never is.

Andrew Rea: Yeah. But can you be a jerk? Yeah, sure, of course, you can be a jerk.

Antrese Wood: No, I didn’t say jerk. I said, “Can you have too much confidence?”

Andrew Rea: Okay. Well, if you define too much confidence and being arrogant and having to have an other.

Antrese Wood: I don't define too much confidence, that's the question, I was making it interesting. If you completely separate arrogance from confidence, because arrogance needs another person to be beneath you in order to exist is my hypothesis.

Alyssa Marquez: I was just thinking that confidence without patience can maybe result in too much confidence. If I'm going back to when I first wanted to do art and I was like, “I believe in myself. I believe that I can be an artist. I could sell work and get into a museum,” but if I'm like, “I'm going to do that tomorrow and I have yet to paint a painting,” that time scale might be a little off, but if you have the confidence that you can do the things you want or whatever, but you don't even want to say you're not based in reality, but you're willing to, as Andrew said, endure it, be patient, know that you'll get there, or that you'll be able to do this thing that you want. I think patience comes with confidence, reins it in maybe.

Antrese Wood: Yeah, that's interesting. I don't know the answer to this by the way. Obviously, I don't know the answer to anything.

Andrew Rea: Yeah, there's no quiz.

Antrese Wood: There's no quiz on this. There's no test and there's no grading. But it's just an interesting thing to think about because of all the assumptions that we internally have and how that impacts our painting, and how that impacts what we do in the studio. If we allow ourselves to really play around with those ideas, it can have a very profound impact on what happens in our studio. What do you think, Merrie?

Alyssa Marquez: I know she looked like she had some good, insightful information.

Antrese Wood: I know.

Merrie Koehlert: It’s so funny because I was trying to make some logic. I was like, “Okay, if arrogance requires another person,” and I was trying to make some rational, arithmetic problem, but I could not make it make sense. But what I finally came down to is confidence is all good.

If you're overly confident and you come up against a problem, you can self-correct and you can fix it. I think the part where if someone is overly confident, who is arrogant, and haughty, there's a vice there, but I think so much of confidence and creativity comes from love. I just don't see why one would take someone else down.

Antrese Wood: Yeah, that's arrogance. That's not confidence. Confidence to me is, and self-confidence in particular, is, “I'll figure this out.” Like what Andrew is saying, like come hell or high water, my mom used to say that all the time too.

Merrie Koehlert: It always seems like the people who I have met, who are very successful artists have so much humility. I think that you're so confident that you're humble. You don't need someone to be like, "Oh, you're so great and we love your art." In fact, it's annoying.

Antrese Wood: Yeah, which again, that is arrogance. Confidence to me, it's not there like you're saying. I’m agreeing and reiterating. Okay, we talked a little bit about the change and the evolution of confidence and I would love to hear how that has impacted your risk-taking in either your painting or your practice, what that looks like for you.

I think, Alyssa, you've touched on it a little bit with this idea of like, “Yeah, and now I'm collaborating with other people,” taking those kinds of risks, which at a certain point, it is a slight risk. What are your thoughts on that?

Alyssa Marquez: The question is how has it changed your risk-taking?

Antrese Wood: Yeah, how your confidence impacts your desire to just take risks?

Alyssa Marquez: Yeah, when I first started showing my work and trying to get involved locally, I would pretty much do any project that came in sight, which was great and I'm really happy that I did that because I had the confidence to be like, "Hey, I'll paint a mural. Sure, I'll paint a mural."

Then the next time it came around, it was all painted on a wall instead of panels and in front of people. It slowly evolved. Then I think I still had that tug every time I'd see something come up, I’d go, "I gotta do that and I gotta do that." Then I slowly was like, “No, I don't have to do that.”

I was able to hone in a little bit, not quite like Andrew's 95% is not important, but maybe like loaded in just a couple percent of like, “Okay, now I know really what I want to do, or a little more what I'm going to do and is that project going to lead me in that direction? Am I following that true north arrow?”

As the confidence has gone up, the need to apply to everything that comes out of every art project in the community has decreased. It's not that I don't want to do it anymore, but my judgments and the true north, I've been using that a little bit more to make the decisions and know that I can make the decisions on my timeline. It doesn't have to be everybody else's timeline.

Antrese Wood: How has being in Growth Studio helped with your confidence?

Merrie Koehlert: Is this for Alyssa or all of us?

Antrese Wood: For all of you.

Merrie Koehlert: Well, I can chime in on that. When I started Growth Studio, I was having a dip in my confidence. I wasn't sure where my art was going at that time. The act of meeting other artists and hearing that whatever was going on with me was actually not unusual and in fact quite normal and that everyone else was having all the same issues: money.

Let's talk about money. There was just such a deep exhale of finding this group of people who were so closely experiencing the things that I was feeling. In the beginning, everyone says this when they start, it's hard the first time you speak, the first time you show your work, we all talk about it, you're sweating and it's a lot.

There's all this sensitivity and there's all this emotion wrapped around it. Then you do it and it's fine because it's really productive and it really helps you. I think before Growth Studio, the critiques that I went to were not constructive. In fact, they felt a little bit destructive. To have this new pathway, neural pathway of like, "Oh, I can show my work and then get really good advice and take it or leave it, but it's really going to help me and make me a better artist” was just huge.

It gave me the confidence to show my work, to speak about my work, to speak about the things that scared me knowing that other people were also having those problems, then also how to take the emotion and the intensity of everything. I think, Antrese, early on you, well, first of all, I love that everything like you laugh all the time and we laugh all the time, just this idea of what are we making such a big deal about it, it's just a bunch of pigment on cotton. When you just scroll back and look at it, it's just so cool to have some perspective.

Antrese Wood: Yeah. It's all just ground-up dirt and oil smeared on cotton pareos.

Merrie Koehlert: Right. No big deal.

Antrese Wood: Yeah. No big deal. How about you, Andrew?

Andrew Rea: I'm going to be boring because my answer is pretty much identical to hers. But no, I really think you can't really underestimate being in a group of your peers and knowing that the things that you're feeling, the things you're experiencing, the emotions you're having are pretty typical.

I remember the first few Growth Studios I was in and people were talking about what they were dealing with, I was like, “Oh, my goodness. Wow, it's exactly the same thing I'm dealing with.” It's like, “I'm not the only person who deals with this stuff.”

I guess the other thing too is it's my tribe so to speak. I'm kind of unusual because my wife's a dancer so she's creative and my daughter's now getting a BFA in sculpture. She's creative. I'm surrounded by a bunch of creative people. But outside of that, most people, you talk about the creative process or painting, they look like you're from Mars or something like that. It's like, “What are you talking about?”

Just knowing that the people are dealing with it and talking through it helps you model it and internalize some of the things that you realize that you were doing that weren't necessarily too healthy and getting rid of them. Those definitely have helped improve my confidence. I think being isolated is really, really, really difficult to be.

Antrese Wood: How about you, Alyssa?

Alyssa Marquez: I feel like Growth Studio has tested my self-confidence because I realized that pretty much everything that I'd done art-wise before I went into Growth Studio, if I would show work, I guess people could say things, but people don't usually critique my art in front of me, whatever they say that's bad, I don't hear it, so this was the first time that I got real instruction, which was from listening to all the critiques and seeing how you're seeing the work.

That was all of those of like value and same shapes and color mixing, all these things that you think about when you're painting, that was really the first instruction I had. I was like, “I don't do any of that. These are all new concepts to me.” I think it was a little bit of a kick in the pants of like, “Okay, there's a ton of techniques to learn that I don't know how to learn.”

It feels a little overwhelming because when you try to implement them all at once, you're like, “Oh, then this shape and this value and this and put this color over here.” It feels a lot. I think it tested me now that I was given techniques and like, “Here are ways to do things,” whereas before, I just did whatever the heck I wanted and that was the right way.

But I mean, it's fine. It's great. I love learning all of that stuff. If I ever start feeling like this is a lot and this painting that I just did doesn't include all these other things we talked about, I can still use what we talked about in the coaching polls and be like, “Yeah, but learn this one thing.”

We're trying it out and we didn't know why this painting wasn't working before, but it's because all your values were big tones. Now I can see that. It's really exciting. But also it was a little bit of a challenge to that when I realized my art didn't have any of those aspects. It's like, “Okay, we've got some work to do.”

Antrese Wood: Yeah, and all the time to do it. Right. Meaning it's our choice at what pace we learn something. We don't have to learn everything all at once, it can be dictated by, “Okay, this is the painting I'm working on. What does this painting need me to know?”

Alyssa Marquez: Edges. I had no idea about edges. Took me a minute to figure out what you were talking about. I was like, “Edges? Edges, oh, I see it. Hard edges and soft edges, cool.”

Antrese Wood: Since we just dove right into this, will you all do me the favor of introducing yourself? Just tell us what is your name, and where are you. You can think of it this way, what kind of work do you do or what are you working on now? However, it feels most comfortable. Merrie, do you want to go first?

Merrie Koehlert: Hi, I am Merrie Koehlert and I mostly paint with oils, but I love all kinds of paint, wash, and acrylic. Right now I'm mostly working on nocturnal landscapes, but typically I would think of myself as a portrait painter.

Antrese Wood: Andrew, do you want to go?

Andrew Rea: Hi, I'm Andrew. I'm currently working on abstraction. I've been doing representational painting for a long time. I've done watercolor, oil, acrylic, and squash. I'm actually even looking into doing some sculpture. I'm not really sure where it's going. But definitely some abstraction direction.

Antrese Wood: I cannot wait to see this. Whenever you're ready to show it, but I'm so excited.

Alyssa Marquez: I'm Alyssa Marquez, I live in California in Eastern Sierra and I am a mixed media artist. Right now I'm working on a series of abstract wood pieces that are primarily made with the scroll saw but also just some other random wood scraps and found objects. I will be showing that soon, so I’m very excited.

Antrese Wood: Thank you guys so much for doing this with me and for sharing so generously of yourselves. I really appreciate it. I know that a lot of people listening are going to just love this episode.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Alyssa, Andrew, and Merrie. You can see examples of their work in the show notes of this episode. If you are ready to join Growth Studio, you know that we would love to have you. It is an incredible experience.

You get live coaching with me every week, as well as critiques and weekly art chats. Your art will improve and you will feel more confident and free in your studio. Whether your studio is a dedicated space or a corner of your kitchen or you're out in the field, just go to savvypainter.com/join or look for the link in the show notes. Until the next time, this is Antrese Wood with the Savvy Painter Podcast. Talk to you soon.

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 will 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.