Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 67—Carol Marine on Daily Painting, Flow States and Overcoming Burnout
170 Plays7 years ago
This episode of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is supported by Hippocampus Magazine, whose founder Donna Talarico, just completed her third annual conference HippoCamp. Visit the website hippocampusmagazine.com to read the great work being done and to submit your own work. Hippocampus Magazine: memorable creative nonfiction. It’s the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak with the world’s best artists about creative works of nonfiction: leaders in the world of narrative journalism, memoir, documentary film, essay, and radio, and tease out their stories and habits so that you can provide their skills to your own work. Thanks for listening, CNFers. This week’s guest is Carol Marine, an Oregon-based expressionistic painter, whom I met at a killer hard cider event on Friendly St. Some of the best hard cider I’ve ever had While Carol might not identify as a writer, she has written a book that I think you should pay attention to. It’s called Daily Painting: Paint Small and Often to Become a More Creative, Productive, and Successful Artist. Maybe you’re a writer looking to get into flow states. Maybe you’re a memoirist and don’t know how to get your work in front of people. Maybe you’re super introverted and have no clue how to be part of a community and network. We hit all of those topic in Carol’s life and how she exited art school super jaded by her teachers, struggled doing big, serious paintings, then dialed it down to appetizer paintings and a movement that built a brand and a career. She’s on Facebook @CarolMarineArt and is carolmarine on Instagram. Be sure to give her a follow. Her daily painting gets posted everywhere, but you should check out Carole’s Painting a Day at carolemarine.blogspot.com. I hope you get a nice hour chock full of inspiration to tackle whatever creative project you have on front and/or back burners. Lastly, if you’ve gotten anything out of this episode or any of the previous 66, I ask that you take a few seconds to leave a nice review over on iTunes. Oh, I forgot to mention! At significant personal cost, I bought more storage, so all the retired episodes are coming out of retirement a la Brett Favre. Yes, the audio sucks, but that’s sorta the point: to show the evolution and maybe the lower the bar of expectations for others looking to do something similar. So, yes, reviews are the currency of the day and add that extra bit of legitimacy to the podcast. That’s it, enjoy episode 67 with Carol Marine!
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Support and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
This episode of the creative nonfiction podcast is supported by hippo campus magazine whose founder Donna Talarico just completed her third annual conference hippo camp Visit the website hippo campus magazine comm to read the great work being done and to submit your own work hippo campus magazine memorable creative nonfiction
00:00:28
Speaker
Hey, it's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak with the world's best artists about creating works of nonfiction, leaders in the world of narrative journalism, memoir, documentary film, essay and radio, and tease out their stories and habits so that you can provide your own work with the skills that you absorbed listening to them. Thanks for listening, CNFers.
Meet Carol Maureen
00:00:54
Speaker
This week's guest is Carol Maureen, an organ-based expressionistic painter, who I met at a Killer Hearts Cider event on Friendly Street. Yeah, that's actually a street in Eugene. Some of the best Hearts Cider I've ever had, thank you Wildcraft. While Carol Maureen might not identify as a writer, she has written a book that I think you should pay attention to.
00:01:17
Speaker
It's called daily painting. Paint small and often to become a more creative, productive, and successful artist. Maybe you're a writer looking to get into flow states or a memoirist and you don't know how to get your work in front of people. Maybe you're super introverted and have no clue how to be a part of a community and network. We head on all those topics of that and in Carol's life and how she exited art school, super jaded.
00:01:46
Speaker
how she struggled doing big, serious paintings, then dialed it down to the appetizer-sized paintings and built a movement that is subsequently her brand and career. It's really good stuff. She's on Facebook, at CarolMarineArt, and CarolMarine on Instagram, C-A-R-O-L-M-A-R-I-N-E. Be sure to give her a follow on both.
00:02:13
Speaker
Her daily painting gets posted everywhere, but you should check out Carol's painting a day at carolmarine.blogspot.com. I hope you get a nice hour chock full of inspiration to tackle whatever creative project you have on front and or back burners. Lastly, if you've gotten anything out of this episode or any of the previous 66, I ask that you take a few seconds to leave a review on iTunes.
00:02:38
Speaker
Oh, and I forgot to mention, at significant personal cost, I bought more storage. So all the retired episodes are coming out of retirement, a la Brett Favre. Yeah, the audio by and large sucks, but that's sort of the point, to show the evolution and maybe lower the bar of expectations for others looking to do something similar. So yes, the reviews, they're the currency of the day and add that extra bit of legitimacy to the podcast.
00:03:06
Speaker
That is it. Enjoy episode 67 with daily painting of fictionado, Carol Maureen.
Carol's Artistic Beginnings
00:03:16
Speaker
what led to daily changing and that turn in your career. Let's back up and see and go to where, let's go back to Texas, where you grew up and we'll eventually start connecting those dots that led to where you are today. When you were little, what did you want to be and what was your childhood like in Texas?
00:03:40
Speaker
Well, I grew up with kind of an eclectic family. My parents built a dome house in Texas in this tiny little town where we lived. And that's where I grew up with three siblings. And pretty much everybody was artistic in some way or another. I think one of my brothers is not, but it's funny because we call him the weird one. Because it's kind of, you know. Our parents told us that we should
00:04:09
Speaker
follow our hearts and do what we love. And art was always the thing for me that I loved. And it was the thing that I could do well, where, you know, it seemed like I was better at it than everybody else in my class, you know, how it goes. And so actually, whenever the teacher would ask us what we wanted to be when I grew up and she'd go around the room asking everyone, when it got to me, everyone would answer for me because they all knew that I was going to be an artist.
00:04:39
Speaker
So and my parents said, you know, you might never be rich, but you'll be happy if you do the thing that you love. And so it was never I never had any doubt in my mind that I was going to go to school for art. And how old were you when you decide like when it just galvanized for you that this was something that you were like, you know what, I'm doing this. I am doing this thing no matter no matter what.
00:05:03
Speaker
I think it was definitely in elementary school. I don't know that I was firmly decided that I was going to go to school for art, but I was definitely decided that I was going to be an artist in elementary school.
Flow State in Art
00:05:16
Speaker
And when you were a kid, what were the things that you were drawn to and what were the things that you were drawing or painting?
00:05:23
Speaker
I drew a lot and I drew whatever anyone asked me to, any of the art projects. I remember this one art project that I had in, I think it was fourth or fifth grade, where they gave us, it was Easter and they gave us just an egg, a piece of paper with an egg shape on it. And they said, decorate the egg.
00:05:48
Speaker
And I thought, oh, how boring, you know, everyone's going to just do the same, you know, stripes or whatever on the egg and color them in. And I wanted to do something different. So I drew little bunnies and things in the margins of the paper around the egg. And I cut them out and I made them little three dimensional figures.
00:06:09
Speaker
that stood up on the egg and of course it made hanging my egg difficult for the teacher but it got a lot of attention and I think I really liked that. I liked the attention but it was also the one thing that I did and it could be any kind of art that where I just lost track of time and somebody told me along the way that
Abstract Art and Challenges
00:06:32
Speaker
everybody has something that when they do it they lose all track of time and they're particularly good at it and that's the thing they should do and so that was the thing I did.
00:06:45
Speaker
And what does it take you to get to that flow state? And it's kind of like probably jumping ahead a little bit chronologically, but I wonder how, like when you get into that mode, like what happens and what's the sequence that kind of gets you to that point? Well, I think that it's the place everybody wants to be, or at least every artist, right? We all want that flow and that to be in that zone.
00:07:13
Speaker
And it's sort of a magical place. I remember one time when I was back in Texas, but maybe five years ago I had taken a break and got back into my studio and it just totally flowed. And I kind of, it was kind of like coming out of a trance at the end.
00:07:31
Speaker
And it just made me so happy. And I walked back into the house and my husband, and I said something like, oh, painting is so great. And he said, he said, it looks like you just had a paintgasm. But I think as far as like what it takes to get there, it takes no interruptions. I've got to be all by myself. It never happens if I'm around other people.
00:07:59
Speaker
Um, I've, it's gotta be a long enough period of time without anybody coming in to say, Hey mom, I'm hungry or the phone ringing or getting a text or whatever. Um, and, but then it also takes painting something that I'm really, really into that I'm challenged by, but that I'm also really excited about. And so that it doesn't always happen because of that, because as you know, sometimes it's work.
00:08:29
Speaker
You know, and it's stuff you have to do. And when you were starting to develop your skills to a point when you realized you could take this on as some sort of career invocation, what were you drawn to in the early goings as you were maybe going through your later years in high school and then into college?
00:08:54
Speaker
I actually was really drawn to abstract at the end of high school. I wanted to do abstract, even though it was very, I didn't actually do a lot of it. It's funny to look back and realize that, but I liked it a lot. And it's something that I've always wanted to get better at. And I think that most people don't realize how hard it is to do
00:09:22
Speaker
good abstract, or at least that's my opinion. But I was also really drawn to people. So when I was in college, I decided that I was going to be a portrait artist. And so I did a lot when I got out of college, I did a lot of practice portraits while in college, too. And in doing those, I did them for friends and people I knew who had kids because kids are so fun to paint.
00:09:51
Speaker
And I realized pretty quickly that one, people are really flaky and I didn't necessarily want to be working with them. And two, they were really picky about how their kids looked and sometimes in a completely unrealistic way. And I, it was so hard, you know, and then I didn't get paid a few times and it just, it was really hard for me to
Art Education Disappointment
00:10:17
Speaker
It was really hard for me to, you know, to tell somebody, Oh, I want this much money for a painting because I was still, you know, insecure and didn't know if my paintings were good enough. And anyway, I'm rambling on a bit, but yeah, portraiture. And, and then it kind of evolved into what I'm doing now, which is more everything else, basically still life landscape. Um,
00:10:41
Speaker
cityscape stuff like that. Yeah. So how did you stay positive through through all that as you're kind of wrestling with those people that were nitpicky about the way their children look that are in and then not getting paid in some instances like how did you how did you stay focused and positive throughout that whole experience? Well,
00:11:07
Speaker
You know, that was kind of the least of my worries at the time was that not working out. I went to school for art in Austin, the University of Texas, and unfortunately the education, the art education was really lacking. The professors were kind of
00:11:27
Speaker
a joke. I never heard a lecture about any of the important things that I consider important now. They were very focused on the concept behind the art. I had one class that I had a solid C in, and I was really working my butt off for all the projects.
00:11:47
Speaker
And finally the professor took me aside and he said, he said, you, you're doing the work, but you know, I give you this time when you introduce each of the projects to tell us what it's about. And you say things like, yeah, I really like these two colors together. And I really liked the polka dots on the inside. And I was like, well, yeah, that's what I'm excited about. And he said, no, no, no. He said, you need to be telling us some sort of political statement or
00:12:15
Speaker
you know, about some sort of childhood trauma that you're trying to get past or something like that. And so for the last project, um, I made up a story and I threw it together. My project, I just threw it together. It was the one I worked the absolute least on. And I made up a story about social inequality or something like that. And, and I did the 15 minute spiel like he asked, and he took me aside afterwards and he said, you finally got it. I'm giving you an A for the class. And
00:12:45
Speaker
And I was so disappointed. That sort of epitomizes my whole university experience in art. I never heard a practical lecture. There was never one about business. And so when I got out, my husband was nice enough to say, you know, keep doing your art and I'll support you because I know someday you'll be making a living with it.
00:13:09
Speaker
Um, but it took me about five years and during those five years, because I had never learned to paint, I had to sort of figure it out for myself.
Rediscovering Painting Through Daily Practice
00:13:18
Speaker
And that was the most disappointing thing because you hear, I was following my dream, you know, and pretty much every painting was terrible or most of them were pretty bad and, and they were big because that was what they had taught us to do in college. You know, my first painting was six by eight feet.
00:13:40
Speaker
So every painting that I did was such a huge disappointment. I was thoroughly depressed and there were times where I would get out of bed and I would think, well, I can either go in my studio and do another bad painting or I can clean my house. And so I had a really clean house for those five years. Yeah. So what were the first steps where, or maybe a moment that galvanized, that changed and pivoted
00:14:07
Speaker
you from six by eight paintings to something manageable almost pretty much six by eight inches even a little smile I think you the the six by six tiles is what you write about in a in in daily painting so what uh what changed and what was that pivotal moment like where something you know you all of a sudden you're like oh I want to get I found the love again I'm not going to clean the house anymore I'm going to actually do the work
00:14:33
Speaker
Right. So my son, we adopted our son when he was two days old. And so when he was about one and a half, a friend of mine sent me an article about the daily painting movement. And at that point, only a few artists were doing it. And the idea was, hey, instead of selling these big paintings in galleries and maybe just eking out a living, if that, you know, what if we,
00:14:59
Speaker
used the internet and sold little paintings and do it every day. And the guy, the main guy who was doing it, who had started it, was selling these tiny little paintings for starting them off at $100 on eBay. And at that point, some of them were selling for $1,000 apiece. So my husband did the math real quick in his head. And he said, huh, you could make a living with this. I ordered some panels.
00:15:28
Speaker
little ones because I thought, well, you know, I'll have just enough time to do one during my son's naps each day and that's it. So I'll just do a small painting. And I did the first one and it was awful, just really awful. And it was the same process I'd always used. It was a very tight stuff. So I was doing all these big paintings and it's really hard to get yourself to experiment when you're doing a big piece.
00:15:56
Speaker
It's got to be the same for writing, I'd imagine, because you kind of have to treat it the same way all the way through. And if you're doing a big painting, you can't just experiment. You know, especially if it's something that is going to go to the gallery, you want to make it consistent with all your other work. But with a small one, suddenly, you know, on the second day, I thought, well, shoot, I'm not going to do the same thing I did yesterday because it was awful. And I hated the process. I hated the result.
00:16:24
Speaker
I'm going to try something that I've always wanted to try, but never had the guts to do it. Cause it's only going to take me, you know, an hour or two. And so I did it. And on that day, that was the first time I ever went into a trance really. And, and, uh, it was amazing. It was an amazing experience. And I, I, when I was done, I just thought, Oh my God, I want to do that again. I loved the painting.
Balancing Online and Gallery Sales
00:16:50
Speaker
And so the next day I did another one like that and that started my love for it again. And it's pretty much hasn't stopped for the last 10 plus years that I've been doing it. What was that very first painting?
00:17:07
Speaker
Well, the first one I did that I hated was onions. And then the second one was an apple, just a simple apple, but it was in a style I had always wanted to do. It was more impressionistic, more painterly, whereas that it was always really tight and, you know, the edges were very precise. And so on the new one, it was, it was looser.
00:17:29
Speaker
So what does that mean? If for someone who might not be completely familiar with certain painting styles, that this was, was not as tight, but more impressionistic, like how do you, how would you define that to a layman? Yeah, I was just thinking, how would I do that? It mostly has to do with the edges where the edges aren't quite so kind of cookie cutter.
00:17:53
Speaker
the edges are a bit more jumbled up and and the the paint strokes are I just keep thinking loose and they're just more expressionistic more you're it's you're expressing I don't know it's I can't
00:18:16
Speaker
I think I would, I'm such a visual person, I would have to show somebody the difference between a tight painting and a loose painting. Would you say a tighter painting looks more almost photographic? Yeah. Like real clean. Right. Clean edges, yeah. Okay.
00:18:38
Speaker
What was it like to be doing that kind of painting and forgo possibly being a quote unquote serious artist? What was that transition like and to paint this freely in a medium that maybe some of the classic gallery people might snuff their nose at? I don't know. What was that like for you?
00:19:02
Speaker
I was interesting and it's still interesting because every once in a while I get an email and somebody is saying, when are you going to get serious? And I think, well, what does that mean exactly? Is it that it's small, that it's not serious? Is it the subject matter? Because some people say, well, still life, that's not serious. But still life is what I love to paint.
00:19:28
Speaker
I'm very excited about it. I can plan it out just like I want it. Whereas say with a landscape, you're pretty much looking for your scene and sometimes you just can't find something that's exciting. And the small thing, man, they're just so fun. And I do bigger paintings too. I will say I took my first daily painting to the gallery that I was in at the time
00:19:56
Speaker
um, that sold my larger work. And I said, you know, is this something that you'd be okay with? Can I sell this online? And she said, she said, Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, it would be fine with me as long as you keep the sizes different.
Creating Daily Paintworks
00:20:12
Speaker
So as long as I only sell the small work online and only sell the bigger work in the galleries and don't ever mix them.
00:20:21
Speaker
And I think that what ended up happening is that I brought business to the gallery and vice versa. And so I think the gallery was pretty happy with that. I have a friend who does both, who sells small work online and bigger works in the galleries, and she calls the little ones appetizers.
00:20:42
Speaker
And I think that it's true that people will get a small one and they'll see, oh, I really like this. I'd love to have a bigger one. And then they go looking for where they can get a bigger one.
00:20:52
Speaker
After you started doing the daily paintings and you started to, it just was crystallizing, you were finding the love again for the work, what were your next steps towards making it something that you could sell at auction through a website?
00:21:12
Speaker
your daily painting website is still like a dot blog spot thing. It's very simple and free. It's something that even as far along as you are on this journey, you've still maintained that simple platform. It is still something that's highly functional. How did you get to that point? What were those next logical steps for you?
00:21:35
Speaker
Well, um, I kind of just copied the other daily painters that were already out there. And the first thing was a blog and a newsletter. Those, those two things were key. And then I went looking for, uh, sites that I could belong to that were basically like online galleries of daily painters. And there was one at the time. And, um, I joined that immediately. And then I, I had the idea to,
00:22:04
Speaker
create another one that was more kind of juried and I kept getting my friends interested in daily painting and so there were some really great painters and so I thought what if you know we create a website and we have we pool our resources and we advertise in an art magazine a really nice one and then and point them back to our website. So that started out with
00:22:32
Speaker
just 12 artists and it was called daily paint works and my husband programmed it and we did use that model for about 12 years where you know we weren't making money off the site we were just pooling our resources equally and advertising in an art magazine and every once in a while someone would say oh I want to go do something else and so we would jury in somebody new and you know but we kept it at 12 for a long time
00:22:58
Speaker
And then we decided to grow the site and we grew it to about 50. And a lot of people at that time were jumping onto the daily painting bandwagon and just clamoring for something to join. And so all these other little sites were popping up, but they didn't have an experienced programmer behind them. And so my husband decided, he lost his job in 08 and we talked about it and he decided to
00:23:27
Speaker
make it into something bigger. So now Daily Paintworks is open to any artist. And we charge a membership fee. We don't charge commissions, except a really small one on auctions. It's just a monthly membership fee, which is different from a lot of the other online art galleries. And we've got 1,500 to 1,600 members on any given day.
00:23:57
Speaker
learn to rewrite your own narrative that you don't have to be a struggling artist. Well, I never wanted to be a struggling artist. And I think I got pretty lucky with the online thing. It's been quite a journey.
00:24:20
Speaker
It wasn't something that I did on purpose. I just, I took advantage of the climate and the art world changing. And there are still a lot of holdouts. There are still a lot of people who think that what I'm doing is not serious. And, um, you know, they would rather, you know, do their big paintings and put them and sell them in galleries. But there's a lot of people too, who have totally jumped on this idea of selling work online.
00:24:49
Speaker
And I mean, it's a great way to make a living. And thank goodness we live in a time where it's possible.
The Business of Art
00:24:56
Speaker
might people misunderstand about the the business side about becoming an artist you know that other half of the job you know there's the half that's yeah you got to be really skilled at mixing your paints and have your great technique and and make things that people want to see and hang in their house but what is you know what is maybe that other half that people that are
00:25:21
Speaker
So maybe worried or don't want to talk about because they think it's like a hush-hush thing but it's really sort of the one of the most important things. Oh yeah well I talk about it a lot. I actually teach workshops and this is one of my big topics. I give a whole lecture at the end of the class after we talked about painting that's all about the business side. So there's shipping your art when it's done. There's keeping in touch with your buyers. There's
00:25:51
Speaker
What I call research and other people call wasting their time But I it's a really important part of it, you know just looking at what other people are doing and and doing you know looking on Pinterest and and finding boards that you like and collecting art and looking at it and studying it and getting inspired from it and Yeah, and and I would say that it's 50% and and a lot of people are really surprised when I tell them that it's not as
00:26:21
Speaker
Horrible as it sounds though because when you hear business, you know, you think oh gosh, you know, I'm not good at that but you know that the the hard parts like the the parts that aren't fun like washing your brushes which I've always hated and You know that sort of stuff Really takes up the smallest amount of that a lot of it is kind of fun
00:26:48
Speaker
you know, staying connected with other people on social media, that's fun and a really important part of it. I find the research part really fun, you know, and one big part that I've realized just the last few years is simply letting my creative barrel refill. And that's a critical part of any creative life, I think, because if you're always working and not
Overcoming Burnout
00:27:17
Speaker
Playing not even letting yourself get bored. Sometimes I think that you You're gonna burn yourself out. I know this because I burned myself out and I had to take a big step back and and Realize what I had to do to take care of myself Because you know being a creative animal is not like something else. It's not like being a construction worker or being a nurse and
00:27:46
Speaker
You know, you don't just go in and are told what to do. You have to come up with stuff all the time. And if you're constantly pushing yourself to create after a while, you just start scraping the bottom of that barrel and it can hurt really bad and it can make you not want to do it anymore. And you can really ruin your love for it.
00:28:06
Speaker
Yeah, let's unpack that burnout period a little bit. What did that look like? What brought you to that point of burnout? And then how were you able to refill that barrel so you came back energized? I'm a workaholic. I will admit that. Hi, I'm Carol. I'm a workaholic. And I also had these expectations of myself that I realize now
00:28:36
Speaker
were unrealistic. And one of those was that I needed that art, my art should be like a regular day job and that I should be working eight hours a day, five days a week. And what I didn't plan for was that the business side needed to take up half of that time and that it doesn't necessarily work to be on a schedule.
00:29:02
Speaker
Sometimes it does sometimes you got to push yourself a little bit when you're procrastinating but other times It can work better to have it pull you You know, and so I wasn't letting that happen I was only pushing myself all the time and I would go into my studio even when I didn't feel like it and after a while It was pretty much only doing still life and I just ran out of ideas I mean, it's as simple as that and then for about a year I pushed myself anyway and
00:29:30
Speaker
And my work just went downhill and I wasn't happy with it anymore. And so I just became less and less happy in general. And there came a point where the idea of a paintbrush made me cry. And I finally admitted that to myself. It took forever, you know, cause here I was living my dream job and, and having a lot of success with it. And,
00:29:58
Speaker
It was hard for me to admit that I wasn't happy anymore doing it. And I thought, okay, shit, I'm going to have to quit and find another job. And what happened was, um, I actually got an invitation to do an interview on an art podcast and, um, it was a friend of mine who ran it and she wrote me an email saying, Hey, you know, the interview about such and such.
00:30:24
Speaker
And I said, I'm really sorry, but I don't know if I'll ever paint again. And she wrote back and she said, oh, you're in that place. Oh, that's a pretty terrible place.
00:30:35
Speaker
And I thought, oh, other people go through this too? And suddenly I didn't feel so alone. And so I started asking all my friends, well, do you go through this and what do you do? What, what's your strategy for making sure you don't get burnt out? And then when you do get burnt out, what do you do? And I started getting ideas and I started by just taking a month off. I took a whole entire month off and I did other things.
00:31:04
Speaker
And that was really nice, although at the beginning of it, I thought, okay, well, if I'm not painting that I need to be doing something else that's productive. And so I had this sort of quota that I, in my head every day that I had to fulfill, which is part of the problem, you know, and that's me being a workaholic. And I know that not everybody is like that, but I had this idea in my head that I had to produce a certain amount each day. And it was silly.
00:31:33
Speaker
I wasn't even giving myself weekends. It was like every day. And I still have to watch that tendency. After that month, I kind of started to get ideas again about stuff I could paint. And so I got back in my studio. But what I found was I wasn't cured. I had to keep taking breaks. And for about two years or so, I had to just keep taking regular breaks whenever I felt like I needed to.
Patience in Practice
00:32:03
Speaker
And every time it was hard for me to admit that, yes, I need a break again. And so those two years were pretty hard. But after a while, I, you know, just sort of got into a rhythm, I guess. And and I and I still struggle with it. But for the most part, my method is to wake up in the morning and I ask myself, do I have to paint today? Usually the answer is no, because I don't take commissions anymore.
00:32:33
Speaker
And so if the answer is no, then I ask myself, do I want to paint today? And if I don't have any ideas, then I'll go do something else. Anything, I'll go take a hike. And I'm lucky that I can do this. I know I'm really lucky. But I have to do that in order to remain sane.
00:32:58
Speaker
People who identify as creatives almost have to do the opposite. They have to trick themselves into actually doing the work. It's the complete opposite for you. It's very interesting that you have to force yourself to come back from it and keep yourself from doing too much because it will fry you.
00:33:21
Speaker
Well, I also have the opposite problem sometimes. And, and, and I'm, I'm actually writing another book about this. And it's about how there are those two different times are sometimes where you, you're afraid of something. It's, it's your, you're doing something you haven't done before, or you're doing it in a way you haven't done before, or you're just afraid you're gonna fail. Or it's a
00:33:48
Speaker
big canvas, like recently I've been doing some bigger paintings and I'm terrified of them. And so I find myself procrastinating and not getting into my studio. So there's that. And then there's when I've overworked myself and I don't want to go into my studio. And unfortunately they feel really similar, those two feelings. And so I have to figure out, well, which one is it? Do I need to take a step back and let art pull me?
00:34:16
Speaker
Or do I need to push myself a little bit and give myself maybe a goal, you know, finish this by the end of the month or, you know, do three of these in the next week or whatever so that I'm basically I'm kind of tricking myself a little bit into getting into my studio. Or I have a friend who said that whenever she doesn't want to paint, she takes some task that she doesn't really want to do into her studio, like brings the laundry that needs to be folded or bills that need to be paid.
00:34:46
Speaker
And she said pretty quickly, she finds herself painting because she'd rather do that than pay the bills. But yeah, those two things are really, really hard. And maybe a particular person only struggles with one of those things, but they're really hard. And yeah, that's all I have to say about that.
00:35:08
Speaker
With the daily painting practice, how did you cultivate a sense of patience that you, how long were you willing to wait for that to maybe crystallize and take off? And you just let that kind of thing, how long were you willing to do that before it either fizzled or did what it did, which was take off for you?
00:35:35
Speaker
Well, I got lucky and then it took off pretty quickly. Um, I don't know how long I would have given it since I didn't ever think that far ahead. I was honestly, I was just enjoying it so much that I probably would have just kept on doing it for a while. But I tell my students that if they're going to start, they need to give it at least a year, more like two or three if they can.
Marketing vs. Craft
00:36:04
Speaker
I had this one gal who had taken my workshop, and she'd only been painting for maybe six months before she took my workshop, and then she painted for another maybe six months, and then she called me. I don't know how she found my number, because normally I don't answer phone calls. I don't know why I answer the phone, but she called me and she said, you know, I've been painting ever since the workshop, and I feel like I'm doing, you know, pretty good work, but only seven of my paintings have sold.
00:36:34
Speaker
And I said, wow, you know, you're in your first year and you've already sold seven paintings. And she said, well, two of them were to my dad. So I don't think they count. And I said, sure, they do. That's wonderful. And she said, but but but I'm frustrated. I feel like I should be selling more. And I said, I said, think about if you were going to learn to play the piano tomorrow.
00:36:56
Speaker
And you would expect to have a whole lot of hours of practice and plunking out painfully slow songs with the wrong note in there on a regular basis and practicing songs over and over and over and over and over and over and over hours and months and years probably of that.
00:37:19
Speaker
But you would never think to record those practice sessions, right? And you would never think to sell the recordings of those practice sessions. But essentially, that's what you're doing. You're recording every single practice session because you're painting it. And then you think, oh, I've got to sell this. Well, not necessarily. I said, do you like every single thing about every single painting that you're doing? Oh, no, no, of course not.
00:37:47
Speaker
Well, maybe this is just your time to practice and maybe you should just see it as that. I mean, even at this stage, I've been painting for 20 years and I still have practice paintings. And actually I heard a presentation recently about how we should all be practicing more because when we're performing, when we're making a painting or a thing, writing, whatever, for an end result,
00:38:15
Speaker
We're relying on what has worked before. We're relying on what we already know. We're not learning anything new. We're not growing as artists. And so the point of the presentation was we need to plan time into our life, into our day, every day, every week, just set aside time to just practice. I thought it was great.
00:38:39
Speaker
I think Steven Pressfield, he just wrote a book last year or something, he gave it away for free, like no one wants to see your shit. And it's like to do something, you know, don't overshare stuff. You know, some stuff should be kept close to the chest. I agree. Because you don't want it out there coming back to haunt you later on, too. Yeah. In your workshops, what concerns your students the most, would you say?
00:39:06
Speaker
Do you mean the thing that they need the most help with or the thing that they're the most worried about? Let's go with the most worried about. And then I suspect that what they're worried about isn't as important as the first part. But what are they most worried about? And then maybe, yeah, what do they need to do most? The thing that they're most worried about is marketing.
00:39:34
Speaker
And the thing that they need to be worried about more is just getting better. Yeah. Um, I heard this great quote from Steve Martin a while back and he said, people always ask me, you know, what do I need to do to become a great actor? And he says, I tell them all the same thing, but they don't like my answer. But my answer is be so good. They can't ignore you.
Community Engagement
00:40:01
Speaker
And so I tell all my students that on the day I talk about the business stuff, I say, you know, that is the number one thing. Be so good, they can't ignore you. It's not about the, you know, the what are the hashtag that you use on Instagram? It's not about using the right hashtag. That's not the key. You know, it's not about meeting the right person, although that could help. But first, you've got to have work that people are going to want to buy. Yeah.
00:40:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing that you could be the greatest marketer, but if you're marketing pure crap, eventually you're going to be exposed for a hack. Absolutely. It's just you need to have a foundation of brilliant work. And even then, you can be really good and go unnoticed for a very long time. So I don't know. How do you tell people who are talented who aren't getting the recognition they deserve or they think they deserve
00:41:00
Speaker
And they have they have the talent like what do you tell those people who are good? And but they're still being ignored at least right now. Oh, yeah Well, I have a whole list of ideas and social media plays a big part in it Especially now it and it's even changed in the 10 years that I've been doing it you know when I first started my blog was my blog and my newsletter were the prime ways that I was I
00:41:25
Speaker
getting followers and getting comments on my work, but nowadays it's all Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest for art. Those three things are huge. And I'm sure that'll change with time too. And then there's all kinds of different ways to get the word out there more. One of the biggest things that I talk about is
00:41:54
Speaker
Becoming active in the community and talking to people just exactly what you're doing Because you never know who you're gonna meet that is going to become a partner in something Or it's gonna help you get give you a leg up. That's what happened to me when I first started there was a gal who another daily painter who'd been doing it for a year already when I started and She had done some
00:42:22
Speaker
interesting things on eBay to get more buyers, but she's also a really fantastic artist. Her name is Karen Jurek. And I commented on one of her paintings on her blog, Simple as That. And she took a look at my work and emailed me back and said, wow, you know, I really like your work too. Would you mind if I posted about you on my blog? And I said, mind, thank you.
00:42:48
Speaker
And so she did, and I went from selling probably a few a month to probably half of what I did overnight. So you never know what kind of a connection is gonna help you get a leg up. And I have,
00:43:04
Speaker
Posted now about about people who I think are really great or in my book My publisher thought it would be a great idea if I included the work of a lot of other daily painters and so I went through and picked out my favorites of all the people that were you know showing and and most of them on daily paintworks on our website and
00:43:25
Speaker
And I promoted them and I think it's been, I don't know what it's done for them, but hopefully it's done some for
Writing 'Daily Painting'
00:43:34
Speaker
them. You know, gotten them new eyeballs to their stuff. So how did you come to want to write the book, Daily Painting? So that happened because after I was doing the Daily Painting thing for probably a month or two, I got an invitation to teach a workshop in Santa Fe.
00:43:56
Speaker
And I thought, oh, I would have never considered that before doing the daily painting practice, but suddenly I felt really confident. I had learned so much even in those few months. And so I thought, okay, you know, this is six months away between now and then I'll come up with a curriculum. And so every time I thought of something that had helped me in my journey, I just wrote it down on a little piece of paper.
00:44:26
Speaker
and after a few months I had a stack of paper and I sat down one day and I just organized it all into subjects and then wrote a basically what has become my handout for my workshops and then teaching for about five years I came up with all these exercises for my students that really helped them you know during the workshop and
00:44:51
Speaker
And then I thought, oh, you know, this would be so cool as a book. And actually, I think what happened was people would ask me if I was ever going to write a book. And so finally I said, OK, I'm going to do it. And then and so I wrote it. Then I decided. Oh, I was looking into, you know, going with a publisher versus self-publishing. And at the time, if I had self-published, it would have meant
00:45:19
Speaker
that I would have had to sell my book for a significant amount. It was going to be like $75 in order to even make a profit off of it, just because it was so expensive to sell published. So I decided instead to make them into online tutorials. So each chapter is its own tutorial. And I did that. And those are still very successful.
00:45:43
Speaker
And then, um, I wrote an article for a magazine, kind of about the whole daily painting thing. And it came from one of those online tutorials and, um, Random House saw that article and called me up and said, Hey, you want to write a book? And I said, well, I already did. And they said, great want to publish it with us. And I said, okay, sure. You know, cause I knew I wouldn't make a lot of money off of it, but I knew that it would probably get me more eyeballs.
Daily Routine and Motivation
00:46:11
Speaker
So.
00:46:12
Speaker
I just turned all my online tutorials into a book and that's my book. So what is your daily routine when you're looking, when you're writing and when you're painting? They might be one and the same, but how do those manifest themselves every day?
00:46:30
Speaker
So, well, like I was telling you earlier, I wake up and I ask myself, do I want to paint? And if I do, then usually what I'll do is I'll decide, do I want to do a little painting or a few little paintings or a bigger painting? Because I'm working towards putting together a body of larger work so that I can get back into galleries.
00:46:53
Speaker
So I'll either do, you know, two or three or four small paintings in a day and then have those. I'll be ahead with those. So I'll just post those, you know, each day after that, or I'll do a larger painting. And it's kind of the same for writing. I'm not very good at switching gears in the middle of the day. It's hard for me to do a little painting and then go work on a book or work on some another project that I have. And I'm kind of a,
00:47:22
Speaker
I don't know if that's just something about me, but I just I like to just go the whole day on one thing. And so I'll either spend the whole day working on my book or the whole day painting or the whole day doing another project.
00:47:39
Speaker
And if you have a bad day at the easel or at the computer writing, how do you recover from that? It's easy to get into a funk and have a negative domino effect. So I wonder how you rebound from a bad day that you deem went poorly. Why?
00:48:03
Speaker
Insider. You know that's a really hard one and my husband jokes that my mood is only as good as my last painting and it's very true and so I often just want to redeem myself as quickly as possible so if I do a bad painting then I want to do another one right away so that I can feel better for the rest of the day.
00:48:28
Speaker
But sometimes that doesn't happen. Sometimes the whole day is bad or the whole day is so-so and it does, it makes me feel really bad. I try to just give myself a treat or that might be alcohol, it might be taking a walk, it might be a day off, it might be several days off. But I do whatever I can to be kind to myself. Sometimes
00:48:57
Speaker
It takes getting re-inspired by other people's art. Sometimes it takes not doing that because that can actually sometimes make me feel worse. I try to just be really kind to myself and, you know, not make it about me. One of the things that I've been thinking about lately is that we should all give ourselves the gift of bad work.
00:49:25
Speaker
we should just expect it. If we can change our expectations, especially if you've taken a break or you're really, it's something you're trying something new and you're scared of it, if you can give yourself the gift before you even start of, okay, this could be totally terrible and that's okay because the first one's probably gonna be terrible. In the process, where do you feel most alive in the process?
00:49:54
Speaker
I'm also alive in the process. You know, when I do a lot of paintings of people in the city or
00:50:08
Speaker
Um, you're just walking around or, um, cars or, you know, little, little neighborhood scenes. Um, and for those, I've got to go take pictures and that is probably one of my most enjoyable parts, uh, because I'm just out wandering around just being totally open.
00:50:28
Speaker
not looking for anything in particular, just being totally open to whatever I see. So I'm just observing, I'm just looking around and then every once in a while if I see something, even, I mean, no matter what, if it catches my eye, I take a picture of it. And that is so enjoyable because there's no pressure. It's just whatever comes around. And sometimes I go out to take pictures and I get nothing. And sometimes I come back with a gazillion photos.
00:50:58
Speaker
But I like to travel and to do that I actually went to France earlier this year to teach a workshop but I also was there to take pictures and that was just so fun. And then when I get home with those pictures I sit down
00:51:15
Speaker
with my computer and I start planning out which ones work, which ones might turn into a painting. And so I go through and I edit a lot of them and figure out, okay, do I want this to be a big painting or a little painting? And how do I want to crop it? Do I want to make it square or rectangular? Or do I want to make it vertical, horizontal? And that part is also really fun. And then the painting part is, again, if I'm really excited about it,
00:51:45
Speaker
then that part can be really fun. It's not always. Sometimes even when everything is just right, it still work, but there's enough time where it turns into that magical zone that it just, I just love it.
Creative Journey Reflection
00:52:04
Speaker
And what keeps, on a day-to-day basis, what keeps bringing you back to the easel and to your studio?
00:52:13
Speaker
just trying to get better, just trying to make another composition that I like. And stuff that I see that other people are doing, I think, oh, I want to try that. Or I don't know, I'm sort of endlessly fascinated with painting in general.
00:52:37
Speaker
And it's really hard. Painting is really hard because you're juggling all these different things. When people come to take my workshops after the first day, they're like, oh my God, I had no idea this was so hard. Because you're juggling not only
00:52:53
Speaker
perspective and proportion and value and color relationships and how they all fit together and but you know you're also composition but you're also there's like this magic thing that either happens or doesn't and it's hard to put your finger on what it is you could follow all the rules and I'm putting finger quotes around that and I still have it not work out so it's this kind of elusive thing I think of it kind of like a dance and
00:53:22
Speaker
And each painting is you going through that dance. And if you stumble or take the wrong step or whatever, sometimes that's all it takes to throw you off and then it just doesn't work out. Or it almost works out. And so if I look at any of my paintings, there are very few where I think, oh, I nailed it.
00:53:49
Speaker
Completely a hundred percent normally. It's like okay. I like 95% of that or I like 98% of that But there's this one little part that I know if I go mess with it. I'm just gonna make it worse You know and and that's good enough for for most for selling most of the time. I'm 98% happy you know I'm gonna sell it anyway, and it sells and
00:54:12
Speaker
that's why I'm a 100% happy with this conversation so
00:54:30
Speaker
And if anyone can just, you know, if they're not painters, they can just insert whatever craft they want in for painting. And I swear they're going to get a lot out of hearing you talk about just going about doing the work. So this was a lot of fun, Carol, and I'm glad we got to have this conversation. Oh, thanks. It was great for me, too. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Yeah, you got it. We'll talk later. OK, thanks. Bye.
00:54:53
Speaker
Alright, thank you very much to Carol Marines for carving out the time to do this, to share her story with all of us. Good, good stuff. Be sure to give her a follow on all her socials. I am at Brendan O'Mara on Twitter.
00:55:09
Speaker
I also have a monthly newsletter that I send out once a month that gives my monthly reading recommendations and what you might have been missing from the podcast. So go over to BrendanOmero.com and subscribe to that. No spam, one email a month, usually on the first of the month. That's about it. Thank you very much for listening. Until next week, it's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Thank you for listening.