The Thriving Christian Artist

Unlock the Secrets of Your Right Brain: An Interview with Karen DeLoach

• Matt Tommey: Artist, Best-Selling Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur and Artist Mentor

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In this inspiring conversation, I sit down with my longtime friend Karen DeLoach—a multi-disciplinary artist, teacher, filmmaker, and creativity specialist who has spent decades championing the role of the arts in culture and the Kingdom. 

From her early days in sculpture and ceramics to her passion for painting and equipping others to express Holy Spirit inspiration, Karen’s story is a rich tapestry of creative calling and resilience.

We explore the importance of engaging the right brain in our creative and spiritual lives, the challenges artists face in a culture that often undervalues beauty, and the freedom that comes when you step back into dreams others once dismissed.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • Why activating your right brain is key to creativity and Kingdom impact
  • How Karen overcame early discouragement to embrace painting again
  • The role of beauty in the arts and why it matters for God’s purposes
  • Practical ways to cultivate Holy Spirit-inspired creativity
  • Encouragement for artists of all ages to believe “the best is yet to come”

🌟 Favorite Quotes from This Episode:

“The best is yet to come, and we have a whole generation of people that really need to know who they are and how they are in the Father’s image.” — Karen DeLoach

 “Karen is one of those people that God put the extra in—if it’s creative, she’s involved in it.” — Matt Tommey


🌐 Connect with Karen DeLoach: http://www.karendeloachart.com/

✅ Stay Connected & Grow as a Thriving Christian Artist:

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Speaker 1:

All of the world. Artists are awakening. Painters and potters, writers and weavers, poets and dancers not chasing followers or fame, but sons and daughters called for such a time as this, transformed from the inside out, creating with purpose, releasing the glory of God and living in the power of the kingdom. Right now, this is the Thriving Christian Artist. Well, hey, friends, it's Matt's. Matt, tommy, welcome back to the podcast. Super glad that you are here.

Speaker 1:

I am really honored and excited and just giddy to have a good friend of mine, karen DeLoach, on today. We've been friends for a long time. I met through an incredible arts ministry years ago called Caritas up in Chicago that I went and keynoted for. But man, karen is listen, she's one of those people that got extra. God put the extra in her. She's into filmmaking, she's into sculpture, she's into teaching art, into pottery, into all the stuff right, just like roll the dice, and if it's creative she's involved in it. And, karen, I'm so glad to have you. Welcome to the podcast today. It's been too long in having you on here. So glad you're here.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, oh man, I do follow you, matt. You're such an inspiration. From the very first time I met you, I was going to be doing my potter's wheel during worship on the stage and it was in the basement and you walked up and I said, can I use you for a moment? Young man, would you help me get this wheel? And so here you are, the keynote speaker, and you're carrying the wheel up on the stage with me and I'm like, oh my gosh, that was something. So I appreciate your humble heart, your beautiful spirit, and we connected right from the start.

Speaker 1:

That's right, that's right. Well, we're good Southern people. We, that's right, that's right. Well, we're good Southern people. We were both in Charleston and I was, you know, in Atlanta and Asheville and going up to Chicago I live we had to look out for each other right up there. You never knew what was going on. I love it. I love it. Hey, listen, for those folks that are just kind of getting to know you, I know I gave a little bit of a thumbnail sketch, but kind of give everybody a picture of who you are creatively and then maybe let's get into a little of your backstory and then we're going to go today.

Speaker 2:

So, Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, I kind of call myself a creativity specialist these days because of all the arenas of the creative arts that I've been involved in and when you're in your seventies, you know you got decades of experiences to draw back on. You know, I believe with all my heart the best is yet to come and so, even though I'm in my golden years and I can have my hair golden see, I can have it where I want. The best is yet to come and we have a whole generation of people that really need to know who they are and how they are in the Father's image. He created us right. He gave us half a brain to be using for creative purposes, to connect with the left brain and all of its very orderly and timely and memorization and all the wonderful things that happen with our left brain. But the right brain kind of has been neglected in our culture. They've cut out all the arts programs that they possibly can because it's so expensive.

Speaker 2:

It's subjective. It's hard to put a grade on someone's painting or their song or their music, so it's something that has not been valued. I believe in our education system valued.

Speaker 2:

I believe in our education system and as an artist and art teacher, I believe so strongly that we want to equip this next generation with the tools to really express Holy Spirit, inspiration, dreams, visions, just incredible beauty of our world that has been ignored and you and I have grown up in the art world that it ugly seems to be what sells. You know what I mean. I mean, you've been successful selling beautiful sculptures, but you know, and I know, most of the high-end galleries are selling ugly right, it can be weird stuff. It's like what is this?

Speaker 1:

who's putting this in their house, right?

Speaker 2:

ever since since Duchamp hung a urinal on the wall. You know the Dadaism in the early 20th century art just kind of. As far as I'm concerned, if it's promoting ugly in heart spirit mind, it is really not the heart of God. And you know, I had an experience in art school. I was really good at drawing. I got good drawing instruction in high school. So I went and I was doing theater and sports and art. I didn't know really what I wanted to be when I grew up but I knew the arts were someplace. So I took my first painting class. They hated my paintings. I love to do people and scenery. They hated it. By the next year they were using four-letter words to describe my paintings and had me totally convinced I couldn't paint, that I was a three-dimensional artist.

Speaker 2:

I ended up going into graduate school to do sculpture and ceramics. But there was something inside of me that really wanted to paint and I knew I wasn't great and I would try. I had these beautiful baby boys being born and I wanted to paint their portraits and I'd get to a certain point, and so I ended up moving with tons of unfinished canvases and maybe your viewers have had this kind of experience where somebody important really declared that you weren't good, you weren't good.

Speaker 2:

You can't do this. Whether it was an elementary school teacher that told you don't color outside the lines, or somebody that said you can't sing or you can't dance, whatever it was, it shut because that right brain I'm talking about is sensitive. It's where we have our imagination and our inventiveness and our whole part of us that is so in tune with Holy Spirit.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's easily crushed, it's easily discouraged, because it's gentle and it's kind and it's seeking truth. It's seeking beauty and when it gets criticized, I call it the left brain bully. You're not good enough, they're not you know the perfectionism that can can can really damage us. We don't forget it. It stays with us and unfortunately, it's like a louder voice and Holy spirit said yes, you can come on yeah.

Speaker 2:

Do it, you can do it. And so I feel very strongly because I was in that generation where we weren't really taught to paint. We were taught just to throw paint on a canvas.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Expect something wonderful to happen. Sometimes it did, most of the times it didn't. But I ran into somebody who was a mentor to me. He had been to the Chicago Art Institute back in the day, where they taught people to draw, taught people to paint the fundamental building blocks of skills. Right, I was lacking skill. And you know, talent whatever talent people have only goes so far. I went to school with really talented people who haven't picked up a paintbrush since they left school right.

Speaker 2:

Then there are those of us that work so hard to pull it forth, to get it out and you know, there's something to that for all of us that have to work to pull it forth, to get it out, and, you know, there's something to that for all of us that have to work hard. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying talent isn't enough. You really have to have.

Speaker 1:

No, it's both, and right it's filled and skilled. Right it's both. We talk about it all the time.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, I have all your book, yes, and it's so real to me because he taught me the skills to enable me to do the kind of work that I wanted to do. As a teacher, I try to create a safe space. This is a no criticism zone, people think you know, I'm sure my teachers weren't trying to ruin my life. They were trying to save the world from another bad painter.

Speaker 1:

Maybe I don't know I tell people all the time I don't think I'd have a job if it wasn't for bad fourth grade art teachers that spoke all these horrible things over their students, like you can't do this or you're not talented enough or whatever.

Speaker 1:

But isn't it amazing though it is, how one little word from a parent or from a teacher or somebody you respect can just be that dart in the heart that really keeps people down.

Speaker 1:

And let me ask you this, karen, because for me, in just watching people, it seems like the things that we've become passionate about are things that we really struggled with in our own life and God brought healing and restoration in that and through that kind of authority in our own life.

Speaker 1:

And I know you as far as you are so involved in such a myriad of different creative things, not only through your personal artwork and what you do, but, but also as a teacher and sort of a catalyst and that sort of thing. But at the heart of all that, I just see a thread of you is this idea that art is not just a product that we can sell. It's actually a process that God can use to heal our heart, set us free, walk into who he's called us to be, live the abundant life and all that. How did that come out of your life? Because I bet I've never asked you this, but I bet there's a story of art being a place of freedom, development for you, and now that's really become a passion that you have for helping others in that as well.

Speaker 2:

You're so right and I think the root of it, and I've heard you so many times you're so brilliant the way you put things. You're a great word picture creator. You create concepts and you take spiritual concepts and you're able to bring them down into word pictures that all of us can understand, and that really is truly one of your special superpowers. I really believe, Matt.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. You know, I write down, I write down your phrases.

Speaker 2:

sometimes I'm like, wow, put that in my hair book. That is awesome and you know that is a gift that you have For me. It is an encourager. You know I can teach skills. I have a how to draw book, how to paint book. I have an art history appreciation textbook that I used for college teaching college art and art history, and so I really love to see people get lit up with the beauty. Even of our history, western history Art is gorgeous, you know, starting with the Middle Ages into the Renaissance and the Impressionists. We have beautiful, beautiful things to inspire us and to learn from.

Speaker 2:

And so I started seeing healing happen and this is where I got into this the last couple of years in coaching art as self-therapy, wellness through creativity that there is a healing that happens when we create. And it is a healing that happens when we create and it is a supernatural, I mean. I started doing some research because I saw it happening in my students, in myself and my family. All my family are all musicians, artists, singers, writers. We don't have any rocket scientists at all. Nobody makes a living, right. I mean, anyway, that's how we get by, god's good. The point is, I've seen how being able to express themselves creatively does something in the brain. So I started studying brain stuff. Like, oh yeah, there is serotonin, which is the happiness chemical that gets released with 20 minutes of looking at beauty looking at onset, looking at art, doing art.

Speaker 2:

It's even more magnified when you do it. It doesn't even have to be good, but you do it and you're focused and it brings neuro connections to the left brain, right brain. This is our brilliance. Neuro connections to the left brain, right brain is our brilliance. So you know, just picking up a paintbrush is using your left brain, but then putting paint down is right brain and you know they say okay. These scientists say out of five and six year olds, 98% are creative geniuses 98% Wow.

Speaker 2:

You know how many in adulthood Two Eight percent know how many? In adulthood Two.

Speaker 1:

Live blobs right.

Speaker 2:

What happened. We know part of it. We've talked about the education system squashes it. Words can squash it. Not getting any meaning or any kind of opportunity squashes it, and the good news is it's not too late. You know, as I teach group classes, I have a lot of adults, a lot of baby boomers like me in there saying you know what I've raised? My family had my career.

Speaker 2:

Now I want to do something that's always been inside of me to do and I share with them about the healing that when you do art there's something supernatural that happens All right. So I had this kid that he had ADHD, he had dyslexia, was failing. We were in the homeschool world, so I was the homeschool co-op art teacher right Right right.

Speaker 2:

And so I had all these young people and I made their mom stay usually mom stay and found some really great mom artists too. And this particular child thrived at drawing and sculpture and painting. He gained confidence that he wasn't worthless because he had trouble reading. He had trouble with his academics by this time he's in middle school and he feels like a total stupid failure. You know, being good at art. So I took all their art and took it to the fair and entered them in the youth competitions. They start winning ribbons. He won best in show.

Speaker 2:

I just didn't age group because of his fatigue in my studio and it changed his life. He was able to buckle down, his mama was brilliant at finding things to help him academically with his mental challenges and I can't tell you how many autistic children there are in that culture and how many children are struggling with these academics.

Speaker 2:

So he thrived at it. Well, not the end of the story. He graduated from high school, he's having a celebration with his family in Florida and he caught a viral infection that went to his brain and he had a stroke. So here he is, 18 years old, paralyzed on the right side of his body. They didn't even think he was going to live. They were like eh, his skull has a ceramic, plastic, ceramic skull.

Speaker 1:

My goodness wow.

Speaker 2:

It's just miraculous. They saved his life Four months in the hospital. He comes home, he can't walk, he can't talk. They're trying to keep his right hand from curling up and he was a righty. So his mom brought him back to my studio. So in he comes and I thought well, you know, your left hand works.

Speaker 2:

I use my left hand all the time. You know what? Anyway, and he, in a very short amount of time, the same connections he had been building in his brain started working for him and he could start drawing with his left hand painting. Wow, yeah, he had a little trouble with sculpture because it's kind of a two-handed thing sure, sure again. It changed his attitude.

Speaker 2:

He started he got a sense of humor back, got out of depression because I didn't even understand that about serotonin, it starts releasing this happiness chemical. Guess what? It can't be in happiness and depression at the same time. You can't be in depression at the same time. An anecdote to that whatever else is going on in your life and heart and mind and obviously I'm talking about visual arts, but music writing.

Speaker 1:

Sure, all of it works right, All of it.

Speaker 2:

Filmmaking, which is what I get to do, you know so there's just miraculous power. So, when you take this art world, that you're encouraging artists all over the world with what you're doing, even opening up, this about thriving. It is, yes, about the work itself, as your beautiful shells are covered with beautiful artworks. It's also about the inner healing and work of God to then make us more sensitive, because if our right brain gets the healing and those words are off the throne of our heart, they're no longer who take those fiery darts out, they're no longer impact on us. We can thrive in every arena of our lives.

Speaker 1:

You're preaching my language. I love it.

Speaker 2:

I love it we're all the same way.

Speaker 1:

I know it, I know hey, let me ask you this.

Speaker 1:

You know it's interesting. I think over the years, um and this was never really my intention, but I've kind of started to be known, you, as the guy who helps people christian artists build their art business and that sort of thing, and that really really was never my original calling. As you know, you were there from the beginning and saw what God had called me to do raising up an army of artists and all this and healing and wholeness and so I've done a lot and I'm obviously passionate about people thriving financially and building a business if that's what God has for me and that sort of thing. But one of the things that I've noticed and I just love to get your thought on this is that today and I think just the spirit of mammon that's in the world today, you know, and how it so easily can get into people's heart there is such a push to monetize everything. And if you, maybe somebody thinks, well, I've had a gift all these years and not only do I need to start just pressing into that a little more for my own benefit, but I got to immediately start selling it Now. I got to do it to make it make extra money and or I don't have enough for a timer. So I got to start an art business and all this and I you know where part of me is like, yes, I can help you do that and all that, and we do that every day in the mentoring program and all that I've been telling so many people lately.

Speaker 1:

I'm like you know what Don't rush to monetize the gift that God has given you, because if you do, I think you rob yourself of the joy of just putzing around in the studio and you know, and playing and experimenting. Because I look at my own journey of, like I made baskets for maybe 13, 15 years before I ever called myself an artist, before I ever got serious about selling them. But I think it was that 13 years, 15 years of just in the incubator, if you will, of just doing it out of the pure love, that my unique voice got developed, my skills are being developed by you know all, the, all the stuff. Yeah, and I don't know if you see this with with folks that you're working in, but I just think this, this over accelerated idea of I've got to monetize everything right now, and I just I think this is the ultimate walk of faith for artists, that is, listen.

Speaker 1:

If God's giving you a gift, be faithful with little. If you do, god's going to make you ruler over much. And if monetization and building an income stream or building a ministry or whatever, if that's supposed to come, god will birth that through you. But don't get the cart before the horse and try to make an income and make an impact without having the intimacy with the Lord in your creative space and I don't know. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that tension because I think it's just a big deal, you know.

Speaker 2:

It is and it's like there's pressure on you. Yes, so I like to do sculpture, I like to do ceramics and I love to give it as gifts. I mean my parents, my family, my siblings. They don't want regular packages, they want my lumpy packages. It means there's something that I've made and and and that gives me so much more joy. You know, and I get commissions and I and I make them and I don't get the kind of joy and I'm. I'm being totally honest, and I had someone say to me you're never going to be a successful business woman Cause you like people more than money. Uh, thank you. I don't know why to say that, but you know, and so it. It. It's definitely we get that pressure. You know that we have to perform. It's, it's like that whole performance thing that if you're not making a living, you know, and and the whole joke when we in theater is the musicians get paid but the actors don't, because they know the up there acting whether they get paid or not.

Speaker 2:

we want to do it so much that's right not that the musicians get paid a lot my sons are all musicians but you know the the. The reality is there's a love of creating that I believe is in every soul, is in every person. If we're made in the image of our creator, then we're going to get our greatest joy out of creating, and there's so many ways. I mean, you know, chatgpt has given me a hundred different ways you can utilize your right brain with your left brain, you know, even taking a stroll, not a bit fast, you know count your steps walk notice the sunset notice the clouds.

Speaker 2:

notice the sky. In my classes right now we're studying clouds, we're studying water and you know we're studying transparencies and how do you layer and watercolors and stuff. And we're looking at nature. Well, guess what? Get out of your house, look around, you know walk your dog and we're looking at nature. Well, guess what? Get out of your house, look around, walk your dog, and it's good for your body, but it's good for your soul, it's good for your mind and you're going to get ideas.

Speaker 2:

All right, here's one of the scientific studies. I know you'll enjoy this one, matt. They study people singing in the shower. So how many people sing in the shower?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2:

Now you have a good voice. I've heard your voice. You're a singer. You can worship later. You got a great voice. Some of us don't. Nobody wants to hear us sing, except Jesus right Joyful, noise Joyful noise.

Speaker 2:

That's exactly right. I have an anointing to sing in the spirit. But so in this, you know, in that time they study people's brains and found out, as you're, you know, scrub a-dub, rubbing in the tub, having just your normal cleaning you're singing, you're gauging left brain, right brain, new connections that have never existed before you get out, you're drying off, an idea comes you weren't trying to solve a problem or figure out something, but it came to you, it's coming through that right brain connecting to the left brain, new ideas, right brain connecting to the left brain. Yeah, new, new ideas.

Speaker 1:

And we weren't trying to figure it out.

Speaker 1:

We weren't trying to make it happen yeah, just singing, just letting it flow, just letting it flow well, that's like those studies they've done on, like praying in the spirit and creativity, like how it even calms the vagus nerve that runs all the way through your body and gives you that feeling of flow and in peace, like I love it. God's hardwired this into us as a way to not only live the abundant life and walk in fulfillment and peace but also be a blessing to others. And, um, you know, karen, I love it because so much of what you say in, in all that you do, is so practical. Like you just break it down where people can understand it.

Speaker 1:

And if somebody is listening today and they're like you know what I've been like running and chasing after all this, all the stuff, the trappings of being a successful artist, but I just I, maybe I just need to slow down for the next month or so and just kind of reconnect with art as process as opposed to product or profit. What would you say? Two or three things somebody could do, even today, as they're getting back in their studio and just say you know what? I just want to play again. I just want to kind of approach this differently, from a no expectation point of view. What would you point them in the direction to do?

Speaker 2:

That's an easy one, okay. Even the scientists say 98% of us were creative geniuses. What did you love when you were five and six? That's how I start with my artist self-therapy. What did you love then? Did you love dancing, spinning? Did you love playing with mud puddles, making mud pies? Yes, some of us did those kind of tea parties in the mud. How about directing plays in kindergarten? Yes, some of us did those kind of tea parties in the mud. How about directing plays in kindergarten? Yes, we were directing plays in kindergarten. How about one of my sons? Everything was a drum. I don't care what it was.

Speaker 2:

It was a drum, guess what. He's a musician. He's a drummer. Look back in your own heart. Did you love to draw? Did you love to paint? Did you like to take pictures? We have you know. We got this fantastic handheld computer. Everywhere we go, we can take marvelous photography, yeah sure. And behind me is one of her photos that she gave me for Christmas.

Speaker 1:

Love it yeah.

Speaker 2:

So we are engaging more and it brings healing. And this is the thing Restoration. You get over whatever negative words and as I talk to people all the time and I know you do too um well, I, I just can't. I can't draw, I can't paint, I can't. Okay, let's try. Let's try this safe space where we don't use that word. I can't right. So you know, when I told you I had students and I brought, I made the mom stay. One mom was just a great little sculptor, she could do everything details and I got. I got a chance to be in a big Spoleto show downtown Charleston and I was going to do a room installation all made out of porcelain called Taste and See Sweet Shop. Was that the cupcakes you did? Yes, I remember that.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and and. And. So Jan Jan was in my world at that time and she came to my studio one day and said Karen, I just got diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. They've given me six months to live. We cried together and I said you know what, jan, in six months I mean in nine months I've got an art show. I need help, I need your help. I need like a thousand pieces that I'm going to have for this whole room installation.

Speaker 2:

Would, you help me? She's like Hannah I don't even know if I'm going to be here in nine months. I said, well, you'll leave a legacy for your family Come on do it. So between radiation, chemo, mastectomies, rebuild everything. She was in the studio with me some days, at least three times a week. We laughed, we played. How do you make dark truffles, dark chocolate truffles versus white truffles? We were just inventing the whole way and we had a blast. Yes, she was there in nine months.

Speaker 2:

She was there working with me at this 17-day show and just full of joy and looking healthier than she had in a year. She became cancer-free, went into remission cancer-free now for eight years.

Speaker 1:

Wow, come on, come on.

Speaker 2:

Now they did all the stuff everybody else does. Who dies? Okay, the medical stuff. What was different? She had something beautiful to work with her hands, her focus. I'm convinced she's convinced her family's convinced we're friends for life. Okay, this is real.

Speaker 2:

This is where the rubber meets the road for a lot of your listeners, a lot of people that have these terrible diagnoses or suffering depression or right responses to what happened to us that never got dealt with. Because time doesn't heal. Jesus heals, right, that's right. Still there, operating, and God wants it out. And you know, even my child that couldn't talk, that ended up talking and walking. I didn't give you, you know, that child that was paralyzed that came and learned to draw and paint and win awards again using his left hand, only Learn to walk. You look at him now. You wouldn't know he has a plastic skull. He still struggles to use his right hand. It's not curled up in a ball, still more left-handed than right-handed, but he has a life worth living and his family knows art has had a huge part to play, the arts, the creative life that God gave all of us to participate in.

Speaker 1:

I love it, I love it and I love that you keep saying yes and God keeps using you in so many different ways, and it's like that, in that, the kingdom right, we get to live the abundant life, and the abundant life gets to flow through us as we do the thing that God's called us to do.

Speaker 1:

And I just I just love it, karen. I know people are going to want to connect with you online for all the stuff that you're doing, so tell us website, social, all that kind of thing, and then maybe just a closing encouragement for anybody that's listening today that you want to leave everybody with.

Speaker 2:

Karen Deloachartcom is my website. Karen Deloachart at gmailcom is my email. I'm on Facebook too. Karen Deloach Art. It's like a little theme there, right? I also have a private one, if anybody wants to, for Christian creatives. I have a private Facebook page that.

Speaker 2:

I feed into. I have a weekly we meet three times a week art group class that has all ages in it and we're just learning and growing to encouraging each other. And so you know my word to leave and this is probably what's just such a great thing and I know you operate in it all the time is create that safe space and let the grace of God flow into you, through you, and say yes, say yes to that inspiration, say yes to that, that vision, and call that's inside of you. However, however, it works.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love it. What a joy to be with you today. So thank you for who you are and all that you do, and thanks for being on the podcast with me. It's been great.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, god bless you.

Speaker 1:

Hey, my friend, before you go, make sure that you're signed up for the Thriving Christian Artist Weekly. It's my free newsletter, full of spiritual encouragement, creative inspiration and practical tips to help you thrive in everything that God's called you to do as an artist in his kingdom. Every issue is absolutely free and it includes the latest podcast episode, featured artist spotlights, a worship song of the week and, again, tons of tips and encouragement and inspiration for you to keep you inspired and encouraged in everything that God's got for you as an artist in the kingdom. You can click the link right here in the show notes to join us, and it's a great way to stay connected. All right, love you, bye.