Feeling stuck in a creative rut? Abstract artist Megan Woodard Johnson joins me for an intimate conversation about the triumphs and trials of the artistic journey. Megan's transformation from a static space to a flourishing studio, sparked by a therapeutic challenge, leads us through a show brimming with insights on how environment and personal history can ignite one’s creative passion. We delve into the tapestry of Megan's work, uncovering how the integration of vintage collage materials and expressive mark-making not only tells a story but also serves as a bridge between the past and the future of art.
Transitions and recognition are at the heart of any artist's life, and this episode doesn't shy away from the tough decisions we face along the way. I share my reflections on the bittersweet process of ending a mastermind group, realigning goals, and the lessons learned in acknowledging the milestones that shape our personal and professional growth. The conversation also celebrates the artistic temperament, that insatiable appetite for novel projects and the courage it takes to step away from ventures that no longer align with our evolving narrative.
Finally, we confront the beasts of creative blocks and the daunting world of marketing art in the digital era. Ever wondered how to keep the creative fires burning when sales dip? Or perhaps how to navigate the complexities of artist-gallery relationships? We tackle these very questions, offering strategies for pushing through barriers and finding solace in artist networks. Join us as we share tales of resilience, from my transition to abstract art to Megan’s harmonious dance with online launches, providing a beacon of encouragement for every artist striving to carve out their unique space in the art world.
Connect with Megan Here and on Instagram Here
Connect with Lea Ann Here and on Instagram Here
Feeling stuck in a creative rut? Abstract artist Megan Woodard Johnson joins me for an intimate conversation about the triumphs and trials of the artistic journey. Megan's transformation from a static space to a flourishing studio, sparked by a therapeutic challenge, leads us through a show brimming with insights on how environment and personal history can ignite one’s creative passion. We delve into the tapestry of Megan's work, uncovering how the integration of vintage collage materials and expressive mark-making not only tells a story but also serves as a bridge between the past and the future of art.
Transitions and recognition are at the heart of any artist's life, and this episode doesn't shy away from the tough decisions we face along the way. I share my reflections on the bittersweet process of ending a mastermind group, realigning goals, and the lessons learned in acknowledging the milestones that shape our personal and professional growth. The conversation also celebrates the artistic temperament, that insatiable appetite for novel projects and the courage it takes to step away from ventures that no longer align with our evolving narrative.
Finally, we confront the beasts of creative blocks and the daunting world of marketing art in the digital era. Ever wondered how to keep the creative fires burning when sales dip? Or perhaps how to navigate the complexities of artist-gallery relationships? We tackle these very questions, offering strategies for pushing through barriers and finding solace in artist networks. Join us as we share tales of resilience, from my transition to abstract art to Megan’s harmonious dance with online launches, providing a beacon of encouragement for every artist striving to carve out their unique space in the art world.
Connect with Megan Here and on Instagram Here
Connect with Lea Ann Here and on Instagram Here
Welcome to Mind Over Medium, a podcast for artists who want to make money doing what they love. When you tune in a twink you will learn how to attract your ideal commissions approach galleries for representation, have a great online launch of your work, and how to do it all with less overwhelm and confusion. You will have the opportunity to hear from amazing artists who will share how they have built their successful creative businesses. My hope is to create a space where artists and the creative curious can gather to learn about one of the most important tools creative entrepreneurs need in their toolbox their mindset. Thanks so much for tuning in to Mind Over Medium podcast. Let's get started. Hello, today I am excited to chat with Megan Woodard-Jotzen. Megan is an abstract artist who adds visual interest to her work by layering vintage collage materials with her mixed medium, which I love. I'm a huge fan of vintage the vintage collage, which I use in some of my work as well, so it's so great, thank you for being here today.
Speaker 1:Thank you for inviting me yeah, did I pronounce your last name? It's Woodard, right, not Woodward.
Speaker 2:That was perfect, and it is. It's my middle name, but because there are so many Megan Johnson's in the world and even other fabulous Megan Johnson artists, I kept my middle name, so that was a little bit of a differentiation there.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that's good, and I already apologized to you before we started recording, but I'll just say I do have a cold, so you might hear a cough drop. So, anyway, do you mind introducing yourself, telling us who you are, where you live and what you do?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Yeah, I'm Megan Woodard Johnson. I am a full-time mixed media abstract artist. I have been an artist my whole life. I'm sure we'll talk about that journey but ever since I was a little kid I studied fine art and graphic design in college. I took about a 10-year break for sort of a more traditional career timeline, and then getting married and having kids and I really kind of reopened the box of art supplies that have been following me around from college to multiple moves and things like that. When my youngest son was two and honestly it was a therapist who said you keep saying you're an artist, what are you making? And I finally realized that other than you know, kids, Halloween costumes and birthday parties and decorating homes and all of those sort of fun outlets for my creativity I wasn't actually making art for the sake of making art, and so my husband and I remedied that pretty quick and made me a little space, and so I've had art in my life as a you know, personal pursuit, not a project I was doing for other people. For gosh, it'll be like 18 years now, really truly full-time, or probably about 12, in the sense that I let go of any other part-time jobs and my kids were old enough that I could really feel like I was putting all of my work brain into artwork. And yeah, so that's that.
Speaker 2:I do have a studio inside my home and my work is like you described. It's non-representational, abstract work. It's very driven by color and line and exploration of visual texture, and the addition of collage elements is really critical to the piece. It's how the pieces start, it's how they get finished details. I just have always loved putting lots of little things together, and then the fact that they're vintage materials is something that it's really just the materials I use speak to me about different phases of our lives and different utilitarian, useful sorts of materials. We can talk about that. But then they get merged together with my personal sort of mark-making aesthetic, which is very expressive and bold and scribbly and swishy, and so there's a nice contrast between those sort of more studied collage elements and the really intuitive personal mark-making. Now I feel like I've got to that point where I've rambled away from possibly all the parts of your question Did you say yeah, I live in Wisconsin just about the middle of the US.
Speaker 2:I'm about 45 minutes north of Milwaukee, two hours from Chicago, so we're in a pretty small town but we have easy access to some fantastic cities and there's incredible art in Wisconsin that I am really lucky enough to be kind of clicked into a lot of other creatives and amazing artists in the region.
Speaker 1:That's great, that's really great. Thank you for sharing that. And then can you describe a time in your life when you felt the most creative?
Speaker 2:I really love this question and I'm just going to go with the first thing popped into my head, which is making things anything. In my dad's workshop when I was probably in second grade, I was given free reign with, you know, like a utility knife and cardboard and glue and hot glue and I just, I just was always making things. And then back to those like putting little things together. I always had like tiny pieces of paper that were somehow being merged together or little I would make like board games and card games, and I just loved constructing things.
Speaker 2:And, honestly, corrugated cardboard was like my favorite material. It's still fun to work on, it's super fun to work with, it's very like it can do a lot of things. But I think a big part of that was that I was like allowed to sit at his workshop or his workbench, you know, on, supervised, like I was trusted with those materials and it just let me like my whole imagination would just take over and I would just be making things. So it was that creativity and the access to all sorts of different materials was really fostered for me from day one from my parents, which I'm really lucky to think back to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great, I love that and it actually sparked a memory for me that's a little similar. My mom went, she kind of dabbled in creativity, like our home cooking garden, and then she painted a little bit and she used oil paints and I was quite little and I remember her just letting me use oil paints in the living room just with like a sheet on the ground. Yeah, that's remarkable that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really is. This is fantastic. She used oil paints, though she probably also knew, like, how to feel like smudges and spells and everything like that.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. That's very cool, that's really great. So I read too. You have a background in printmaking, is that?
Speaker 2:correct. I do so again. My parents supported my creativity and my art making my whole life. You know, art was always my favorite activity in elementary school and then, when my skills and talent and interest started to go beyond, you know what happened in the regular art classroom they'd find me either, you know, private classes or summer rec programs there, just always was art going on. And so then, when it came time to apply for college, there was a little bit of like, I would say like resistance or concern about the idea of going full fledged fine arts. And I think that you're already nodding your head A lot of people that I know, especially, I don't know, women, and especially a certain generation like I think in my timeline.
Speaker 2:I was going to college in 1992. And at that point there was no like having your own internet to promote your own website, to promote your work or social media or anything like that. So the prospect of going for a painting degree or you know something, that was just purely fine arts, it was very, it was unclear to my parents, and unclear to me too, what you would do with that sort of degree, and so the sort of the compromise we all came to it, but that I would study and go for a degree in graphic design, which I love as an art form, as a, you know, thought process. All the things that design does I think are incredibly important and it was really wonderful to learn about.
Speaker 2:But then my minor ended up being printmaking and the printmaking lab was where I mean I could have spent 14 hours in the print lab and not even known that a second had ticked by. It was 100% love. So I didn't major in it, but it was my minor and it's where, you know, it's where all my extra hours went. I just it's like a yeah, just like a heart relationship with printmaking. But I went to college in West Virginia and then, right after school I moved to Milwaukee for a job, completely leaving behind any kind of art connection or access to a print lab, and so it's not something I have maintained, but it's. I think there were some sensibilities about printmaking that still surface in the way that I see mark making and the way that I build, you know, visual texture and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's what that caught my eye, because I can see that in your work.
Speaker 2:So that made sense to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so you recently moved your studio from outside of your house into your home, which I did recently as well. I was going to just check in. How's that going for you? How's that transition been?
Speaker 2:It's been. It's the oh gosh. Moving that studio was like. It was like moving a house. It was crazy. I had been in this outside studio with the, with the friends we shared it, but I think we I think it was about four years. It was a pretty big space and the amount of material and stuff and just really everything ended up in the studio, so the move itself was like kind of a killer. But my new space is in the basement of my home, but you can see it behind me here. It's well lit, it feels open and airy.
Speaker 1:Yeah it looks great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and my rented studio had once upon a time been an apartment, so there were lots of little rooms, which was great for keeping things separate, but also everything was separate. So now everything's in the same space and it feels really fun. I can tell that the making of art here is going to go really well. The move was officially finished, I think, at the end of October, and then I had a commission to do right away and then we kind of got into holiday mode. Yeah, and then also you met my yellow lab Walter at the beginning, before we started recording.
Speaker 2:Walter really loves hanging out with me on the couch and so sometimes it's really hard to like like that. Having a cup of coffee with the puppy on the couch in the morning is really nice and sometimes honestly a little hard to pull myself out of.
Speaker 1:Oh, I can imagine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's that. The notion of like leaving the house to go to work was, you know, a catalyst for some you know whatever energy or taking it seriously for a number of years. But I'm enjoying now that I can kind of come down here when I'm ready to and the work is, I can pop in and out and do things, and I think it's going to be a really nice new phase, essentially.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's very good. I'm glad it's going well. It's been an adjustment for me. I'll be honest, it's definitely been an adjustment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, In sort of what ways? Like what has been, I think it's smaller, which that's fine.
Speaker 1:I can make that adjustment. I think there's part of just the scene of people that I miss a little bit and yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I probably need to reconfigure some things. I keep kind of fussing with things and I think I just either need to just decide it's fine how it is and just, I mean, I'm still working, but yeah, I think I'm in my head about a little too much honestly, I think that's probably there's a phase of that for every transition for me, or, and the amount of putzing I did around in this space when I could have been painting was sort of ridiculous.
Speaker 2:But also I look back now and I think, okay, it just needed, I needed. I wasn't in a creative or energetic place to just sort of slam from one productive space to another. I needed to let it, I needed to nest here. I think is really what it was. So that has been actually really nice and I can feel like this sort of bubbling up of energy and inspiration that I'm excited for the holidays, we're hosting people, my kids are coming back from college, all that kind of stuff. But all of our commitments on the calendar are done by the end of the day On the 25th and I cannot wait for the 26th to get down here. I feel like I will be just set free and that's exciting. So I feel like some of that percolating and the nesting and the putzing I'm done, I'm settled and ready to go. That's so good, I love not failing that notion yeah.
Speaker 2:But the part about the transition for me of being at home is that I could be a real danger of never getting out of pajamas for a week, Never leaving the house for a week. So I need to be better about building some sort of schedule that gets me out of the literal building and in contact with some other humans in a face-to-face way. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:I now have painting pajamas because I'll just come down here with my coffee and I know, like the night, at night, I'm like, oh, I think I'm going to be able to paint early, I wear this one pair of pajamas.
Speaker 2:Because what I've done is ruin every article of clothing that I own. Basically, I have what? Instead of one pair of painting clothes, I have one pair of non-painting clothes, but not in one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, yeah Well, I highly recommend the painting pajamas, if you can work that into your wardrobe.
Speaker 2:Thanks, yeah, that's a good plan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, we're recording this. You had a tourstead into the year. Do you do anything or have any kind of rituals around wrapping things up or reflections that you would share?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I absolutely will. I have for a number of years made a real point of carving out some time, either at the end of the year or at the very beginning of January, and staging for myself like a work retreat, whether and it usually wasn't a thing where I could afford to necessarily go and go somewhere. But I remember the first time I did it with real intention, I cleared all of the art making materials off of my big worktop at my studio. I kind of took down all the work in progress. I made it just like a sort of a blank slate kind of a space and I brought in snacks for myself. Like I tried to think like if I was at a company and they were doing a year-end planning, like they would have stones and they would have a good coffee, and I bought myself at end of the year like gift from my boss, which was me, and I did that. That is awesome.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 2:It was fabulous. It was sort of sprung from an idea of a friend of mine who was in an artist mastermind group that I ran, who at the end of the year she and her husband would go out for dinner and like celebrate her role in the family and her accomplishments in the year Because, like his company would always do a big company party for him. And they both thought, well, wait a minute, like she just does everything like at home and she's building up her own business and her creativity, like, so they would create an event where they would celebrate and like notice her accomplishment. I just thought it was beautiful. And my husband runs a small company, so he sets up, you know, either the holiday party or the end of the year kind of stuff. And I thought this is what happens when you work for yourself, like if this stuff doesn't happen unless you do it for yourself. And so that was sort of the buildup.
Speaker 2:But at some point I will take time and I will do a pretty structured day of like noticing what really happened in the past year or comparing it to what maybe the original goals were, thinking about what I, you know I'm still responding to, or what are my goals changing and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:This past year I let go of some I'll say like businessy or admin kind of ends of the work that I was doing. So I'm no longer coaching, I'm taking a break from leading any kind of mentorship or anything like that. So I need to do this again. But I think my vision is going to be shifted in a very big way because my I have goals that are pointing in a like a different direction than sort of how many more mentorships can I do, or how can I market them, and things like that. So it's actually now that we're talking about it I feel I'm realizing it's probably almost more important that I do it this year, because there's nothing that's sort of a you know, hit, repeat kind of a goal. It's all new stuff. So, yeah, I'll make a note of that, I'll make sure I do it. There you go.
Speaker 1:Just listen to the podcast if you forget. Yeah, Was that a hard decision? Oh, I was, because I was go ahead. I'm sorry I did.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I was going to say like it wasn't a hard, let's see. The only thing about letting things go that is a hard decision for me is when I listen too much to the like outside voices, whether they're literally a person telling me or just sort of a this is what people do, kind of a assumption of the you should be doing this. So, and especially when something you've built is going really well by all measurable markers but it doesn't feel like it's serving me anymore. And getting older I've started to let myself listen to that Like if it's not serving me, it's not serving the people that I am trying to be working with and if I keep just sort of doing it, I'm in the way of whatever my next evolution or my next sort of growth point is going to be. So it's uncomfortable to let things go, especially when you've worked hard to build them.
Speaker 2:And one thing in specific is for a number of years I ran a mastermind group. That it was fantastic. It was six months long, it was pretty small Eight people, I think, was about the max. It was very intimate. It was a lot of just really beautiful relationship building and growth for everybody involved and stuff like that. And I ran that for I think about four years, with six month intervals or maybe three years, and then at the end of the last one I could just tell that my energy had shifted and I loved the people that I was working with. Too much to keep opening up new sections if I wasn't like really there anymore in terms of you know my own connections, but yeah.
Speaker 2:So then those sort of year-end planning and goal setting and stuff were. They were kind of really fun in terms of, like planning out a calendar that involved like this launch of a mastermind or this dropping of a course or this, because I have a part of me that loves big calendars and all that. But this year I did that last year in November, looking ahead to 2023. And then didn't end up really doing many of the goals in 2023. I just kept letting them go. So this year it would be interesting. Like it would be interesting because the looking back will be a big like oh, I thought I was going to do this but I didn't. But I don't mind, I know now it's because I was just letting a page turn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. To me that just sounds like one, that you're very tuned in to your intuition or your gut instinct, whatever you want to call it. And two, it's like you stayed in your integrity and knew that this was not aligned anymore. And that's a hard thing to do, especially when you said it was successful.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and you would think it takes so much time to build something up. And you know, after a couple of years you've refined it like it was running like clockwork. Of course you would keep doing it. Or you know, of course you'd keep launching workshops because they went so well and everybody loves them. But I don't know what it is in me that it's almost I have the most fun in the concepting and the planning stage and then, once it's running, I have a lot of fun like doing it for a couple of years and then I just I'm just ready to be done with it and so I'm always in the building mode, which you know.
Speaker 2:there's certain like business plans and scaling and doing all this stuff and if efficiencies and making more money that I never hit. I never hit that like that was sort of ever green or it's working for you. I never hit that point but I need to stay interested. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That makes sense to me. I mean I think it. You know, on some level it fits with the artist temperament a little bit. I mean, you know, always trying to figure things out and not necessarily always onto the new. But I think that we do get bored pretty easily.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like really I mean for the most part like every new canvas is a new problem, it's a new possibility. So you know, even you don't have to be changing everything about every piece, but every piece, the second you lay down a layer of paint or anything it's new and so yeah, I think you're right, like it's either the artist mentality that like makes us jump, you know, let things evolve or the need to let things evolve is what draws us into the artist life or all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:But it fits and it's so much better when you don't fight it. Even when not fighting it or letting one thing go before a new thing is ready means like this first. Personally, this year has been like a pretty I would say hello. Like that, fields go fallow for a while, and I talked about this for years. This has been my longest period of fallow in terms of ideas or new work or just forward momentum, but, like I said, I could feel the stuff under the surface now finally, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think, like just knowing and trusting that there are seasons to it. And if it were, all is it feasting and fallow. What is the opposite?
Speaker 2:effect, like the fallow season and the growing season. Yeah, yeah, the feast or the family? Yeah, the hardest right.
Speaker 1:I know, I know this. I grew up on a farm. I should know this but if it were always that the high versus, you know we wouldn't. That's not sustainable Really in any way.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I think that's. Yeah, that's true. So it's, you just try not to panic when it starts to ebb away. I know that. You know it'll come back in some form or another.
Speaker 1:And so far.
Speaker 2:I've never had like a low period that at the end of it I completely dropped, like I don't. I can't imagine me ever completely dropping away from art. I don't think that that would be possible. Every once in a while I think like I'm doing this for the long haul. It is possible that in 20 years we'll be talking and I'll be a ceramicist, like who knows? Like, like, yeah, I love paint and I love putting materials together. But that can happen in a lot of different forms. But even though I'm comfortable with those changes and that sort of growth, for me it's usually a really slow, long, gentle process that moves to a new space and it's not usually like a completely separate you know building that I'm going into. It's just a little bit of different materials or a little bit of you know answering, different compositions and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really interesting. You seem to have a really good I mean, for lack of a better term like head on. You seem to have a really good head on your shoulders about the highs and lows of what we do.
Speaker 2:It's like I said, it's something I've talked about a lot in the past and I know you know I said that I really started building up my art again when my kids were very tiny. At the time I was also in just sort of a just a discussion group, I mean. We talked about all sorts of different things and it was an age range of you know. At the time I was in my 20s and the oldest member was probably like close to 80. It was just, it was fantastic, fantastic men, women, so many great perspectives and I was sharing that.
Speaker 2:I was nervous about like, do I even know how to be an artist again. And it was a woman who was older, who shared that exact perspective and said it's like a field going fallow, it's under there, like, don't panic, just let it come. And it was a really wonderful metaphor. It calmed me down and it turned out to be so completely true that, yeah, I've never really worried about those pauses again, but there are times when they're really inconvenient. I mean, this is the first year that I have two kids in college and I've had very few sales this year. I think probably for a lot of artists we've seen maybe a little bit of a down tick in sales, just the economies in a different place, stuff like that. But also I haven't been working at creating at the pace and actively doing shows or markets or things that used to make sense for my work and my ways of selling. So you know, it would have been nice if this was a high year.
Speaker 2:Those are great College tuition, it'll come around.
Speaker 1:I feel you. I feel you. Yeah, well, how do you deal with the creative blocks? I mean, obviously you recognize them. It sounds like you don't panic or make it be like this huge. It sounds like you don't catastrophize them, which you know I think some people can maybe included once in a while.
Speaker 2:It's really scary. I mean, it's such a part of our identity and when we feel like it's not working or it's stuck like and I don't know, like we're in general, like all the people that I know in this field, like we're hardworking, driven women too and we want, you know we just we want things to work, we want to do the work we want to. I don't know the resting into it is often not like our nature either A real creative block.
Speaker 2:I never have them, but most of the time I let them be and I go out and do something else, or I let myself take a couple of couple extra resting days and trust that they'll come back.
Speaker 2:But also there are some things that get just get like, once you sort of get the motion going, sometimes you realize like, oh, I actually wasn't blocked, I was just sort of in my own way, and so for me sometimes that's you know, grab paper and do some loose studies and you know, or just play with color instead of trying to like jump back into a painting. Also, some journaling and really thinking about my work, reflecting on it, is really helpful, especially if I have a number of like completed pieces that I can put up on the wall and just sort of have a conversation with and observe you know, almost like a critique by myself, or you know just a like if you went to visit an exhibition with a docent how they would lead you through looking at the work and dialoguing with it. Sometimes I just literally sit down and like talk to my work and then, if I'm having a day where I like hanging, again getting off the couch, getting down and going to actual work.
Speaker 2:I'll come down and sometimes all I need to do is like mix some color once. I get like the palette knife moving around and the colors sort of out on the palette and start seeing it and like touching the materials again. It really doesn't take me long before I'm like, all right, I'm back in and you know so kind of.
Speaker 2:It's a little balance of letting myself relax but also not. There's like a difference between relaxing and just really like being a slug or being lazy, like I think we're quick to call ourselves lazy when we're actually not. But you could also push. You could also push yourself past the point of restorative rest to resistance, and when I, if I feel like that, maybe where I'm at that, I just come down and start like scribbling literally grab a, I will grab and I'll grab materials that aren't important or precious, like I have a box. I have a vintage box from my birth year of Crayola crayons, the 64 box with the sharpener in the back. So sometimes that it just like connects me back to just being a kid and it not mattering and you know the smell of the crayons. Something like that will just snap you out of. It is usually what helps for me either that or a deadline, yeah deadline, deadline to really work yeah, I don't really do it definitely.
Speaker 1:You talked a little bit about journaling. Do you do anything else to support your creativity?
Speaker 2:I mean I work down here. I guess I feel like I'm at the point now where I've created so much like infrastructure that's sort of natural in my life, like I've got this space, I've got every material I could dream of. I also have permission from myself and, just you know, support from everybody in my life that if I need to go buy more materials or explore something new, I you know I can and I do. I have a. I guess one thing that I do that's conscious and very important to me is that I have a really great network of artist artist friends that are at all different mediums and all different places in their career, but they're all serious about the work that they make and what, and they all identify as artists, you know. So I like not that having a friend who's a hobbyist isn't valuable, like that's super valuable but having friends that are also just really serious about this being like the main thing in their life or the thing that is sort of their identifier, is critical and it sort of goes back to that whole like we work for ourselves. But that doesn't mean for me it doesn't work to work in a complete vacuum. I need a cohort of peers. So I have some that are local, that I see in person, and I have some really wonderful relationships with friends that I've made through Instagram but are across the country, and two in particular that the three of us hop on zooms. You know, used to be at least once a month to just talk about what we were working on. We have a slack channel where we brainstorm problems, we answer stuff, you know, questions for each other, and we even did yeah, we even did a residency, the three of us to like two November, like not last November, but the November before, so two years ago, when we all met at a residency. Um, that was fun because one of them my love dimension names, um, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:So poppy dodge was one of them I don't know if you know her work and then Gretchen Morrison, who her handle is toddy pond designs, which they're both also abstract artists, and, um, we were at the residency for about I think it was like five days. Gretchen used the studio space to like, explore her own work and think about where she was going with her work and do sketches and journaling and all that kind of stuff. Poppy got permission from the property owners to do a mural on a shed and it was her first outdoor mural. So it was like a big step for her and something she'd been wanting to do for a long time, and I used the dining room table and spread out and did my whole annual plan, with all of the planning the next masterminds coming up with. That was a year that I ended up launching a couple of downloadable courses and stuff and I. It was a whole mind retreat for me, but it started because we started group messaging on instagram and then it grew from there.
Speaker 2:So those yeah, those relationships are really important. Some of the inspiration of that comes from my husband, who's an engineer, but he's the president of a small company and when he you get up to a certain level in a company where you don't have any peers like in the office, you go. He goes outside and he's in like professional organizations of other you know engineering management people or other, you know business leaders or whatever and he's the one that was just like well, you need this, like you, and that's what happens when you get up to a certain level that you're kind of by yourself, you have to go outside and find those groups, and all of those sort of little tips make me realize like I have to support myself as a creative and as a business, whether that business looks like you know, offering products, like courses, or just keeping my art practice vibrant and exciting and challenging. I'm not the kind of person that can just do that myself in my own head oh, I don't know if any of us can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sounds lovely. What a gift that you've given yourself, and it's so nice that you have like-minded people who are, you know, also in for the adventure great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel incredibly lucky with who I've, you know, bumped into out there, and that's one thing. I have my own thoughts about Instagram lately, but in the last 10 years, like all my people are Instagram, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:I know. It's so true. Yeah, I know. I mean. Yeah, it is what it is. I, my attitude towards Instagram it's like I'm not gonna change it.
Speaker 2:What do you do? Yep, it's true, it's true so out of my chain good yeah, and trying to take what's good from it and I keep like thinking, like it's free, it's still free, exactly, it's free marketing, yeah, it's marketing. Or it's a place to meet other people or yeah, exactly, you know, whatever it is. It's for me, it's an inspiration board to like. I my my list of saved poses, like a million long, but you know they're there so yeah, is it?
Speaker 1:yeah, I use it as inspiration too, and my folders are like recipes outfit ideas are inspiration yeah, for sure, all the things, and I love everyone's well.
Speaker 2:How the like the algorithm is so crazy, but kind of obvious too. Like you know, one day I clicked on a video of a cute baby donkey and then, like the next time I open, they have there were three videos of cute baby donkeys and I thought that was great, I'm cool with this. And then you can click on something I'm like you know about menopause and then all of them go better, it can be a great resource. Thank you you mine.
Speaker 1:Literally, if someone just picked it up, they would think I was a crazy cat lady. Because of the menopause and one of the ways I connect with one of my kids who's like we have a family cat like I'll send a cat video for sure. Like you know, as a mom, you know I'll do anything to connect with my kids and so now I just like cat video this exactly, yeah, and do you, like you guys do have a cat.
Speaker 2:They see, like I don't have a cat of my older son who's living off campus with friends, and they have a couple cats in the house that his, they're his roommates cats, but he's happy to live with them. So now I get a bunch of cat videos because I've, you know, sent them to him and I'm like, okay, well, I'm a cat person, by proxy, I guess yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's kind of a funny thing like an experiment, like if there's got to be some game. If you show someone your Instagram feed, could they tell what you were about?
Speaker 2:oh, I like that, yep, absolutely and then you think oh, I better go edit this. Yes, quick, do some smart posts. I gotta say something intelligent first, yeah yes, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, you mentioned a couple things. Well, one. Okay, I'm gonna circle back. Have you always been an abstract artist? That's?
Speaker 2:that was the question I've been holding on to for a minute okay, so I'm a pastry realism artist definitely, but I have in the past been like a referential or like I've had recognizable elements, some sort of symbolic shapes and elements and things like that that I was using for a really long time. My work immediately before this non-representational abstract work was very abstracted but still recognizable shapes that referenced houses, and I just sort of was. I'm always forever thinking about the interconnection between people and especially as seen in like shared very small moments that still kind of connect you together, or having these like I haven't ever seen all the posts in your shared folders, but just this conversation shows that point of connection. I love those little tiny points of connection and I always used, for this sort of long house series I had this utilization of all the same mediums. It was collage elements, paint, draw lines, but the collage pieces especially would sort of coalesce into this shape of a house that had you could sort of see through it or see up under it. There was a lot of transparency and sort of playing with depth, because I just sort of was always thinking about, like, the things that make us feel home within ourselves or within our space At a certain point, though, so that, going all the way back from the very first pieces that I made when we made my studio and my younger son was two.
Speaker 2:They were mixed media, they were bits of collage, a lot of these vintage elements, a lot of the same like oil, pastels and painting things like that. They were very small because I was working during nap times. Every paint element, like I, most everything was water based so it could dry quickly and I wasn't dependent on. You know, I could stop at a moment's notice. And also, I think, like we talked about with the printmaking background, I just really love building things together and for me, even back to being a kid, making things like I love gluing things together, I love stacking stuff up. So you know, all that time things were abstract. I wasn't trying to make anything look exactly like you know it looked, but I was using images that were recognizable. The abstract work. I can't start.
Speaker 2:Five years ago and I had a solid year where the houses were getting more and more abstract.
Speaker 1:And that was fun.
Speaker 2:But I had this weird thing like I wasn't. I think I somehow didn't have permission to be a real abstract artist. I don't know what that was. It felt like a level of bravery that I didn't have, a level of confidence that I felt, you know, too kind of shy to grab it. I was this sounds embarrassing but it felt like guys could paint abstract that I couldn't or I don't know it just there was. I put a bunch of blocks in front of me and then I got into this show that's based in Milwaukee called the 30, 30, 30 show, and this gallery has 30 artists that make 30 pieces in 30 days of January, so like a piece a day, and they're six by six, so small. The show at the end is so great because it's just these panels.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm sure you know all these pieces. I love that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I really used it as an opportunity to. I was like I can't do 30 houses, that's gonna bore the death out of me. So like I did probably 15 houses. But then I started playing with abstracts and playing with like my compositions and my colors and everything like that were like really on and really solid, but they didn't have like the emotion that I wanted to have. But they were the starting point, yeah, and so you just started breaking out and sort of swooshing stuff around and leaving the house shape behind. And it was a really exciting period to sort of finally shed those expectations and push through those barriers that I had built for some reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really interesting and I'm you know it doesn't sound to me and correct me if I'm wrong like it was just like a decision, like nope, I'm, you know, planting my flag. I'm now an abstract artist. It was like you kind of inched up on it a little bit at a time, which I think sometimes that's the way we have to do it in order to be able to do it.
Speaker 2:Right and you know the things I noticed. You know we were talking about using Instagram as like an inspiration space, like any, like truly non-representational abstract work. I was just. It was like taking my breath away. I was so and I had this like feeling of envy, like I want to do that and I don't know. I think finally, I sort of did have a little conversation with myself. It was like you can do, like you're a loud, there's nobody, there's no like application you have to submit to be allowed to do what you want to do. So it was a long period of like wanting to but for some reason holding myself back. And then, yeah, once I kind of pushed through that, there was a real like I'm never doing the house again and I thought those like I still look back at them and I think they're fantastic, and the studio move unearthed a lot of stuff that was in storage, and I was like I love these so much.
Speaker 2:I'm not going backwards to them though, but you know I really value them yeah.
Speaker 1:I always. I think it's interesting and I was just talking to someone about this. I feel like we often just look forward and like what's the next thing and how am I going to up level or change or tweak. But I think it's really important too, as artists, to look back and see are there any things that we want to bring forward again? So I yeah.
Speaker 2:I think that it's really fun. I think I had done some talks and I did a course for a little while of how to talk about your art. That can be really difficult and one of the exercises that I suggest is like put up a retrospective for yourself. Like hang it on a wall so you can see, like find the oldest piece of work that you still have like in storage and I in the demos, like I had stuff from when I was like five or six and I could find the through line all the way up until now and I still could.
Speaker 2:It's, there's evolution. That happens even when you make really big jumps and there's so much neat stuff to learn and look back and think like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize like that concept was important to me way back then, but I was expressing it this way. Or, you know, you just aren't consciously. You know think you're addressing something at all, but then it comes up really specifically in the current work and it's really important to look back at your whole history and make it fun for yourself. Call it your own personal retrospective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, so it's um. Yeah, that is important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think sometimes, like just to sort of make it I don't know kind of fun and not so serious, like I do say like, oh, you've got to be ready for your artist talk when you, when you have your big retrospective, when you're 80 or whatever, and you got to be able to talk about that stuff from when you're in college.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely Fun. That is fun. And something else you mentioned that I wanted to ask more about just feelings of resistance, because I find this fascinating and it's a lot of what I, when I work with artists like there's a lot of resistance to doing things, marketing, calling yourself an artist, maybe changing your style or whatever it is Like. Talk to me about how that shows up for you and how you deal with it. Hmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, I have that, I think, in like, say, technology speak there's even actually like a term for this, but it's the same as like always being like being on stage and having people like paying attention to what you're doing, like the spotlight, being in the spotlight, yeah, and it's almost like a I don't want. It's not necessarily uncomfortable, but it's like I put things through a filter sometimes. So this is, it's a fault. It's the way this like resistance sort of comes up is mostly through the thoughts of what does this look like to the outside? So it either well, I have to do a big marketing campaign and drop a new collection, because that's what people are doing, and so that's how you know. That's an outside perspective of this is how you should do it. You can learn from all of that kind of stuff, but it can be. Maybe your editor might have some work here for this answer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's all right.
Speaker 2:I think it's like I think that one of my biggest struggles is with kind of constantly having this narrator in my head of what like, like taking what I'm doing and sort of trying to put it into something palatable or postable or shareable or you know all that kind of stuff. And I don't I want to say that started with Facebook back in you know 2000 or whatever, but I think I've always been a little bit like that and I have to work to like unplug that part of my brain, and I have to do that mainly in the studio, but also to give myself grace when I don't want to follow the marketing format that seems to be what you know I'm seeing a lot of examples of or when I want to do something maybe David fit the mold or I. You know, that's where that's one way that I have to be careful about that Resistance, resistance for me. I do work with some galleries. I do a lot of. You know, every year I reach out to more galleries. It's a it's trick, it's hard. I've reached out to galleries for the past three years and not even had any response. You know I have a couple that I'm in that are fantastic and I've just finally, you know, started a relationship with a new gallery that I'm very excited about. I would be so happy if I could just paint and let them do everything about selling the work.
Speaker 2:That whole notion of galleries taking 50% and that being something to resent, I absolutely don't. I feel like if I'm in a good relationship with a gallery that's working really hard for me, they earned it. Because I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to reach those. I try to. I feel like I've tried everything, but I know that my heart hasn't been in it, because I just don't want to. I don't want to have to learn every new method, every new posting style, every way.
Speaker 2:I love talking about my work in person, so being at an exhibition or a show or I have in the past done big art fairs and I love that.
Speaker 2:I can sell my work in person, I can talk to people about it but it doesn't translate really well to me in a way that's comfortable for me online and so then it often doesn't, isn't very fruitful. And also I was just thinking about this morning because I wondered if this would come up when we talked. I don't have a very thick skin when it comes to like a launch of new work or a campaign for a new you know anything that I'm offering not working like, not making a bunch of sales right away when it drops, or you know all that kind of stuff. I don't have a very thick skin so I get, I get kind of, I get bogged down when those, but I don't have those successes that feel like, oh, everything's sold out, yeah. So the whole like yeah, like the virtual marketing and selling of stuff is a real struggle for me. I mean, I'm going to get over that?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure, like I'm not sure that my version of getting over that is like figuring out how to market and sell on my website and putting more effort into it. I think that my version of that is to keep building relationships with galleries and other people like intermediaries, because I'm really happy to supply them with work and they're doing a good job of getting people through the door. Then it's, it's okay with me, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think you have figured it out, and this is something that I talked to clients about, like if they have real resistance to marketing themselves online, I'm like then this is the route. You have to find other routes to do it, and it's been, I mean, essentially cold calling galleries, like with an email or whatever it is. But you, you have to trade feeling uncomfortable one way for maybe feeling a little less uncomfortable, another way to move forward, and that sounds exactly like what you did and that's perfect.
Speaker 2:You know, it's like reassuring to hear that because I think, and I think too, we're seeing that drop of collections model sort of change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and while that was really the big thing, and there's the build up, the titling of the collection, but a lot of that was tricky for me because I don't work in collection. So I already felt like I was many like creating something that wasn't real. But my thing then was I just got to take more like workshops or listen, like, do more, you know, learning from people that do it and are succeeding at it. And it's nice to sort of personally be at a spot where I'm like, or maybe not, maybe I just really concentrate on the work and build it up and make it, you know, as amazing as I think it can be, and then that's what I'm selling to a gallery as opposed to trying to, you know, get it out to everybody else. So, yeah, if I, when I work with a gallery, I'll do I really work hard. If I feel like it's a great back and forth relationship and they're working hard to I, you know, I really try to make sure that I'm like a worthy risk on their part. Yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:I try to be an excellent partner, like because I think of it as a business relationship. I'm like I want to be an excellent business partner with this person or this group, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's an area of resistance for me and the other stuff that sort of I don't know if it was imposter syndrome or whatever made it hard for me to like just really let go and let myself be an abstract artist. That part's gone, I've grown out of it and now it feels like just really easy to tap into the just make what you want to make. You're good at making things like. You know what you're doing and you're allowed to change and evolve and you know it's going to be solid if you don't get a lot of your like muddled up thoughts in the way you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah get those out of the room.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that makes perfect sense, because you've been at it a while, and as have I, and I think, just like if we were starting out a career as I don't know, like an attorney or something, we would probably feel a little unsure of ourselves for quite some time until we had, you know, years under our bell. I don't know why we feel like it should be different. I don't know. What we're talking about is not uncommon. You know, I've talked to a lot of people at this point and I feel like we are very hard on ourselves because we have this thing that we want desperately to get out of us and share and it feels like so personal and I think we have to be so vulnerable to be able to do it Like, not like hitting the mark. We can be pretty tough on ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you nailed it in talking about the vulnerability of it, like that's inherent in the. You know, just saying, if you're doing something that feels very vulnerable and very personal, letting it out and sharing it is, it's just like riddled with potential negatives, whereas like studying, I don't want like we're gonna use the lawyer analogy again which.
Speaker 2:I could never be a lawyer. So there's tons of respect there, or I wouldn't, whatever, like you do all the studying. You know the laws, you know the mandates, you know the statutes and you know you go and you know I don't know if there's much of your like personal heart that's tied up in what you do when you argue a case, but when you've you know, I created something and you want to put it out there and you want to make sure. You just want to protect your heart a little bit, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah, but I do think just having more repetition under our belts and just continuing to plug away at it, you do. It feels like the boat isn't quite as rocky, Would you agree with?
Speaker 2:that, yeah, 100%. And I think I take it like when you realize that you as a person are inherently, are inherently valuable and you don't need to like prove that to people, you get to a point with your art that if you can just feel like it's okay if somebody doesn't like this, like it's not making work for everybody, and it'll find it's people and you also eventually, after you've been working at it long enough, you have so many examples of your work finding the people it connects to, to like you're like okay.
Speaker 2:There's the proof that eventually it finds the right people even if this show wasn't a sell out, or this piece didn't get a ton of likes, or somebody looked at it and was like why are you doing that now? Like you, you don't let. I do have a thick skin about all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just the something about the marketing and putting things up for sale and trying to like that part. When it doesn't work, it's because I think it's because I don't like doing that. So then when it doesn't work, it's almost like proving the cycle.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Well, this has just been a great conversation and I appreciate you so much.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you too. This is your podcast is fantastic. I'm really thrilled to be a voice on what looks really fun.
Speaker 1:Well, where can people find you and how can I connect? And I'll put it in the show notes.
Speaker 2:My website is Megan Woodard Johnsoncom and so hopping on there and signing up for the newsletter I tried to do in newsletter we're going to say quarterly is maybe my goal for next year. That's another thing. I'm sort of letting myself go from the expectation to like share a blog style newsletter or anything like that, but it is a good way to stay connected to what I'm up to. And then I do have that love. I don't know it's not going to be a hate, but like I do love Instagram, I spend maybe a little too much time on there looking at the recipes and the whatever all those posts, now the cats and the donkeys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I do love sharing work and I do love connecting via Instagram, and so that was just Megan Woodard Johnson art, because I was feeling super creative when I made my first handle. Those are really the best ways and you know there's an email link on my website as well and stuff like that, so if anybody really has questions, but those are the two places to see what I'm up to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wonderful, well, thank you again and I know people are going to get a lot of value out of this.
Speaker 2:It's fun to have an art chat, so thank you very much.
Speaker 1:It's always so fun. I feel so lucky that I get to have all these art chats with people.
Speaker 2:Yeah maybe some art move on your part.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening to Mind Over Medium podcast today. If you found the episode inspiring, please share it with a friend or post it on social media and tag me on Instagram at lianslotkin, or head to my website, wwwlianslotkincom. To book a discovery call to find out more about working with me one on one. You can also head to my website to get a great tool I've created for you to use when planning your own online launch of your artwork. It's an exercise I've taken many of my coaching clients through and it's been very helpful. It's my way of saying thank you and keep creating.