Artist Maxine Miller on Changing Gears While Staying the Course

Author T. Thorn Coyle speaks with artist Maxine Miller, who shares her journey from aspiring ballet dancer to graphic designer, to a successful artist in the punk rock scene, Hollywood, and the music industry, and the challenges of navigating the art world. Maxine reflects on the significance of self-expression and the role of day jobs in supporting creative endeavors. Maxine and Thorn speak on the importance of finding a place that feels like home, and finding our spiritual practices. Maxine emphasizes the significance of service in her art, viewing it as a gift to the universe and her audience.

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Hello everybody, welcome back to Magic, Creativity and Life. I'm T. Thorn Coyle. And today I'm talking with artist Maxine Miller. It was a terrific conversation. We talk about her time in Hollywood, working on shows like Angel and her move to her own personal art and running her own companies, to magical practice, all sorts of things. In personal news, I am in the final stretches of my work in progress, which is a contemporary fantasy novel based on loosely on the Thomas the Rhymer Scottish ballad. And I'm very excited. I'm going to be launching that on Kickstarter in May. That's the intention with some really fancy special editions I'm working on. I'm working on a bunch of other projects in my publishing business and in writing for the year to come. And I want to encourage everyone, if you haven't yet, check out the deck Maxine did the artwork for and helped me design my You Are the Spell Oracle deck. You can find that at thorncoylebooks along with a bunch of fiction if you need an escape right now. Well, that's it for me for personal news. And let's dive in. Hello everybody. Welcome to Magic, Creativity and Life. Today I'm speaking with artist Maxine Miller, who started her career in LA's punk rock scene, making graphic art for the music and movie business, working for rock bands and divas from Batman films to Madonna's tours. Maxine created demon art for the hit TV series Angel and the movie Constantine and did costume sketches and props for many productions. Feeling artistically unsatisfied, She then launched her own companies, Maxine Miller Studios and Celtic Jackalope, making art inspired by Celtic culture and witchcraft, reflecting a reverence for nature and the divine. She makes statuary sterling silver jewelry, silk screened apparel and fine art prints. In 2022, she collaborated with author Christopher Penzak on the magical botanical oracle deck and is working on the forthcoming Celtic lore oracle, stated for a 2027 release. Maxine also did the art for my Oracle deck and book project called You Are the Spell. Maxine, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. So I ask every guest to start off with about creative roots. What are your creative roots? Was it always visual art from childhood on or were there other art forms you were interested in? Tell us a little bit about that. Well, I didn't want to be an artist, I wanted to be a ballet dancer. And I just threw everything into that. But it's such a restricted field. had a few things going for me and a few things against. And I found myself at the school of the San Francisco Ballet one summer. And I was drawing dancers for fun because I maybe couldn't make my body do those shapes, but I knew what they should be. So I would draw them. And my roommate in the boarding house saw that and she got very excited and she said, could you paint one for me in a pink tutu? And so I ended that summer with, you know, facing down like the end of my ballet career before it really started, but I had a purse stuffed with money from a girl that said, can I have a yellow tutu? Can I have a rose? Can I have, you know, and I was not pleased about this, but it was just such a fork in the road. So. How old were you at that time? I was 17 and I frustrated myself a little while longer trying to break into the local ballet companies. at the end of the day, just really had to, you I mean, it's not so terrible. It's the arts. was kind of the greatest tragedy of my life because I loved dance so much. but it has turned out well. That's amazing. And the fact that you were getting paid immediately is also amazing. Well, I think trying to make money with art is kind of insane, but there are several elements, one of which is just luck. Because from the word go, people were giving me money. Somebody would see something I'd done, and they didn't even bother with, that's so pretty. They would just say, much? And that is just luck because there are, the world is full of beautifully talented artists that cannot make a dime and hacks that just rake in the money. So whatever that is, I'm very lucky to have it, but it was not something, you know, that is just kind of providential, I think. Well, clearly though, you connect with something that draws people in because I have several of your art pieces in my home. And, you know, that was long before I hired you to do my deck and book art. And it's why I hired you to do my book art, right? Because you've got an eye and the way you work with detail. is very resonant, I think, with people. Well, I like substance. In my early days of trying to get a break, long before I discovered witchcraft or anything else, I'd gone to an art expo in LA and I was just looking for somebody to help me or a direction or something. And I spoke to a woman that sold art prints and she looked at my... portfolio and she said, you know, you have two options. One is to do faceless decorative art, know, lots of details and flourishes and pretty, but, without much depth to it. Or you could take what you do and go much, much darker and perverse. because there is an audience for that. And I said, so what you're telling me is that I need to not be me. She laughed and she said, if that's, if you want to make money. And, you know, the, the, the reason that, that what I'm doing connects with an audience is because there is intention in it. There is thought, there is feeling and, and that feeling is expressed with details but also symbolism, you the choice of goes into it. When I design a statue, it's a pet peeve of mine, goddess statues. It's just a pretty girl. And then there'll be a little name plaque at the bottom. And that's so hollow. I want you to know who that is from... all the symbols that are worked into the piece and the mood of it. I think that's how come somebody might be drawn to something that I've done as opposed to something that is just pretty. Yes, like the first piece I bought from you was one of your Caradwen's cauldron plaques. And one of the reasons I love it is all the detail. Like at first you just see this kind of beautiful, you know, Art Nouveau Celtic knot work with the goddess with her hair streaming and the giant cauldron. But then you pause and look closer and there's all these figures pouring out of the cauldron. right? That you might not notice it first and that level of detail is what I love about your work. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. That's kind of the thing is, if you make something that just works on a pure design level, you know, to be attractive, but that is kind of where it starts getting good and interesting for me in the doing of it is, is to have more to look at. Mm-hmm. I mean, my father showed something I'd done. I mean, at this point, I'm maybe 18 years old or something. And he showed something I had done to a friend of his. And she said, oh, that's very nice. And he said, no, look at it. And she said, I looked at it. But I mean, was a forest scene with all kinds of stuff going on. And she was like, oh. So yeah. Right, now I see. So there's two things I wanna circle to from this conversation. The first is the other reason I think your work is so resonant is that it's also you, right? You said early on, this person's like, well, you can go this direction or that direction, but you've gone a direction that is Maxine Miller, right? And I have that... in my work, sometimes I think, you know, I write, you know, urban fantasy filled with social justice issues. also write, you know, cozy paranormal mysteries. Like most people who write cozy mysteries only write cozy mysteries. And so sometimes I say, well, gosh, you know, I kind of write all over the map, but my readers and my colleagues say, no, you don't. It's all you right? Your voice, your values. it all comes through the characters' voices. And I feel like your art is very similar. Even though your art is more consistent in expression, I think. I mean, I mean, when I started, did, I did art cards for a company called Paper Moon Graphics, and it was all very soft and very sweet fantasy, know, unicorns and piroes and all that kind of thing. and, you know, life sort of changed my direction and my style of art. So it's remarkable to me. Sometimes somebody will recognize my name from those things that I did so many years ago. And if you put that piece of art next to something, you know, from along the way, it is a stretch that that's the same person. But at one point I had a friend of mine move to London and around that time my style got much harder and my subjects got darker and the next time we met, which was a couple years later, I could tell she didn't care for it and I said, you know, it's like, One gets used to praise from one's friends. So I was a little ruffled and I was you know inquired and she said when I look at these I see pain and I don't like to Identify you with that. So I prefer that you you know do teddy bears and unicorns and I just thought well Yeah, this friendships kind of done that really, you know Right. Right. If you can't be honest in your art. Yeah. it's not because you don't like my new stuff, but it's because you are not accepting of the person that is now in front of you. Because I mean, art defined is expression. What's the point of even doing this is to get that at whatever is inside you in the form of ideas and craft. out there in front of an audience. So, you know. Yeah, you years ago, back when I was just writing nonfiction, I hadn't returned yet to fiction. A colleague of mine said, you know, I really like to write this book, but I still have to write these books that I don't want to write first. And I just looked at that person and was gobsmacked. I was like, why would you spend all this time and effort writing a book you don't want to write? Like, I can't, I couldn't do it. And that's not to say that I'm not interested in commercial success, but it has to come from somewhere inside of me and then move out from there. Yeah, you know, the other thing is if you really, if you are really following your muse wherever they're going, that can be, that can cause bumps in the road. mean, art is a fairly crazy thing to do in the first place, but I say it is difficult to like every Bob Dylan album or every day. Right. are true to what they want to do. And they're like, I guess I don't mind if the audience doesn't get this one, but this is what I'm to go off and do. Well, yeah, and speaking of Bowie, like I loved 10 Machine and a lot of people were like, what even, what even is this? I went to that remarkable tour that he did with Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor said, there's no way that I'm following you. And it was kind of a low point in Bowie's career. So, you know, but they agreed they wanted to do it together. And Bowie went out there and did new stuff and deep cuts and absolutely refused to play hit songs. And the audience was mostly younger people that had come for Nine Inch Nails and they left in droves. It was just the most bizarre thing. And I'm a Bowie fan, but it was also, have to say for the jury that it was a little difficult to be a given so much new stuff. And it was like, I guess the whole tour was like that. Like he did not change his set. He was like, no, this is what I feel like doing. I mean, talk about brave. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it makes me think of Joni Mitchell saying, no one ever said to Van Gogh, play a starry night again. Right. So circling back to your style and the evolution of your style, I'm wondering how much your early graphic design I mean, I see the echoes of your early graphic design in your current work, right? The kind of symmetry you work with, that sort of thing. What was it like doing graphic art in punk rock LA? I'm assuming in the 80s. Yeah, the 80s. Well it was shall I say, I was cracking up in a manner of speaking because I had been doing this very sweet, very light, I didn't even use black ink, that's how sweet this stuff was, I used a crow quill with sepia or indigo colored ink and did these very soft and very sweet things, but that was increasingly not who I was. And so within the constraint of all this work that I was doing for the card company, it was, I kind of just couldn't do it anymore. So I left and then I had this sort of harsh, you know, sort of whomp. Now I've got no money coming in and I, you know, and so and so worthless guy that broke my heart. all of this. So I ended up in front of a therapist and I had stopped working and she kept saying, I just think if you could put all of this emotion into art you would feel relief. But I was like, nobody wants to look at this. Nobody wants to You don't see yourself as Picasso, you Great. as a person who made coin with Piro pictures. So cut to, I was introduced to a who had a punk zine called Scratch Magazine. And he said, you're an artist. Yeah. You he said, you want to do a cover? And I said, well, maybe. How much does it pay? And he laughed because was fun, nobody got paid. So he said, there's no money, but you can do whatever you want. And that was the first time somebody had said to me, you can do whatever you want. So I thought about it and I ended up coming up with this pen and ink illustration of a woman's head being split in half. with an angel and a demon figure fighting in the top of it. I mean, it was far away from a teddy bear card you could possibly get. And he loved it and he published it. And my father was horrified. But that was the literal beginning. mean, my work from that point forward did not look anything like what had come before. And I was like, I don't know how I'm going to make a living with this, but this, you know, I mean, the therapist was right. was like, once I could open that channel, then I had much to say and, you know, and got back in there. And luckily for me, it rolled into the hairband era. in LA where there were lots of bands everywhere and everybody wanted hearts with daggers through them and dark angels and this kind of thing. So the work began to come back in. That's great. You know, and I'm just struck by this image of the woman with her head cracked open, literally then cracked open art for you again, right? And it opens something new. Well, was informative. I mean, you surprise yourself, right? But it's like I had never done anything like that. And when I was doing the cards, the aim is to please in a certain lighthearted and pleasant kind of way. So I was kind of surprised that I had it in me, but it so reflected what I was feeling. it was just, you know, was just a hundred green lights all at once. This is what you're supposed to be doing. So. fantastic. Yeah. I mean, I've always followed my muse too, from art form to art form, from this expression to that expression. And it hasn't always been easy, but it's also for me been the only thing I could do. you know? Yeah. where I, you know, in that sort of transition, I just went and got a job in a shop because I don't know how to make money with this and I know I'm not doing, I know I'm not doing unicorns anymore. So I'm just going to do something completely else to stay afloat. And as I say, once, once the music industry jobs started coming in, I got to a point where I had enough enough activity to you know to get out of retail but yeah I mean, that's what I always did in my younger years. I worked a series of very weird, odd jobs because I always wanted time to do whatever my art form was in the moment, right? Mostly it was writing, but I did a lot of other things too. And, know, I'm thinking of writer David Goines once said something along the lines of, sometimes you have to let your day job be your patron. You know, we no longer have the Medici family. Yeah! So that's your day job is your patron of the arts. And I really like that attitude. And I know a lot of creators who use that, you know, they create all the time as they work their day job. And I just think that's actually a powerful thing. Yeah, well the Medici's are also going to want to put their thumb on the scale as far as what you produce. So there is that, there is that too. Whereas, you know, whatever you bring in from doing, I mean, I bought one time I bought a book on the habits of authors and I thought, once in a while I suffer from work block and I thought, I wonder if there will be a little gem in this that will kind of help me out. And I was dismayed to read that most of them that get up super early in the morning and work really, really hard. My guy was William Styron who worked very little and got up very late. But nevertheless, it was interesting because there were people in there, T.S. Eliot brings to mind. that kept their day jobs and worked many hours at their day jobs that somehow that was even from the point where some of these authors where they had enough money coming in where they could easily quit but there was something about the routine of it that they liked you know the the i do this at this hour and this this hour and then these are the hours that i write Yeah, there's author and coach, Becca Syme said something once that made me understand that she said, and it's so simple, there are internally motivated people and externally motivated people. And that made a light go off in my head because I'm very internally motivated, which is why even through, you know, chronic illness, I can barely get off the couch. I still am producing, right? I've just got this internal drive to produce and create. But I know people who really struggle. for those, a lot of those people, the structure of a day job enables them to create. As soon as you take external structure away, they flounder. They can't do it anymore. Yeah, well, I mean a deadline, because there was a lot of years of freelancing there and stuff for the... the film or music industry comes with deadlines. And a lot of times they knew what the album was called for six months, but they call you three days before they want the cover. Why? But that's how that works. I think one of the reasons why I ended up with my own company was because I found it hard to live with the pressure, particularly if you were doing stuff for TV, because films, they have enough time sometimes to screw around, to redo things. Let's have three versions. And the first one was always the best anyway. But the TV schedule is very harsh. And when I was doing stuff, for Angel in particular because that show I did many things for. It was sort of in the pre-digital age. So I'd be working on it till four o'clock in the morning and a runner from the studio would be on my doorstep at five to pick it up. Yeah, and that prop works today. So there was always this tightrope. of what if they don't love it, you Yeah. How long, how long did you do that work in Los Angeles before you split off and formed your own studios? Oh, golly, I mean, a long time. I will throw a dart and say 20 years, know, trickles in the beginning. And then there was a period where I just had a lot of that work going on. the one that got away was to do art for goth bands, because that's what I liked to listen to. But I just didn't have the same hookups to get the work. I would get most of my gigs from word of mouth. So if you did one heart, I used to say I threatened to have a portfolio that had nothing but hearts with daggers through them. A dagger through a glass heart for a band called The Lost Boys. There was a heart with bullets through it for Bang Tango. There was, you know, I did a heart with a dagger, threw it with wings for a t-shirt for Bon Jovi, which they then went and sold to a bunch of other people, which was very painful. well, know, it's strange business. I mean, I did a heart of stone for Cher, and she took that artwork. and she made it the logo for a Vegas TV special. And I learned a very expensive lesson that your invoice needed to read t-shirt only. the thing is on and the phone rings and I pick it up and he doesn't even say hello as my father just says, did you get money for that? my gosh. No! But I mean, you know, if I would have wanted to sue her, I, it was, you know, where's the money to sue her in the first place? But also if you're putting out there that you're going to sue your clients, then that word gets out there too. People don't want to hire. So artists are very exploited in that milieu. Yeah, I mean, I see that with writers, you know, if you don't have a good lawyer to go over your contract and give you like, you know, those front scene cards with your name on it and, you know, based on the series by your no one knows, right. And that's where you make all your money is in book sales, you know, after that. Yeah, it's it's tricky. So I'm going to switch gears slightly. When did you start? Because I want to get into the art you make now, but I want to ask when did you start studying magic and witchcraft? I fell into it and it was a very, I mean I could. I I liked Led Zepp when I went to the occult shop because Jimmy Page was interested in Crowley and the occult. But it kind of washed over me. It was a long time before I picked it up, you know, for reals. But I have a business partner for the company I have now. And we started with doing Scottish clan crests because he was listed in his Scottish heritage and you know he wanted a Macfarlane crest, his own crest. He made t-shirts, people loved those, other clans said would you do one for us so we found ourselves with a little business and at one point you know they're fun to do they're They're heraldic images, basically. And I said to him, this is fun, but is there anything for this audience that we could do that would be a little bit more artistically interesting for me? And he said, well, you could draw Gernunnos. And I said, who's Gernunnos? I mean, had no idea. your your kernunos is like so amazing. was the funny thing is that I said, okay, and then I go look it up. I'm not even sure if I Googled it because I was the last person to get online. I was not sure I trusted that magic box. But at any rate, I looked it up. And I read just the littlest bit about it. And I was just like, well, I know him. I mean, I knew exactly what he looked like. And where did that come from? So I did that. And that was the door opening. Okay, well, you did that. You could do a triple goddess, you know? So we started out with the icons that are, you know, the most known and the most popular. And just each successive thing felt like an old friend. So at that point, I guess I better crack a book, you know? That's amazing, Maxine. You know, and for people who aren't familiar with your work, I just want to say that your variations of those gods and goddesses are beloved by thousands of people, right? And it's amazing that you entered into working on those art pieces by way of introduction to those. it's pretty... it is remarkable. It amazes nobody more than myself, really. I went to Scotland recently with a Temple of Witchcraft retreat, and this is gonna be fun, this is gonna be interesting, we're gonna look at... fairy sites, we're going to look at, you know, old stones. And I was expecting to have fun and be inspired. I was not expecting to be knocked over sideways by how strong the connection was. Because my ancestors that I know of were all Slavic, were all from Ukraine. And... I, as far as I knew there was not a Scots or Irish or English person in that whole family tree. But obviously the idea of ancestors is more broad than that. But I mean, it's just funny because, because you have, you have your intellect that knows these facts and then you have emotions that wash over you. So. went to some of these sacred sites and I was just practically knocked to the ground with how much feeling came over me. So, you know, I was discussing that with Christopher, who knows a thing or two, and he said, you know, like the idea of ancestors is very broad, witch ancestors and, you know, mighty dead. And I just thought, well, that has got to be what it is, because I just feel so connected to this. And it all seemed to be a lot less of an accident of fortune that I ended up doing this work. Wow. Yeah, my first time, I've been to Scotland twice and I love Scotland. And I first went to England and thought I would have this huge response and I didn't. Which was interesting despite having been an Anglophile as a child and all of that. But as soon as I crossed that border into Scotland and the land changed, I had a response. And part of me wondered if it wasn't a similar response to the response I had. You know, I was raised in Los Angeles and knew I needed to move to San Francisco. I'd never been there, but I needed to move there. And as soon as I moved there, I was like, this is home. And there's something about that, the fault line, the San Andreas fault line there. You felt similar, even though the terrain is radically different in Scotland, but it's that same kind of volcanic craggy, something's gonna happen any minute, you know? And now I live like you do in Portland, which we're surrounded by volcanoes. Well, I lived my whole adult life up to, I think I was around 50 when I moved here and I never fit into Los Angeles. I just happened to be there and I thank God I moved because, and it's funny because here there's a lot of California hate because people, cash out and they come up here and the first thing they do is complain about the rain. It's like, well, it's a rainy place. What were you expecting? But when I got here, nobody ever guessed that I was from California because I just fit in here. And it so happens that I really love rain. So that was fine. But it was just, I would be hanging out with a group of people and they were stuck. talking about those terrible people from California and I just be like, uh-oh. Yeah, I had the same thing happen. And you know, I always loved rain because coming from Los Angeles when it was raining was the only time the air was clean and the weather was decent. Well, you know, one of the other big takeaway from from the exposure to Celtic and witchcraft traditions was the realization that it is all about seasons and we have seasons, we have beautiful seasons. Yeah, LA is very distinct seasons. beautiful and the same most of the time. And rain is rare and now it's even more precious, but you know, things just look the same. I mean, if you garden, mean, you can plant any time you want and the garden centers are open all the time. it's just, it was... It was just another thing of getting here and boy, this feels right. I mean, when it snows, I mean, I just am like, like just a little kid. This is beautiful and magical and you know, but I was doing all this artwork that was, that was to do with seasons and the wheel of the year and how things change and just not seeing it outside my window. So yeah. Right. that was a nice fresh jolt of inspiration coming here. So what is your, if you don't mind talking about it a little bit, do you have a regular spiritual practice or is art your, mostly your spiritual practice? What helps you day to day connect? Well, I would say art is probably, it's kind of like a conduit, particularly if things are going well, you you get into the zone, as they say, and it's a meditation. My practice outside of that is really spotty. I would benefit from it being a little more disciplined. I think, I've, you know, I'm not too good about the regular thing. One of the things that's nice about the Wheel of Year actually is that, is that it kind of gooses you into reconnecting, oh yeah, you know, or, oh, the moon's doing this, you know. So, so, know, when I'm, the solstice. Yeah, when I do sit down and connect, then it's very meaningful. I sometimes will just, you when... That's the other nice thing about gardening is that it's not a... You're not doing a formal spell every time you go out there, but you are kind of... I mean, a garden is like a a hyper sigil. You are... you are worshiping just in the act of tending. And there's just, there's a million metaphors in a day's tasks out there, you know, the cutting of dead wood and the, you know, and the digging into the ground. It's all sacred stuff. So that, I mean, I mean, that is... Probably the desk and the garden are, you know, my sort of two regular touchstones, you know. that makes sense. So when you're preparing to make a new piece of art, what's one of the things you do to connect in with that piece? Hmm. Well, I, you know, it's funny there, there is, you have, you, are juggling art and craft and they are, they are slightly different animals. I will get an idea. You know, it's like a soap bubble that lands in your, in your outstretched palm and I will make a spinal tap type Thumbnail it's two inches tall, you know just to like capture that idea and I will tell you it is just the damnedest thing That it is so hard to capture When you when you then blow it up to the size you need to do it Sometimes the magic is in that little two inch thing and you're like, whoa, why can't I? get that on the bigger sheet, but that that inspiration and that that little germ is the most fun. Everything after that is kind of, it's the crap side, it's the donkey work. And it's a kind of a tense time where you're trying to your little shining inspiration onto the format that you need to do it. Once you've got it laid out and you're getting stuck into inking and painting and the crafty stuff, then you can kind of let go a little bit and go over to your unconscious mind. Like I will play music or an audio book or just something. that's going in the background, the sort of the white noise. And then you can kind of almost fall into it. And when you're really doing something that is working and you're loving it, sometimes like the music will stop or the podcast is over and you don't realize it because you're just so in there. And those are the best times. Sometimes a piece is just gonna make you suffer, but most of the time it's good. interesting. I mean, I love you talking about the art and the craft of it, because I feel that way with writing too. you know, I love being in the flow when my subconscious is driving the bus and I've got my song on loop in my earbuds. But the thing that I'm struck by as someone who enjoys your art is calling the some of the craft parts you do donkey work because it the finished product sure as heck does not look like it was a labor. I mean, I know it was a labor because the deep level the level of detail and all of that is incredible. But it's stars? I do it to myself. I love tiny stars, masses of tiny stars. But my god, you have to draw every one of those little butters. I, you know, I don't, I'm not anti-digital, but I'm not a digital artist. Everything is old school. And I have, I have a girl I hire. to digitize my stuff for printing, but nothing in the piece itself is done with computers. So... Yeah, I was surprised at the first sketches you sent me that actually were sketches. On paper, you sent me a picture of pencil on paper. Yeah. I mean, I was on a panel one time, what the heck was it for? I think it was one of the last fairy cons that they had. there were, I think there were five of us. And the subject was digital versus analog. And everybody else worked as digital artists. A couple of them had daytime gigs doing digital art. But when it came to, you know, the question was posed, what do you like better? Every single person said they preferred, you know, old school tools. And I just, you know, If they're a really talented artist is going to make a piece of digital work that is compelling, but the lesser ranks of digital artists all have a very samey quality. It's like if you're putting in a shadow, they put in black. But that is too simple. Shadows are composed of loads of colors. So there are traps, you know, that people can fall into. I just, you know, I just didn't relate to it. I didn't want to learn it. I was really stubborn about that. You know, possibly to my own detriment to need to rely on somebody else to, you know, to do this or that to get something vectorized. I just, you know, even the tools that I use, the technical pens and things like that, they're little by little, they're all going away because of lack of demand. And I just, you know. wonder if they'll come back though the way like albums, know, pressed albums have come back and but it's a real challenge because the paper stock is very degraded from what I have used for all the years. And it's just always like, the demand isn't there. know, the technical pens I get, they stopped selling in America, so I have to order them from Europe or Japan. And, you know, it's kind of worrying. so I'm a little long in the tooth to, you know, to start over with things. Right, right. It's not that you couldn't, but it would, it seems like it would be a huge amount of effort and you're, you already work, you know, you're, you're used to, your subconscious is used to that form. It's the difference. Like it's, I do do some writing in with pen and paper, but that is not how my muse is used to working. My muse is used to working with a keyboard. It's, it's the channel. you're used to working on. Yeah, well, I mean, a keyboard is a keyboard looks different, but a keyboard, how long have we had typewriters? You know, that is still in its sense, that is still old technology. Yeah. So I have a couple more questions for you. One is, what does the word magic mean to you as an artist, as a person, as a gardener? That's a big topic. How to define it is an interesting question because it's the same substance for all of those categories. I might, in a way, to be pragmatic about it, I would almost call it that it's a hyper awareness because a lot of what we would call Magical is something that is already there, but you didn't notice it before. you just... You just allowed yourself and your senses to perceive something a little extraordinary that was probably just there waiting for you to wake up. But... I like that. Well, that's a new thought. think that's good. I think that's beautiful. And I think it's just right. And it leads into my final question, which is another big question that you can answer as large or small as you want currently. What is your why? My why? You know, it's... it was Dylan that said you have to serve somebody and I feel like service is the thing that that elevates your life and your time and when I make artwork I feel like I am in service to the gods and the universe And also to my audience. You know, if I am having a rough patch and just not feeling it, sometimes I will think about, you know, this little thing that is frustrating me, like somebody will respond to that, you know. Because if it's all about self, that just doesn't feel good, does it? That doesn't go anywhere. Great. So if you just think of what you're doing with your art, know, it's like a gift that you're doing. Yes, it's for you too, and you are pleasing yourself in the making of it, but it's just a broader thing than that. as far as gods and guides and all those magical folks that we hope are working with us. You know, if I am of service to to them, then it's harmonious with with the universe. Man, that sounded grand. It's just right, Maxine, it's just right. So I think that's perfect. Thank you so much. So yeah, so once again, I was talking with the amazing artist, Maxine Miller, and you can find her work at maxinemillerstudios.com and celticjackalope.com. And as always, you can find me at thorncoyle.com. Thanks for listening. I don't know about you, but I got quite a lot out of my conversation with Maxine. I was really inspired to hear all the ways in which she leveraged her art, committed to her art, and followed her path, even taking risks when things didn't feel right anymore. Stopping art, well, not stopping art, but stopping trying to make a living with her art temporarily, getting a job in a shop. and figuring out how to regain her strong connection to art again until finally she took another risk, formed her own companies, and is the successful, steady, working, independent artist she is today. And the way she weaves magic and practice through it all is also inspiring, and it's the thing I try to do. And I wonder if that's something you try to do yourself. So thanks again for joining me. And as usual, you can support this podcast by joining my Patreon, patreon.com. Thanks to all my Patreon supporters. I couldn't do this without you. And I wish you a thousand blessings and as much magic and creativity as you can hold.