Mike Ryczek flew to New Orleans to see his work hanging in the kind of gallery he'd always aspired to. Dinner with the other artists went fine. Then came the gallery crawl the next day, and he froze: four galleries deep without talking to anyone, thirty minutes standing beside his own paintings waiting for someone to approach, and finally the Irish goodbye and some consolation fried chicken. 

In this episode, the two of us talk about the moments an art career makes you feel like an imposter, and I share my own recent version of his story, because these feelings don't retire with experience. What changes is how you recover.

Mike is a painter in Dedham, Massachusetts who has held gallery representation for over a decade, won a $15,000 Mass Cultural Council grant, and still interrogates every achievement for the trick behind it. Our conversation stays close to what an art career feels like: from the whiplash of rejection and reward arriving back to back to the self-belief it takes to keep assigning yourself work few people see. There’s no strategy in this episode, just the facts of the profession. 

Relevant Links: 

Mike Ryczek

Have you ever struggled to figure out exactly where your art fits? Or maybe you’ve tried to write an artist statement only to find it one of the hardest tasks you’ve ever had to do. Today’s guest, Jennifer Sharpe, a multimedia artist and experimental filmmaker, has a way of making those problems vivid and infinitely relatable. 

In this episode, we talk about how a continuously shifting cultural landscape affects artistic practice. Over the last twenty years, we’ve seen multiple online communities collapse and rebuild. Jennifer came away convinced that while platforms vanish and institutions wobble, the relationships you build are the only durable asset an artist has. 

This conversation wanders in the best way. Racehorses, vagabonds, cave paintings, jobs, and a whole bunch of other ideas you wouldn’t think have anything to do with artists, but really do.

Free Info Session, How to Get on a Museum’s Radar, Tuesday, July 21, 7:00 PM EST

The art world tells artists that if you just keep going, eventually something will break for you. But persistence can also keep you stuck. If you don’t know something’s broken so you keep doing the same thing, you won’t grow.

That's what happened to Gin Stone. Gin is a Cape Cod artist who did what she was supposed to do. She kept going. And she stayed stuck because she didn't have the right help. In this episode, she talks about the gallery show that made her realize she had nothing to say about her own work, the overhaul that followed, and the grant she landed just last week for a sonification project built on 2,000 years of geological data.

RELEVANT LINKS:

Free Info Session, How to Get on a Museum’s Radar, Tuesday July 21, 7:00 PM EST

After years of producing social practice art, Peter Walsh wanted to get back in the studio. So he rented a space and started painting. But when he started reaching out to his old painting friends, he found most had moved on to other things. He needed community. 

He joined Netvvrk, along with many of the artists in his Brooklyn studio building. Then he practiced patience: he went to other people’s shows, built relationships, and let the work lead. That led to his first solo show in New York. 

In this episode, we talk about restarting a practice mid-career, the self-doubt that shows up even with a long CV, and why the artwork always has to come first. Peter lost a painting the day before we recorded. He painted over it and kept working. As he puts it, he's not done.

Guest: Mark Witzling, abstract painter

In this episode of Art Problems, I speak with Mark Witzling about his career path as a painter. Witzling continues our series on artists who are building careers regionally, and his story takes on a second challenge that artists ask me about all the time. Witzling doesn’t have an MFA or a BFA in art. 

And he works full time on his art. Want to know how he got his studio paid for and work placed without institutional bona fides, while living in St Louis, MO? Tune into this episode and find out! 

RELEVANT LINKS 

How to Get on a Museum’s Radar, (Free info session) Tuesday July 21, 2026

Mark Witzling

Craft Alliance (St. Louis) 

Southern Vermont Art Center — site of his solo show last year

Meg Lagodzki paints from a studio in the woods just outside Bloomington, Indiana, five hours from the nearest major art center. In this conversation, part of an ongoing series on artists building careers outside NYC and LA, she talks with Paddy about what it took to grow beyond her local market: the critique group that pushed her work in a new direction, the cold DM from a gallery that turned into a five-year relationship, and the shift from applying to open calls alone to finding opportunities through other artists.

Momentum Gallery

In this episode, Paddy gives you the skinny on the Guggenheim Fellowship, one of the most prestigious awards for mid-career artists. The talk contains tips and strategies you won't find on their website, including knowing when to apply and how often. You won't find this information anywhere else, so have a listen. Even if you're not planning to apply, this episode will give you strategies for ALL grant applications.

Katie Hargrave is a visual artist and associate professor at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, where she's lived and worked for twelve years. This is the second episode in a series on artists building careers outside city centers.

Ever wondered how to build a growing art career without moving to New York or L.A? Today, I speak with Jodi Hays, an artist who has done just that. 

In this episode, Jodi talks about deciding early on not to bend to the art world’s preference for artists located in major cities, and to build something sustainable on her own terms. This meant investing in Nashville as her home and part of her practice, taking the long view on relationship-building, and using follow-up, not just outreach, to open doors. She also gets into the financial realities of working outside the major markets, and what it looks like to finally have gallery representation she trusts.

About Jodi Hays: Jodi is a visual artist based in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work is held in public and private collections, and she is represented by David Lusk Gallery. 

Jodi Hays

with Constance McBride, figurative ceramic sculptor, curator, and co-founder of The Hook Experiment

Now based in Chester County, Pennsylvania, Constance is co-running The Hook Experiment, a nonprofit gallery and performance space in Oxford, PA, where artists can show large-scale installation and experimental work free from commercial pressure. The space hosts group shows and open calls, rents to outside organizations, and recently completed its first international juried exhibition. It's a 501(c)(3) now, with a board, an executive director, and a calendar that includes performance, sound events, and more.

In this conversation, Constance and Paddy talk about how the skills she built inside Netvvrk showed up when she wasn't even looking for them, how artist-run organizations can be structured to protect studio time, and what it looks like to build infrastructure for your own community when the existing options don't fit.

Constance McBride is a figurative ceramic sculptor and installation artist based in Chester County, Pennsylvania. She is a co-founder and board member of The Hook Experiment.

Find Constance's work at constancemcbride.com or follow her on Instagram at @constancemcbride_art.

Find The Hook Experiment at thehookexperiment.org or on Instagram at @hookexperiment.

Questions? Email [email protected].

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