Authentic Obsessions

Mentioned

Follow Paula’s Palette on Instagram and Facebook

Follow Paula’s hand painted wearables on Instagram

Paula’s website

Paula’s Etsy shop

The Arts Mill

North Shore Academy of the Arts

Frida Kahlo

Kate Scott

Takeaways

1. There’s an insecurity and vulnerability in giving your artwork to other people.
2. How we envision our art going out into the world doesn’t mean that’s what it’s going to do.
3. One of the dangers of social media is that your art can come out looking like everybody else’s.
4. It always feels better if you’re not forcing something.

Mentioned

Follow Melanie Chadwick on Instagram

Melanie’s website

Melanie’s workshops, postcard project and shop can be found on this website

Melanie’s YouTube channel

Melanie’s Food Illustration course, Illustrated Recipes: Making Delicious Art on Domestika

Creative Catchup YouTube

Creative Catchup Instagram

Takeaways

1. Letting go of how something should look diminishes my perfectionist tendencies
2. Having an anchor allows you to feel free to go and explore and engage your curiosities.   
3. The wrong way is not doing it at all.
4. My whole senses are awakened when I’m out in the wild. It makes me feel alive when I experience what’s going on around me and being in the moment.
5. It’s not always the end result it’s the process of making and creating.
6. My faith doesn’t restrict me, it helps take away that fear that I might have of exploring the unknown.
7. Success is finding contentment in the life that I lead and finding joy in the mundane things.

Mentioned

Follow Amy Maricle on Instagram

Join Amy’s Creative Self Care facebook group, Mindful Art

Check out Amy’s website, Mindful Art Studio

Follow Amy on Pinterest

Amy’s YouTube channel

Whiteness at Work with the Adaway group

SARK

Fogbow

Takeaways

1. Tuning in to the body is such a wonderful way of arriving in the moment and art is a tremendous opportunity to arrive in the moment using our senses.
2. The more you focus on the process, the more the product improves. And the more you get into the richness of your own work you judge yourself less and have more fun.
3. Allow yourself time to indulge your curiosities.
4. Pause and look deeply at nature as you’re walking.

Mentioned

Follow Jo York on Instagram

Find Jo York on Facebook

Jo York’s website

Lamicall Gooseneck Bed Phone Holder Mount

Barbara Hepworth

Paul Feiler

Artemisia Gentileschi

Brimham Rocks, North Yorkshire

Jennifer Pazienza’s Gotta Minute? videos

Takeaways

1. Acrylics are dead useful.
2. Working in a series help keeps the momentum going and gives yourself the time to delve in and get deep into it.
3. Just calling yourself an artist is quite a big deal.
4. “When I get really stuck I tidy up the studio and do loads of displacement activities.”
5. Don’t doubt yourself.
6. We need to allow people to grow up with a creative outlet and awareness of nature.

Follow Iris on Instagram

Iris’s YouTube channel - Iris Impressions Art

Iris’s website

Haribo sweets (the Deutsch site of course!)

Primrose Hill in Regent’s Park, London

Listen to Iris on the Get Messy Art podcast with Caylee Grey

Takeaways

1. If you’re really interested in something, it's worthy of your time.
2. “Making the art that I want to make, writing the things that I want to write, and sharing in my vlogs the things that I'm already doing is the most genuine way of growing my audience in a meaningful way.”
3. Make things imperfect on purpose. It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to exist.
4. “If I do things ‘authentically’ and the way I want to and when it's nice for me then I can do it fairly consistently.”

Takeaways

1. When it’s really overwhelming, go outside with the dogs.
2. Be more flexible with yourself.
3. “How you spend your days is how you spend your life.” Annie Dillard
4. You don’t have to fit nicely into a box in order to be successful.
5. Nature is essential for emotional health.

Mentioned

Follow Melissa on Instagram

Follow Melissa on Pinterest

Follow Melissa on Facebook

Melissa’s website

Melissa’s Blog

Sally Maxwell scratchboard artist

Takeaways

1. It's looking in and finding out, “what is your special thing?” That's going to be your key to starting the thing you want to do.

2. We all think other people are doing it better and have it sorted and then when you're sharing with these people in groups you find out you're all doing exactly the same. When you know that something like procrastination or perfection is a natural part of the process, you don't put much weight on it. You can recognize it and then it doesn't consume you.  

3. We don’t realize how important the little easy things that we do are, and how much they’re a part of us.

4.  “I’m not a big believer in busy.”

5. Success is when I'm relaxed and comfortable and confident in what I'm doing and that's only when I'm doing what comes from inside. When you look elsewhere that's when it goes wrong.

6. It helps to put words into those feelings that come and take you over, making them more manageable.

Mentioned

Follow Caroline on Instagram

Caroline’s website Stitched Pictures by Caroline

Follow Julie King on Instagram

Follow Jillian Lawrence, Modern Marketing on Instagram

Maud Lewis

Takeaways

1. Beauty matters.

2. Beauty is a whisper of our humanity.

3. If you’re going to use the wheel, break the rules.

4. Even extroverts need quiet spaces.

5. The reason art and beauty exist is to remind us that we matter. Feeling seen and heard shouldn't be based on a post code and it shouldn't be a luxury, it should be a birthright.

Mentioned

Follow Rachel on Instagram

Rachel’s website

Follow Rachel on Facebook

Follow Rachel on Twitter

Rachel talks about Hope in this short film Barnaby Festival

Kintsugi

Lucie Rie

The Great Pottery Throw Down

Edmund de Waal

Theaster Gates and a link to short films about his work

Whiterocks Beach, Northern Ireland

Takeaways

1. Creating fuels creating.

2. Be content with whatever that day holds.

3. “I’m not gonna let anything with self-talk get in the way.”

4. “Fight for joy in whatever that season holds. The joy that comes out of me comes from those hard seasons.”

Mentioned

Follow Sandi on Instagram

Sandi’s YouTube channel - Bits of an Artist’s Life

Sandi’s website

Mary Fedden

Lilias Trotter

Takeaways

Don’t worry about how it’s perceived but what it feels like.

Take the shoulds out of it.

Eventually you'll get the right outcome and it's not an outcome until it’s right.

This is totally about joy and freedom.

Mentioned

Follow Jo on Instagram

Follow Jo on Facebook

Jo Payne’s website

Jo Payne’s Etsy shop

Crow Point

David Hockney