In this episode, I had the absolute pleasure of speaking with Gracie Klumpp, an autistic author and illustrator who tells stories with words and pictures. What struck me most about our conversation was how much we had in common - both being late-diagnosed AuDHD artists who've had to navigate the complex journey of unmasking whilst building creative careers. Gracie shared her fascinating path from film student to animator to illustrator, and how she's now circling back to narrative storytelling through graphic novels and comics. Her approach to letting each story dictate its own medium resonated deeply with how I work with concepts and ideas in my own practice.

The heart of our conversation centred around the unique challenges of being neurodivergent creatives in a world that wasn't designed for us. Gracie spoke beautifully about the process of archaeological self-discovery - peeling back layers of masking to find who you really are beneath all the "shoulds" and expectations. We discussed how art can be both a tool for processing our experiences and a way to help others feel less alone, particularly when we're brave enough to explore the darker, more difficult aspects of the human experience alongside hope and transformation.

I was so inspired by my conversation with Gracie and I know you will be too.

✍ Read the full show notes here: https://zuzushausofcats.com/journal/ep18-gracie-klumpp

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🎶 Music by the incredible Caspar Riis: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://soundcloud.com/caspar-riis⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Used with permission.

In this episode, I sit down with Gabriella Buckingham, a British contemporary painter known for her experimental still life and intuitive landscape work. Gabriella's journey from graphic design student to successful fine artist is anything but conventional - after initially studying graphic design, she made an emotional plea to switch to illustration, launched a greeting card business that swiftly turned into what felt like a “sweatshop operation”, and eventually transitioned to fine art via a supermarket job during COVID!

What makes Gabriella truly fascinating is her multifaceted practice that seamlessly weaves together art-making, teaching, and spiritual exploration. She runs online painting courses where she literally “speaks her brain” while demonstrating techniques, and writes weekly esoteric mailings covering astrology, tarot, and energy work. Gabriella's approach to both art and life is refreshingly intuitive.

Perhaps most moving is Gabriella's openness about her spiritual connection to her work, including a profound experience with her guardian angel that shaped her business name: From a Place of Wonder.

I loved this conversation and I’m sure you will too!

✍ Read the full show notes here: https://zuzushausofcats.com/journal/ep17-gabriella-buckingham

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🎶 Music by the incredible Caspar Riis: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://soundcloud.com/caspar-riis⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Used with permission.

In this episode, Victoria J. Fry opens up about her journey from art school graduate to successful multi-passionate creative entrepreneur. Based in New York City, Victoria is not only a talented landscape painter but also the founder of Visionary Art Collective, New Visionary Magazine, and Warnes Contemporary Gallery. She shares candidly about the post-graduation depression that many artists experience when the supportive bubble of art school suddenly disappears, and how it took her nearly a decade to find her artistic confidence again.

Victoria's landscapes are infused with a profound sense of longing and nostalgia, rooted in her childhood experience of leaving the English countryside at age seven. Her dreamlike paintings, dominated by blues and greens, capture what she describes as an eternal yearning for something just out of reach - a feeling that resonates with the Welsh concept of "Hiraeth," a homesickness for a place that may not even exist. Through her intuitive painting process, she transforms these deep emotional experiences into work that speaks to universal feelings of displacement and the search for home, both literal and metaphorical.

Our conversation also explores the practical realities of balancing multiple creative pursuits with running a business. Victoria shares her strategies for maintaining both her studio practice and her various enterprises, including setting firm boundaries around weekends and evening hours, embracing the cyclical nature of creativity, and allowing herself the freedom to experiment across different mediums. Her advice for aspiring full-time artists is refreshingly practical: develop multiple income streams, transition gradually from full-time employment, and most importantly, allow the journey to unfold organically rather than forcing overnight transformation.

✍ Read the full show notes here: https://zuzushausofcats.com/journal/ep16-victoria-j-fry

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🎶 Music by the incredible Caspar Riis: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://soundcloud.com/caspar-riis⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Used with permission.

I'm absolutely delighted to share my conversation with Helen C. Stark, the brilliant artist behind The Time Foragers Club on Substack. Helen's journey from postnatal depression to successful artist is both inspiring and deeply moving - she discovered her love of creating again through a local art group that literally kept her alive during her darkest moments. From there, she built an illustration career that included creating the first Edinburgh colouring book, before eventually moving to Yorkshire where she stripped everything back to focus on what truly mattered to her: colour, joy, and the practice of noticing beauty in everyday life.

What I find most captivating about Helen's work is how she's created this entire world around the concept of ‘time foraging’ - gathering moments of beauty and meaning from both the past and present. Her weekly visual journals are like love letters to the ordinary magic that surrounds us, from blackberry picking rituals inspired by her childhood in France to creating watercolours from earth pigments collected on beaches where the Brontës once walked. Her recent Ode to Charlotte collection, which sold out incredibly quickly, perfectly demonstrates how she weaves together historical inspiration, personal ritual, and artistic practice into something truly special.

Helen's approach to creativity feels revolutionary in its simplicity - she's chosen to look for joy as a deliberate act of resistance against the darkness in the world. Through The Time Foragers Club, she's building a community of people who want to carve out time for creativity and noticing. Her story reminds us that being an artist is a lifelong practice of curiosity, play, and finding beauty in the most unexpected places.

✍ Read the full show notes here: https://zuzushausofcats.com/journal/ep15-helen-c-stark

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🎶 Music by the incredible Caspar Riis: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://soundcloud.com/caspar-riis⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Used with permission.

In one of my favourite episodes of the pod to date, I sit down with Copenhagen drag legend Annie Rection for a conversation that had me in stitches from start to finish. Annie is a comedy drag queen known for her sharp wit, high-energy performances, and incredible hosting skills. In 2025, she even toured Europe opening for Bob the Drag Queen after impressing him with an impromptu comedy set!

We dive deep into the art of drag comedy, exploring how Annie balances multiple creative disciplines - from makeup artistry to joke writing to lip-syncing. She shares brilliant insights about her creative process, including how she approaches structuring a show, and how she manages to translates her material between Danish and English.

Our conversation touches on some heavier topics too - the responsibility of being many people's first introduction to drag, the reality of running a creative business, and the recent protests against drag performances in Denmark. Annie's perspective on art as activism and the inherent political nature of drag is both moving and inspiring.

What struck me most about Annie is her incredible warmth and vulnerability. She's the perfect gentle entry point for drag newcomers whilst still being razor-sharp in her comedy. Her advice for aspiring creatives is honest and practical - it's hard work, you'll make sacrifices, but if it's truly important to you, it will make you happier than you can imagine.

If you've never been to a drag show, Annie's infectious enthusiasm will have you booking tickets immediately. And if you're a fellow creative navigating the challenges of turning your art into your livelihood, you'll find wisdom and solidarity in abundance.

✍ Read the full show notes here: https://zuzushausofcats.com/journal/ep14-annie-rection

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🎶 Music by the incredible Caspar Riis: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://soundcloud.com/caspar-riis⁠⁠⁠⁠. Used with permission.

In this episode, I sit down with Swedish watercolour artist, educator, and creative business coach Louise Stigell for an honest conversation about building a sustainable creative practice on your own terms.

Louise's journey is one of transformation and intentional choice-making. After burning out from her career as a freelance writer and web designer in 2020, she rediscovered art as therapy and never looked back. What started as painting birds for healing became a thriving multi-faceted creative business that includes original artwork, YouTube content creation, online courses, and voice coaching for fellow creatives.

Louise doesn't mince words about what she calls the "pornification of art" on social media platforms. We dive deep into why Instagram's highlight reel culture creates unrealistic expectations and how she's built her business primarily through YouTube and email marketing instead.

From her game design background, Louise brings a fascinating perspective on gradually "levelling up" your comfort zone. We explore how she overcame social anxiety to start a YouTube channel and how that confidence translates across all areas of her creative practice.

Finally, Louise offers invaluable advice about the tension between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation when you turn your art into your livelihood. She's refreshingly honest about the challenges of maintaining your love for your craft when it becomes your income source.

✍ Read the full show notes here: https://zuzushausofcats.com/journal/ep13-louise-stigell

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🎶 Music by the incredible Caspar Riis: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://soundcloud.com/caspar-riis⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Used with permission.

In this delightful episode, the wonderful Orla Stevens takes us on a journey through the Scottish landscapes that have shaped her artistic vision - from the mists of the Trossachs to the wild beauty of Orkney. We delve into how she transforms the often grey and green Scottish countryside into explosively colourful works that capture not just what she sees, but how these places make her feel.

Orla also shares her unique practice of incorporating sound into her visual work, drawing what she hears in the landscape and translating music into colour palettes.

We chat about the reality of being a full-time artist, and how you're really juggling two full-time jobs. One of my favourite insights from our conversation is Orla's approach to business and art as mutually supportive rather than competing forces. Her teaching and community-building work creates space for her personal painting practice, showing how both sides of an art business can feed each other.

✍ Read the full show notes here: https://zuzushausofcats.com/journal/ep12-orla-stevens

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🎶 Music by the incredible Caspar Riis: ⁠⁠⁠https://soundcloud.com/caspar-riis⁠⁠⁠. Used with permission.

In this episode, I sit down with the incredible Kyla Yager, a Toronto-based artist who has turned her ADHD into her creative superpower.

Kyla creates what she calls "intuitive ADHD art" - maximalist, pattern-rich paintings that capture the energy and emotion of the moment. Her work is a celebration of neurodivergent experience, transforming the hyperactivity of her mind into stunning visual expressions that invite others to unmask and connect with their own authentic selves.

Kyla shares how her artistic evolution mirrors her journey of unmasking her neurodivergence - from hyperrealistic portraits in her youth to the explosive, pattern-filled canvases she creates today. One of the most fascinating aspects of Kyla's practice is her love of live painting and speed competitions. She describes the rush of creating in front of audiences, how she channels the energy of a room into her work, and why performing whilst painting makes her feel most alive.

We explore Kyla's belief that art speaks louder than words and how she uses her practice as both personal therapy and a tool for connecting with others. Her work creates safe spaces for people to explore their own emotions and experiences of otherness.

✍ Read the full show notes here: https://zuzushausofcats.com/journal/ep11-kyla-yager

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🎶 Music by the incredible Caspar Riis: ⁠⁠⁠https://soundcloud.com/caspar-riis⁠⁠⁠. Used with permission.

In this episode, I sit down with the wonderful Dave Conrey - artist, graphic designer, and zine-maker extraordinaire - for a conversation that had me itching to get back to my studio before we'd even finished recording.

Dave and I originally connected way back in 2013 (which is basically a century in internet years), and it was such a joy to reconnect and dive deep into his creative practice. What I love about Dave is not only how fearless he is when it comes to his creative output, but how excited he gets about his work too. He was so inspiring to talk to!

If you're someone who gets excited about DIY/punk culture, is looking for a way to bring more tangible, touchable art into your life, or has ever wanted to make a zine but didn't know where to start, this episode is absolutely for you. Dave's enthusiasm for experimentation and his "what would happen if..." approach to making art is genuinely infectious.

✍ Read the full show notes here: https://zuzushausofcats.com/journal/ep10-dave-conrey

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🎶 Music by the incredible Caspar Riis: ⁠⁠https://soundcloud.com/caspar-riis⁠⁠. Used with permission.

This week I'm absolutely delighted to share my conversation with Tara Leaver, an artist and educator whose journey back to creativity after depression is both inspiring and deeply relatable.

Tara and I first connected back in 2016, and what I've always loved about her approach is how she teaches the often-overlooked elements surrounding art-making - the mindset work, the process development, and crucially, how to find your own artistic voice rather than simply copying your teachers.

In this episode, we dive deep into Tara's fascinating dual practice of making sea-inspired paintings in Cornwall whilst simultaneously supporting other creatives through courses and mentorship. She's refreshingly honest about the challenges of context switching between these two sides of her work.

What really captivates me is how Tara translates her sensory experiences of swimming in the cold Cornish sea into her paintings. Her process is a beautiful marriage of visual reference and sensory memory. We also unpack her concept of the "Happy Artist" - which isn't about perpetual joy, but rather about being an artist within the full context of human life.

As Tara puts it, we're not creating in bubbles; we're artists with lives that happen outside the studio, and acknowledging that context is crucial for sustainable creative practice.

✍ Read the full show notes here: https://zuzushausofcats.com/journal/ep9-tara-leaver

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🎶 Music by the incredible Caspar Riis: ⁠https://soundcloud.com/caspar-riis⁠. Used with permission.