Category Archives: reflection

Oprah’s Advice to Me On Becoming An Artist

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Oprah Winfrey

What Oprah told me to do would be forever burned in my mind, and melded on my heart.

JUST A SMALL TOWN GIRL

I can hear that Journey song ringing in my mind now. At the age of 14, I already felt a hole in my heart. Very motivated to escape the boring little town I was drowning in, I searched and scratched for whatever opportunity I’d come across. Or whatever I could make. I didn’t like where I lived, didn’t know about the opportunities all around me. I hated being a kid. Always hated it. Couldn’t wait till I could drive a car away from this small country apartment and reach the skylines of some epic major city.

I’d begun to pursue my art in any way I could. My parent’s didn’t tell me to do the things that I did. I just did them. They were encouraging and supportive, even going as far as finding magazines and books on the subject. My grandmother would even compile television recordings of Bob Ross episodes for me to watch when I came to visit. But I was driven and determined, even if no one was there to support me.

One of my acts of pursuit was in the form of a letter. I had no idea whether it’d get to her, or whether I’d even manage to get a reply. A busy woman and a famous one.

What would she care about what I search for?

FOLLOW YOUR HEART

But I’d written Oprah Winfrey about my art, sending her a packet of samples from my various work. I’d already been taking the advice of Walt Disney Animation studios, who’d written me back 7 years earlier, sending me a packet of all the necessary steps I should take from high school and on. So I had already begun building a portfolio of sorts. Comic sketches, paintings, elaborate character designs and fan art. I’d asked Oprah if she would look at them and tell me what she thought. I was a fan of her, what she was about and knew that she was a powerful woman. I just wanted her advice. Maybe even a little leads.

When you’re a kid, you really have no tact or fear. I simply asked her if she’d help me.

Within a few weeks, I’d found a letter written out to me from Harpo studios, sitting in the mailbox. My heart raced as I ripped apart the envelope and pulled out the thick, folded paper. She really wrote back. Truly wrote back!

Her letter was of appreciation and encouragement. Oprah thought my work was great for my age, and shared with me her personal story as a child, of her hopes and dreams and of the struggles she experienced.

Oprah told me to follow my dreams fiercely, to follow my heart and I could make it happen. I had talent and the passion. It was a matter of execution now. Follow your dreams, and use the gifts God gave you.

I held onto that letter with an iron grip in the following years. Every once in a while, I’d take it out of my keepsake box and read it.

Who has encouraged you to pursue your dreams? 

Awaiting Inspiration

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For me, I am normally inspired regularly and daily. I think that the practice of drawing daily from a young age (and consistently through adulthood) was really the key that helped train my mind to be open to ideas and pictures. I also really find myself inventive on other levels. In terms of projects, business or work, I tend to be really creative. I even keep a list of business/product ideas that come to mind, as they often do. JUST IN CASE I might end up using them.

But SOMETIMES, you find yourself with a creative block. It’s either stress from having to pay the bills, relationship issues or maybe you just need a break!

I find that if I take a step back for a day or even a week, it really helps me refocus and be excited to work again. And the painting just flows.

What works for you when you have a creative mental block?

What do you use to ignite it for the day?

Surviving Analog in a Digital World

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As many of you artists who are adopting a web based initiative will find, you will become exhausted by the constant hustle and flow of social media work. The obsession for information and constant communication can be overwhelming. If you are easily swayed by new things or tend to get lost in chat, you have the potential to burn out and disconnect from reality too. Too much time in front of a digital world can be disorienting for our sensitive minds.

Artists like myself never truly stop using the tools to communicate and promote, but there comes moments of burnout, blackout periods in which I recognize that and refuse to use anything. I even forget where my phone is. Continue reading →

Creative Mind 101: Winning Ideas

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Ideas come and go. We contemplate them or dream about them for weeks or even years.

Some of us act upon them.

They seem daunting or unconcieveable possibilities canvassing the walls of our consciousness as we go on to our day to day living. We are told that “anything is possible”, to take risks while we are grasping onto realities. We have bills to pay, family to take care of or predictable goals to attain.

How do you determine what are winning ideas, worth the work and the risk taking? Ideas that can alter the world around you, better your life or fulfill your dreams?

IDEAS COME TO LIFE WHEN:

- We have a passion for this idea.

- When the idea is so crazy it’s worth the risks.

- We have a “Kaleidoscope vision”. (more about this in my next post) To see in multiple directions, and see the multiple outcomes.

- We stop worrying about outcomes.

HOW TO CULTIVATE STRONG VISION FOR YOUR IDEA Continue reading →

Could Internet cause a shift in artistic development?

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As you may know or may not know, the majority of artists (like me) have been raised and molded within an insular experience that caused us to create art. The small social circles and their typical standards have been the pressure cooker for the troubled, introverted creatives that didn’t have the simliar positive social experiences as other normal children.

These experiences forced us into creation mode. Whether out of expression of feelings we couldn’t share or as a safe haven from the stress of our surroundings, these factors played a huge role in our artistic development and sense of purpous in what we create.

The internet now comes into play. We are no longer an island from the rest of the world, watching and reading about it through television and books. We are able to connect with other social groups, finding like minded people of our age and interests. We open up the doors to developing more a healthy social personality that we may not have had 10 or 20 years ago! Children have more access to the world wide web through school computers and affordable, accessable mobile phones. The integration of the web in everything we do is bringing the world closer to children no matter their station or home situation.

We tear down the very barriers that form us, or don’t we? Continue reading →