Season 2 EP 5: Finding Joy in Creating with Richard Graves
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Perfectionist in Recovery
Finding Joy in Creating with Richard Graves
I had a great conversation with guest speaker and fellow artist-friend of mine, Richard Graves, from Abingdon Virginia about his creative practice, making room for joy in his creative practice, managing perfectionism, and his passion for youth engagement in the arts. This conversation was LOADED with goodness, so I saved some of the highlights for you below! Enjoy.
Connect with Richard on social media!
www.facebook.com/richardgravesart
www.instagram.com/serpounce
“I try to be really mindful of separating the art from the business side of it. I need to have time where I'm working on art just for art's sake and just for myself.”
-Richard Graves
Working as a full time artist, Richard describes his experience of developing a rhythm of working and how a necessary element of that rhythm is making space for him to make art for art’s sake - not with the intention of sharing it.
“I have a sketchbook where if I'm working in that sketchbook, unless something's just a complete home run, it stays in the sketchbook or it's not something that I'm going to sell, but it's something that I'm doing for myself and for my own creative practice.”
-Richard Graves
“I'm trying to remember that the validity of the art has nothing to do with how it's received or where it goes on a show or what type of feedback it gets.”
-Richard Graves
I really appreciated this reminder from Richard about the validity of art and its true value.
Speaking about Play in his art practice and his passion for youth engagement in the arts:
“There are times where I'm burnt out and I don't feel like doing anything and just making marks on paper and color on paper and mixing colors and playing. I think there's kind of that really great joy in that.”
-Richard Graves
“I love youth engagement with art. I love working with younger artists and kids and seeing how they approach it without thinking of all the tips and tools and all the things that you collect for your tool belt as an artist. It’s more forgetting about all of that and just having fun.”
-Richard Graves
“I have a four or five year old niece at the time, and she was showing some pictures to her grandfather, and I was in the room and they’re at that age where everything is silly, we call this silly and that's silly. And the grandfather looked at her picture and said, ‘Oh, I love this, but the sky is pink. That's so silly.’ And she got very, very serious and said, ‘No, Richard's an artist, and he said the sky could be whatever color I want it to be!’ That is one of my proudest moments, but it's also something that I want to remember myself.”
-Richard Graves
Speaking on the role art plays in his life:
“Art is how I digest feelings. That's how I feel most comfortable communicating with the world. It's where I feel the biggest, strongest connection with other people and with my community.”
-Richard Graves
“There's been plenty of times I've been painting something and I think about what's been going on in my life as I look at it, and I'm saying, ‘oh, this is very much that.’”
-Richard Graves
Speaking on how he fuels his creative practice:
“One big one, big activity that's been kind of a godsend for me, especially in the last five years, is yoga. I'm very much a go, go, go person and being able to kind of center myself and slow down like I see yoga as having a huge explicit connection with with the art of painting and drawing.”
-Richard Graves
“Taking time to appreciate and support other artists. I think being influenced by the community, and particularly the arts community, is very important to me. I try to make a point to go out and see other people's shows and to keep up with with artists that inspire me and the larger community. Being engaged in the arts in a broader sense helps encourage and focus me for when I get into the room alone to start the process of creating.”
-Richard Graves
Speaking on how he manages Perfectionism:
“I don't have those voices of being self-critical while I'm creating. I think once I'm in the flow. . . I'm feeling very present. I often get those voices before and after. It's before when I have to narrow down my decisions of what paint am I using, what colors, you know, the design, who's the intended audience - all those decisions pile up ahead of time. That's when I'm getting kind of the most self-critical, self-conscious, a little too self-aware in the bad way. Then it happens afterwards when it's like, ‘oh, will this sell?’ But the actual process of creating, for the most part, with a few exceptions, once I get going, I'm good to go. And it's kind of having to remind myself... I know how to do this. I've done this before. I might be taking a different approach or trying something new this time, but it's like if I sit down and start working, kind of clear those voices for a second, I can kind of work through it and find those periods of joy.”
-Richard Graves
Connect with Richard on social media! Check him out at www.instagram.com/serpounce or https://www.facebook.com/Richardgravesart
Ready to take the first step in your creative recovery?
If you enjoyed the episode, LEAVE A REVIEW!
My dream is to help more people connect with their creative identities and embrace themselves as a whole, messy human, and as it turns out, leaving a review on iTunes helps me to do just that!
So thank you in advance for leaving your review and helping me to connect more people with their inner artists!
Season 2 EP 4: 3 Steps to Reconnect with Your Creative Voice
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Perfectionist in Recovery
3 Steps to Reconnect with Your Creative Voice
Hello and Welcome back to the Perfectionist in Recovery Podcast! My name is Marcy Parks and I am a Perfectionist in Recovery.
For Today’s episode, I want to share with you 3 steps you can take to reconnect with your creative voice, but first, I want to take some time to thank you for being here, thank you for listening, and thank you for supporting this podcast! I get so much joy from sharing this podcast and creating a platform to support people in connecting to their creativity. That being said, I want to hear from you! This podcast is here to serve you, so I want to hear your feedback on how I can make this podcast better for you. Send me questions you want answered or topics you would like to hear discussed on the podcast! I have added a new feedback form on my website at www.marcyparksart.com/perfectionistinrecovery where you can go to submit feedback on the show, ask questions, and let me know if you want to be a guest speaker on the podcast. Like I said, your feedback makes this show more enjoyable for you to listen to, so go to www.marcyoarksart.com/perfectionistinrecovery and send me your feedback. That is also where you can find transcripts for every episode including links to websites for guest speakers and more.
And for those of you that already love the show, but want to continue to show your support, like, follow, or subscribe on whatever streaming platform you are using and leave a review! Reviews are one of the best ways you can support the growth of this podcast. You can go to www.marcyparksart.com/perfectionistinrecovery where you will find all the transcripts for each episode and leave a raving review of the show!
But once more, I just want to take a moment to again thank you so much for being here and for sharing your time with me today.
Now let’s get into it.
On today’s episode I want to share with you the 3 steps you can take to reconnect with your creative voice.
The reason I wanted to share this episode is because as an artist and recovering perfectionist on social media, there is a constant pressure to keep up with the fast pace of social media that has created such short attention spans. If we want our art to be seen, we have to be posting regularly. If we want to be posting regularly, we have to constantly be making art to share. But it is really easy to lose touch with ourselves and our own creative impulses when we are constantly making art with the sole intention of sharing and getting engagement.
And this doesn’t only apply to artists, or artists on social media. Anyone who may not identify as an artist, but wants to have a creative practice, may feel this pressure, too. Especially if you are someone that is somewhat active or present on social media. It is really easy to fall into the comparison trap when in the early stages of developing a creative practice and find yourself comparing your progress to someone else’s. Really, this can happen to anyone at any point in their creative practice.
But this is a topic that has been on my mind lately and that I have been struggling with myself and so I wanted to share a little bit about my own experience and some of the steps I have taken in order to reconnect with my own creative voice so that, hopefully, anyone else feeling this way can learn to identify their creative voice among the background chatter of social media and their own inner critic.
Recently, l have been struggling with the pressure to create and to share new work that was not driven by my own impulse to create new work. If you have been a long time listener of the podcast, you have heard me speak about finding and honoring your creative rhythm. When I think of my creative rhythm, I always think of a tea kettle. There is the rest and recovery period of my creative cycle where the kettle is filling up with water, then there is the inspiration period of my creative cycle where the tea kettle is heating up, and then there is the production period of my creative cycle where the tea kettle is whistling hot and ready to be emptied out. There is no real rhyme or reason to how long each period takes. Sometimes, it takes longer than others depending on what other outside demands there are on my attention.
My kettle has been in the heating up stage for a little while now. I have been feeling really inspired, but not quite ready to jump into the demands of the production period of actively creating work.
However, I have still felt an intense pressure to produce work. Not because I have felt especially inspired, but because when I spend any amount of time on social media, I am inundated with images and stories of people doing, producing, achieving, and accomplishing so much!
And this is why I say this can apply to anyone, not just artists, because this happens to everyone. You see someone sharing beach photos and suddenly you start thinking you need to book your next beach trip even though you hate sand, you see your friend sharing photos of a loaf of bread that looks so good you can almost taste it through the photo and now all of a sudden you start thinking you should be baking more even though you prefer cooking over baking, or you see someone else share their 6-pack abs they somehow managed to grow during the pandemic and now you feel like you need to renew your gym membership that you let lapse because you prefer to exercise outside or in your home.
Comparison is not exclusive to artists, it happens to everyone, but the voice of comparison is not your voice. The voice pressuring you to create and share your process is not the same voice that inspires your creation.
So how do we decipher which impulses are truly our own and which impulses are driven by comparison, self-criticism, and our aspiration to do everything “right”? How do we come back to our voice?
Three Steps to Reconnect to Your Creative Voice
Step One: Slow it Down
Part of what makes the background chatter in your mind so overwhelming is because it is all happening so fast. Life happens fast and it barely slowed down even during the peak moments of the pandemic. Not to mention, we have all been living in a hyper-vigilant state trying to survive the pandemic. Now, the US is starting to reopen again and the pace of life is starting to pick back up.
Step one is to slow down where you can.
This may look like:
Being intentional about meal times - don’t work through your lunch hour, sit down for breakfast.
Leaving a weeknight or weekend day free on your calendar.
Plan a long evening bath before bedtime.
Practice pranayama or breathing exercises.
Schedule open-ended alone time - time, even if it is only 15 minutes, out of your week where you have literally nothing planned and anything can happen.
The point is to pack moments of pause into your day
Step Two: Get Quiet
When my head feels too full of chatter, I get deliberate about getting quiet. For me, this looks like media breaks and lots of media-free walks.
Media breaks are hard, but so fruitful. If you want to do a media break intensive, this is when you plan a week where the following is off limits:
No music
No news
No books
No podcasts
No social media
Basically, during a media break, you remove all the external voices from your headspace for any given amount of time, but a week will have you feeling like a new person. Now, this of course is for someone who wants to do a super strict media break intensive, but that's not always possible for everyone. I know that is not always possible for a lot of people, like teachers or students who have required reading as part of their homework or careers, so you can tailor it to fit your needs. Maybe shorten it to a weekend over the summer, maybe only cut out social media and podcasts - the point is to plan for it and try it out. Play around with the concept and how you think it might benefit you the most.
Media-free walks are like the point of entry into media breaks. Media-free walks just means going for a walk without listening to anything or engaging with any media. I will usually keep my phone with me for time, but to keep the temptation of looking at my phone at bay, I will set a timer to go off that lets me know when it is time to go home.
Step Three: Start Listening
Y’all know what I am going to say here and if you don’t, you haven’t been listening to the podcast long enough.
JOURNALING!
Journal, journal, journal.
Get some paper and start writing. Open a new document on your computer and start typing. Whatever your preferred method - although with a computer the potential for distraction increases significantly.
The point is to get to writing. Write down whatever is on your mind, even if you feel like it doesn’t matter. A friend of mine describes this process as a brain dump - just offloading whatever is on your mind for the sake of making room.
How to do it:
Make a commitment to yourself - establish a set number days of the week/which days of the week you will journal
Set a deadline - Your journaling will be done by fill-in-the-blank-time of day
Give yourself boundaries - 3 pages minimum, or 15 minutes total time.
What happens as we journal consistently is that we start paying attention. When we journal and journal daily, we start to notice the recurring thoughts, common themes among passages, the pace of our writing, the curve and shape of our letters - that’s where you find your voice.
And for anyone who wants to start a creative practice, but isn’t sure how or where to start, these three steps are the foundation. By following these three steps, you can connect with the other ways in which your creativity wants to be expressed. For established creatives with longstanding creative practices, this is the way to keep your practice authentic and true to you - no matter what starts trending.
Ready to take the first step in your creative recovery?
If you enjoyed the episode, LEAVE A REVIEW!
My dream is to help more people connect with their creative identities and embrace themselves as a whole, messy human, and as it turns out, leaving a review on iTunes helps me to do just that!
So thank you in advance for leaving your review and helping me to connect more people with their inner artists!
Season 2 EP 2: Finding Your Voice with Jason Flack
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Perfectionist in Recovery
On today’s episode of the Perfectionist in Recovery Podcast, I am joined by Johnson City, Tennessee based artist and artist advocate, Jason Flack. You can follow Jason on instagram at www.instagram.com/artbyjasonflack
In this episode we talked about the role art plays in helping people find their voice and connect with their identity. Here are some of the highlights from our discussion!
“I’ve always been a creator, but started taking it seriously after the death of my twin sister and needing an outlet.”
-Jason Flack
Jason shared about how his twin sister’s unexpected passing influenced him early in his life and drove him to painting as a way of processing experiences and healing.
“I had an identity crisis through life, and death.”
-Jason Flack
Jason speaks about how so much of his identity was wrapped up in his twin sister. “I was so shy, she spoke for me. In school, my sister’s favorite color was purple. Guess what my favorite color was - it was purple.” But after her passing, art has become a vehicle for him to express himself.
“The way I can speak louder is through something bright on my canvas.”
-Jason Flack
“Now, time is incredibly important. Even when I am wasting time, I am thinking about art. Now it is my identity without my sister. Art is my twin.”
-Jason Flack
After Jessica’s, Jason’s twin sister, unexpected passing, Jason shares how he perceives time and the role art has since come to play in his life.
“People look at me like I am not from here because Appalachia has gotten away from this creative aspect, but every one of us has someone in our bloodline way back, or even recently, who made their own shoes, clothes, and art as well.”
-Jason Flack
Jason speaks to his experience as being a child of both black and white parents growing up and being an artist in Appalachia.
“It’s always ‘we’ before ‘me’.”
-Jason Flack
Jason speaks about his work as an advocate for artists in Appalachia and his intention to collaborate with and bring artists together to reach out to the community and bring attention to Appalachian art and artists.
Ready to take the first step in your creative recovery?
If you enjoyed the episode, LEAVE A REVIEW!
My dream is to help more people connect with their creative identities and embrace themselves as a whole, messy human, and as it turns out, leaving a review on iTunes helps me to do just that!
So thank you in advance for leaving your review and helping me to connect more people with their inner artists!
Season 2 EP 1: Welcome Back!
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Perfectionist in Recovery
Welcome Back!
Welcome Back!
Hello and Welcome to the Perfectionist in Recovery Podcast. My name is Marcy Parks and I am a Perfectionist in Recovery.
Welcome back to the podcast! It has been a long, but needed break since our last season, but I am excited and ready to be back sharing with you here in this space. This season I am planning to have more guest speakers on the podcast sharing about their creative practices and the role that their creative practice plays in their life and what that looks like. Some of those speakers will be artists making a living off of their artwork, some of those speakers will be professionals in the corporate world whose creative practice is their refuge, but in every conversation I hope you are able to find and connect with a story that sounds familiar to your own.
That being said, I will still be sharing meditations and my own musings on creativity in between. I am still going to be hounding you about starting a journaling practice if you haven’t already, but not judging you if you’ve fallen off the wagon or don’t have the energy to start one either. I hope it goes without saying, but in case it doesn’t, I will say it anyway, I want this space to be a resource of comfort, inspiration, and connection. I never want anyone listening to this podcast to feel guilt or shame for not having the time, energy, or resources to commit to their creative practice. There are seasons for everything and it is completely normal to move into a season where creative motivation and inspiration runs dry.
Speaking of seasons, I thought I would take a moment to catch up on what has been going on behind the scenes during this break. We all know that 2020 was one, long, challenging season for everyone on every level. Following the conclusion of the first season of this podcast last year, I hit a pretty hard wall of burnout and fatigue that led to me taking a long break to try and rest, but my inner perfectionist has a really strong, negative reaction to rest that can make it hard to actually do so. I recently completed a new collection of work titled “Winter” speaking specifically to this tension - the tension of being in a season that calls for rest, the frustrated reluctance of actually wanting to rest, and the transformation that takes place when we are actually deliberate about rest. The collection was inspired by the literal season of winter, but is more about the winter seasons of life.
Winter is a season that forces us to rest. We lose daylight, it gets colder outside, and rest becomes an essential part of our survival of the season. All non-essential functions and tasks are reduced in order to better our chances of surviving the season. My collection was speaking to this feeling - the feeling when you are in a season of life that is demanding you take rest. Whether it is a pandemic causing a global shut down, or your body shutting down on you, there is a clear message that it is time for you to stop doing and slow down, whether you like it or not.
I am been feeling this so much within myself in the last few months - an intense push to slow down, to stop, and to find joy where I can, so that is where my focus has shifted recently. Right now I am just trying to be deliberate in what I give my energy and attention to and taking care to spend time with my family. Searsha, my daughter, will be four this year and time with her right now is my priority. I gain so much inspiration from watching her grow more and more independent and interacting with her world. Just this morning I was watching her coloring on her own chalkboard and it was so much fun to watch the ways in which she would be coloring wildly one minute and then very deliberate and very intentional in the marks she was making the next. That same freedom and play that she brings to everything she creates is exactly what I hope to one day find and translate through my own work.
In the meantime, I am back to doing the practices that I know fuel and support my creative practice. I am journaling, meditating, practicing yoga, and making time to connect with the people that inspire me the most. Right now I am binging every episode of The Creative Pep Talk podcast with Andy J. Pizza. It is an incredible resource and I love it SO MUCH! Definitely check that out. But other than that, I am back to sharing with you here every week! I am glad to be back in the conversation around creativity and finding inspiration in your daily life. Tune in next week to hear from one of my most favorite makers from my area, Jason Flack! You can find him on instagram at www.instagram.com/artbyjasonflack . Jay is such a fun person to talk to, he is so passionate about art and bringing the community together through art and I love that about him, but he is also just a really amazing human being and I was so inspired by his passion and enthusiasm! Tune back in next week on Friday at 12 PM to hear from him.
Journaling Prompt:
For now, maybe just take some time today for yourself to just write down anything and everything that is on your mind and treat it like you are wiping the slate clean, turning a new page, starting fresh. Just get it all out of your head and on to paper so you can just let it all go.
Until next time.
Ready to take the first step in your creative recovery?
If you enjoyed the episode, LEAVE A REVIEW!
My dream is to help more people connect with their creative identities and embrace themselves as a whole, messy human, and as it turns out, leaving a review on iTunes helps me to do just that!
So thank you in advance for leaving your review and helping me to connect more people with their inner artists!