I cared a lot more about going viral when I was in my 20s. I wanted to post that perfect photo, the perfect poem, the perfect Tweet. Even here on WordPress I was so invested in trying to get shared on Freshly Pressed that I had multiple blogs and would post to each of them every single day. Honestly, I don’t know how I did it. These days I can hardly post two blogs a month.
When I got into my 30s, life became less about “being a famous author” and more about being a decent human being. An authentic, decent human being. I think raising a daughter as strong-willed and stubborn as I am has knocked me down a few pegs. Motherhood has taught me that there are more important things than making it big.
My solo show, which I’ve been calling “Hidden Feelings” has officially been hung at Central Bank of Boone County in Columbia, Missouri USA. If you live around the area, or happen to be passing through, I’d love it if you stopped by to check it out.
For those of you who are not in the area, and for those of you who would like a deeper understanding of the works hanging on the wall, I’ve put together this list of each piece and what inspired its creation.
This is PART TWO of that list. I highly encourage you to check out PART ONE so that you can learn more about the exhibit and its meaning, as well as the first ten pieces you will see as you walk through the show.
There was a quote I heard several years ago on a podcast. I no longer remember the podcast or the host name/interviewee name (nor can I find it online—sorry) but the quote was “Paint what makes your heart hurt.”
Immediately after hearing the phrase I went to Pinterest to make a board of things that make my heart hurt. Rainy days, clothes on a windy line, quiet candlelight, crunchy autumn leaves…
But I realize today that those moments of heart-hurting are fleeting. I’m like a helium balloon, floating from one moment to the next, never able to hold onto certain emotions for long. I need something to anchor me down to that feeling, keep me immersed in the water for a bit, so to speak.
I have been in full experiment mode lately. What this means is I have been trying a ton of new things, filling sketchbooks with “let me see what this does” adventures, and scribbling without an end game. It sounds fun, but this isn’t always welcomed by my conscious thoughts. Mostly because when I’m experimenting my work is all over the place, and I start asking myself a ton of questions like…
What kind of artist am I?
Is this the kind of artist I want to be?
Would this even hang in a gallery?
Is my style shifting?
Do I even have a style?
Can I call myself a professional? Or am I just a hobbyist splashing around? A hobbyist who needs to get a real job..
The year started quietly for me, like the morning after a good snowfall. Muffled. Dormant. I was a hibernating bear.
Needless to say it took a few days to get back into the groove of creating. My goal was simple for the month: form a gouache habit so that I could start—and successfully complete—a 100 days project.
That project starts January 30th.
But the new year, as I’ve said before, isn’t a cure-all. Looking behind me, beyond that dividing line between 2022 and 2023, my art had been lacking in something, and still was. I felt free in scribbling, as usual, but there was just something…hollow about it all. Maybe I’d just fallen into a routine of “sameness” and my work had become less about expression and more about muscle memory.
However, after the process of forming this daily gouache habit began, I came to my first conclusion: my world didn’t have enough color.
In the past I’ve always kept my tones a bit desaturated so that they would appear more natural, organic, and sophisticated. Which is interesting to me because if I were to describe my personality it would be the exact opposite. Loud, vibrant, and playful. A bit much at times.
But just working with vibrant colors wasn’t enough. While my studies gave me a buzzy feeling, my larger works were still lacking in something, despite their newfound vibrancy. After a week or so of discovering new artists, creating vision boards, and self-exploration I came to my second conclusion: the loud colors were coming across, but the playful aspect was not.
So I turned a geometrical “almost perfect” painting into a wild scribble of personal reflection, inspire by the feeling I’d gotten after seeing the crescent moon at the blue hour of a recent morning. I called the initial, geometrical version “dishonest” on Twitter, and when asked why I thought it was dishonest, I responded:
…art is play, scribbly, and a dance. I shouldn’t edit over the dance.
In other words, painting the scribble and transforming it into this geometrical, neat and orderly piece was like telling a great lie. And not only was I lying to my audience, but I was lying to myself.
BeforeAfter
I am not clean, orderly, or neat. I am a big scribbly mess of energy and I tend to run eople away before I can make friends with them because I’m just a bit….much. When my art is also a bit…much…my covering it up is almost like trying to hide my identity.
Intuitive art is not about hiding your identity.
Art, in general, is not about hiding your identity.
So I went back to the very root of why I create art in the first place: it’s fun. I like smearing paint on a canvas while dancing to Aurora and Harry Styles, so that was a good start. Art went back to being more about the process and less about the final result.
But it’s not always rainbows and butterflies and play. While January has apparently been a good month so far, by the looks of my scribbles, my work is not always fueled by joy and playfulness. Sometimes I’m in a shit mood and can only think about mass shootings and the dying planet. In the past I’ve often kept those negatively-fueled pieces to myself. But that, again, is another lie. Life is up and down and turned around and upside down and nonsense. So keep an eye out for the grumpy art too.
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My newest scribbles are making their way onto my shop as they’re finished. Click here if you’d like to take a look. If you have any questions you can email me lina@linaforrester.com
Until next time, may your scribbles be scribbly and your identity be un-masked.
If you’re like me, or literally anyone else on the planet, you’ve probably made a New Year’s Resolution at some point in your life. But I’m here to tell you that the generic “I’m gonna lose some weight” resolution is no more than a recipe for a binge-eating cake session in less than a week.
Thing is, the person you were on December 31st is the exact same person who wakes up in your bed on January 1st. We have to stop kidding ourselves into believing that we are brand-new (insert your pronouns here). Because we aren’t. The diet may have started, but the person you are still loves cake, and you’ve already been invited to two birthday parties in January.
So what are you to do? Just give up and eat the cake?
I mean, if it were me, I’d eat the cake.
But if losing weight were a really important goal for me, for health reasons and for the sheer fact that I no longer have any pants that fit me, I would focus less on the generic “lose weight, diet, exercise” mentality and focus more on forming a habit that will lead up to my goal. Like, maybe I could form a habit of doing 20 minutes of yoga each morning, or maybe I could form a habit of logging into my fitness pal every day after lunch. The goal then becomes less about losing weight, and more about establishing the routine that will eventually lead up to the weight loss.
Forming habits is not easy, and you’re going to have a few days in January where you either forget or say “today’s not the day” but once that habit is established you won’t be able to do anything else at 10am besides roll out the yoga mat. In fact, your day will be weird without that action, and you might even find yourself doing it later in the day so you can achieve some normalcy.
So, stop giving yourself these generic New Year’s Resolutions. Instead decide what it is you are trying to improve upon, and then think of the habits you can form in order to achieve this goal.
But Lina, you say, isn’t deciding to form a habit kind of like a resolution? Sort of! But it’s less “I will” or “I will not” and more “these are the habits I’d like to establish in the coming months.”
Instead of “I will do better in school,” form a habit of studying for an hour each day at 5pm.
Instead of “I will be more optimistic,” create a habit of writing in a gratitude journal every night before bed.”
Instead of “I will stop smoking,” form a habit of repeating a mantra each time the craving kicks in, or form a habit of going to a therapist each week to learn some great methods to fight the urge.
Having some trouble forming that habit? Try a habit tracker. You can find them in planners, journals, and there are dozens of phone apps with habit trackers as well. Make it fun. Treat yourself when you get to 10 days, 50 days, 100 days, etc.
One final bit of advice…avoid trying to change something that relies on external forces. For instance, “getting more followers” or “making more sales.” Goals like these are a slippery slope that will most likely leave you feeling resentful. You can definitely form few habits that may lead to more followers/sales/etc., but these habits are not a sure thing and on the off chance that you just so happen to make these goals at the beginning of a year like 2020, well that just uproots the whole plan.
Your goals should be something that you yourself can change, without relying on outside sources or the public or your audience. Goals like these, achieved by establishing a daily habit, are going to be the most successful, and leaving you feeling the most fulfilled.
Until next time, may your New Year be exciting and full of endless possibilities.
The Lina of the past wrote in the beginning of her 2022 Passion Planner that she wanted to “establish herself as an intuitive artist” by May. She also wrote that she wanted to finally start showing in Columbia, show in St. Louis, have a large-scale series, and to move to a new house with a studio space (with lots of natural lighting). While not all of those things happened this year, I can say, as Present Lina, that I had a pretty decent 2022.
But it wasn’t without its mishaps, trials and failures, and good old fashioned life. There was no way we could have predicted the massive inflation here in the U.S., the drunk moron who would total our second car in June, or the death of our beloved Canary, Apple. We, as a family, also caught Covid a week before our vacation, something we had tried so hard to prevent with vaccines, masks, and hand-sanitizer. Is it time to quote John Lennon here? I think it is:
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
That might actually be my biggest takeaway from the year 2022, that no matter how well-planned you are, Murphy is still right around the corner, waiting to throw you a curve ball that will send you down a completely different path. 2022 added new therapists, med regimes, and a second car payment. If I could change anything, it would be only to bring Apple back, so I can hear him sing during the sunrise, and while watching musicals on TV.
I think it’s important for all of us to take a moment to reflect on this past year. What popped up that was out of your control? What did you accomplish and what did you mess up? Did you learn any important lessons? How are you different today than you were on January 1st? Doing this kind of reflection is a great way to prep you for the impending 2023.
Here’s mine:
Successes of 2022
Art in the Park: This was an event I had been getting accepted to since 2020 but due to the pandemic was unable to participate as it was canceled each year since. Except this year! I finally got to see what it was like to be a part of a huge, multiple-day art festival. Not only that, but it was a big eye-opener as to what the public is drawn to and how to give my booth a more “professional” look for next year’s event. I even gained some networking points and am now part of the 1st Fridays in Columbia.
Columbia Art League: This is one of the art galleries in Columbia, and the one I had been wanting to submit to for so long but could never work myself up to it. This year I decided that since I was going to be a part of Art in the Park, that a membership to this gallery was a must, and I have since been a part of several of their exhibitions and have even made a few sales and won an honorable mention ribbon.
The Eccentric Chai Podcast: Perhaps my biggest success of the year is my podcast, Eccentric Chai. I had been tossing around the idea of starting a podcast since 2020, but it wasn’t until this year that I finally decided to go for it, and it wasn’t as hard as I thought! Just like everything else, it’s a learn-as-you-go process. With the podcast I had to learn how to use Audacity, how to get my podcast on multiple platforms, and how to prevent myself from spending the entire week working on one episode. I have big plans for the podcast in the year 2023 and I’m excited to get started.
This painting was a fail for me, but that’s common with intuitive art.
Mishaps
I don’t want to call these “failures” because technically you never “fail” at something unless you give up entirely. These things are more mishaps, and so that’s what I’m calling them.
Doubting Myself and My Art: This isn’t necessarily a preventable mishap, as this is practically in the job description of an artist. At some point we will doubt ourselves, our art, our “brand”, our “style”, and everything in between. We will worry that we aren’t contributing enough to our family when we don’t sell enough. We will worry that we are spending too many events “working” and not enough events just spending time with our families. We will get overwhelmed with FOMO and Impostor Syndrome and existential crises and all those other fun issues we deal with as creatives. But it’s important to not let these issues bog us down, rather remind us why we chose this career path in the first place. Why do you do what you do? I’ve only just recently figured this out and it’s the end of the year. So don’t beat yourself up if you’re still confused.
Patreon: I don’t know why I keep trying with Patreon (I suppose I should read above), but I gave it another go this year and it has still barely gained any momentum. My hope is to better my marketing skills in 2023 so that I can get more patrons. A steady paycheck is very important to this career, and Patreon is one of the only places—other than teaching—that I have found to give me that option.
Marketing: Which brings me to marketing. This is yet another learn-as-you-go process. You find what works and what doesn’t. As Andy J. Pizza would say, you have to “write while onstage.” But my issue is that I didn’t add any further research to my marketing tool bag. I need to focus on my professional development in 2023, read a few books on business and maybe even take a class. The better I am at marketing, the better I will be able to prevent the previous two mishaps.
Lessons Learned
There’s too many to write about, so here’s a list:
How to better set up my booth at events
How to make flyers and brochures for marketing
How to host a podcast
Consistency is KEY
When you finish a painting, FOLLOW THROUGH. Scan it, post it on your shop, frame it, don’t just toss it in your portfolio and move on.
Take a break (the world won’t end, and neither will your career)
Your best moments in this career will not be monetary. Instead they will be the time your student called your intuitive art class, “finger painting for grow-ups,” the time a mother cried because her son was so passionate about art camp, and that evening you taught intuitive art to cancer survivors.
To-do lists will change your life
Goals for 2023
I’ve already mentioned a few, but let’s get specific.
Podcast Interviews: I have always loved listening to artist interviews on other podcasts, and have wanted to do the same on my own podcast. 2023 will be the year I finally start interviewing other artists.
50 Patrons: It’s not a huge number, but it’s a specific one, and specific goals are always much more obtainable than general ones. Once I add those marketing skills to my tool bag, my goal is to get this number before the end of 2023.
Watercolor Classes: I have given them in the past, but now I want to give them weekly. Because of the lesson I learned that “consistency is key,” I know that weekly classes, held on the same day at the same time, are far more successful than the occasional, sporadic classes. I also want to start doing my intuitive art classes weekly as well.
Work Larger: This was a goal for 2022, and while I did work larger, I didn’t finish anything large. But I have some new ideas and I can’t wait to get started on some big surfaces. It will be one step closer to my career goal of painting a mural in the city.
2022 had its flaws, as does any year, but damn it was a good one (and busy). The amount of events I did in 2021? Two or three. The amount of events I did in 2022? Over FIFTEEN (and I still have two more scheduled this month)! I exhibited in new places, taught kids’ camps, won 1st place in the Chalk Art competition, and became a part of the Art Heals project here in Jefferson City. My family and I went to St. Louis to see the Van Gogh exhibit (Goo said it was one of the best days of her life), traveled to Cedar Point (on a plane!) and rode a busy subway to downtown Chicago.
Don’t get me wrong, we had our shit days. We struggled with the inflation and gas prices. We had to watch what was happening in the world on the news and feel completely powerless. We buried Apple beneath a tree on a cold January day.
But my hope is that I can take these moments and put them in the “I lived through it” file. I don’t want to dwell on them, but I don’t want to forget them. And I want to give the fun stuff more focus. A lot of times we only remember the bad stuff, but it’s the bad stuff that makes the good stuff good. Right? That might be the biggest takeaway from the year.
My 2023 New Year’s Resolution is to pay more attention to the good stuff, the good memories, the good feelings, the fun days with the family. To not let them be overpowered by the bad stuff, but rather enhanced by it.
Until next year, may your Holiday food be hot and filling, and you and your families be happy and healthy. See you in 2023!
I remember first attempting meditation when I was fifteen years old. I sat on the floor of my tiny square bedroom, the only light being a single candle in front of me. Twenty years ago, the internet was still in its infancy, and so I’m not entirely sure where I learned how to meditate. Most likely a magazine. Regardless, I felt prepared enough to give it a try. I did what the instructions had said, to focus only on the candle, and that if things pop into my head I was to acknowledge them, then go back to looking at the candle. I’ll be honest, as a fifteen-year-old that made no sense to me. I found myself focusing too hard on focusing, then drifting off to random teenager thoughts, before going back to focusing too hard on focusing, even squinting my eyes to make doubly sure I was only looking at the flame.
Nowadays, even with the internet in our literal pockets, I still haven’t found an article that can describe meditation efficiently enough for fifteen-year-old Lina. I think it’s because meditation is…kind of hard to explain. And for someone who is super visual, learning how to meditate by reading an online article, or a spread in a magazine, is going to end in squinty eyes and frustration.
It wasn’t until I took Marie-Noelle Wurm’s class on free form abstract art that I began to understand. Now, four years later, I have a firm enough grasp on the idea of meditative art that I feel confident enough to pass on the info. Especially for those of you who are visual like me, and need more than just a candle to keep your mind centered.
For this exercise you will only need a pencil and a piece of paper. We’re not going to go too crazy.
Next you need to find a quiet place to sit. Whether it’s in a coffee shop or a laundry room, you just need to find a place where there are no major distractions.
Finally, you can work in silence, or if you’re like me and are distracted by silence, you can put on some music. Make sure the music is also not distracting. Nothing with words or rising and falling crescendos that force you to stop to change the volume.
Before you begin, remember the only thing I want you to focus on here once you put pencil to paper is just that. The pencil on the paper. As you work I want you to listen to the pencil on the paper, watch the pencil move as if you are a bystander watching someone else draw. If at some point you realize you’re thinking about something else—that’s normal—then just return your attention to the pencil.
When you’re finally ready to begin, I want you to pretend you are writing, but don’t use actual letters. Just flourish and scribble and move from left to right as if you’re writing a letter. This is called asemic writing.
Once again, pay attention to that pencil only, even if you have to focus on where it actually touches the paper. Let your hand move automatically, not consciously. When you notice your mind wander, return to that pencil. It might feel tricky at first but once you get into the flow of things it almost will feel as though you are moving with your own natural rhythm. Because you are.
Don’t stop until you’ve filled the page with your “letter.”
Congratulations! You’ve just meditated.
As you practice more and more you will be able to try other methods such as filling your paper with circles or parallel lines. You can even move up to other mediums like ink or even paint. It doesn’t matter what you use or create, all that matters is you keep those automatic motions and focus only on the medium as it touches the surface. In other words remain present.
How do you like to meditate? Is it something you do daily or whenever you need the water to clear? Talk to me!
Don’t forget to tune in the Eccentric Chai podcast this Friday!
Let’s face it, we all live in our own happy bubble. Most of the time. We get used to what works and go with it, because why fix what ain’t broke? We get the same order from the coffee shop, cook the same meals, walk the same routes, wear the same outfits, talk to the same people, go to the same places on vacation.
And this isn’t just true with our normal day-to-day lives. As artists, we’ve also created our own creative bubbles. We choose the same color scheme, the same medium, the same surface, even the same spot next to the window to work. Same background music. Same subject matter. Same camera. Same brush.
We all get into that “assembly line” mentality, essentially creating for the sake of having more content. And that can work to our advantage if we have, say, a trade show coming up, or our Etsy inventory has gotten a bit low.
But sometimes I feel like I’ve just been banging out painting after painting and getting absolutely nowhere. This is when it’s time to get back to the basics. I have to get back into that mindset of this is what I love instead of this is what I do.
There are a few things I do in order to re-connect with my art. Use them when you start to feel that disconnect so you can get back to making meaningful work that not only reaches you on an emotional level, but your audience as well.
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Start From Scratch
Lately I’ve been focusing more on making tiny books and zines because they feel so special to me, like a little treasure, and there’s no question as to why that is. It’s because I make them from scratch. From cutting the paper, to folding it, to staining it, to binding and creating covers. I do all of that before I even start the project of adding little paintings to each page and telling a nature-y story. In other words I find that emotional connection before I even begin.
Think about ways you can start from scratch with your work. Could you stretch your own canvas instead of buying a pack from the store? Could you make your own beads for the jewelry you create? Could you make your own watercolor paint? I guarantee you it will bring you closer to your art.
Tie in Your Own LifeExperiences
As an intuitive artist a lot of my art will be influenced by current emotions/experiences, but sometimes I will find something that “works” and will run with it and before you know it I’m back in that assembly line mentality and I’ve painted six landscapes that all look pretty much the same. This usually means I need to take a step back and go live life a bit so I can come back with new material. It can be something as simple as a color I saw in the wildflowers growing on the side of the highway, or a murmuration I saw billowing overhead, or the feeling I get from watching Heartstopper for the 50th time. Then I can tie these experiences/feelings into my work.
Think about something that has inspired you lately. The color of the school bus as it picked up your child. The feel of your cat’s fur as you dug your fingers into it. The pattern you saw in a rock on your morning walk. Even emotions like anger and frustration that come from things like watching the news can all be slipped into your work in some way. And when you come back to your work in the future, you might even remember what it was that inspired you in the first place.
Finish with a Bang
I have this issue with following through once a piece is finished. Usually I’ll just set it aside until I decide to enter it into an exhibition and then I either grab a frame from another piece and re-use it or buy a frame on sale. But I’ve realized lately that this is doing a disservice to my art. I need to remind myself that once I’ve signed the bottom of my painting that I’m still only 2/3 of the way finished. The final 1/3 of the process is the display.
So instead of finding the cheapest frame or re-using one that’s falling apart, I need to think about the perfect frame for this particular piece. If there is a frame out there that was made for this painting, I need to put effort into finding it. I also need to think about the matting. Do I want to bring out that pop of color I added with a double mat? I’ve seen artists do amazing things with their mats, from stitching things into it, to extending the painting down to the frame itself.
What can you do to display your work in the way it deserves? Is there a special box you can find for those earrings you made? Could you search for frames at an antique store instead of a supermarket? And when you find the perfect way to bring your piece to a close, leave it. Don’t steal the frame for another piece or rip it from its mat. Making this promise to yourself (and your piece) will further solidify your need to making the perfect choice when choosing the best way to show it off to the world.
Finding that emotional connection with each and every piece is not exactly something we actively think of at every step of the creative process. And I think that’s how we slip into that mindset of quantity over quality. But art isn’t something we can–or should–assembly line. We create to see ourselves, to use our voice, and to help others be seen. So instead of going through the motions, work toward finding that connection. Find a reason to care about each individual piece as if each piece is the only one of its kind. Because it is.
Until next time, may your art be meaningful and your connections be strong.
Scribble Chai 