How much are you influenced by others in your artwork and do you think it helps or hinders or is just kind of a neutral aspect of your interaction with the people and world beyond your studio?
I’d like to put forth an argument for being a lone wolf. When you try to belong there is a danger that your efforts are made and your focus is determined by the pack mentality. The Lone Wolf, on the other hand, finds its own path, discovers things in its less intrusive, less disruptive and quieter steps. There are things that we will be open to, ideas, inspiration, and motivation we have access to in going it alone that is not present to the group.
Come explore this idea and find ways to be the lone wolf when you need it while still being a part and getting your muse feed by your chosen pack.
Leave a COMMENT: https://thesagearts.com/episodes/
–
CONTACT SAGE
Email Sage via the contact form or send a voice mail (use the red button, bottom right) on the show website: https://thesagearts.com/contact/
And join Sage on social media:
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thesageartspodcast/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TheSageArtsPodcast
–
GET WEEKLY PODCAST NOTICES & BONUS MATERIAL:
The Sage Arts Podcast
–
JOIN THE COMMUNITY:
The Sage Arts Share Space on Facebook
–
SUPPORT THIS PODCAST
· Buy a STICKER! (Get 2 per order as of this release.)
· Buy polymer art books and magazines
–
CREDITS:
Cover design by Sage; Illustration by Olga Kostenko
Wolf art—Creative Commons licensed. Attribution still being sought.
Music by Playsound
Transcript
Audio file
Transcript
You should have been spending some time in your authentic self in your artistic expression without having to consider your decisions, which are often influenced by all these outside sources of things that we’ve seen or heard. Have been told. Hello all my lovely creatives out there. Thank you for joining me on the Sage Arts Podcast this. Sage back from a little break that I had to take in order to take care of stuff here, and I am going to be doing something a little bit. Different just to. Forewarn you, there’s going to be a lot. Of chatter about. What I’ve been doing, my personal kind of stuff initially, but I promise there is a point in what I’m doing, so just hold on as we get going on this. Park, as has been, was been two or three weeks since I last talked. To you in any. I miss doing this but I have had to keep my focus on the House repairs and a lot of the projects to do with things around the House here so I have not actually had time to do much of my scripting, which I usually do for you because I don’t want to just Babble on and on about random stuff. Or lose track of what I’m doing. But my mind has just been so focused on how stuff, it’s really hard for me to shift gears and to spend like like they recommend sometimes, you know. Ohh you can spend, you know, one hour a day doing this one thing you have to do another couple hours doing this other thing. You have to do and. Just split a few days so a little bit. Gets done every day and you feel like you’re accomplishing things. But honestly, I can’t do that. I’m not. Good at that. My mind just goes so completely into whatever that one area of interest or work or whatever. Here it is and it’s very hard for me to shift gears. So I I’ve known this for years and I’ve tried to work it in so that all the things that I’m doing are doing in chunks, right. So one or two days I spent on my artwork another couple of days I spend on my writing on the end of the week, I spend on the podcast, that kind of thing, but. When I’m have these long term projects like these, the stuff that we’re doing on the House, it is really super hard for me to take any part of my day to contribute to things like making the podcast. So it’s been a little rough getting things done like I’ve done no artwork like 0 artwork in the last probably like six weeks. I have been writing cause I can do that really late at night. My brain’s actually in in a good place for. That but in any. Case the the fact that I. Feel pressured to do all the stuff. That I have not been doing. Has actually caused me some pretty severe problems. I had huge headaches and they ended up with a sinus infection. All kinds of crazy stuff which I thought, you know, I’m just messing around with stuff outside and fixing things. I’m moving things. I must be breathing all kinds of weird things. As it turned out, after a couple of different doctor’s appointments, it’s simply because I’m stressed out and I’m clenching my teeth. Like at night while I’m sleeping and it caused headaches, inflammation in my ears and disrupted sleep. So I had to get a mouth guard. And then I got really sick. Turned out I was allergic to the mom. Mouth guard because I’m allergic to like every other thing on this earth. So that’s not really surprising. But it took a while for us to figure that out. So I was dealing with that as. Well, and it just kind. Of made me think where. Is all this stress coming from? I’m not really doing any work, I’m just working on the House stuff and I love working with my hands so I’m building Stone raised planters. Fixed them gates I. Did some concrete repair. I did some gutter repair just like all this weird little stuff and I enjoy it because I’m still working with materials. It reminds me a lot of kind of the artwork aspect of understanding materials and the tools that you have in dealing with them. So you would think I would kind of just be enjoying this time off. But as it turns out. I have all this chatter in the back of my head about like ohh I’m not doing the podcast often enough. People are going to forget me or or not listen to me because I’m not doing it on a regular basis like other people do. Through and that I’m not getting my writing done. So when are my books going to get published? And I’m not getting my artwork done so I’m not progressing and I realize I don’t know where all this pressure is coming from. And then when I sat down, started journaling about it, it really comes down to the fact that this is what I think other people. Expect of me. I mean, I have some of my own expectations of myself for sure, especially with the podcast stuff, especially with the getting the books done because I have a couple different writers, groups and people that know that I’m doing this and I feel like it’s been a couple of years I’ll be working on these books and they haven’t gotten. This far as I should have. And I have always been a person who is heavily influenced by what I feel other people expect of me. And I had actually written these initial notes about the subject matter. I want to talk about today, but what I’ve. Been going through. Recently is actually a really good. Example of the ill effects of the influence of other people now. Having an influence from an outside source can make us accountable, can motivate us, can help us keep on track, and those are wonderful things. But like anything, there are extremes, and there’s good ways and bad ways to use those things. So having outside influences to motivate you and keep you going, it’s great. That’s never my problem. I don’t have a problem with wanting to do things or getting to work on things, but I get very stressed if I think other people are waiting on something. For me, which was great, like when I was doing a magazine, it kept me on deadline because, like, there’s so many people involved and it was, it was always something that had to be done for this person and that person and that kept me on track. But now, I mean, I don’t have anything that I owe anybody in terms of, like, I don’t have an agent who’s expecting a book, and I don’t have an. Art gallery. That’s. Expecting artwork from me. Now I have the podcast and I want. It out every week but. I don’t think any of you are gonna give me a hard time if I don’t do it. Nobody has. Yet. So thank you so much for being understanding. So I’m really seeing kind of the negative side of outside influences right now because I got so stressed out that I got the clenching and the headaches and the. You know all. Every the domino effect of all that stuff that happened. And so when I was thinking about what to do this week, I found these notes about what I. Called the lone wolf. Artist and I realized that there’s a. Lot of connection and overlap. Between that and what I’m experiencing now. So I thought this would be apropo for. What I and many. Of you are probably experiencing, this is always a very stressful time of the year. Because you’ve got to get all your holiday artwork out there and trying to get it sold. Or of course, we have all the family stuff and. All the celebratory stuff which we do enjoy, but it does take a lot of work and it does take. A lot of. Time that we usually don’t have, so we are dealing with a lot of stress and a lot of outside influence right now and. So I thought. Let’s talk about. Outside influence and how it affects your art and how to kind of. Deal with it. Like, what’s a good? Way of dealing with it and then how? To work with. These outside influences and things that we want to be doing because we do want social interaction and social media can be a great source of inspiration and looking at the people’s artwork and. Feeling a part of a larger community, but when are these influences useful for us and when are they detrimental? That’s going to be the focus. Today I usually do kind of shout outs at this point, but I. Haven’t been on. Social media and because of that, a lot of you haven’t been very active on my pages, which I completely understand because I’m not going to be very reactive back if I’m not on. So it all of you that have sent messages or have been making comments or likes and just kind of keeping things active. From there, I really appreciate it. I have had a few emails from a few of my regular commenters. Thank you all of you who continue to give me feedback and then I had some interesting conversations with a couple of people who will be guests in the coming months, so things are still happening over here. But in any case, if you do have comments or anything that you would like to tell me, you’ll find links in your show notes or description section of wherever you’re listening to this podcast from. You can always go to thesagearts.com, where you’ll find a contact page to reach out to me. You can also click on the news and notices button on the homepage of the saviors.com. To just get the news about what’s going on and when a new episode comes. Out and if you want to donate and help keep this going as slow as. It is right? Now, but I am ramping up for January. There are donation buttons on the homepage of sagearts.com for Buy me a coffee and for PayPal. Again all those links are in your description or show notes section on your podcast player. So all that business aside, let’s get into. The lone wolf approach to being an artist and what that means and how you might use it. So first of all, let’s talk about the importance of. Other people and socially are acceptance by other people because this really influences so much in our lives and I don’t know if we always realize it. I think we all know that other people influence what we do. Society influences what we do. Trends influence what we do. But as artists, well, really, as human beings, we have a drive. To be important, to be accepted, to be recognized. I think that goes back to a mechanism of survival when resources could be so scarce that if you weren’t important enough, you weren’t recognized. Enough or treasured. Enough or whatever. You would go without and starve or freeze or be left alone. Today, that kind of drive isn’t usually connected to physical survival, but it does manifest itself in emotional, financial, and psychological subsistence. But just because our standing in the social pack these days isn’t usually a matter of life or death, it doesn’t make it any less important or difficult for us to deal with. Keeping our place in the. However, I’d like to put forth an argument. For being a lone wolf. Particularly as an artist, when you try to belong, when you try to be recognized as emphasis on the word, try. Of course, your efforts are. Made and your focus is determined by that pack. The Lone wolf, on the other hand, finds its own path, discovers things in a less intrusive, less disruptive and quieter way. There are things that we will be open to when we’re just doing things on our own. There’s ideas and inspiration and motivation in going it alone that is not present when you are trying to be part of a group. The group is like a screen of trees that keeps you from seeing the broad Vista before you and that wide open. Based beyond is really where all your creative thought or is probably going to be so. OK, first of all, dispensing, dispensing with all. The crazy heavy metaphors there. What I’m getting at is that wanting to belong as an artist is very common and normal, and sometimes a very necessary thing. And it’s not just because we’re human beings and social creatures. Art can be a very isolating process. And we, being social creatures, yearn for interaction. How to rectify our need to belong to be recognized and accepted by a group and yet hold on to our quiet solitude in which we hear our own particular voice and recognize our ideas as authentic and purely ours. The really simple basic answer is to practice compartmentalization. They say the right compartmentalization. That that really tested my talking ability here. Each of these. Needs that I’m talking about aren’t dealt with separately and you access them and live with them at different points in time when you compartmentalize so different points of time could be either different times during the day or at different times during your week or your month. But there really are huge benefits to. Working on your. Art without the influence of other people, to the extent that it is possible. The exception might be if you’re working on a collaborative project, so of course you’re going to have to have input of other people because. You’re collaborative. Or you happen to be one of those. People who are particularly. Motivated and inspired by others and part of your artwork is taking from what you observe in other people, but that would be as a critical observer making your own very particular observations. And drawing conclusions that are filtered through who you are and what you’re interested. Otherwise, I think unless you have been doing. Your work for ages. And you’re in touch with your own personal voice, and so in tune with what it is that you want to say, that really you’re probably best making your creative time, at least the mulling through of your ideas and planning for your work. You know, the designing stuff. That should be done for most of us, without anyone else involved, really, without anyone else’s voice in our heads and without concern for anyone else. Judgment. I know there will be exceptions to that for certain people for certain work processes, for certain types of art, but I really do think the more that we can hear our voice that it is the loudest voice in our head, the better off we are as artists in terms of reaching that authentic. Personal voice that we want to instill in. Our work and express of ourselves. In our work and I. Know this is much easier said. Done, but there are. A few things that you can do to make it easier to switch modes. When you need. To be the lone wolf with full access to your authentic voice and your own particular creative well. So for one, I would strongly recommend that you work on your art when you’re not going to be disrupted. And that means not disrupted by people in the house and of course don’t have notices on from social media or e-mail or anything else that is not absolutely necessary. I’d also suggest maybe not. Not accessing any kind of media, no literature, videos or any other kind of input when you’re doing the design aspect of your work. When you’re making decisions about what it is you’re going to put into your artwork, and if you’re really well disciplined and it’s easy to do it, don’t have any input from. Other media in the hours coming up to your studio time before you actually get into your work, just really try to be a clean slate, so to speak, before you get into your studio. If you’re able to let your mind wander before you go into the studio. So if you haven’t listened to the episode on the importance of doing nothing, do nothing before you go into the studio and let your personal self, your authentic self kind of come to the forefront of all the things that are going on in your head. That voice in your head. Should be you and then when you go into the studio, what you’re hearing should be more you than. If you come to the studio after just having immersed yourself in other people’s artwork online or in a book or in a gallery, you’re going to bring that back to. Your studio with you which? Is perfectly fine, but you want you you want your voice to be the four most voice that you’re hearing, right? So. Once things have been planned out like you’ve done your design work, you’ve done a lot. Of decision making. Then there’s usually more space for more interaction and more outside influence, because what you plan to do has already been. Decided it’s really that decision making process that we go through as artists to decide what we’re doing and how we’re going to do it. Colors are going to use different various design aspects that we’re going to work into it. Once you’ve made those decisions, if you can like a lot of work in polymer, is planned out ahead of time, some painters is decided. As they work, that’s fine, but if you have a planning phase and an execution phase, then during the before the planning. Says before that you want to try to clear your mind of other influences as much as possible to try to hear your authentic voice. And if it’s all through your process, then hopefully you have the opportunity to clear your mind of outside influences before you get into work in your studio. Whenever you work in your studio. And that brings us to another thing that is very similar that really works for me. That has really worked. For a lot of other. Creatives and that is to work on. Your creative stuff first thing. In the day, the fewer influences you can have from media and other people that you might run into throughout the course of your day, the better. There’s a lot. Of subconscious influence for most of us, like you know, when you’re like in another country, you start kind of maybe taking on the accents and the mannerisms of other people there. You know the the, the local people there. I think a lot of people do this and it’s not really a conscious thing, but we’re hearing this new way of speaking and talking and acting and there’s something in our psyches that, again, want us to conform to the pack. And so we start assimilating, doing things that reflect what we’re seeing and hearing during the day. And that happens in a much subtler way at home, not, you know, when we’re away. It’s very obvious, but. We’re at home this. Stuff comes on. We most of the time have no idea that we are taking. On these actions and. Thoughts and patterns that we’re seeing around us. So the reason it’s good to do it first thing in day is because you’ve spent 6 to 8 hours or? When you sleep processing and stowing away all the various things that you experienced during the previous day and then your mind kind of clears and it should leave. Pretty much just. Your internal voice, just your internal thoughts and the strong and dominant default person that you are. Should be what is primarily. Left so when you wake up, you are as close to being the true version of yourself as it really can be, at least like without further therapeutic intervention. So I know for a lot of us doing work, the first thing in the day is not always possible, and if it’s not, may I recommend doing some other kind of intervention between the bulk of your day and your creative time, such as taking a short nap or doing meditation, or writing in a journal or anything. That will alter your frame of mind from all the things that you’ve been taking in during the. Day. So although an app is not nearly as long as. A good night’s sleep. It can do much of the same thing, allowing the brain to process all the input you’ve been getting and kind of dig down and root into who. You really are. Meditation also can quiet the mind and clear it for more authentic creative time. Journaling is another way of working through things because you’re able to get them out of your head, put things that you’re worrying about. That’s kind of taking over your thoughts and that should allow you to not just focus, which is a big part of that and getting things. Head of your head, but it also should allow your personal voice to come through, especially after journaling, because you’re hopefully writing in your own authentic voice. Another little trick that has helped me a lot over the years is to stop at the end of your studio session in the middle of what you’re working on rather than work. Up until you get to a stopping point so. You want to. Stop where it makes sense in the use of your materials or the things that you’ve prepared or set out or whatnot. But if there’s a point where it’s, you can stop and you can put away whatever you got to put away and come back and not have to make a decision about what to do next, then you’re going in not having to make any decisions and you can get into your creative work mode before decisions have. To be made. And hopefully. You’ve gotten into flow where hopefully all those outside voices have kind of quieted down. So you should have been spending some time in your authentic self in your artistic expression without having to consider your decisions, which are often influenced by all these outside sources of things that we’ve seen or heard have been told.
Because yeah, our.
Decision making mode often is highly influenced by outside sources, other people, other artwork that we’ve seen. So if you don’t initially have to make decisions, there’s a good chance you won’t bring in as much. Influence into your initial efforts. And so by the time you have to make another decision, your mind. Should be settled. More or less in the true you. Mode in that Lone Wolf mode and your vision and expression can be and should be less influenced by the outside world. This doesn’t always work I have. To say but. Even if it doesn’t work, it does have the benefit of making. It easy to. Get back into your work because again, there’s. No initial decisions. To make you can just start working because you know where to go, so there’s no drastic shifting of mental gear if you just pick up where you left off. And that’s easy, right? And then once you’ve gotten into the work for a while, it makes it even. Easier to keep going because yeah, I don’t remember which episode I talked about. The gutters that our mind runs in, but we do tend to get into. The channel of thinking, a channel of a certain mentality or mode of work, and it can be kind of hard to shift. But if you get into something cause it’s easy because it’s already ready cause you stopped halfway. Then by the time you’ve worked through whatever it is that you had to finish in that unfinished part, your mind is there. So it’s it’s great. For that, and I’ve been using that as a. Kind of golden. Rule in my writing practice for sure, I always stop in the middle of. Something so in artwork. It can be. A little bit more difficult, I think like with polymer clay, sometimes I can’t really stop in the middle of something because I have certain things set up. I’ve warmed the clay and I don’t want it to have a resting state at that point or you’re doing a transfer process which has certain time and it has to be followed through or whatever. So it isn’t always possible to stop in the middle. Of the steps that you’re working. On but if it. Then before you leave the studio, make those next decisions so that when you come back, those are already made and you don’t have to do that. Does that make sense now with all this talk about being a lone wolf and not having those outside influences, I do want to emphasize that you don’t want to deprive yourself of outside influences. You don’t want to deprive yourself of social interactions. For instance. We absolutely need social interaction. What other people are doing is important to us. Keeping your thumb on the, you know, activities within the artistic community that is important to you can be extremely important in what you do. So don’t set that aside or ignore it. As human beings, we need that kind of interaction. We need that. And have been put in as artists. Many of our. Ideas and our motivation and our energy is generated by social interaction and seeing new. Things, but this is where the compartmentalization comes in. Try to be uninfluenced in a lone wolf manner when working on your most creative and decision focused aspects of your art, and then prioritize time to get out and socialize. And you know sometimes especially been working on something for a long time, like I’ve been working on this. For a long time. I haven’t been wanting to go out. But it doesn’t matter if you are under deadline or you don’t have the funds to go out or you’re tired or exhausted all the time, which I have been from working too much or whatnot. Get yourself out and about in the world. Get yourself exposed. To other influences, art isn’t made in a vacuum. So set time aside to go out and have dinner with a friend. Meet up some siblings or parents or neighbors for coffee, go to a gallery opening and mingle. Go to a museum and talk to the staff about the artwork. Join a local group for outings or hikes or coffee or whatever intern. To and of course, how much you need depends on the kind of person that you are. So if you’re introverted, maybe just an hour or so at a coffee shop by. Yourself at the. Least with other people around and things that you can observe can be helpful, but if you’re a complete social butterfly, you do want to be keeping track of how much time you spend on the social activity so you don’t get distracted. Aren’t getting your work done right. And then of course, there is the social media drain that we all have to deal with it and I’m not going to get on too much of A soapbox about this. You’ve heard me say this before. Limit your social media. Even to the point that you schedule it, which is I think probably the best way to do that, I have a very specific social media schedule. I can do social media. During lunch and sometimes late at night, if I need to catch up on something and. Like right now I’m not doing it at all and it’s I kind of say it’s pretty nice because that stuff just kind of well one it’s a it’s a time suck, right, but also exposes you to so many other people’s art and their accomplishments and. What you see is. Like, really wonderful stuff and to immerse yourself in something like that can be kind of discouraging because we compare ourselves to other people. So be careful about that and I. Let me just say this. Looking at other people’s work online is. A horrible way to judge what you’re doing. Because what you do, what you’re doing, how you’re doing it is a completely different experience than what these other people out there are doing. You have a certain set of talents and interests and time that you’re able to spend on. This and the other thing. Is so much of the stuff online has been doctored or altered in some fashion. And a lot of it’s not going to be your style and what they’re trying to do with their artwork is gonna be different than what you’re trying to do with your artwork. So really, try to avoid the comparison thing with social media stuff. And if you do want to look at other people’s work, look for inspiration for aspects of. Work and just admire and feel good that other people are out there being creative and then just try not to think ohh why can’t I do that or why am I not doing that? And if immersing yourself in other people’s work is something that you. Do enjoy. Maybe. You can have it not just a particular time of the day, but a particular day like the day that you don’t do a lot of studio work, or you’re just doing clean up work or whatnot that you can immerse yourself in something so that you have at least a night between when you’ve immersed. Yourself and other people’s work. And when you’re getting to your own work, and again this may work better for some people than for other people. But unless you’re very practiced at filtering what you’re seeing through your own mode of expression and your own voice and whatnot, it’s going to be hard to not have those things influence you or discourage you. Just remember, art is not a competition. Art is. Inexperience. More than anything, I think you want the experience of making the art. That is what it does for most. Of us, it’s. The process right of of creating it and then of course having this beautiful piece at the. End is always a huge. Aspect, but I think honestly it’s kind of a bonus. To the whole. Process and experience of making art in any case, teach around some of you might be like it’s all about the end product. I’m about the journey and not about the destination, so maybe that’s just me. So with those possible approaches in mind, let me circle back to the whole idea. Of being a lone wolf and why Lone Wolf. Artists, I think, have a real advantage. For one, if you are influenced by the group, if you want to make what other people are making, if you want to be admired by other people in the same way other people seem to be admired for the work they have out for public viewing, you’re going to really kind of sit on the outside edge of actually being an. Artist and in speaking mostly about when you start making what other people are making, if that’s what you’re doing, then there’s a good chance you’re not doing art so. Much as craft. That you maybe are becoming a great artisan. But the artist. Is a person who takes something of themselves some authentic part of themselves and puts it out in the world, shares it, whether it’s their aesthetic, the way that they see beauty, or their opinions, or making social commentary on things that are important to them or sharing their experience. Of life. That’s what makes it art. And if you’re trying to follow the pack, if you’re trying to do what other people are doing online, you really risk missing out on. The authentic expression that in my opinion, and this is just my opinion, is really the pinnacle, the the, the best feeling, the best reward in creative work. It’s like the difference between doing a paint by number. Painting and painting something yourself. There’s so much more self satisfaction and fulfillment in doing something original and doing something that is just purely from your own ideas. And I think we sometimes lose. Sight of that. Because we want the approval of the group, we want the. Social recognition for what we’re doing that. We try to play it. Safe. It reminds me of how studio. Develop TV shows or movies like we see so many things that are remakes of something else, or they’re taking the same character or set of characters or same world and just making movie after movie in that same world or with those same characters because they’re afraid to take risks. They want to be accepted. Of course they’re trying to make money. Want people to go see those movies or watch those TV shows and they. Can’t there’s no guarantee. That they will, but maybe they’re hedging their bets. Maybe they’re getting a bit more insurance because they’re working with something that has been proven. Before, but you know what? The people who take the risks, who try something different, not for the sake of being different, but because they have such a passion to share what they feel or what they see or or have something that they need to express. Will often have more value for the people who see it or experience it, but definitely has more value for the artists themselves. So if your number one concern is making money and some of you are working artists and you have to pay the bills and you have to put. Food on the table. And so seeing. What other people like May actually have to be an influence in order to feel like you can guarantee that you’re going to make the money that you need to. I know I did that when I was a working artist. There are certain aspects of the things that I would put into the shows. That I knew would sell because they were trendy because everybody was into them. But then I always did the work. That was my personal passion, driven express. So sometimes you have to do the trendy stuff, but give yourself space to do your personal work to to put out the things that mean something deep and dear to you, because as an artist I just honestly feel that that personal self-expression. Is the most wonderful. Feeling that you can possibly have as an artist to create something that never existed before to kind of play God a little bit, so to speak. To create something and put it out into the world and share it and know that no one has seen anything like this before. And when I say that I don’t mean something that’s so drastically different that no one can compare it to anything else, I mean something that is recognizable as you and. It’s just like in writing, and I know I do a lot of comparisons with writing, but they’re so specific because I probably because they do with language, but in writing they say there are no new. And that’s probably true if you boil them down to the basics, right? So there’s probably no new paintings. They’re gonna be landscapes or portraits or still lives or abstract or whatever. These all these things have been done. But you haven’t done them and you haven’t put them out there. And when you make your own way when. You as the lone wolf, go. Out on your own. And do your own hunting for motivation and inspiration, and bring that back to the studio and make your artwork from some very personal place. It will be original because no one else is you and no one else can do what you specifically do. So don’t be afraid. To go out on your own and do something that no one else is doing that no one else is getting recognition. For if it’s something that you want to do if something that you want to try if it grabs your imagination and makes you curious and makes you want to explore it, do it. Don’t worry about what other people are doing, and if it’s something that looks a lot like what other people are doing. But it does drive you and you are passionate about it. Do it in your way. You don’t have to consciously. Try to be different than other people, but don’t consciously try to do it like other people. Hopefully that makes. Sense. So being the lone wolf is really about just making your own path. And I just like the wolf metaphor representation for us because it’s it’s strong and feels brave and feels sexy even right? If. It feels like what I. Think our passion feels like. That we our rules. We’re out there hunting. We’re out there howling and we’re figuring out how to make what we want to make and create and survive in the artistic community that we’ve chosen. In a way that is fulfilling and important to us. Not to the pack. And I think if you do it that way, I think it will essentially be something that the pack will appreciate. So I hope that makes sense to you and I didn’t wander around too much. With my ideas. But I do have quite a passion for finding that thing inside of you that is specifically yours, and being able to use it to create and to share with the world because again, there’s just no better feeling, at least in. My book that said I am going to wrap this up because I still got so much to do I have. The longest to. Do list who doesn’t this time of year right? I should have one more of these out for you before the year wraps up and then in January, then in January. When I can talk. We’ll get back to regular schedule. With interviews and Brett should come back and just have a lot of a lot of fun this coming year. So. Meet me again. Here in about two weeks, if you want to. Write me just. Say hello. Give me some ideas. Let me know what you want to see me. Next year, anything at all, you can go to thesagearts.com, go to the contact page to reach me. There you can reach out to me on social media again. I’m not on there quite so often, but I’m still getting notices. So write me on Facebook or Instagram at the Sage Arts podcast pages. And if you want to support this. Podcast you can do so by either donating at buy me a coffee or PayPal. Add those buttons on the homepage of sagearts.com and in the show notes as you. Or you can go to 10th news arts.com and buy polymer and mixed media related books, magazines and other little tidbits there. So go check it out. 10th News arts.com that’s 10th spelled out TENTH&USE arts.com. And we’re going to leave it at that. So I do hope all of you are having a wonderful holiday season and that things aren’t too stressful and you’re still getting to be creative. During this time, but whatever you do, don’t forget to go out and have those new experiences keeping your lone wolf news fed, right? And as always. Stay true to your authentic. Brand of weirdness. And join me again next time on the. Sage Arts podcast.
