Becoming an artist in the public eye can be uncomfortable. Why is it important to step out of the shadows in order to pursue your art, and what are the challenges in doing so?

I struggle with fear and boredom. I fear unknown places and unknown people as well as rejection, especially in my art.

But I also get easily bored, and I thirst for adventure. My fear and my boredom have been playing this weird dance all my life, one keeping me safe, the other keeping me exploring. Fear kept me away from acknowledging what art meant to me for too long. But the pandemic forced me to confront the truth. Here it is.

My Artistic Journey,
or how I finally became an artist in my forties

I was 47 before I dared calling myself an artist. Before, I had a hobby. A hobby is a big blanket you can hide your fears and insecurities under. It helps you hide how much this thing you do any chance you get at the weekend and in the evening means to you. It hides the fact that this is the only thing in your life that keeps you going and sane. It feeds your soul. It’s the little square of blue sky in the prison cell.

Why it is important and frustrating to find your own style in order to get recognized as an artist.

Who am I? At 47 I had it mostly figured out when I decided to become a “professional” artist (Maybe one day I will be confident enough to get rid of the quotation marks) but becoming a professional artist means finding my STYLE with capital letters. It’s like going through puberty again.

Why having more than one passion is good for you and serves your art.

The 19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire wrote a poem called “Correspondences” which states that the world is made of feelings and symbols we can experience that answer each other. Baudelaire might have had Synesthesia (a neurological condition that causes the brain to process data in the form of several senses at once), but that’s irrelevant. I like this poem because I like the idea that there are several ways to experience the same thing and that more than one sense can be involved. I definitely experience this in my art.