After the tangible evidence of your art itself, and the quality of your unique artist’s voice, the three most important pillars of success are choices made, confidence radiated, and contrast illuminated.

Choice supports growth, responsibility, and self-validation

Making choices (and giving ourselves permission to make mistakes because we’ve made a choice) is the single, strongest pillar of growth.

Keep reading →

Excerpted from Chapter 8 of Living The Artist’s Life

Every living artist I’ve ever worked with, and every deceased artist I’ve ever studied, have all shared one simple trait: each of them has gone through varying levels of self-doubt; each of them, at different times in their lives, has questioned the worth of their talent. 

No one that I know of has ever been exempt from this.  For some, like the poet Sylvia Plath (who was also a talented illustrator), their spells of doubt and depression were mind-numbing, paralyzing, and, in the end, beyond their control. 

For others, like Picasso, those spells were nothing more than…

Keep reading →