THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman: Today we’re going to be talking about the Pantone color of the year. There’s not much of a color and what that signals about the collective psychology, design and buying behavior because that’s important to you. Hey there. It’s Miriam Schulman. And welcome back to The Inspiration Place podcast. So Pantone is an industry that helps manufacturers predict what’s going to be popular with color trends. And I absolutely love the Pantone predictions. It really takes into account everything that’s happening in the marketplace in pop culture. And what they’re doing is not so much forecasting using crystal ball, but they see what’s already starting to trend, and then they crystallize it by looking at everything, not just the art world, but they’re looking at home decor. They’re looking at fashion, they’re looking at so many things and they give you a prediction. So this year’s color of the year is Cloud Dancer. You know that cloud isn’t exactly a color. It’s kind of white. But this is how they’re spinning it. It’s ethereal. It’s calming. It’s the hue a spiritual reset. It’s an invitation to begin again. It’s like a blank canvas. So let me tell you what we’re going to talk about today, because it’s not just about the color. So in case you’re already disappointed that color of the year is cloud, I want you to still listen, because this is where we’re going to talk about why Pantone chose Cloud Dancer and what that signals about the collective psychology, design and buying behavior because that’s important to you.
Miriam Schulman: We’re also going to talk about the deeper symbolic meaning, the oracle archetype energy of Cloud Dancer as a spiritual reset. And I’m also going to share some case studies. I’m going to talk about three different artists who paint skies, and these are all artists I’ve mentored. And these artists are all achieving success in completely different ways, and they’re painting the sky in completely different ways. And of course, they’re successful because they’re messaging, not the medium, not the genre. So it’s never about chasing the trend. It’s about tapping into the cultural zeitgeist and understanding how what you do fits into that. All right. So let’s talk about what Cloud Dancer actually means beyond color theory. And I’m just going to say it, and you probably already guessed it from the way I’m talking about it. When I first saw the announcement, I had a very real, very unfiltered reaction. And it was basically the The sound effect of. Because normally Pantone gives us something we can play with. Radiant orchid. Amazing. I immediately want to paint a peacock a purple peacock. Viva magenta! Fabulous. Give me florals. Give me drama. Tangerine tango. Yes, please. I can put that in a sunset right now. But this year they didn’t even give us a color. They gave us clouds. So I felt completely let down. I was like, really? You’re giving artists a blank space like white, near white, a whisper of a hue.
Miriam Schulman: I wanted a color. I wanted a color. I could respond to a color that made me reach for my paint. Something with saturation, energy, direction. Instead, we get the visual equivalent of a deep breath. But here’s the thing. Once I got over that initial disappointment and once I stopped looking for the color, and instead I started listening for the meaning, because remember, we talk about this. Buyers buy meaning, not medium. I realized what Pantone was doing. They were doing something very different this year. So Cloud Dancer is not about pigment, it’s about the moment before pigment. It’s the blank canvas, the reset, the threshold, the quiet clarity we’re all craving right now. So let’s get into what Pantone actually said about this choice and why, after my initial wah wah wah. I now think that this is one of their most spiritually aligned picks ever. Hey creatives, if you want 2026 to be your most focused and profitable year yet, listen up! I’m hosting my annual goal setting workshop, the session that helps you map out revenue, projects, and clarity for the year ahead. It’s normally $97, but actually you can get it for free this month. And here’s how. All you have to do is buy a paperback copy of Artpreneur, the step by step guide to making a sustainable living from your creativity for yourself, or as a gift in December, and send us your receipt.
Miriam Schulman: And in case we haven’t met yet, I’m Miriam Schulman best selling author, 25 years as a professional artist and host of The Inspiration Place podcast. My students have generated hundreds of thousands of art sales using the system I teach. And in fact, this year we kept track and we sold over $400,000 worth of art in 2025. Now, if you want to join us for that, 2026 is profitable for you to go to SchulmanArt.com/GOALS for the details and let’s build your 2026 on purpose. Okay, so let’s talk about pantone’s reasons for the choice. They said that this is a calm that is needed in a frenetic society. It represents a desire for simplicity, a symbol of new beginnings, a blank canvas moment, ethereal, soft, quiet clarity. Now, what I want you to know as artists is not so much. Oh, I can’t use color now, know that that’s taking things too literally. And it doesn’t even mean you need to paint clouds. Although I will be sharing a few case studies of artists who are painting the sky or drawing the sky and what impact that has had for them. What would you need to know is that this choice indicates a soft minimalism and quiet interiors, and it reflects a yearning for more calm, more meaning. Buyers are craving soothing, luminous and atmospheric art. And yes, Sky art has already been trending in interior design. So the choice of Cloud Dancer by Pantone simply confirms what collectors are already responding to emotionally.
Miriam Schulman: Now we’re going to talk about Oracle and archetype interpretation. So this is where Cloud Dancer gets interesting. And honestly this is where the choice starts to make a little bit more sense to me. So if you look at it as a color, you’re going to be disappointed because it’s barely a color. It’s an idea. But if you look at it like you’d look at an oracle card or an archetype, Cloud Dancer suddenly has teeth. First of all, it’s the threshold. It’s that liminal moment before you step into something new. Not quite here, not quite there. It’s the pause in the music. It’s the breath before the brushstroke. It’s that pause in the dance. Second, it’s the fool from the tarot card. Not the village idiot, but the one brave enough to begin pure potential. Clean slate. And third, it’s the air element. The realm of intuition, truth, perspective. And let’s be honest, the weather inside our own heads. Clouds are the original mood rings. And finally, Cloud Dancer is the messenger. The sky as the place where meaning shows up before we have language for it. Birds, omens, shifting light. All those little signals that say pay attention. Something’s changing. So when Pantone names a color that’s basically a shade of inhale, what they’re actually naming is a collective desire to reset, to quiet down, to see clearly.
Miriam Schulman: And that is exactly why sky painters are having a moment. Because they’re not painting scenery, they’re painting thresholds, they’re painting inner weather. They’re painting the messages people are desperate to hear right now. So if Cloud Dancer were an Oracle card, it would be the threshold, the breath before the transformation. Okay. It’s so funny because when I was doing my homework for this episode, this that same week, my mom and I went to a poetry reading at Symphony Space, and Joe Harjo was one of the poets who read. And she read a I think it’s a brand new poem. It’s not called Cloud Dancer, but it was close. It was like Cloud Jumper, Cloud Leaper or something like that, and I couldn’t find it online. I think because it’s a brand new poem from our forthcoming poetry collection that’s being released this coming year in 2026. So it carried though a lot of her signature cloud language. So clouds are something that she has talked in the past. It’s definitely a metaphor for her. If you know Harjo’s work, you know, she treats clouds as elders, as teachers, as the weather within us. So she once wrote about the cloud people and she praised the cloud Cup. And she said poetry began the moment she learned to listen to what the clouds had to say. So when I heard this new poem, it made me connect those dots that Cloud Dancer isn’t just a color, it’s a listening practice.
Miriam Schulman: It asks us to pause and hear what our inner weather is saying. And that’s why sky painters are thriving right now. Their work mirrors our internal shifts. Okay, so before I get into why Sky Art is having a moment, I want to share with you artwork that I just purchased. Yes, I do collect art. So let me tell you a little story that absolutely proves why sky imagery is having such a moment, even before Pantone made their announcement. So a few weeks ago, I bought an original painting by the artist Katherine Wells Stein. Now, if you’ve ever heard me talk on this podcast about my salons, I call them salons. I know it’s a little pretentious. They’re basically dinner parties, but I like to pretend that I’m like Gertrude Stein and I’m curating a room, but but I am. I’m curating a room, and I use Oracle cards. And one of my favorite decks to use is her Oracle card. She has two different decks that I use, and I love them because the imagery on it is just so beautiful. I really, truly appreciate the artwork on the cards. It’s mystical, it’s dreamy, it’s symbolic in a way that just speaks directly to the subconscious. Now, what most people don’t realize is Catron normally creates her art digitally. So when I got an email from her saying she had made a small series of original paintings, not prints, originals, actual paintings, I jumped on it instantly.
Miriam Schulman: Now, at the time, I had no idea Pantone was about to announce the cloud based color of the year. I was not thinking about trends. I was simply responding to my own intuition. So out of the three original availables, there’s one image that I like the best. It’s a woman riding on a horse, but the horse’s entire body is filled with the sky. Not painted onto it, filled with it, clouds drifting across the torso like a portal somewhere softer and more spacious. And here’s another delightful twist the woman riding the horse is wearing this tall, dramatic top hat that immediately reminded me of a dear friend of mine, a fashion icon in her own right. She’s been on the podcast. We’ll link to her episode. Zipporah Solomon. So she wore it to a dinner that we attended together, so the whole thing just felt like a winking message to me from the universe. And the message was, pay attention. This guy is speaking. And this was before Cloud Dancer. This is before Pantone, and this was before I even heard the poem by Joy Harjo, before I was even aware of the trend cycle. So this is what I talk about on the podcast is that some people say I don’t follow trends. I don’t want to follow trends. The trend is more like a cultural moment that people are responding to. It’s not like I know that clouds are trending.
Miriam Schulman: Therefore I want a cloud painting. No, that’s not what it’s about. I’m feeling the same thing everybody else is feeling. We’re all in this cultural zeitgeist together. So I bought the painting because it felt like a symbol of transition, a journey between worlds held inside a sky body horse led by a woman dressed for reinvention. And that right there is exactly why Sky Art is resonating so powerfully right now. People want imagery that carries them someplace, imagery that feels like a threshold, a breath, a possibility. And Sky Art is no longer just landscape. It’s myth making, it’s identity, it’s dream work. It’s the visual language of the collective desire to rise above the noise and step into something new. Okay, before I go into the case studies, I do want to clarify the trends. And I have been talking on this podcast a lot about trends in the art market and home decor. So I’m just going to rehash some of the five major trends that is part of this. So number one is biophilic design is rising. Number two spiritual minimalism on the rise. Number three people looking up literally and metaphorically. Number four interiors embracing calm ethereal light, diffused gradients and five clouds are an emotional mirror and buyers resonate immediately. Okay. So now let’s talk about the three case studies, why these artists are succeeding. And they’re for three different reasons. All right.
Miriam Schulman: Case study number one. We’re going to talk about Shaina Bose. She is an artist from Atlanta. Now when Shane and I first sat down for her messaging session, she was doing something extremely common among high skill artists who haven’t yet excavated their meaning. She was describing her hyper realistic drawings very accurately, but not truthfully. Her before messaging leaned on technical descriptions and nostalgic subjects, and she thought people would collect her architectural drawings because they were precise, impressive, or reminded them of places that were disappearing. And all of that is true. But the moment we started unpacking her story, a completely different truth emerged one she had never connected to her art until that hour. So before messaging, this is what she thought she was doing. I draw buildings because I love architecture. I like nostalgia and documenting old signs before they disappear. These are hyper realistic graphite drawings. I need productivity, I need refinement, I need technical focus. It’s all true. So technically accurate, but emotionally it’s flat. Collectors don’t buy technique. They buy a worldview. So let’s talk about the turning point. For her, the breakthrough moment was a single question. I asked her, why do you choose these viewpoints? And then she started answering without thinking. Well, everyone else walks around looking down at their phones and I want them to look up. And you could feel the room shift. And that was the truth. Her art had been whispering the whole time.
Miriam Schulman: This became the spine of her new message. Not buildings, not nostalgia, looking up as an emotional, spiritual and philosophical act. This was her cloud dancer moment inside her own life the moment of clarity, breath and upward reflection. Her art is what happens when a woman stops chasing hustle, culture stops seeking approval, stops living sideways, and instead looks up. And collectors who see themselves as people who have rebuilt their lives. People who have pivoted, burned out, recalibrated or chosen. Peace over hustle. They recognize themselves instantly. And guess what? In her most recent show at the Swan Coach House, she sold out all four of her pieces. Hey, creatives. Self-doubt does not disqualify you as an artist or a creative entrepreneur. It’s actually part of being vulnerable, which you need to create good art. And of course, it’s part of being human. Every successful artist I know has faced that voice that says, you can’t do this, or who are you to call yourself an artist? But the difference between those who stay stuck is not the absence of self-doubt. It’s having the will and the words to move forward anyway. I’m Miriam Schulman, I’m author of Artpreneur and I’m host of The Inspiration Place podcast, and I’ve been a professional artist for over 25 years, and I’ve helped many artists get over this figure. Mark. And here’s what I’ve discovered with the artists that I work with. They’ll create these incredible pieces, but when it comes time to share them with the world, often they freeze.
Miriam Schulman: They’ll think, what if people don’t get it? Or what if I sound pretentious? Or what if I don’t sound professional enough? Like am I too much or not enough? So they either don’t put themselves out there at all or I see this much more commonly. They use safe, generic language that does not capture the magic of what they’ve created. But here’s the truth your doubt does not disqualify you. Your uncertainty does not make you an imposter. What matters is that you have something within you that requires expression. And you know what? The world needs to hear about it in your voice, not some watered down version. That’s why I created the Artpreneur intensive messaging session Plus Vault. We’ll work together to find the authentic language that honors both of your vulnerability and your strength. You’ll discover how to talk about your art from a place of love. Love for your work, love for yourself rather than fear. Because when your words come from that place of authentic expression, that’s when people truly connect. That’s when your art stops being invisible. Ready to find your voice? Go to SchulmanArt.com/VAULT. Okay, now I want to tell you about a completely different kind of artist. This is Bonnie Minardi, and she paints the sky as sanctuary, restoration and the longing to fly away. So when Bonnie came into her messaging session, she already knew her collectors were drawn to the healing of her work.
Miriam Schulman: The calm, the softness, the sense of being able to breathe again in a chaotic world. But she had no language for that. Why that feeling that was so central to her art, or how deeply it came from her personal story. But by the end of the session, what became clear is that Bonnie’s landscapes aren’t just landscapes. They’re visual sanctuaries rooted in the childhood moment when she learned that the sky was the only place she could go to feel free. Kind of like Dorothy wishing to go over the rainbow. This is one of her core pieces of her messaging, and the reason her cloud drenched paintings resonate so deeply with her collectors. Okay, we’re going to talk a little bit about what she thought she was communicating. Kind of like the before. So like many artists with decade long practices, Bonnie assumed her collectors responded to peaceful nature scenes, soothing palettes, beautiful technique and oil and cold wax and connection to the Santa Cruz landscape. All of that is true, but none of those things explained why her work feels like an exhale to the people who buy it on paper, their landscapes on paper. I don’t mean she’s working on paper, but, you know, it sounds like their landscapes, their landscapes. But in reality, Bonnie’s art are escape routes. She just hadn’t named them yet. The breakthrough moment happened when I asked a simple storytelling prompt, and Bonnie casually said, when I was 7 or 8, I used to climb a hill near my home in San Francisco, stand at the top and imagine I could fly away over the neighborhood, over the city, through the clouds.
Miriam Schulman: This was the portal. Bonnie didn’t have a safe childhood. She processed trauma and grief and fear and loneliness without support of adults. And the only place she felt quiet or held or free was connecting to the sky. So the sky became a refuge, an escape, a possibility, A spiritual shelter. The place where she could breathe. And that is the emotional architecture of her art. Her landscapes aren’t about scenery. They’re about remembering that hilltop and that sensation of being lifted away from pain. And Cloud Dancer couldn’t be more aligned with that feeling. When I asked Bonnie whether she processes emotions through her art, she immediately said, yes, definitely. Her paintings are how she metabolizes these old wounds, and her anxiety and the longing for peace and the desire to feel connected rather than divided. Her relationship to nature as a spiritual practice, her deep, decades long commitment to gentleness, compassion, and healing. And that’s why her work feels alive, not decorative. Bonnie paints inner weather. Clothed in outer atmosphere. And the clouds in her paintings are not just clouds. They are the emotional residue of survival, healing and transcendence. Bonnie believes beauty is a form of nonviolence. Gentleness is not weakness.
Miriam Schulman: Nature is where she accesses a higher power, and art can be a form of prayer. Beauty can be a form of brokenness. We restore ourselves by returning to land, to light and quiet, and these core values shape her collector’s experience. Her buyers are independent spirited women, emotionally intelligent couples, people who crave calm, people overwhelmed by chaos and noise. People who seek Spiritual clarity collectors who are carrying personal demons of their own, but not identifying as artists themselves. In other words, people whose nervous systems beg for stillness. And this is why her paintings consistently sell during her open studios. They function as emotional rest stops. So after the messaging session, Bonnie’s true message is put a little air. Quotes. My paintings are visual sanctuaries, spaces to rest, breathe, and return to yourself. And more specifically, I’ve been chasing the sky since I was a child because the sky is where I first learned peace. So her work is not about technique. It’s not about style. It’s not even about scenery. It’s about healing, spiritual refuge, emotional clarity, the beauty that emerges from brokenness, the possibility of personal transformation, the soft, sacred quiet that exists above the noise. This is the heart of Cloud Dancer, a calm, ethereal, reset. Her cloud work whispers you’re the sky. The rest is just weather. If Cloud Dancer is Pantone symbol of collective longing for quiet transformation, Bonnie is its painter. Okay. And now we’re going to talk about our third case study, which is Chris Holt.
Miriam Schulman: The story with Chris is totally different from Bonnie and from Shayna because with Chris, the transformation wasn’t just in his messaging, although we did that with him too. But with Chris, for him, it’s more about what I’m telling you, the story. It’s more about permission. Permission to paint what he actually loves. Permission to follow the pull of the clouds. Permission to become the painter he already was but hadn’t fully claimed. And the universe and the market met him right there. So let’s talk about the gallery conversation that changed everything. So during our recent Inner Circle call, Chris shared the win that has completely reoriented his practice. He said, I’m now painting clouds full time. I’ve got six of them going at once. By the way, for. Well, try to get a clip of Chris and a clip of Shaina and a clip of Bonnie. You know, to make this a little more interesting. The decision didn’t come from guessing what the market wanted. It didn’t even come from following trends. It came from listening to a gallery director say, Hey Chris, if you love painting clouds, pink clouds, and instead of resisting or overthinking, he just leaned in. And that’s important because artists often treat the work they love the most as indulgent. And Chris is now treating it as a directive. And the market responded immediately within days of shifting into this cloud work.
Miriam Schulman: Two things happened. Number one, his current gallery celebrated the shift. They said, Chris, we want more of the clouds. They can sell the clouds. They can see clarity where he previously saw risk. And number two, a second gallery reached out. They found him through his website, because his website clearly talks about what he does and specifically referenced his earlier show that combined flowers with clouds. So a full year and a half later, the clouds are still what sticks. Clouds are his signature. Clouds are what people remember. Clouds are what the market is asking for. And this is the opposite of trying to be commercial or trying to follow trends. It’s the moment when the artist finally becomes legible to the world. So let’s talk about this creative breakthrough. Kris also shared another essential insight with us. He said, my best work is when I’m spontaneous and fast, and I’ve changed how I paint to accommodate that. And this is huge. Huge cloud painting requires looseness, surrender, energetic mark, making quick decisions, responsiveness. You cannot overwork a sky. You cannot micromanage atmosphere. So when Kris reorganized his studios, his schedule, and his process to support fast work, he wasn’t only solving a production problem, he was solving a creative integrity problem. So now he paints every morning six paintings at once. Flow state, not fear state. Cloud Dancer is literally about calm, clarity and motion. The exact condition Chris is now cultivating.
Miriam Schulman: If you’re a visual artist, you’re probably thinking that writers have it easy when it comes to putting their work into words or talking about themselves. And here’s something that’s really fascinating. Even professional writers struggles when it comes to writing about themselves and their own work. I’m Miriam Schulman. I’m author of the book Artpreneur, and I’m host of The Inspiration Place podcast, and I’ve been a professional artist for over 25 years. But here’s what I’ve learned. Whether you’re a painter, a sculptor, or any kind of creative, including writers, the challenge is still the same. How do you translate the meaning behind your work into words that actually connect with people? Because at the end of the day, people don’t just buy your art, they buy meaning and they buy connection. I see this struggle everywhere. Artists will spend months perfecting a piece, pouring their heart and soul into every brush, stroke or detail. But when someone asks, what’s this about? They stumble. They’re completely unprepared. They’ll say things like, well, it’s an acrylic on canvas, or they’ll talk about their technique and they completely miss the emotional core that drove them to create it in the first place. Now, I know that’s because many of you do create on a subconscious level. That’s totally normal. But that’s the thing. Your collectors are not buying your medium. They’re buying your message. Which is why it’s so important to unpack that. They want to feel something.
Miriam Schulman: They want that piece to mean something to them in their lives, in their homes, in their hearts. That’s exactly why I created the Artpreneur messaging intensive Session Plus Vault. We’ll dig deep to uncover not just what you make, but why it matters. You’ll discover how to articulate the meaning, the connection, and the secret that only your work can offer. Because when people understand the why behind your art. That’s when they don’t just admire it, they need to have it ready to give your art the words it deserves. Go to Schulman Art. Okay, we’re going to start wrapping up clouds as symbolic portals in the work. So where bonny’s clouds are emotional sanctuaries and shayna’s clouds are spiritual alignments. Chris’s clouds are portals. Chris paints skies the way surrealists paint dreams. Their openings, their thresholds, their shimmering symbols, their hints of another reality just beyond this one. And even during the inner circle call, when he commented on the painting I just bought recently, he immediately referenced Magritte. Of course he did. He is oriented toward the metaphysical. His clouds are never just meteorology. They are archetypes of possibility, transformation, the unseen, the symbolic, the spiritual subconscious. Cloud dancer pantone’s ethereal, quiet, new beginning. White mirrors this perfectly. It’s the space before the vision, the blank portal, the threshold of becoming exactly the territory that Chris occupies. All right, so let’s talk about the discipline behind the magic. People see the dreamlike quality of Chris’s paintings, but behind the dream is a system structured mornings blocked studio time, six canvases at once, rotating out gallery inventory every two months, committing to 50 paintings in 2026, using LinkedIn and email consistently.
Miriam Schulman: And I hope you’re listening. Chris. This is what you committed to, by the way, and photographing and documenting and scheduling Content. This is what it looks like when an artist steps fully into the identity of a working painter. Now, clouds may be his subject, but consistency in 2026 will be his superpower. When Cloud Dancer symbolizes the desire to begin anew, Chris embodies the practice of beginning again every single morning. Okay, so let me wrap up with the final advice you should take away from this episode. Don’t chase the color. There’s not much of a color chase the meaning behind it. If your work embodies calm breath, liminality, reflection, or upward perspective, lean into that. If it doesn’t, don’t force it. Trends are invitations, not assignments. So I teach artists to market through meaning, message, and emotional connection. And this moment proves the value of that. Now, if you want help discovering your own message, the language that connects your art to the people who will love it. That’s the work that I do inside of my messaging sessions. That’s the work I do inside Inner Circle. All right, my friend. So thank you so much for being with me here today. I will see you the same time, same place next week. Until then, stay inspired. Bye for now.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on Facebook, Facebook.com/SchulmanArt, on Instagram at @SchulmanArt and of course on SchulmanArt.com.
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