THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman:
Well hello, passion maker. This is Miriam Schulman, and you’re listening to episode 162 of The Inspiration Place podcast. I am so grateful that you’re here. Today, we’re talking all about why creativity makes you happy. In this episode, you’ll discover why learning new skills opens up pathways in your mind to other areas of your life. How practicing skills rather than copying projects will help you develop your voice as an artist. And just in case you thought I forgot about the business aspects, we will talk about why asking higher prices for your art and your art classes will bring you higher quality customers.
By the way, if you’re a big fan of what we talk about here on the podcast every single week, then you absolutely can’t miss my free ebook. It’s called The Artist Profit Plan. I talk about the five things you must do to sell more art, plus let you know what you’re doing that’s probably wasting your time. I’m giving this ebook to you for the very, very, very low price of absolutely free. So head on over to schulmanart.com/profit and download it today.
Today’s guest is a professional painter, designer and educator, with work informed by the real and the imaginary. Her background in textile and ceramic design is noticeable and the stylized abundant and colorful forms used in her still life, landscape and floral paintings. She’s known for her altered and distorted, floral and simplified plant shapes, painted in layered colors with added patterns, textures, and mark-making. Inspired by nature, travel, thoughts and the changing seasons, her artworks have an ethereal quality, conveying an intrinsic beauty impression or special memory, which is why she’s a popular workshop teacher and online art educator. As a designer, our guest collaborates with manufacturers and producers of textiles, wallpaper, homeware, and paper products. Her art is also represented by galleries. Please welcome to The Inspiration Place, Este McLeod. Hello, Este, welcome to the show.
Este MacLeod:
Hello, hello Miriam. Thank you very much, you called me Etsy there, which is not a bad thing.
Miriam Schulman:
Did I really? No, I have a terrible learning disability. I have ideological processing and I do do things like that, I’m so sorry.
Este MacLeod:
It’s not a problem. It happens very often actually. It’s because Etsy, and it’s probably something that’s said far more in your head than Este.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, I have something called audiological processing, so I mix up syllables and when I write, I mix up numbers, it’s kind of related to dyslexia, but it’s with listening.
Este MacLeod:
I think I’ve got it as well, names sound to me-
Miriam Schulman:
Oh really?
Este MacLeod:
Yeah, a name does often sound to me like another name, even though it’s not the same, but it’s so similar, it could have been the same name, even though it is not at all, but also has the L and an N in it.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s very common for artistic people because we have such a powerful way of viewing the world, we have very developed brains in some areas and we’re less developed in other areas. Not that we’re dumb, but it’s uneven profile. What you’re describing about the similar syllables, I think it’s called synesthesia, which of course I can’t pronounce anything because of my audiological processing. I have a cat named Ebony and my sister-in-law has a cat named Annabel. To me it’s very similar because it starts with this vowel and then has a B in the middle, the feminine vowels have a certain color to me, so it’s like, I see the word as being almost the same word. Does that make sense too?
Este MacLeod:
Yeah, that makes complete sense.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m so glad my nonsense makes complete sense.
Este MacLeod:
[crosstalk 00:04:56].
Miriam Schulman:
It’s so weird.
Este MacLeod:
When did you starting the podcast? How long have you been doing this for?
Miriam Schulman:
Almost three years.
Este MacLeod:
Wow.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s really my favorite thing that I do now. Out of all my creative things, I call this my art now also, I really enjoy the whole curation of figuring out what kind of guests and how to pull out what it is that they have to say that my audience would appreciate. I do solo episodes too, but yeah, it’s a lot of fun.
Este MacLeod:
I really enjoy your podcast and I’m really not saying … I mean, I don’t have to say this online, but I really do. It’s very, very valuable. I’ve been listening to them and it’s really very insightful the people that you interview, I have to say this to you. It’s very good.
Miriam Schulman:
Thank you so much. All right. So Este, we sat next to each other in Brooklyn.
Este MacLeod:
Of course we did.
Miriam Schulman:
We sat next to each other during an art class. We were both students at this wonderful Brooklyn art class. I was so lucky to be seated next to you. So, that is how we actually know each other.
Este MacLeod:
Yes, it was a wonderful day.
Miriam Schulman:
So we took a class that was taught by Helen Dardik and Carolyn Gavin.
Este MacLeod:
Monika, Monika Forsberg was there too.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes, yes. So it was right around the time of SURTEX and I think BluePrint and people were coming in and maybe that’s why you were there as well.
Este MacLeod:
Exactly. That’s why I was there, yeah. I made the trip a bit earlier in order to do the workshop.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, that was such a fun class. What was really nice about it is because they had it at such a high price point, I think it attracted a certain level of person, if that makes sense.
Este MacLeod:
Totally. No, I do know, it’s like, you have to really want to do that otherwise you wouldn’t. What I thought about as well, I think it was $450, it was expensive.
Miriam Schulman:
It might have been $500, it was a lot and to me, it was the no-brainer. It was a lot and at the same time it was like, of course.
Este MacLeod:
Yes. And I have sold all the work that I made there, so that’s fine, and I’ve made designs from it and it has inspired other ways. Because I am not a gouache painter, but I then have since gone on to, I was asked to teach on another platform to teach a course on gouache and watercolor. So, even though it’s not something I do a lot, would develop more of an affinity for it. I typically paint on canvas, so it’s been very good. And yeah, it’s actually a very good lesson. I don’t know if it’s you, is it out of your podcast, where you were saying that people … the price point doesn’t affect whether a person will buy your work or not? Is that something that you were saying?
Miriam Schulman:
I say that a lot. It’s that we always assume as the seller, that people are price sensitive and actually what people are looking for is value. Especially when it comes to art, they are driven by pleasure rather than solving a problem. When someone’s trying to solve a problem, they’ll look for the cheapest way to solve a problem. When they’re driven by pleasure, sometimes spending more money gives them pleasure.
Este MacLeod:
I think that’s true.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s why Rolex watches, luxury goods, there’s something fun about being able to invest in something that is not accessible to everybody.
Este MacLeod:
Just think of it as, “These are not our people. This is not for you.” I’m fine with it not selling, the right buyer will come.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s right. It’s not so much that you think that they’re not the people, it’s about having that abundant mindset, that there’s always going to be another buyer. I also like to call it hot girl energy. So, it’s like the hot girl is not worrying about settling because she’s afraid that something better may not come along. The hot girl knows there’s always another guy, so that’s the energy of why high prices.
Este MacLeod:
Not chasing, not chasing, that’s what I often say. Never chase. It will sell, there will be another buyer. So it is, it’s a wonderful place to be, to not have to justify your art. It was really lovely. It’s so good to see how other people create. I don’t do many workshops, any in-person workshops and especially nothing happened in the last so many months, but it is really good to see how other people create in that particular workshop, because we all do it so differently. Monika is a friend of mine and she has a very particular way of working as well, as I think of it. We all have our own styles of working and that gets written reinforced when you do something like a workshop with three artists at an event. Topic is flowers and florals, and people just have their own way of doing it. You think there would be more overlapping and it’s not.
Miriam Schulman:
It was very interesting. It wasn’t so much that I was taking on other people’s styles with you sitting next to me and looking over the shoulder. I feel like both of us, when we were taking instruction from the teachers, it was still our own voice was coming through, but what was fun was experimenting with materials that we may not have chosen. That was the biggest thing that I found very expansive for me, a part that, “Oh, I never would have thought to use this hot pink color. I never would have thought to use this calligraphy pen and the ink, and how interesting is that?” I found that really opened me up.
Este MacLeod:
Try something out because you may find that this is how you do not want to create, and that’s learning. You could have that experience and enjoy the experience and enjoy the way a person teaches you, but you can also go, “This is absolutely not how I create,” and be happy to create how you normally do. It’s not a wasted opportunity. It’s not a waste, it is having experienced that. And then it will somehow come back in your own work without you all of a sudden changing direction or feel you have to embrace how that person works, if that makes sense? It’s all just add-ons, little bits of-
Miriam Schulman:
It does. What’s really important, especially when you are someone who feels you haven’t established our practice like we do, it’s so important to check your ego at the door and come with … in a beginner’s mind, because it’s so tempting to want to go into our, I’m going to call them artistic tropes, like the things that we know are going to be successful. It’s so much more challenging to try to do something in a way you’re not sure if it’s going to turn out or not, because you’ve never done it before. Even though you’ve done lots of art, you’ve never done, like you said, this mode of creating that this other person has.
Este MacLeod:
Taking the lead, but let another person take the lead, following the lead and go, “Okay. I would never paint like this, but let me give it my best shot,” because you’ll learn from it. I painted things on that day, which I know was in my style, but differently. And all of them I can remember from the day, but it doesn’t look like a copy of the particular artist, but it’s just a bit different. And it could be something, as you just pointed out, the simplicity of simple idea of, “Oh, hot pink,” of bringing in florescent colors, something you wouldn’t normally do because it didn’t feature before.
Color combinations, that could lead you onto a whole new path, but also methods of working and other thing in terms of doing workshops, I recently did a mosaic workshop and it was an absolutely impromptu decision. It was, “Oh, there’s just one place open, it’s Saturday, it’s not far from where I am. I’m going to spend a day doing mosaic.” I don’t want to become a mosaic artist and I definitely don’t want to be one now that I’ve done it, but I loved what I did. I loved sitting next to somebody, a friend of mine and she said, I think you should do this. “Okay, fine. I’ll just do what you say, and I think you should do use those plates and use this.” I loved being so almost out of my comfort zone that I, as a child, just take the lead from what I’m told to do, because it will work out fine, but taking a different direction and just play for the sake of playing and not being too hung up about the outcome.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. It’s almost better, I thin when you’re doing something like this, to take a class that is completely different than the kind of art you normally produce. So I, as a watercolorist, it’s much more powerful for me to take an embroidery class, go completely in a different place. Like I said before, it’s easier to check your ego at the door, come with that beginner’s mind and to stretch yourself and even something like an embroidery class can inform and change my watercolor painting as long as I’m open to it.
Este MacLeod:
Absolutely, absolutely. It might not be immediate. It might be that in two years’ time you go, “You know what, what I experienced when I did that embroidery class was a sense of calm and the fact that I didn’t have the pressure to make work that is commercially viable, sellable. I want to go back into that space. I want to take two days, or three days, or a week and just embroider and play, because that was something that I valued at the time.” There are different benefits to it, but it very often will directly benefit your work.
I’ll tell you something that I did as a student, I studied several years in my life, sometimes on a whim. And the one was, I did a degree as a mature student in ceramic design and glass with glass. I had a tutor who absolutely inspired me. He basically had such an impact on my life because he said to me, “Okay, I can see you’ve been working, I can see what you do. I can see you proficient in ceramics. I don’t even want to see you work in ceramics, I want you just to play.” And it was the freedom for somebody to just see, “I can see you can work. I can see you work hard. I can see you are skilled. So therefore, just play and enjoy this time of studying and see what you can discover.”
Then on the back of that, I actually did a master’s degree in jewelry, but I’m not into jeweler. I did this because I didn’t want to do a fine art master’s degree because that almost would have been too easy. Like you just said, it’s too close to what you do. So, I thought if I approached a jewelry degree, master’s degree, the way I would a fine art degree, but in a smaller scale and with a different objective and incorporating different things, because jewelry is very particular. There are particularities to jewelry. It’s artwork that we all own and it’s very emotionally connected to at least one piece of jewelry, most of us, in our lifetime.
I didn’t become a jeweler and I was not particularly good technically, and I was not very skillful at it. The tutor would sometimes just look at me and, in desperation go, “You shouldn’t hammer things so hard.” Anyway, it was this fine art approach I had, of two things, an experimental way. But that was time for me to explore new things and to play. That has come back in the way I teach and the knowledge that I’ve gained from that as well.
Jewelry can also just be small scale sculptural pieces, inspire you so much. I mean, it’s anthropological as well. It shows you the trends, the designs, the fashions from the beginning of time, the beginning of civilization, I should say. So, it inspires other things as well. It can inspire so much. It’s an inexhaustible well. Even though I didn’t study a master’s degree to change my career, it impacts me, almost say, daily.
Miriam Schulman:
Wow. Yeah, I completely agree with the thing that you said about how, when you’re taking a class and you learn something, but it may not impact you immediately. I also see that when I’m teaching business skills too, and I tell my students that I’ll share something with you and you may not be ready to receive it yet. When you are ready to receive it, it will either come back to you or you’ll hear me say it again on the podcast, and suddenly it will make sense. So, something will trigger a memory of what you had learned and now you’re ready to receive that information. Like you said, with what it was that you’ve learned, it might’ve been something conceptual rather than technical that is informing your artwork, that will come back.
All of our experiences inform our art, which is why we each have our own voice. Even when we were at that workshop, when we’re both painting the same flowers in front of us and you turn them side by side and it doesn’t look like … with the same instruction and the same materials and the same flowers, a dozen people around the table all had very different expressions.
Este MacLeod:
Yeah, it’s your interpretation of what you see. It’s your hand will create something different from the person next to you. That is actually something, again, I was saying earlier on about the artists who run the workshops, who show you they work will have an impact on the outcome, but it will still be your work. That is also why copying ultimately never is a solution. You have to create your authentic voice, whether that is by learning by copying, I typically wouldn’t encourage, but some people feel that is the way for them to learn, but ultimately it is your authentic voice has to come out of that. Even if your method of learning is by copying what a mentor does.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m so glad you brought that up because there is a tradition with fine art, copying from the masters and learning from the masters. But what’s really essential is that you’re mastering the technique and the foundation behind it. When I teach my students, so what I specialize in teaching is watercolor portraits, and I do have a demonstration where they are copying that demonstration but because the whole point of the class is for them to take those skills and then paint their own portraits of their family, or their grandchildren, or for those of them who are ambitious enough who want to monetize it, they can be painting other people. What’s so important is that I’m really teaching them the foundational skills so that even if they’re learning from this project, that they are able to take that to the next painting that they do and really move on with that.
Este MacLeod:
It’s something that I think about a lot about copying and how to help people, because I’m sometimes confronted with that and it’s like, “Okay, how do you help this person who’s been copying you?” Because very often people do not actually realize. It’s not a malicious thing. It’s about you see something on Pinterest and you go, “Oh, I would like to do that. I would like to paint like this artist.” Then you go and you meticulously copy that, or you make something that is so similar. My current thinking is, copy, copy, copy, copy, copy, and if you then feel, “Okay, I now know how to do this painting the way this person did it. I’ve basically made a painting exactly like this artist, but possibly even better because I’ve now developed the technique, skills, the materials, all the knowledge,” then put it away. Don’t show it to anyone, don’t dare put it online. Your own artistic integrity will be at the peril of that because people will know and you will look like a copier.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah and then you’ll suffer from imposter syndrome.
Este MacLeod:
Yes, yes you will. So, if you feel that is what you have to do, then do it and then move on. Then look at your own work, and that brings me to the following is sketch. Always sketch, have a sketchbook. It’s not about drawing pretty, it’s about doing it regularly because that is a bit like … I think of it as note taking, if you were a writer. Making annotations is important in the same way as creating sketches when you have a dry spell, or not even for a dry spell, it just informs, there’s a language in it and that’s so important. That’s your resource for then working bigger. You have to draw. Having that discipline of sketching regularly, I think is the best tool to develop your authentic voice.
Miriam Schulman:
I have some questions I want to make sure I ask you. So one of them I have on here is that, how do you get inspired? I’m assuming it’s not by looking on Pinterest.
Este MacLeod:
Pinterest is good. Pinterest is very good to organize things that you are inspired by. Actually, I use it when I teach, I have a board, which I would go, “Okay, have a look at mid-century design,” or orange, brown and mid-century ceramics, or something like that. So yes, it’s a good way to organize thoughts, but I would certainly not look at Pinterest and go, “Oh, I need some inspiration today. I’ll see what I can find.”
I was thinking about it this week. I am really inspired by nature and I’m inspired by how things grow, how the seasons impact on it. Actually, I think I make better work often when the seasons change and in autumn, because there’s a sense of loss and melancholy. I almost look at things more, whereas in summer, everything is growing and it just makes me happy. Definitely, I make more florals and more colorful work then, but sometimes there’s something almost deeper coming out when you’re aware of the seasons changing. I do not like autumn, I feel that sort of, “Oh God it’s just before winter.” Then you have to go through a long winter because I come from South Africa where the winter’s typically short. In the UK, it’s a long winter with lots of rain and gray. So you have to think of things to make you happy and painting certainly makes me happy and being creative and finding your own joy. You have to make it yourself, you have to create it for yourself.
The other thing is travel. I am very inspired by traveling and travel doesn’t have to be necessarily abroad, even though that helps. Looking with fresh eyes, just a change of scenery. Recently, we literally did a two day trip somewhere. It was so inspiring to look at nature, walk in a different forest, just driving through a different environment, inspiration from going to museums, galleries,
Miriam Schulman:
Este, has your creativity suffered in the last year because of COVID and all the restrictions we’ve had?
Este MacLeod:
Yes. Yes and no. In some way, it actually made it blossom because as of late, I have to say I’ve been feeling more depleted. When it first came apparent that we were going to be in a lockdown last March, I had just come back from Vietnam. I thought, “Okay, the best thing I can do now … ” and I can remember thinking this and going, “Okay, this is what I’m going to do. The best thing I can do now is to create a quick, short five day course, and my objective is to involve minimum materials, simple processes, and to make it so that anyone age five to 95 can do it.”
I then created this project, everything is based on letters or numbers, which I actually am not fond of. I’m a little bit dyslexic with numbers actually. I don’t have an affinity with numbers, but I like the shapes of numbers. It’s like literally taking numbers and turning them into patterns and turning them into leaves, and then they become paintings, and wreaths, and cutting them into potato shapes and making potato prints and literally playing, playing, playing just with those shapes.
The objective was to have people interact and if you’re all of a sudden at home with children as well, to engage creatively. So, that’s what I did. And then on the back of that, there was such a demand for courses. I normally do two courses a year, but I then started making more courses. In that year there were quite a few that I created. Then I did another, in our second lockdown, I created another course and I called that Zest, literally based on the fact that we’ve been given so many lemons. So taking lemons, literally as my topic, the subject to work with. That then became another course.
So, during 2020, and in the beginning of 2021, they were free courses just with the objective to engage with a wider community and let them be more creative. So, making art is my mainstay, it’s important to be creative, but at times I have definitely, I would say in the last few months I’ve been feeling it harder. It’s not that I feel I am not creative, it’s that I feel saddened by the world and by the fact that it sort of continues. I feel really the hardship of other people. I don’t know if this makes sense, but it’s almost like, but I always still have my art. So, the fact that I have it, and it really does make me happy. But then I feel in the same time, more sorry for people who are really struggling.
Miriam Schulman:
Of course, it makes perfect sense. It’s kind of like that survivor’s guilt.
Este MacLeod:
It is exactly that. On Instagram, I do live demos and I do those weekly, and I know there are people who say that they really enjoy these weekly interactions and little projects and prompts that I create for people. It’s something I really wish would go away, lockdown, the implications from it. It will go away, there were plagues before.
It is debilitating. I don’t really know how to make it better, and that is something which makes me sad. It’s draining, but I’m a glass half full kind of person. I do think it is bound to get better.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m glad you shared that and shared so vulnerably. I definitely feel more empathy now with people in different times, what it was like to live in different times. People, like you said, who’ve gone through this, like the Spanish Flu Edvard Munch did The Scream during that plague, that’s when that piece was made and we can now completely relate to, yeah, that’s how it feels.
Este MacLeod:
I did not know that. Wow.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. He has actually a piece. I forget if it’s a self-portrait, or a portrait of somebody else, where somebody who was sick with Spanish flu, and then … hopefully I haven’t totally screwed this up, maybe it’s a different artist. If it’s the right artist, I will make sure I’m going to post both of those in the show notes. All right, so this is a great place to wrap up. There were six questions about a completely different topic I wanted to talk to you about, but maybe we’ll get you back again Este, what do you say?
Este MacLeod:
I’d love that. That would be very good, thanks.
Miriam Schulman:
As we’re wrapping up, make sure you check out Este on Instagram. She’s Este MacLeod over there. You can find her free course. She has one on exploring color in your sketchbook on her website, estemcleod.com. Did I get that right?
Este MacLeod:
That’s perfect.
Miriam Schulman:
And we’ve included the links to all these places in the show notes at schulmanart.com/161. Don’t forget to check out my free ebook called The Artist Profit Plan. We’re going to dive deep, going beyond the starving artist mindset to uncover what’s really sabotaging your success. To grab your copy, head on over to schulmanart.com/profit and download it today. Alrighty, Este, do you have any last words for my listeners before we call this podcast complete?
Este MacLeod:
I fundamentally believe that creativity makes you happier. It’s something that lifts your mood, whether it is from making art, cooking, gardening, engaging creatively, it is something that will lift your mood. It helps you to be in a different place in your head. Engage with your creativity because you’ll be grateful for it.
Miriam Schulman:
I love that. Thank you so much for being with me here today. We have a great guest for you again next week. Trust me, you don’t want to miss it, so hit that plus sign in your app or the follow button, depending on which app you use to listen to podcasts. If you’re feeling extra generous, I’d really appreciate a review. If you like the show, you can tell us why. If you’re not sure how to leave a review, go to schulmanart.com/review-podcast. I have a video, I will teach you how. If you pop your Instagram handle at the end of it, I’ll even give you a shout out over on my IG stories. All right, my friend, thank you so much for being with me here today. I’ll see you the same time, same place next week. Stay inspired.
Thank you for listening to The Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on Facebook at facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram @SchulmanArt. And of course, on schulmanart.com.
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