My practice includes ceramics, sculpture, painting, digital work, and drawing. It also includes learning to run a small business, dealing with clients, books, email lists, event planning, my personal life, and having 10 art related projects going at once. To say that I am an artist is really a blanket term for all the random things that I do. It doesn’t adequately describe it all, and often non-creatives have a hard time understanding the creative mindset, or what is required in running an art business. I get why people are comfortable working a 9-5, it’s steady, predictable and you don’t have to worry about being a one-person-show. I live, eat and breath my business since I am trying to figure out how it all works. My art practice has been sidelined so I can focus on a groundwork. It’s frustrating to explain to people that I don’t just get to paint and do crafts all day. I have made one painting in the last four months, when I can typically produce 5 in a month!

My art practice has split into what feels like separate perpetual tangents. I have the art that is meant to sell easily, destined for that empty living room or bedroom wall, the abstracts and animal portraits. Then I have the darker work, dead things, vultures, taxidermy, and surreal illustrative images of birds and animals. This is the stuff I am compelled by, the stuff I talk about when I write an artist statement, or am interviewed about. It’s more in line with the art for arts sake. Of course there are a thousand things that fall somewhere in between. But what they don’t talk about in art school is managing separate practices. Everyone seems to talk about an art practice as whole, singular and focused. This is not my experience, and I want to be open about that.

I also believe that employing various mediums in an artistic practice expands ones knowledge of form and material significance. Materials are alive and our interactions with them inform our understanding of the world around us. I work in various mediums, and switch between them often. I feel as though each material experience informs one another. A direct example is how sculpture informs my painting and understanding of 2D form. Alternatively, how I throw a ceramic vase is guided by a form best suited for an illustrative surface.

This is all to say that if you are another artist reading this, you may relate to these sentiments of feeling the pressure to do it all, to make the work, to promote the work, to sell the work, and all the other random tasks in between. If you are not an artist and you have read this far, thank you. I hope that I can expand your idea of what is required of small business owners, artists, and people out there choosing to do what they love.

Cheers to you all,

Rachel Speakman