Ep #2: Balancing art, business, and parenthood - with artist Carrie Brummer

Podcast

Jul 11

In this illuminating episode, I sit down with the brilliant Carrie Brummer to explore the beautiful chaos of combining artmaking with entrepreneurship and raising kids. Carrie shares her journey of integrating creativity into daily life, and offers some invaluable insights for anyone seeking to make creativity their full-time gig.

Carrie shares some fab tips for making space for creativity amongst the endless duties of small business ownership and parenting little ones. Her flexible, go-with-the-flow approach feels so liberating in a world that constantly urges us to hustle and grind, no matter the cost.

From finding creative fuel in the humour and mundanity of domestic life, to chasing artistic dreams in unconventional ways, to giving yourself permission to ebb and flow - Carrie's hard-won wisdom feels like a warm hug.

Whether you're a fellow artist/parent striving to make room for it all, a creative entrepreneur looking for a fresh perspective, or simply someone craving more artful presence amidst the rush of daily life - this candid conversation is sure to refill your cup.

You can find the video version of our chat below (where you can also see me do a very quick sketch of Carrie as we talk):

Or listen to the audio version (click the arrow at the bottom right to play):

Find out more about Carrie:

Carrie Brummer is a visual artist and art educator, and has had work displayed in short term exhibitions at The Smithsonian and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Her artist practice is about highlighting and addressing gender norms, perfectionism and being a primary caregiver.

Carrie teaches through Artist Strong where she helps creatives build their skill and develop their unique artist voice. She speaks about creating a unique style, why talent is overrated, and mindset issues unique to creatives.

She is a new(ish) Mom to a strong, smart 4-year old, a furmom to a doodle that’s more muppet than dog, and currently lives in Houston, Texas after 13 years in the Middle East and Canada. When she’s not playing board games with her hubby, she’s baking, reading, and making her own art.

Eli: I am joined today by the wonderful Carrie Brummer, who is a fantastic artist and an amazing guide for artists as well. She helps all sorts of artists discover their true creative selves and get on the right path. Carrie, would you tell us a little bit about your background, how you started with what you're doing, and how you got to be where you are now?
Carrie: Sure, thanks so much for having me. This is going to be fun to be in conversation with you again and to dig deep into our process and ideas. I really don't remember a time when I didn't want to be an artist, to be frank. My mom had a degree in art. She was a constant explorer of materials, and that was modelled to me when I was very young.
There's some irony there because I'm a perfectionist and she's not. That's something we can get into. My first memories are colouring with my grandma and my mother, then drawing and painting, and seeing friends being good at certain things in art and really wanting to be better. Even at an elementary age, there was this push or desire. I think I felt a real sense of reward and affirmation from my family if I improved in my skill. All that coalesced into this desire to express myself through my work and feel permission to communicate through art in a way that maybe, being a little more shy and withdrawn, I wouldn't voice in the same way. It became an avenue through which I could access part of myself and be fully expressed. It was really a tool, even through my adolescence, that helped me to process life, which I think so many of us can relate to.
When I was in high school and thinking about college, I got some mixed messaging and was told, "You can't have a career in the arts; you won't make any money." So, I went to school studying psychology and some other things, thinking I might become a therapist and make art on the side. Ultimately, I decided to teach, thinking I could teach art, have a steady income, and have summers off to focus on my own practice.
That eventually led me to where I am now. I ended up teaching overseas, moving to Dubai after living and teaching in Massachusetts. I lived in Dubai for six years, teaching there. Then, I met and married my now-husband, and his job moved us to Muscat, Oman. When we moved there, I decided to take a step back from classroom teaching. I realised that many adult artists don't feel the support they need to realise their creative interests. I thought about what would change if everyone felt that permission and the cultural shift that could happen.
I decided to start Artists Strong online to reach more people while making my own work. That was the big catalyst for starting Artists Strong while engaging in my own practice.
Eli: I love that, and I didn't realise you had a teaching background as well as psychology. It all ties together perfectly, doesn't it? So, for people who don't know you, what is Artists Strong? Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Carrie: Absolutely. Artists Strong has been running for over ten years now. It started as a blog about the creative process while I was in the classroom, talking about education and creativity. As I realised I could serve self-taught and adult artists who felt they were struggling with their skill development and voice, and had gaps in their learning, I developed a clearer vision of who I'm serving and how to support them.
Through Artists Strong, I create free and paid resources to support artists who have a home studio but feel stuck and unsure about what's next. Perhaps they've taken many courses where they learned to paint in the style of a teacher, which provided a lot of information and learning, but they've reached a saturation point. They start to wonder how they can take these ideas, interpret them, and show more of their own voice or style in their work. What does that even mean? What is style and voice?
I try to create weekly content through my YouTube channel, and I have a program called Self-Taught to Self-Confident that guides people through this process.
Eli: That's fantastic. What an incredible resource for people. I think what you said about artists learning from teachers is so true. Sometimes you can tell who an artist has learned from because they've picked up a facsimile of that style. Can you give us a little more definition about style and voice and what you mean by that?
Carrie: Absolutely. When I say "artistic voice," I am talking about everything that makes you an artist and how that starts to reflect in your work, whether you intend it to or not. That's the beginning of seeing style, but style is something that evolves over time. Many creatives worry about being pigeonholed into one style and resist the idea of having one style their whole life. For me, style is a cohesive thread that has six qualities: how you use the elements and principles of art, medium and materials, genre, theme, influence, and personal experience. It's how you arrange those things to communicate ideas in a group of works. Style is more reflective through a series of artworks.
A great example is Picasso's work over time. His work varies greatly depending on different periods in his life, but if you look at it in terms of series, you can see different styles expressed across those series. Your voice is all of that work together. When you look at all the work, there's a connecting thread that ties it together. By doing reflective work, getting support and feedback, and engaging in that process, you can really tease out and strengthen your voice and the styles you develop and evolve into as you grow as an artist.
Eli: I love that definition. It's so clear. There's so much talk about style, and a lot of new artists desperately try to find their style, thinking it's something you can try on like clothes in a store. I've always told people that they already have it within them. Their job is to hone, nurture, and bring it out. I really love that.
How do you feel style and voice interact with each other? Do you think there's an innateness in the voice, or is it something that needs excavation?
Carrie: Excavation is a great word for this process. People feel stuck because they think style is something external to try on rather than internalise. We need to digest what we're doing and consider our artistic choices. We get to choose how much our medium drives the message or how people perceive the connection across our work. We can decide if there's a theme or a moment in art history we're tied to and trying to extend or add to.
Both style and voice require self-reflection and assessment to understand what we're doing. This helps us communicate our style more concretely. Artists start to have light bulb moments, realising specific aspects of their work, like how they hold a paintbrush, are unique to them. In my case, I have an overarching thread of concepts about gender norms and the unsung roles of women, which evolves in my work. This has led me to create an Instagram account as an artwork and explore embroidery in addition to my traditional acrylic work. There's freedom in this excavation process.
We need to give ourselves time to look at our work as a whole and get feedback from trusted peers and mentors. This helps us think about our artistic choices and how we can consciously work with them moving forward. Curiosity is essential, rather than feeling pressured to force something. Every time I've tried to force the next stage of my work, it hasn't been successful. Evolution is important because it's messy, with starts and stops. You never know when the next idea will hit or how you'll come to the next series. I like to work in series, and understanding both style and voice involves this idea of excavation.
Eli: I really love how much clarity you have when you talk about this. It's such a good way of putting it. In my work, I work in collections and am very much driven by the idea I’m trying to express. What's the thing I’m trying to communicate, and how is that best achieved? Is it a painting series, a collage, something in textiles? The medium itself carries a message. The way you present something has its own meaning and coded set of expressions. I love that you bring that out because it's not something we often hear in conversations about style, which often seem one-dimensional.
Carrie: Yes, it lacks nuance, which makes people feel cornered or boxed in. Creatives typically are a bit rebellious. We like to do things our own way. "Don't tell me what to do; I'm going to do it differently just to make the point." I'm concerned that creatives don't understand it's a natural process. Style will eventually evolve whether you intend it to or not. But if we are more conscious and do the work, we can have it evolve more quickly and be strategic in how we show up for our work if that's important to us.
Eli: I love that. I find it really exciting. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you today is because you have such an intellectual approach to your work. I’m really fascinated by your process of researching and the behind-the-scenes work before you get to the visual communication.
The collection that particularly caught my eye was your "Anonymous Woman" collection, about unsung heroines of the 1940s. Can you give us some insight into what that project is about?
Carrie: Absolutely, it'll be a good starting point to discuss how my style has evolved and continues to grow. Maybe I'll start with how the idea developed. Initially, I was doing work that felt very derivative, where the influence of others was more evident than my own voice or style. I was feeling discouraged and was choosing more public unsung women. I wanted to find royalty-free images of these women to avoid legal issues and be ethical about the image references I was using. So, I was looking at Amelia Earhart and Frida Kahlo, and although I liked the work, my inner critic kept screaming that it was cliché and derivative.
I knew I wasn't exactly where I wanted to be yet but trusted that this was leading me somewhere. I decided to do three or four pieces and see what happened. While searching the US National Archives for royalty-free images, feeling there was something bigger I was supposed to be doing, I stumbled on these wonderful photographs of women training to be cabbies in the 1940s while men were off at war. The images were so joyful, with so much presence, that I was captivated.
As I spent time looking through them, I noticed that the photographs documented the novelty of their career change and gender role but didn't include any of their names. That realisation punched me in the gut, and I knew this was what I was supposed to be doing. It felt like a download in that moment, a clear extension of the idea of unsung women or undervalued women from history. This was very grounded in that truth but in a more unique way.
Carrie: I felt I needed to give these women time and recognition. I typically paint or draw, so I did some small sketches, got excited about them, and a friend gave me feedback. I decided to embroider and embellish them with gold leaf. These activities are craft-oriented, typically identified as female, laborious, and undervalued, which added another layer of meaning.
When thinking about titles for the work, it naturally came to me to give them names. They deserved to have a name, even if it's not the right one. Some people in the Artist Strong community also helped me name some of the works. This led to the series of pieces, which became the first solo exhibition I had while living in Canada. I had a solo show outside of Ottawa and won a grant for that body of work.
Eli: Is that one of them behind you now?
Carrie: Actually, she's part of a newer project. I found her in the archives as well. Her name is Maud Wagner, one of the first recognized female tattoo artists in North America. It's hard to see here, but the lines are fully embroidered on her, so some of her tattoos are embroidered rather than painted.
Eli: Wow. Are the ones on your website the same scale?
Carrie: Some are almost the same size, but many are around 16 by 20 inches. There’s a range of sizes because I wanted to play with scale. I knew I wanted them in an exhibition where they could be purchased, so I consciously thought about how a range of scales would invite people at different price points into the work.
Eli: That’s really smart. I love how you’ve used the embroidery and gold leaf, making them large, important, gilded, and elevated. Naming them is such a powerful thing. What a wonderful thing to do for these women. That’s so exciting.
Carrie: Thank you so much. I was really hopeful that through social media, someone would recognize them, like a great aunt. Unfortunately, I haven’t had that luck, but who knows, maybe someday.
Eli: They’re not going anywhere. Maybe one day, someone will find them and recognize them. That would be wonderful.
Eli: You've got this beautiful collection with the drawings and everything. How far into the research process did you go? Did you have a structured format for finding out more about these women, or were you just inspired by the photographs and went from there?
Carrie: Even though I'm very type A and tend to be structured, which sometimes contrasts with being an artist, this is where I let intuition guide me. I'd be working on a piece, inspired by the image, and then ideas would come to me, like using embroidery or adding gold leaf. I became curious about the colours and patterns reflective of the time period. I looked up vintage wallpapers and fabrics and found clippings and colour palettes to decide the colour scheme for the body of work.
I didn’t know from the start that’s what I was going to do, but I realised it was important and sought out that information. This determined the limited colour palette, keeping them almost like tinted photographs rather than super rendered faces, using patterns and colours reflective of the period.
I also looked up books and articles, clipping pieces that talked about specific experiences. This helped me feel like I was bringing them to life while working on them, grounding the idea and aiding my decisions in the work.
Eli: Yeah, so you're immersing yourself in that environment, looking at the things they would be looking at, bringing their stories to life in actuality. That's so exciting.
Carrie: Exactly.
Eli: And on the flip side of that, you're working on another project which seems completely different, very much community-based and digital. Was it a natural progression to lead onto that?
Carrie: Yes, yes, yes, it's funny how it all ties together. This piece is part of that as well. While I finished up my solo show and had the exhibition, I became pregnant and we moved from Canada to Texas in the US. At the start of March 2020, I was gifted with a beautiful little girl right at the start of the pandemic. Our whole world really turned upside down in so many ways, but in the best of ways as well. I knew going into that solo show that I would have a period where I'd be taking a break. I wanted to be home with her as much as I could be, and I also knew it would probably change my identity a bit. I was nervous about what that would mean for my art and teaching, how I'd marry these things. Then the pandemic elevated all those questions in a very big way. The closest family member we had was a two-day drive away, so we didn't have a village around us. It was just my partner and me. In hindsight, it was wonderful, but there were challenges associated with that as well.
Carrie: I had already extended this idea of women from history and stumbled upon a photo of Maud Wagner. I thought about women being tattoo artists, a non-traditional job role for women today. I started reaching out to local women tattoo artists, photographed a few, and made some of their work. I hope to continue that series and round it out. While doing that work, I realised I couldn't paint the same way, and didn't have the time. A good friend suggested coloured pencils, which I hadn't used in years but were easy to manage with a baby around. I drew myself as a marionette for a call about motherhood and the pandemic. It felt vulnerable, but when I shared it, many mom friends reached out to affirm their shared experiences. This led me to think about ignored aspects of our culture, like the struggles of primary caregivers. I wanted to bring voice to this, so I started the Primary Caregiver Project. I embroidered into cloth diapers, playing with the irony of the overwhelming message to savour every moment. I hope to embroider at least 50 diapers and frame them beautifully. The community element involves an Instagram account called Primary Caregiver Art, where primary caregivers can anonymously contribute their experiences. I plan to use these contributions for potential exhibitions, books, or posters. Additionally, I'll host in-person and online embroidery workshops, where people can reclaim their caregiving experiences through the act of embroidery and the sense of community it brings, grounded in our history and culture as women.
Eli: Absolutely, yeah. The thing that we have lost as a society with this sort of cult of individuality, we've lost a lot of that kind of women coming together, people raising children together, sharing resources, and sharing the load. Everybody is now expected to be in their little family units doing it all by themselves, which is not the way we're supposed to work as a species at all. I love you're bringing people back together. Again, you're using this medium of embroidery and this medium of “women's work” to draw attention to the fact that “women's work”, I'm using inverted commas for people who can't see the video, is so undervalued despite being so laborious and time-consuming and skillful as well. I mean, not just embroidery but caregiving in general. It's a skill.
Carrie: Absolutely, yeah. I really do hope it gives people more permission to show up and engage in this conversation and make peace with, you know, if it's in the past for them. The most consuming part of primary caregiving is in their past. It could be a way to honour that experience, good and bad. I really want us to be able to talk about all of it because that's what's going to help normalise things for anyone going through caregiving. It's also why I labelled it or decided to use the term primary caregiving because I know many people now too who are like I have a friend who's a grandmother who's a primary, who's a guardian, you know, like she's going through this experience but in a different way. I had loved ones who are caring for their spouses or their parents, and that is a kind of caregiving, and I think we need to acknowledge how important this is as part of our culture. Yet, we don't talk about it, and we place all kinds of expectations on ourselves and each other without even having that reflection or conversation, which I think is quite stifling when you don't feel permission to express.
Eli: Yeah, yeah. I think there's a lot of shame around that as well, particularly, I'm not a parent myself, but I have friends who are parents, and the shame around just not enjoying all of it all the time, like not being able to savour every moment for whatever reason, and then feeling horribly ashamed and guilty for not enjoying every single moment because that is the narrative, you know? I think there's a little bit more leeway when it comes to caring for a spouse or a family member or a parent or something. It's a little bit more leeway, but certainly when it comes to children, your pride and joy should be just the ultimate source of fulfilment in your life, and if actually some days you just don't want to be a mother or a father or whatever, that's like the worst and you can't possibly give voice to that, even though it's a universal thing.
Carrie: Now, exactly. Yeah, like the other week I had to carry my screaming, wailing child like a football out of an American football out of a mall screaming bloody murder because she didn't want to leave a playground area, you know, like something. I can't say that's my favourite part of parenting. I was dripping in sweat by the time I got out. She's four now, she's not a little one, you know, but yet they're natural parts of a parenting experience, and you know, I can laugh now because I had a means to communicate and vent when it was really hard in that moment, you know? And I feel more permission the more I talk about it to everyone, and I'm really hoping it also normalises it for more people because there are too many people who are suffering and don't feel that they can speak to their nuanced experience, and for me, that's my voice, like that's the thread that's connecting all this work. You know, is this idea of like who doesn't feel whose voice isn't being brought to the forefront that we deserve to hear or think about or reflect on as a culture so that we can decide as a community like what do we value moving forward, and what is important to us. And I can very much see that this is still about essentially women's issues, you know, feminist thought, what is equality and showing up and the permission to voice all of our experiences.
Carrie: Obviously, I don't think I would have come to this new work without the birth of my daughter, so you know, that was a huge shift in moment for my work, and it dictated the medium as well because embroidery and coloured pencil are so easy for me to pick up and put down in moments of parenting. And I choose to be home with her. Living in the US, we don't necessarily have the support that some people in Europe, for example, have for care. And I choose to be home with her, so that limits the time that I teach and the times that I have to make art. So I have to really think carefully about how I'm showing up when I have time.
Eli: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting that the highest forms of art in terms of medium are the most. The ones with the highest barrier to entry, the ones that people with a lot of money, a lot of space, a lot of time, a lot of energy have access to, and the people who don't have access to those things, we use different media. I have a friend who has a chronic illness, and she uses marker pens, lying on the sofa in front of the telly, and you know, her art is absolutely beautiful, and when she has the energy, she takes that into the studio and she makes it into something like an acrylic painting. But most of her work is done with markers in front of the telly because she can pick it up. She can put it down. She doesn't have to worry about it drying, and it's just accessible.
Carrie: I hope more artists can feel that permission for accessibility, like what makes it easy for you to show up because it doesn't always have to be like a big fancy painting, you know, which is, I think, what is communicated without being said sometimes that we feel like we have to do to be good at art.
Eli: Yeah, so I love that you're elevating these things into, you know, using the message and the concept to take these mediums into something that's more elevated. I think that's a really beautiful thing. You mentioned before that this kind of evolution of your style has come about through a big life change. But obviously, I mean, you've been an artist for many years; you must have had many kinds of evolutions on your journey. Do you want to talk a little bit about what that looks like and how you've been able to kind of pull out those golden threads of continuity?
Carrie: Yeah, I would say, especially before my anonymous woman series, I had started to work in series, but I hadn't really found the thing that really made me feel alive. You know, that thing where you hit a certain note and you just feel it through and through. I'd been searching and exploring and doing what we all do because that's how you start to show more consistency of voice or consistency across style and series of work. But we don't know how long it's going to take. And we can be insecure about it, and I'm speaking from personal experience. I have a degree in art and art history, I'm teaching art to high schoolers, and I don't feel confident enough yet in my own skill, like what am I saying in my work? So I was making a lot of art, but it was kind of all over the place. What really started to ground me actually was when I moved to Dubai. It was a burgeoning art scene, and there was a local gallery there called Tashkeel, still open, and they started to have open calls for artists, and that gave me structure. So for me, what I started to see is I need a framework or some kind of structure to help me start thinking about my work and then to explore ideas through a structure instead of feeling like everything's very open-ended and I can do whatever I want. That almost was too much choice, and so then I didn't want to choose anything or I didn't feel that sense of investigation that I think is important to me in my work, like that curiosity and digging deeper. And so once I started to really value this place and I liked the questions that they were asking, I noticed a shift in my work. And it was like a shift in my skill, a shift in my level of communication, and kind of reflecting the environment and world around me. And I think that was really the start of me owning my style a bit more, and still, it was very much evolving, and it was a reflection of living in the Middle East at the time. Like I have a series of beautiful lanterns that I did, you know, things were kind of more reflective of my environment or me thinking about definitions at home and kind of playing with those ideas. But it really wasn't until we moved to Oman, and I started thinking about like, I want to talk more about women. And in fact, that might have been tied to the fact that I was tutoring someone in art history at the time who very much only wanted to learn about women artists across history. And so, of course, my art degree did not include very many women artists from art history. Those books don't include very many, so I had to do a ton of research. And we focused mostly on the Renaissance. And I found the biographies and stories of these women to tell her every other week or every few weeks or so. And I think that probably precipitated the... I want this in my work more like there's an injustice here with how much women contributed to art history. And I think that kind of then maybe triggered that okay like how do I investigate this in my art. How do I start talking about it?
Eli: I love that. I did our art history degree as well, and I have spent the last sort of 10 years just re-educating myself about all the incredible women. And I have to say the women are so much more interesting than the men. Like their stories are more interesting, their personalities are more interesting, the things that they had to overcome. It just gives them so much more character and is lovely, and I'm sort of we've had this wonderful period in Copenhagen recently where all of the big art museums and galleries have finally realised that women artists are incredible, and we've just had run after run of incredible exhibitions with these women from history, and it's been so refreshing. And it's such. It makes me so mad, you know, it just makes me so mad that these women were largely completely ignored, diminished, and the number of great, groundbreaking things that happened throughout our art history. The number of times when you actually do a little bit of digging, it's like, oh, he got that idea from a woman, like the whole readymade thing with Marcel Duchamp. It was a woman's idea. What was the name, Baroness Elsa?
Carrie: Yes, I just found that out about, sorry to interrupt you. I just found out about Jackson Pollock, that he saw work by a woman, and I can't think of her from, and she was doing it, and he's like, oh, I want to try this, and so he's the one that profited.
Eli: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it happens over and over again. I know Yayoi Kusama, like a lot of the really interesting, weird stuff she was doing kind of in the 60s. Other people, men would take those ideas and become very successful at the time. Unfortunately, you know, we don't know anything about those men now, but we know about her. So, you know, every now and again, you know, history does do the right thing, we remember the right people, but it's a very rare occurrence.
Eli: So I want to switch gears a little bit and talk a little bit more about how you balance your creative artistic needs with the needs of your business. Obviously, you're running an online teaching business, and you have your art practice running alongside that. What does your average day or week look like balancing those two things?
Carrie: So, currently, my daughter goes to daycare twice a week. So that has been a big shift for me. I have two days where I can focus on interviews and work and uninterrupted thinking which I never realised how much I would value. And so I plan my days around that, and that's very important for the business side. I need uninterrupted time to record my YouTube, to write the transcript that I record from, to set up the blog post.
Carrie: I can do editing and some things when she's around, right? I also want to be very present in both parts of my life. I don't want work to be something that she just always sees me doing. I want to be present with her, so I'm trying to figure that out. So I generally have that pretty bound that I only work Mondays, Fridays, and Saturday mornings, and that's really when the work happens unless I journal in the evenings, and I'm starting to write articles before bed rather than journaling. So that's kind of helping. So what I've done too is I've really pared down my offers. So right now for Art Strong, I have "Self-Taught to Self-Confident." And it is an all-encompassing premiere program to help people go through making sure they don't have any gaps in their learning to fully express themselves through unique art. They end with creating a series of work that's unique to them. And that has a weekly call. So that's like a weekly touch point where I can get feedback to my clients, they can go through the program at their own pace, and they still get as much feedback as they need from me. And so I build my time around knowing that I need to serve them in that call. And then I have a handful of one-to-one coaching that I do as well. And those people, I also reply to them on Monday mornings. So it's kind of like generally Monday mornings are for those things, and that leaves me a day and a half to think about marketing or whatever I need to do for administrative things for the business.
Carrie: And then for my art, that is something I'm quite happy to model to my daughter. You know, that I have an interest in addition to being her parent. So we have the studio now, she calls it the studio, and she's reaching an age where there are certain things I can easily work on with her. So I've started to explore collage as a means to explore composition and in some works, I can easily pick up my embroidery work with her or the coloured pencil portrait I'm doing right now. And I do have, in addition to the series that I'm very specific and committed to, I like to have other work that I'm playing with and exploring.
Trusting my gut that again might lead to the next series when I have time or space. So I have these other works in progress that I can play with and pick up or put down, and I work on my art almost every day. I give myself two days a week where I can give myself a pass if I need to, but I also serve this idea which I also recommend to all my students is that we have a minimum expectation for ourselves rather than a max. I really recommend the book "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. He started talking about achieving things through committing to a 1% improvement every day.
And when I was in the throes of the first year of parenting, I really needed to hear that that was okay, and I have made so much more art by committing to this minimum timeframe most days of the week than I would have if I only waited till I had big chunks of time. So it's like 15 minutes to an hour depending on the day, but I am showing up and making work and feeling a sense of accomplishment there. And it's been lovely to model that to my daughter as well, that I have this passion and interest and I get to explore and do these things in addition to being her mom. And I really, really like that, and that also then allows me the Monday and Fridays to really dedicate to anything related to Art Strong because I know that I've integrated art into my daily routine. I'm not as worried that I'm not catching up or doing enough with the work.
Eli: I love that, and it's amazing how much you can get done in just 15 minutes to an hour a day, like what really stacks up when you're giving it even just a tiny amount of time.
Carrie: It really has made a huge difference. Like last year, I actually had to have surgery on my dominant wrist for my dominant hand, and I taught myself to draw with my left hand. But I did it not by pushing myself to do like 10 minutes or even a half an hour a day; I started with 2 minutes in a sketchbook before I went to bed. So I at least drew something, and I have this little sketchbook now full of these interesting little portraits done with my non-dominant hand. And you really see the evolution of my dexterity and control, and now I can integrate that use into my work. Like that's been a response, but I think I share that again just to emphasise to anyone who feels like they're in a time of their life where they don't have a lot of time for their work and they want more that we can sneak it in in little ways. And it truly makes such a difference if you show up a little bit every day. And I know that concretely people can digest and understand that. But it's almost like we don't believe it until we start doing it and seeing the work. I had a client share that with me last week. She's like, I know this is true, but I didn't feel it until I saw the results in my own work. So have some faith, you know, in that minimum expectation for yourself.
Carrie: And for me, most days, instead of every day being a perfectionist, gives me some leeway and permission to be flexible. I am making work; I was able to apply for a grant that, you know, fingers crossed, will help me realise the primary caregiver project. Like I'm giving myself time to do those things, and it's amazing how much more time I actually think I have than I realised by showing up for that.
Eli: That's amazing. That's such good advice. I think that's you know, I know a lot of entrepreneurs who have children, and it's astonishing what they're able to do just by squeezing the work into the gaps. And you can do exactly the same thing with art, like having a sketchbook and a pen within grabbing distance at all times is an absolute game-changer. Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah, yeah, and instead of at a doctor's appointment or waiting in a really long grocery line queue, you know, like you can have a little sketchbook with you. You don't have to play on your phone. You know, like you can doodle. And of course, it takes time to adjust to a new habit and routine.
But if you always have a little book in your bag that you take with you? Why can't you start to think, oh, I could pick this up and do some doodling? And in fact, this can be part of what helps you refine and develop the voice that you're seeking if you are seeking your voice to be more refined.
Eli: Ah, I love that. That's such a wonderful piece of advice. Thank you. What advice would you give to any aspiring artist who wants to make art and creativity into something that they do full time?
Carrie: I mean, be flexible about how you get there. I've just very explicitly said, right? I'm working two days a week on my business right now because I'm choosing to prioritise parenting. And I think we can think we have to make 6 figures or there's a certain number in our head or all of these things. But instead, I think we should be asking what kind of quality of life are you talking about for yourself and what do you really want? And is the number a reflection of what you really need to live well, or is it because someone on social media has told you that's the number you need to be good at what you're doing? Because I feel like a successful, thriving artist, and I am supplementing income, right? And now I am not replacing any income that I used to make as a full-time teacher. But that's okay because this is a goal that I've had and it's a value that I'm operating from. And I wish more people felt permission to be honest about that because I know plenty of people who actually have part-time jobs that they take very consciously to open up the feelings of exploration and curiosity. So they don't feel the pressure on their work to figure out what's next. And it doesn't mean you can't become full time either, but giving yourself that space and time instead of pushing to rush to get there. I think that immediacy in our culture is a real problem today that doesn't allow for the creative process to take place which has ebb and flow.
Eli: Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And you're right. It's about the quality of the life. It's not about getting to some mythical destination. It's about what do you want your life to look like and art and creativity is. It's a very fragile thing like it has to be treated with care and respect and yes, you can make money from it and yes, you can make good money from it, but you can't bully it into doing that for you, you have to kind of let it evolve naturally in its own pace, which I think is completely counterintuitive to this very kind of hustly entrepreneurial culture that we have around even around art which is crazy to me.
Carrie: Yes, exactly.
Eli: So much for talking with me today and for sharing your incredible wisdom and it's been so lovely to hear about your practice and to get to know you better as well. It's been such a joy for me and yeah.
Carrie: So nice to thank you. It's so nice to engage in conversations like this. I hope it brings some value to people listening or watching.
Eli: I'm certain that it will. It's just so incredibly valuable to get kind of under the hood of people who are doing these amazing things and to hear that they're just ordinary people living their lives, making it up as they go along. You know following the threads and there's no kind of magical, mystical like anointment that happens.
Carrie: Exactly Yeah, let me know when it happens for you.
Eli: Thank you so much for being here! Where can people find you online - I'll put all the links in the description in the show notes. But so if you could just let people know where they can find you.
Carrie: Yeah, so on Instagram I have 3 accounts but if you find me at @artiststrong you'll find my artist one and that'll link to the primary caregiving one too,if you want and then artiststrong.com is where the education platform lies and then carriebrummer.com is where my art is.
Eli: Wonderful and everybody you need to go and look up this wonderful work because it really is it gives me chills. It's so good. Oh thank you. Thank you for being here.
Carrie: Thank you, Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun.