Ep #6: Growing an art business through genuine connection - with artist Tracy Verdugo

Podcast

Dec 12

In the final episode of season one, I sit down with Tracy Verdugo, an Australian artist and teacher whose vibrant work and approach to creativity has touched lives worldwide. Like many of us, Tracy came to art later in life - she was 33 when she first picked up a paintbrush, believing until then that creativity was something other people did.

Our conversation explores how she moved from teaching art to neighbourhood children to running international workshops and retreats, building a thriving creative business while managing chronic illness. We dig into the reality of being a working artist - the challenge of balancing creative time with business demands, the importance of working in seasons, and how to stay connected to the joy of making art when it's also your livelihood.

What I love about this conversation is how Tracy emphasises the importance of community over commodity. Her approach isn't about quick wins or marketing tricks - it's about building genuine connections and letting the business grow organically from there.

Whether you're considering taking your art professional or simply wanting to develop a more consistent creative practice, Tracy offers practical insights about staying true to yourself while building something sustainable.

Watch the video version here:

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

Find out more about Tracy:

If Tracy Verdugo was given the opportunity to coin a term for a new art movement based around what she teaches she might call it “Curiosity and Wonderism”or maybe “Loosen-upism” or “Endless possibilitism”

When she is not hanging out with her family in their artsy adobe home in a small village on the shores of Jervis Bay, Australia, or throwing paint around in her little purple studio in their backyard, you may find her teaching poolside on a volcanic island in Italy or sketching with her students in a centuries old marketplace in Mexico.

Tracy is an inspiration instigator, prolific painter and lover of the written word, smitten traveller and soaker up of all that is beauty-full. She teaches her Paint Mojo and other creative workshops all over this amazing planet and reminds her students of the wonder that already resides within them.

Her works are vibrant and filled with joy, inspired both by wanderlust, diversity and the beauty of everyday life. Her works are held in collections both in Australia and internationally.

Mostly though she is mama bear to two gorgeous, zest-filled daughters, Santana and Sienna, Ita to Nora Luz and Meya and co-adventurer in life with her amor of 38 years, the talented and brilliant Marco.

Eli: Hello and welcome to Zuzu's Haus of Cats Presents. I'm Eli Trier, your host, and on this podcast I love to talk to my fellow artists and creative people about the work they make. We dive deep into the creative process and cover everything from why they make what they make, to how they actually get everything done, and everything in between.
This week, my guest is the amazing Tracy Verdugo. Tracy describes herself as an inspiration instigator, prolific painter and lover of the written word, smitten traveler, and soaker-up of all that is beautiful. She's an incredible artist, teacher and vibrant spreader of joy across the world. She's probably best known for her Paint Mojo creative workshop, which she teaches all over the globe, reminding her students of the wonder that already resides within them.
I'm so honored to have Tracy on the podcast today. Let's jump in.
Welcome Tracy! Thank you so much for being here. Tracy and I have known each other for about a decade, and this is actually the first time we've had a face-to-face conversation, so it's very exciting for both of us.
Eli: Tracy, would you give us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Tracy: I'm an Australian artist with online classes, and I teach retreats and workshops here in our little town of 1000 people, but also all over the world. I love to really encourage women, especially, to grow their creative confidence. I meet a lot of women who are similar age to me - children are growing up or grown up - and they're ready to do something else with their lives, to maybe reignite a spark that's been with them for a long time but hasn't been able to shine as much as they'd like to.
Eli: I absolutely love that. Creativity is such a powerful tool for self-discovery, and I find it really therapeutic - it's the best anti-anxiety thing I've ever done.
Tracy: When I first started teaching, I actually only started painting when I was 33, right at the turn of the century. I immediately started coming home from my art classes to gather the neighborhood children and teach them whatever I had learned that day, at their level, because I was so excited about everything. I did 12 years of teaching kids art classes after school. Those kids taught me a lot about curiosity, wonder, and imagination, and I took all of that with me when I started to create workshops and retreats for adults.
Eli: You said you didn't start painting until you were 33. Tell us that story - how did you get started?
Tracy: Growing up, my family wasn't really into the arts - working class Australian family probably didn't have time to explore anything like that. My brother, though, was a natural. He was six years younger than me, but from the time I can remember, he could sketch amazingly well. Mum would refer to him as "Jason's the artist, and Tracy's the smart one" - she gets the good grades, and he can draw well.
It wasn't until later that I realized the reason he was a good artist was because he had spent countless hours copying cartoon comics, sketching, honing his skills. As a kid, I just thought he was born with it and I wasn't. I dabbled in crafty things throughout my late teens and early twenties, but I had art set on a pedestal - some people get to do that, and most of us don't.
It wasn't until I saw an ad in the newspaper, when my daughter Sienna was in preschool one day a week, that things changed. I saw an ad for a local art class on my free day and thought, "I'm going to do it. I'm terrified, but I'm going to go and see if I can do this." Before you start to paint, you look at other people who do it and think, "This is a magic trick. This is something amazing." Within three weeks of starting the class, my mind was completely changed about who can paint and who can't. Not that I could paint straight away, but I could see the world differently.
Eli: That mirrors my own experience so completely - I also have a younger brother who is six years younger and incredibly talented. I grew up hearing "Casper is the artistic one, he's the talented one. Eli is the organized one, the clever one."
I have one of those weird brains where I can do the creative, arty stuff, but I also have a very logical, analytical streak as well. I think it's probably the autism - serves me well!
Tracy: After that art class, I would come home and gather the neighborhood kids to teach them. That went on for 12 years. I also got involved with a local arts festival. We live in a very small area in Australia that was really busy during summer, but the tourists would stop coming in winter. A group of locals decided to have a winter festival to bring more tourism in.
About two years after I started that art class, I put my hand up to have a solo exhibition at the Winter Arts Festival. I tend to jump in before I think about things too much! Then I realized I was committed and had to come up with 20 paintings for the exhibition. I did it, and it was a great success that built my confidence. I continued having exhibitions every two years when they ran the festival, either in town or at our home. From there, it just grew, and around 2012 I started doing my first workshops for adults.
Eli: You're very much online now, doing stuff all over the world. Was teaching in your hometown a natural progression from teaching the kids?
Tracy: I was teaching the kids while working in special ed during the day, working with a class of boys on the autism spectrum. I had grand ideas about overhauling the Australian education system and bringing more creativity into it. I got a full-time job there but realized how hard it was to make big changes in the government department. After seven years, I knew it was time for something else.
Tracy: Our youngest daughter was going to do an exchange in California in grade 10, and our eldest daughter was moving out at 18 to go to university. I suddenly had this pit in my stomach - it was just too soon for me to have an empty nest. I wasn't ready. So I started thinking of ways I could go to America to spend time with my daughter during her exchange, since she'd be staying with family.
I thought maybe I could put together a workshop and approach someone in America about teaching. I started researching art retreats and reaching out. At the time, I also had a Facebook community of about 5000 people. I got accepted to teach at an art retreat in California, and as soon as I posted about it on Facebook, at least 12 friends reached out saying "If you're coming all this way, you need to come to Texas, you need to come to Florida."
Within about a week, I had a 12-week tour lined up in the States. I had never traveled by myself before. I took my art kit and two suitcases and jumped on a plane. I visited nine states over 12 weeks, flying somewhere different almost every week, meeting amazing people, staying with beautiful hosts. That was the beginning.
Eli: What a bold move! I love that energy of just jumping in and going for it.
Tracy: I'm quite spontaneous - I think it's a superpower. When I first started doing this, I had no idea about the impact. I thought I was just going to teach art classes. I had a program worked out, but it would veer off in different directions. I realized pretty soon there was such a psychological element to what people would bring to the workshops. You could really see problems or issues people were having in their life mirrored in their approach to art or their fears around making art.
I got so interested in that aspect, and that's really what it's become. Even though I'm not an art therapist or qualified in that way, it just feels like... and it's not even me doing it. It's the groups that come together, the community we form, the conversations we have, the songs we sing while we're painting, the laughter and the tears - it's all of it. It's really beautiful.
Eli: You seem to be incredibly prolific. I'm always seeing new stuff from you - new art, new classes, new everything. Is that actually the case, or are you just expert at repurposing things?
Tracy: I think it's a bit of both. I'm prolific in spurts - I might have weeks out of the studio because I'm working on something else or not feeling well. But I have become very good at repurposing. When I'm feeling good, in the studio, and not focused on other business stuff, I can really get into a flow. Yesterday was the first day I got in the studio in three weeks since we've been back from Europe, but today I was in there again and it felt so good.
Tracy: Looking back at all the paintings I've created, I guess I am prolific, but I'm not in the studio all the time. Being a full-time artist isn't about being in the studio all day every day - we would love to be, but there are often long periods where you're focused on other things, like making classes or rebuilding websites.
Eli: I think it's really important to talk about that and let people know. Anyone looking at this and thinking "I'd love to do this full time" - I don't think I've made less art since I became a full-time artist.
Tracy: Exactly. One of the things I deal with most at the moment is just scrolling too much, jumping online, getting on social media. It's procrastination, and it's really hard. I'm trying to get better at setting timers and giving myself blocks of time, but it's all too easy to justify because it's like, "Well, I'm just looking for some good ideas." Before you know it, it's 11 o'clock and you were supposed to be in your studio at nine.
Eli: You have to deal with the same kinds of things I do - we both have chronic illnesses. We have to be very careful with our energy and managing that alongside the demands of a business and maintaining a creative practice.
Tracy: Yes, absolutely. Part of connecting with people and building community is showing up as you are, wherever you are, whatever is going on in your life. Of course, there are boundaries, but I'm not afraid to say when I'm not feeling well. What I've found is that whenever I do that, I get ten people reaching out to say "Thank you so much for saying that - I've been dealing with XYZ."
Two years ago, I was really in the throes of a bad ulcerative colitis flare, and my husband was away doing the PCT trail in America for three months. I was terribly ill, but I decided to make the best of it. I put newspapers down on the coffee table in the lounge room, put Netflix and YouTube art videos on, and brought my paints and sketchbooks in. Even though I didn't feel well, I had the fire on - it was winter - and I would just play with whatever was in front of me.
I shared those moments too. Sometimes it was "Oh look, I just discovered this" or "I just went on a shopping spree on Amazon because I don't feel well." You're still sharing your life, even when you're not feeling very good. I think people really appreciate that, and it helps to build your community.
Tracy: Bottom line is, it's almost impossible to do it all yourself. For the first maybe six years of my business, I was doing everything myself - probably not very well and all over the place. I was doing too much and burned out. When our youngest was old enough, she started working with me. I had an assistant before that as well.
Tracy: Now my daughter handles most of the emails except personal ones. She does all the website stuff, edits my videos, builds the classroom website. She manages customer service and all the background tasks that would pull me away from painting. Our ultimate aim is to have me only doing personal emails, social media, and painting, while she handles everything else.
My business completely changed when I got a coach during COVID. Until then, everything had been organic - I hadn't spent any money on the business at all. I knew we were going to be in for a rough ride since I couldn't do workshops anymore. I hired a coach for $7,000 for six months - I thought I would die, it was so scary! But she changed everything for me. Within the first couple of months, she made me understand that you have to spend money to grow a business to a different level. She convinced me to try Facebook ads, but not by myself like I had tried before.
Now I have a team that handles the Facebook ads. The expenses are crazy compared to what I used to have, but the business has gone to a different level. The only reason I took the leap was because I had just had a successful organic launch, and I thought, "I'm going to basically gamble this $12,000 I have sitting there. If I lose it, I lose it." We had an amazing year in 2020 - my class went viral around the world, all because I worked with this coach.
It hasn't been an easy transition - I fought for a while against what felt like moving away from my authentic voice and having to be more "salesy." But then I thought, "Just get over yourself. People who love you are still going to love you." I decided instead that I could be someone who encourages women to grow and do things outside their comfort zones.
Eli: When you're in the studio, do you have any rituals or special routines, or are you very much spontaneous?
Tracy: I'm a sometimes-ritual, sometimes-not person. Sometimes I'll get some incense going, put some nice music on. I like to sing while I'm painting. But it's not like "I must do this before I can do that." Some days I need to clean up before I can start, other days I'm happy to jump into the mess and keep going. I just go with however I'm feeling.
My biggest hurdle these days is too much inspiration, too much choice, too many possibilities. You can sit looking through your half-finished works, and a whole day will go by without doing anything. Sometimes I'll just choose a photo I took while overseas and think about what I want to do with that. Other times, I'll pull out canvases that have been sitting half-done for six months and do something radically different - throw some fluorescent paint on because I don't know what else to do. Sometimes just that act of making that bold move can change the energy.
I did that this afternoon - I had a painting that I started at the workshop last weekend. It was very dreamy and calm and watery, and I could have kept going in that direction. But today I was feeling more vibrant, so I squirted some pink paint on it. At first, I thought "Oh gosh, what have I done?" But then I added more color, and suddenly I had a cat sitting in a garden. Sometimes the painting just comes to you like that.
Eli: Thank you so much for this incredible conversation. Where can people find you on the internet?
Tracy: The place I show up most is Instagram under my name, Tracy Verdugo. I'm on YouTube doing something almost every week - Tracy Verdugo Art. My website TracyVerdugo.com has all my online classes. Next year I have a few spots left in Portugal and Sicily if anybody would like to come and paint somewhere amazing with me.
Eli: What a fantastic opportunity! All those links will be in the show notes. Do go and become part of Tracy's community - she's absolutely wonderful and what she's doing in the world is spectacular. Tracy, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate you and the energy and positivity you're putting out into the world.
Tracy: Thank you! It's been lovely chatting with you, and I hope we can catch up when I'm in Copenhagen next year.