How does a series of paintings actually come to be?
In our Season 3 premiere, we’re pulling back the curtain on the conceptual phase of art-making. Listen in as Fi Marks and I workshop the themes, challenges, and inspirations behind her upcoming work.
If you’ve ever struggled with the “what’s next” in your own creative practice, this deep dive into the brainstorming process is for you.
00:00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to Art crush season three with Artists Paula Telizyn and Fi Marks, where we talk about art, art, businesses, creativity, running shows, art world and more.
00:00:30 Speaker 1: It’s season three Fi. Can you believe this?
00:00:33 Speaker 2: Uh, I think it’s amazing. And the reception to particularly season one was great. Season two, everyone’s got, oh, it’s better, it’s better. So thank you to all those people who’ve spread the word and, uh, have bought into some of the amazing things that we discuss on this podcast.
00:00:54 Speaker 1: We’re hoping to to shake things up for our listeners, especially if you’re a creative artist and think that art can only be sold in one way. You can only approach your art business in one way that you have to be in a gallery and that’s it. and, uh, yeah, we want to get behind the scenes in ways I think a lot of artists don’t talk about on podcasts and social media.
00:01:15 Speaker 2: And I have to say, Paula, that I think this doing this podcast has been a catalyst for you and I as well, that now we’re actually putting our money where our mouth is now, our mouth where I’m, oh, I don’t know whatever way it is. Um, in the fact that we are now going to do some of the things that we discussed, particularly in season two, about Exhibitions and being a woman and exhibiting and taking control. So well done. Artcrush.
00:01:48 Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly. Unexpected benefits. In season two, we talked about making shows differently. We talked about, not waiting to be validated by galleries or, juries to pick our art. We talked about what happens when you have art block, which is what I’ve struggled with. and what happens when you fall out of love with your art. We covered a lot of topics so since that point. So we recorded season two between September and October of twenty twenty five and released it in January of twenty twenty six, because I got Covid and, uh, and all of that in November. Again, fun time again. Number number five. You know, five fifth time’s a charm. but a lot has changed for us because, as you said, we have we’ve got a show coming up in England in May, uh, that we are running. We found a venue fee, found a venue, And, uh, booked everything in. We’ve got our artists collective, which we have formed. I have figured out what I’m doing as an artist, which is really helpful because I’m going to be in the show and more so Artcrush has served us, but we’re hoping that that also works for you as well. I mean, the whole point isn’t for us to be going around and saying, you know, we’re helping ourselves. We want to get back to the community. It’s really important for us as women artists to, um, lift up and guide and help other women artists who are maybe not realizing the possibilities that are out there. I mean, it’s twenty twenty six, which is.
00:03:16 Speaker 2: True.
00:03:17 Speaker 1: It’s incredible. but which is in a time of opportunity. Yes. There’s a lot of stuff going on in the world. We don’t have our heads up our butts about that. But the reality is we have a lot more opportunities. So when I graduated from art school back in nineteen ninety four ninety five, because I have multiple art diplomas and all that, there was no ability to market globally because the internet was still very new. to find buyers, you had to work through dealers galleries. Word of mouth, um, local shows like you were stuck with either paying a lot and advertising and hoping somebody would pay attention in a larger area, or you were stuck locally until somebody noticed you and suddenly your career could take off. It was very this huge sense of helplessness that artists had.
00:04:05 Speaker 2: And a huge sense of elitism, because those people that were in the big galleries were people who knew, people who owned and worked in the big galleries in major cities. And so it was a self-perpetuating circle. So those people who weren’t rich or from a certain type of, uh, society just fell, fell by the wayside, you know, and it became, I think, almost like. And it’s still true now. Almost like another echelon with local art for, you know, local artists that you sell really cheaply at local art fairs. and it’s almost like there is no bridge between that and exhibiting, having a solo show in a gallery, you know, they don’t it’s not a stepping stone. It’s like a different, tier.
00:05:02 Speaker 1: So in twenty twenty six, we have options. We can make people discover us as artists, we can book places, for a week or a weekend or whatever, and do pop up shows. We can take charge of our art careers. And a lot of artists don’t do that. A lot of artists still go, I’m waiting for somebody to discover me. And I know this because I mentor artists and I go through, like in the past week, I’ve looked at thousands, and this is no exaggeration, thousands of artists accounts looking for potential people to work with as a mentor. And and I’m seeing this helplessness. And when I have conversations with a lot of artists, it’s, oh, if I get a gallery show, like one gallery show, my career will be made. Well, no, that’s not the case. That’s not the case. Everything is cumulative. We talked about that in last season, though. What I want to talk about, aside from, letting go of that helplessness that artists have, is how do we present ourselves in a way that allows people, to understand what we make. So we talk about signature collections. So fee had a signature collection. You’ve just recently finished, a series of six paintings that all go together, but you don’t have to purchase them together. But the stories intertwined. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about that collection as we move into our topic of today?
00:06:18 Speaker 2: Yeah, it was it was a bit of a shift, but it was a shift that was definitely coming. I am not neglecting my women’s stories, hidden stories from history. but this was, very much off the back of the series that I’d done on women transforming into animals, which I think was sort of really my first signature collection. and this one, it just came to me mainly through talking to my friends, my reading around the subject, was about having to escape to freedom, releasing ourselves from toxic relationships, environments or circumstances. And that is still relevant today, as it has been since the beginning of time, and particularly for women. I’m not saying that men can’t don’t have have have to do that because they do. We’ve all found it in the workplace or in a relationship. So it’s not just that, but my focus, obviously, with the work that I was doing was specifically about women. and so within this sort of series of six, start off with the sort of like initial idea, almost the movement, the actual we were just discussing it before we came on air about suddenly somebody saying, you don’t have to put up with this anymore. You can leave. We always have choices. It’s scary. Nobody’s saying it’s easy. Nobody is saying, oh, yeah, you just have to walk out and that’s it and everything’s going to be hunky dory. Nobody is saying that. But you need to say I deserve better and understanding. Even if your self-esteem is rock bottom, that you do deserve better and everybody does. It’s bullying. And bullying should never be allowed. So it starts off with the beginning of the journey, of moving away. There is a metaphor running throughout the, series of birds, birds and cages, releasing birds. and seeing that as a sort of like parallel to the women in the paintings. and then it it’s the joining when when you find yourself being released, we often go for support for friends or in groups or within our community. And that’s where we find the support. We find other people with similar stories. and through that support, we start to rediscover ourselves. there is one that’s called a moment of doubt, because, again, I didn’t want people to think it’s, you know, like goes in, in one direction. We don’t always we will have panics. We will have those moments where we think, I don’t think I should have done this. I think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. And then you have the euphoria that you’ve been released, that you’re out of that toxic situation. Um, but that doesn’t last forever. And we don’t have a happy ever after. But we start to have moments to cherish, which is the final painting where we recognize moments of happiness that perhaps we weren’t having. We were so busy surviving and being like a, you know, a swan or a duck, you know, with paddling madly below, but looking okay that we suddenly go, ah, and breathe. We’re here. And that moment of tranquility and reflection is almost like the pinnacle. And but they come and go, you know, they they will keep going. And we still have those even years afterwards because we know and appreciate what we have now.
00:10:21 Speaker 1: Yeah. And it’s a it’s a beautiful series. and it pulls together a story that so many, so many women recognize. I know I see myself in that series as well that, I think you told the story in such a humane and loving and supportive way through those six paintings, that seeing them all together, is a powerful thing. So if you’re curious about this series, I. Are they on your website yet?
00:10:49 Speaker 2: some of them are, but they are all going on this weekend, so they will be.
00:10:53 Speaker 1: Yes, perfect. So by the time this podcast gets released, if you go to Mark’s Dot Dash Dot Co Dot UK, then you can see the series on her website. and I know you’re creating a PDF lookbook with them as well, so you can get the story together and take a look at them and uh, and get a chance to purchase one or more of the paintings. But one of the most powerful things about working in a series. It allows your viewers to see your work as a cohesive whole. Right. So if you did a landscape painting, a portrait, an abstract painting, and maybe some mixed media collage. Somebody would come to your, your work and be confused. There’s no consistent method of telling a story. There’s no sense of flow. There’s no sense of, okay, she can make more than one painting in this style, or more than one piece of art in this style. Because of course, I work with collage artists and and other artists as well. so having a series shows the strength of your skills as an artist. It shows the strength of your skills as a storyteller because art is storytelling. And so now you’ve finished this really powerful, beautiful series that, you’ll be showing and talking about and everything else even more than you already have done. we need to talk about your next series, your next collection. And so we decided before we recorded this podcast for you and I, that maybe it would be fun to let our audience into some of the planning and brainstorming that comes with a series. So fee doesn’t lean on me to decide her series because she’s her own person and she knows her own mind and whatever, but I feel very privileged to have this back and forth conversation with her as she hammers out her ideas. So where are we at?
00:12:39 Speaker 2: Okay, so where we’re at, I have to because I have been over the last week, I have been really trying to come up with the next series and I don’t want to go backwards. It’s about I really feel that I’m moving forwards and I’ve learned so much from doing, the Escape to Freedom series and, I know that I learned a learnt a lot, it developed and I have to remember this and I think as artists and creatives we have to remember you don’t have an idea and you can see clearly, oh yes, I can see six paintings. One’s going to be this one’s going to be that one’s going to be. There you go. This is the start. As you paint the first one, the others start to evolve. So I know I don’t have to come up with a complete concrete series that I know of what each one are going to look like at the beginning, because I know that that evolves. But I really, really enjoyed exploring this theme, and, researching it. And I know because women spoke to me and they said they all identified with different parts of the series. We’re all at very different places. So for the new series and I have started a painting, well, a drawing today, but as I say it, it’s to do with, masks. The masks that women wear. And I have to be mindful. And this is where I think AI and the internet can sometimes let you down if you start trying to have a debate with AI. They’re not like real people, and they’ll come up with ideas that they’ve actually just stolen off other people. And it’s not your style of art. So I’ve sort of disbanded that. And this is why we’re talking about it today. But I knew from my style of art, knowing what I like to paint and what it looked like, the idea of a masquerade ball came into my mind. And the masks that women put on. So there is a there’s the woman behind the real woman. But then also due to societal pressures, and the pressures we put upon ourselves, It almost becomes a bit Midwich Cuckoos in the way that we, we are expected to look a certain way, behave in a certain way. I used to say years ago that I was going to write a book called The Big Con because when I was, uh, growing up in the eighties, particularly eighties and nineties, I was felt very much that I was expected to do everything that as well as still get married, have kids, have a nice house, go on holidays, all that with all that sort of side of it. I was meant to be have a successful business, a successful job, make my own money, contribute to the family. And it was like, you can’t have it all. You can’t. You have to make choices. Otherwise you end up having a breakdown. And this is the pressures that society puts on women and on we put on ourselves because we think, oh yeah, I’ve got young, I’ve got to look this, I’ve got to look the other. So I know that there’s something in there to explore. So the first one that I’m doing, and I’m not sure if it’s the beginning of the series, the middle or whatever, but I knew because of my style of art, I knew a masquerade ball with women and I, I’ve got them almost like holding the masks away. So you see the women, the real women underneath. But the masks and I haven’t quite decided yet, you know, are going to be either women at different stages or images of women that we aspire to due to those pressures. But I want it to be a series, another series of about six paintings for six or eight paintings.
00:16:49 Speaker 1: Um, we talked, um, off the podcast yesterday about, the sacrifices that women make. Right. To to be in relationships, to have children, to conform. That we lose decades of our lives and lose ourselves in the process. Just wearing those masks and trying to fit ourselves in. You know, there’s a lot of of women now who are choosing not to have children. But when I went to have children, I’ve always wanted children. So my children hear this. I’ve always wanted to have children. I remember being young and wanting children, but I didn’t know I had a choice. Right. And and it was very odd for me when a couple of my friends chose not to have children for whatever reason. and it was just, like, unusual because my generation, which is generation X, went off, we did our school, we got a job, we got married and we had children. And that was what you were supposed to do. but I’m seeing the, the, the young women now who are looking and saying, well, I’m choosing not to have children. I’m choosing not to sacrifice. I know for myself as a parent, especially when my kids were all toddlers and young and everything, there’s a whole decade there of where I was wiping butts and chasing kids and, you know, pulling Lego out of each other’s noses and things like that where you can’t do the things that you want to do as a creative. I couldn’t write the books. I couldn’t paint the paintings because I was the primary caregiver for these children. And again, I have no regrets about that. But it’s something that that I think, when we look at how we lose ourselves. And so you finish it.
00:18:21 Speaker 2: Is it? It is. It’s definitely a losing. And I, I, you know, as I told you, Paula, I had a very distinct moment that is very, very vivid in my memory. Um, it was after my marriage had broken down. We were struggling financially. I had a six year old daughter and I was working full time in education. And I remember being in the bath and starting to cry because I felt so lost. I didn’t know who I was anymore. And I’m sure lots of the listeners out, out, out there can identify with this. I thought, who where is she? Gone. That person who wanted to be an actress, who wanted to be an artist, who was so creative. And where is she? And I, at that point didn’t know how to rediscover myself. And I think. That the change really came when I left working in education. And I started I set up my own business. I met people like Paula who we could talk about doing things and not conforming. Part of me wishes it had happened years ago. But timing is everything. I have no regrets and the opportunities that are around now weren’t around twenty years ago in the same way. So in the last I would say since. Since I became an artist six or seven years, I’ve never been happier. I know who I am now. I have a very clear view. I don’t feel lost. I’m still. I’m still a mother, you know? I still have relationships. I still, you know. But I know I’m very clear. And I’m continuing to do that work on myself to develop.
00:20:32 Speaker 1: so in your series of, of this series of masks and all that, your need to explore with one of the pieces, potentially A woman or people coming back to themselves, they have to lose themselves completely. So we’re aware of the mask and but we don’t know what’s behind it. You have to have that moment of despair. Who who am I? I think a lot of us go through that. Like my my young life was all about being married to my ex, and it was my world revolved around him and his opinions and his his needs and wants and whatever. I didn’t know who I was when things were falling apart.
00:21:16 Speaker 2: Because nobody, nobody talked to us when we were growing up. About that, about it was almost like seeing success. But you are there, you know, and a lot of women I still hear saying today, oh, yes. But, you know, I, I’m such a care giver. sometimes that’s phrased as a people pleaser. Um, and it’s not a positive thing because that’s when you get lost. Your opinion is irrelevant. Your needs and wants are ignored. That’s what being a people pleaser is. You’re not actually winning anything, and the people that you’re pleasing are often pleasing themselves anyway, so they don’t need your pleasing as well. And they don’t actually think very highly of you for behaving like that in a very sort of subservient way. you almost like, disappear. And again, the disappearing woman, the disappearing, vanishing invisible. Yeah, yeah. You know, and in fact, when you said, I’ve got an idea for another painting now in the series that’s just come to me and I think it’s about embracing yourself. So there might be different aspects of yourself, but I can show women embracing themselves, one perhaps being brightly coloured and one being more muted.
00:22:35 Speaker 1: Mhm.
00:22:37 Speaker 2: Something like that.
00:22:38 Speaker 1: Exactly. So there we go. So we, we step back and take a look and realize we’ve lost ourselves behind the masks. We’ve made ourselves invisible in our own life. I mean, I did that and I did that over time. young me, we never would have stood for that, but married me. I got lost in the role and made myself invisible in my own life. So embracing yourself means seeing yourself as you are, as you desire to be, and hopefully when not as you think you are. In terms of a lot of us coming out of these situations tend to have low self esteem. So we think we’re, you know, awful people. and so we see the worst and amplify. It’s like it’s like when you look at a person and you think, gosh, they’re lovely. But then you just focus on that one blemish on their skin. And that’s what you see with ninety percent of your vision, that blemish, and you miss that ten percent that you’re not seeing, which is just amazing and beautiful and wonderful. Right. Um, so yeah, that’s.
00:23:35 Speaker 2: And even and even situations, you know, like a lot of people say, you’ve been on holiday, been traveling, or you’ve gone and done something. When people ask, how was it? What do we focus on? It’s like almost like, oh, let’s focus on the things that went wrong, the things that didn’t work. Oh my God, it was a disaster. Did it? Absolutely not true. This, as you said, it’s a minuscule little thing. But if we focus on it, people go away and go, oh, did you hear? Fee had an absolute disaster when she went away. Yeah. You know, and it’s like you’ve perpetuated that myth.
00:24:13 Speaker 1: Yeah. So figuring out what to focus on when we finally see ourselves and people are also complicated too. When we when we look at other people, we tend to hold them in higher esteem than ourselves because we know what we’re thinking. We know where we fell short, we know where we slacked off or cut corners or whatever. We don’t know where other people did, so we hold them in higher esteem. I must be the only person with, you know, a dark heart or I think badly of somebody, but everybody else thinks they’re great. we tend to put ourselves down more. So I really like that idea. So we’ve got two paintings in the series now Masks and Embracing yourself. these tend to sort of swing to the positive to with your series. Right?
00:24:56 Speaker 2: Absolutely. I can’t do miserable paintings and and actually, you know, I am I am an artist that wants to sell their work. And who wants to have a miserable apart from The scream, obviously.
00:25:09 Speaker 1: Or Hieronymus Bosch? I mean, come on.
00:25:12 Speaker 2: But it’s it’s not my style. And, you know, the whole thing of what we’ve been discussing and what we talk about on the podcast is empowering. If I can empower other women to make decisions in their life, in their lives and in their, careers or whatever, that my job is done, that is what I strive to do so. Yes. Even though if there is, if there is paint a painting that is perhaps looking at the bit of the darker side, there should always be some optimism, some glimmer of hope. Even on that first painting, there was light at the end of the tunnel. The women were moving towards the light from the dark forest. You could see that there was hope. There always has to be hope in my paintings, not despair.
00:26:00 Speaker 1: okay, so we we are looking at the positive. We’re looking at empowering. We’re looking at transforming, um, and helping women see that they have possibilities. So that that big moment, the moment and I think it happens to a lot of women. So you end up surviving in your situation. Whatever that situation is, you end up trying to stay afloat. And then somebody points out something. So for me, it was one of my friends when I was telling her what was going on, she got very angry on my behalf. And nobody had ever gotten angry before. And that’s when I realized that maybe my situation wasn’t very normal, right? That that I shouldn’t know what is normal. Unfortunately, this is true, but I shouldn’t have accepted how things were like.
00:26:41 Speaker 2: It’s about the accepting. It’s such a low threshold to what our expectation is.
00:26:48 Speaker 1: So maybe there’s an awareness painting in there somewhere, or the idea, um, and let’s just play with it, maybe a little bit of that moment when you suddenly see things as they are and it’s not embracing yourself, but it’s just maybe that’s too far back in the the journey.
00:27:06 Speaker 2: Yeah. I did just think of something as well Oh, yeah. Some something else clicked in. Okay. When you talked about transformation.
00:27:20 Speaker 1: Mhm.
00:27:20 Speaker 2: Um, and I thought of caterpillars and butterflies and obviously I’m not going to paint a woman as a caterpillar. But again it’s that actual having that time, having that time to reflect and work on yourself is when the caterpillar is almost in the chrysalis.
00:27:43 Speaker 1: Mhm.
00:27:44 Speaker 2: And then it emerges you have to go through a process. You can’t just leave a toxic situation and be fine. Yeah. It takes time. And you and I know this Paula because we’ve seen each other go through things. I’ve always I’ve been a little bit ahead of you. Yeah. But we know how it how it works. And you have to give yourself time. So somewhere there’s a painting there which regarding butterflies and.
00:28:15 Speaker 1: Yeah, even if you’re not that straightforward with that, that um, angle because obviously those are cliche, but.
00:28:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
00:28:24 Speaker 1: But what if there’s also something you just said, that because you are ahead of me, everything for you happened long before we met. what if there is also some kind of guiding painting? Some kind of lighthouse? I mean, lighthouse again, is a cliche, but some kind of thing where there are people who say, hey, by the way, I’ve already been through this. It’ll be okay. Like one of one of my friends I talked to years ago, she said, you know, you’re on one side of the fence. I’m on the other because she had, left her marriage and all that and and was fine. But, she said, it’s really hard. You can’t see how good things are when you’re there. So let me tell you what the experience is. It’s shit to cross the fence. Absolutely. It’s because it’s hard to climb out of your life and try to rebuild it, but once you’ve done that, it’s so worth it. So. So maybe there’s something in there as well where.
00:29:16 Speaker 2: I don’t want to replicate. I’ve got a similar painting in the last series.
00:29:20 Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah.
00:29:22 Speaker 2: So there is a two women together and a woman is almost like guiding the other woman.
00:29:27 Speaker 1: So perfect. Yeah.
00:29:28 Speaker 2: I don’t want that. That is a similar sort of thing. That’s that’s the only thing about that. But certainly, Yeah, it it’s that it’s that moment of possibilities. What people again, we’re talking in cliches, but the paintings won’t be clichéd. But that light bulb moment and Yes. Yeah, yeah. But as I say, I think. It’s about and this is and we’ve talked about this before. It’s about being true to yourself. And it’s not easy. It’s not because we are so innately built in about worrying about what people think of us. And I think for women, that’s worse. I’m not going to say absolutely. But I in my experience, women worry far more about being seen as they almost want to be ordinary and camouflaged and hidden. And so when they talk about being hidden, often that is of their own doing. And I think they’re they’re hidden because they don’t know who they are. So they can’t strut about going, well, this is me, take me or leave me because they don’t know themselves. You can only get to that point if you’ve gone through the process.
00:30:52 Speaker 1: Yeah, and are aware that you have the permission to be yourself as well. That that you’re.
00:31:00 Speaker 2: Okay.
00:31:01 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:31:02 Speaker 2: But yourself is okay. And years. And you know, I know people. And you know, when I’ve heard women’s stories for years and years and years, if not their lifetime, people have believed that there’s something there, odd, or there’s something wrong with them or they don’t quite fit in. And instead of embracing that, not fitting in, they just feel awkward, or they don’t put themselves in situations where they’re going to feel like that.
00:31:28 Speaker 1: Yeah. So it’s it’s interesting. So as you’re listening, you can hear that we’re sort of bouncing ideas back and forth. If he’s going to walk away and come up with her own variations and, and more in depth. But this is how series come together. So if we look at the overarching story, it’s coming from a place of becoming self aware that there’s a mask. It’s, realizing that maybe you’re not perceiving things the way they, they could be or not embracing yourself. And then it’s that journey which is never a straight line, as it isn’t when you’re escaping to freedom, it’s never a straight line. There’s that journey of figuring out who you are, what works, what doesn’t, that you’re going to figure out how to encapsulate in this series. and maybe you’ll walk away and throw everything out.
00:32:16 Speaker 2: So it could easily happen. But I think there’s something there about the truth being true to yourself. Who is the real person? Are you proud of who you are, or are you a bit embarrassed, or do you not know that’s what it’s about? Yeah, which which will make sense. And I’m sure maybe by the time this gets actually out there, the series will be well and truly underway. And so you’ll be going, oh, that’s what she did instead, or exactly.
00:32:50 Speaker 1: Exactly. Art creating is not a straight line either. Like I tend to know what I’m going to paint by the time I get to the easel, because I do some pre work and Photoshop and everything else. But the journey of what I’m saying with my art happens before I ever sit down in Photoshop and pull things together and decide what I’m going to be working on. I think it’s the same for a lot of artists. Some artists get to their canvas and don’t know what the hell they’re doing, and it’s a surprise. And that’s great and wonderful. everybody’s process is different, but there is a process.
00:33:22 Speaker 2: Absolutely. And with me, it’s talking, reading, rather than sketching out. And then when I’ve got an idea, I go, okay. And I start with one woman maybe, and then I’m like, okay, right how I want another woman. That’s that’s sort of interacting with her or within this story, this scene. And so mine does develop on the canvas, but I have done all the prep beforehand to to know what it’s going to be about, what? What I want to say. Yeah, but the how does evolve on the canvas?
00:34:00 Speaker 1: So if you’re an artist listening to this and wondering if you’re making art correctly or planning your art out correctly, there is no one way. If you’ve gone to art school, they will say this is the only way to do things. Which irked the crap out of me when I was in art school. Because art needs to follow a process that works for the artist. It needs to to allow us to dip into our creativity. One of the things you mentioned briefly about how useless AI is for brainstorming, one of the things I hate about AI is that the people who lean on it for creativity end up losing that muscle in their brain. And we know this now. There actually are studies available that you can look up that show that brains fire differently when you lean on AI too much. Now, we had similar concerns with the internet. People were like, oh, if you if you rely on the internet for information, your memory won’t work. Well, we know that that’s not the case, but with AI it’s entirely different because it’s a muscle that we use for brainstorming, for thinking, for problem solving, that the minute you turn to it regularly, you lose that ability.
00:35:02 Speaker 2: And so it’s not it’s not a creative tool.
00:35:06 Speaker 1: No it’s not. It just is. Um, AI is a misnomer. It’s a a large language model which basically completes your sentences or it pulls together things it got from the internet. Now in twenty twenty six, it’s pulling together AI slot from the internet as well. So it’s even more garbage. so it’s really important as artists for us to understand that it’s okay for our process to be messy. It’s okay for us to have incomplete ideas and maybe set them aside. For me, myself, when I’m coming up with ideas, sometimes I need to sit in the back of my head for a bit and percolate. You know, like the old style coffee percolators that little bloop bloop bloop on your stove. My parents had one of those, and that’s what I think about when I stick something in the back of my head and think, I’ll come back to it later. I’ll obviously write it down somewhere so I don’t forget entirely, but I’ll let it sort of bloop, bloop, bloop in the back of my head. And it could take a month. It could take, you know, several months. And then it comes out as a fully formed idea, fully caffeinated and percolated. Um, so, so embracing our process as creatives, as messy and imperfect. And maybe we bounce ideas off each other, like PHE and I do regularly. Um, in terms of like, I’ve come to her to say, what do you think of this idea for my next series and stuff? This is how it works. Conversations and sharing and listening and all of that. So before we wrap up this episode, our first episode of series three or season three, is there anything you’d like to say? PHE.
00:36:29 Speaker 2: Yeah. No, absolutely. And and I think, you know, like we’ve talked a lot about, artist communities and developing and actually we’ve with the, fifty one percent, we’ve found we meet up every week and just bouncing ideas off each other. It’s amazing how much, our ideas and our thinking are developing, and it’s important. And I know there are a lot of artists who don’t. They keep it very insular and keep it very much to themselves. Um, and I think that they could push themselves even further having these discussions with other artists. We’re not copying each other. It’s about going back to what we want to say in our work, not what the skills are. And that’s why we’re not competing with each other. We’re supporting each other.
00:37:23 Speaker 1: Humans. Primates are community beings. We do better when we’re in communities. We create work that is greater than ourselves. if you mentioned the fifty one percent, we’ll talk about that in a future episode. But that is the art collective that we both belong to. And, we do better work together, even if we go off and work separately. Those ideas that support that encouragement and all of that makes a huge, huge difference. So this wraps up our first episode of season three of Art crush. Yeah. Thank you to our listeners for listening, for bumping our stats up, for making us, actually one of the faster growing podcasts on Spotify. you can also listen to us on Apple Podcasts. You can listen to us on YouTube. On Amazon, you can find us in Audible and Audible. Yes. Uh, so look for us in your favorite podcast app, and don’t forget to hop on over to our websites. And my own website. Com the URLs will be in the show notes so that you can come and see what we’re actually working on. And we will be adding in our collective’s URL, our website, once that’s ready to go. So there’s a lot going on. Thank you so much for joining us, and we will see you in the next episode.
00:38:42 Speaker 3: Bye.
