Navigating The Shame of Not Maintaining a Creative Practice

In this intimate episode, I peel back the layers of my experience as a fine arts student thrust into the digital chaos of online learning. Picture it: Zoom calls, pixelated canvases, and a longing for the smell of oil paint. As I grapple with the harsh realities of traditional art education in a virtual world, I share candid conversations with tutors—some enlightening, others downright frustrating.

From battling the superficial aspects of the art market (hello, Instagram likes!) to stumbling upon an unexpected creative outlet (cue life modeling sessions), I spill the paint-splattered beans. Along the way, I shift from rebelliousness to forming genuine connections with mentors. It’s a journey of disillusionment, determination, and—yes—shame.

But fear not! As the pixels settle, I uncover the magic of adaptable creative practices. Who knew that life modeling—posing in my living room, draped in bedsheets—would become my sanctuary? And as I wrestle with internalized shame, I discover that authenticity is my greatest brushstroke.

So, fellow creatives, let’s sail these tumultuous waters together. Grab your metaphorical life jacket, and let’s navigate the shame, one canvas at a time.

Remember, imperfections are our palette—the colors that make our stories uniquely ours.

Stay curious, stay messy, and keep creating.

Creatives and entrepreneurs have so much in common - let's bridge the gap of acknowledgement and leverage our creativity!

Stay tuned for upcoming episodes (post episode #7) for interviews with exceptional creatives and entrepreneurs from around the world!

And stick around to follow the journey of an artist in business school (me!) - hope I am able to help you in your journey to career freedom!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Creatives are adaptable, resilient, passionate and great problem solvers just like what an entrepreneur should be. And yet artists and business people hardly get recognized as one and the same. Well, welcome to Bridging that Gap. Same Well, welcome to Bridging that Gap. Hello, hello, fellow creatives, and welcome to the podcast Artist Takes On Business School.

Speaker 1: 0:32

I'm your host, mayada Maya, a self-employed life model who, upon graduating from her BA in Fine Arts, lost the love, admiration and respect for the art world, but not for artists. This two-year-long podcast will be tailored to my fellow creatives who want to build a sustainable and financially rewarding creative career without selling out. Get the behind the scenes, the insights, the knowledge and the encouragement from people who know exactly how you feel and, of course, from entrepreneurial experts alike. So, so, when COVID hit, I was in my second year of university, I was studying fine art in London, and naturally everything became more complicated, kind of more difficult to navigate, and I found myself falling behind my cohort because I hadn't really invested much time within social media to kind of learn how to, you know, optimize posts, how to use it to market myself and my creative work. I just I was a teenager that didn't really vibe with the whole concept of social media. So when everything went online, so did our practical exhibition opportunities, all of our assignments. We were basically being told to do like Instagram takeovers for like our university Instagram pages, and that would be how we would, you know, present our work to the world as if they had like such a massive following.

Speaker 1: 2:37

To begin with and naturally the entire staff was, you know they were not prepared for this shift in the curriculum. A lot of them were undertrained with the tech side of it, and not even the tech, but like how to, how to make you know, video more engaging, because you know we're having to essentially show up and just watch a screen for hours during lectures, which you know we're having to essentially show up and just watch a screen for hours during lectures, which you know naturally is already a bit of a boring task, especially when you're dealing with creatives that you know like to work with their hands and be in their studio and spend a lot of time just making. With that right came a lot of loopholes. There was a lot of um flexibility for us as students to take on or take not. Most of the students basically started to use that as a way to get out of classes and assignments to the point where I basically I ended up getting an email from like not enrollment, but you know the staff, the admin staff, telling me that my attendance record was really low and if I didn't start showing up to classes my visa would be void, would become void and I'd have to leave. So, naturally, that's what kind of kept me going and showing up.

Speaker 1: 4:24

But I did realize that by being a bit rebellious in that way, I was able to form very honest relationships with some of my tutors, because I would explain to them like look, this feels like a waste of time, these assignments they're not. I don't think they're doing what needs to be done. I was, I don't know. I've just always been a bit blunt with things, especially when it feels like it's not right to be doing. And I started to you know, get feedback on that from the tutors saying, yeah, you know, I agree, but sometimes it was just a requirement for the coursework itself, whereas other times they would just kind of take me off the hook.

Speaker 1: 5:24

Eventually, the more time passed with the same kind of curriculum, I realized that there was a big superficial side to the art market and the art world in general, more about making something that was weird or different or that would stand out as opposed to, you know, creating from an egoless and maybe even naive place, which I feel is really. I feel is really necessary, especially when we're just starting out in this path, because we don't want to get so caught up with, let's say, the adult side of a new project too quickly, because it can really stagnate us. We'll start thinking about all of the things we need to be doing, to be optimizing something and I find that, you know, by doing that, we can get really limited in how much we make that by the time graduation came, I was super. I felt super unprepared for life in general. I wasn't sure how to like navigate the whole process situation, like what it meant to like get a job, and I felt like I didn't have enough tools in my belt to like offer to like employers.

Speaker 1: 6:57

I ended up becoming self-employed as a life model and that was how I was able to bridge the gap between me not having a creative practice and wanting to have a creative practice but not being able to engage or re-engage the like my own personal project per se. I found that with life modeling I was still, still performing. I was still, you know, making art in that way, that very theatrical, very perform career that I've maintained, I think, because one I'm kind of my own boss, I can kind of do what I want, and my uniqueness, my adaptability, versatility, just my strange poses and ability to hold difficult things or difficult poses for a while, all these things were and are very beneficial for, you know, the students that are in the class. It keeps the class interesting, which I find.

Speaker 1: 8:22

Having known a few life models and gone to life drawing classes myself as the artist or the painter or whatever it is, I noticed how there's a lot of very typical life model poses. They're not very engaging or active and I wanted to be different, whilst also kind of just being myself. But yeah, because when I graduated it didn't occur to me that that was a creative practice that I was maintaining. It's only now, in retrospect, that I realize, oh, I don't actually feel that I don't feel as much shame about not maintaining a creative practice when I didn't have a project that I was working on or keeping a sketchbook. It was almost like I was ashamed of that for myself, whereas now, I think, because I have that outlet, or I've had that outlet for a few years it's been okay, like I haven't really outlet.

Speaker 1: 9:31

For a few years it's been okay, like I haven't really noticed that big of a dip in my almost self-hatred for not having a practice, which I think has allowed me to shift my thinking around what it is to be a creative and by sharing my story with certain people, I've actually gotten feedback about how it seems like normal it's completely normal for creatives and artists throughout the decades, the centuries, to have periods of high productivity and low productivity, and we should really just learn to accept that and kind of go with the flow and more so, focus on, like, the reason why you're not doing something or why you don't want to do something Because you're so. If your reason for not doing something is based on which a lot of the times it is but if it's based on fear, then that's something that you need to be addressing for yourself, right? I mean we don't want to stop ourselves from doing something because we're scared. That will most definitely be outside of our comfort zone and it takes some practice with kind of oiling up the gears a little bit to, you know, get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and it took me those two years after graduating to really realize that, to realize that, you know, my life doesn't have to be around one specific thing. In fact, I can't seem to function when my life is just one specific thing. It will function for a little bit, I'll be super invested in something and then all of a sudden it's like my brain kind of forgets that I was doing that. Or if I fall off of a routine for like a day, it's really hard for me to like backtrack and get into the zone once again, whereas what I found to be most helpful was to have a space of my own that's already kind of set up and when I show up, or when I even just see it from like across the corridor, the, the room or whatever it is, there's more. It's more enticing because it's already kind of set out. It's there, I can just get on with it, and that works for a creative practice so much as any other thing you do right.

Speaker 1: 12:08

It's so much easier to just sit down and do something if you already haven't prepared, and a lot of people talk about this right. For people, for example, that like to, or would prefer to be to go running, um, to maintain, like to keep physically active and fit. You know their trainers. I've heard of trainers that will tell them to set out their shoes in the morning, have the clothing ready on with something, the more probable it is that you'll actually engage with it. And naturally that's just a tip for kind of getting back into a zone or a flow with any sort of project or undertaking that you do.

Speaker 1: 13:07

But more importantly, it's about realizing that we're so valuable. We're so valuable. It's so easy for us to give up and to stop and not contribute to our goals and our future and to others. It's much easier to stay in our little comfort bubble, you know. But if we're able to really grasp the idea that we're not a singular facet right, that there's so much more to a single person than we let on, if we're able to really embrace that, I think we have a bigger chance of pursuing our goals with a mindset of long-term. Because, yes, you could have a week where you are so unproductive and you just cannot look at that. Whatever it is the laptop, the stack of pages, maybe the book that you're trying to read, whatever it is if you were to allow yourself to kind of get just get back on a groove more naturally, you might find that it's easier to approach something because there isn't this shameful energy behind it. You won't necessarily come beating your ass trying to do something. Instead, you're embracing the fact that you're getting back onto it.

Speaker 1: 14:43

Hey guys, thank you so much for listening this far. I really hope that it was not too atrocious for you. These first I don't know five to seven episodes that I'll be uploading to launch this new podcast. Well, they're kind of like test runs, and, you know, hopefully you'll just get to know a little bit about me, how I think my experiences in life and what kind of brought me to the point that I am in now. I'll be starting my Master's in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Holt University, holt International Business School, in September, so in just over a month, in September, so in just over a month. I've lined up some exceptional guests for you, though, which I'm very excited about, because this is wow my network has completely changed and expanded within a matter of a month, which is insane. But yeah, I've lined up five, I think five different interviews, um, that will be coming out or I'll be launching for you to stream in august. And, yeah, this is just a little message from your host, maya maya, letting you know that there's a lot more to come and a lot better to come as well.

Speaker 1: 16:07

But I needed to to put in the reps. You know, you know how it is. It's new, if anything, if you end up watching this after I've already launched, after there's already some interview, things don't even bother. You'll get to know me through the other episodes, the more finessed ones. This is more me just trying to put in the reps, get into the flow of things, understand how it works and just get more comfortable to speak in front of the camera or in front of the mic. I have a camera, but whatever, it's fine, um, sweet, uh, peace and love, and I hope you have a wonderful day, night, afternoon, weekend, week ahead of you. Much love, ciao, ciao.