“While I had to change the logistics, what didn’t change is the way I connected in heartfelt, authentic ways with my clients and students. ”
I am so thrilled to share this beautiful interview with you. Dar is one of my students and then I became one of her students (that’s kinda how our online world works, isn’t it?) and it’s been an immense pleasure to get to know her better. She is a formidable force in art and teaching and I loved learning more about her impressive background and journey. Her tips towards the end of the interview are spot on, I especially love the last one which has helped me through these challenging times as well.
Read to the end for a great offer on Dar’s new self-study art course. She is a great teacher and has been instrumental in boosting my own creative journey. Thank you so much, Dar!
1) Tell us about your business
In short, I am a working and teaching artist. I come from a creative family, with a father who was an artist and a mother who was a college professor. I’ve often thought that my life has become almost a complete morphing of those two parental influences.
My professional beginnings, however, were in education, not art and, in the mid-90s, I was a high school language arts teacher. Then, in 1995 I got married, moved to rural Ohio, and had two sons and the “artsy” side of me came out during my early motherhood years and being home with my young children. Later, in 1999, my then-husband was transferred to NJ and it was this transplant to the east coast that really revved up my professional art endeavors, particularly because some of the female friends I made were exuberantly pursuing very self-made and independent careers.
I got my feet wet in a creative career that was pretty “homespun,” doing art festivals and small, local gallery showings. To increase my income I taught myself how to frame and did that on the side. I also taught myself how to use the Adobe suite for graphic design work that I did for other small businesses.
In 2004, I combined my background in writing and language arts with the art I was doing, contracted with a printer from Hong Kong, and independently published my first of six children’s picture books, I Love The Night. Over the next decade, my titles garnered positive reviews by Kirkus, Booklist and School Library Journal, were carried nationwide in both Borders and Barnes & Noble, received numerous awards, and, most recently, were included in a children’s anthology published last year by Houghton Mifflin. During this time I was very active in visiting author/illustrator events at school and public speaking on creativity and education at a variety of both national and international conferences for educators.
By the time the financial crisis of 2008 was in full swing, I’d already added more fine art endeavors to my professional life and was able to weather the cut in funding to schools for programs such as mine. I switched my focus to growing my audience for my Tree paintings, which had developed into a highly unique and recognizable style that continued to get recognition. I began to teach more adults in a casual, workshop environment, as well as on location for different groups and organizations. I opened up my studio to an annual holiday show and continued to pursue shows, festivals, galleries, and private commissions.
By 2012, I was divorced and supporting myself and my two sons through a combination of educational-oriented and fine art activities. In 2016, I was accepted into the Artist Educator program for GOLDEN Acrylic Colors, which has increased my knowledge of acrylic materials and made it possible for me to share these explorations with my students to help them find their artistic techniques and voices.
2) Has Covid changed the way you run your business?
What I’ve realized is that Covid has really only changed the way I run my business on the outside. At first, like so many of us, I was stunned, depressed and devastated by the thought of literally everything being canceled. Every show I was planning, every workshop, all of them vanished in what seemed like a few days.
I’ll admit that I spent a good amount of time feeling very low until I began to look at new ways to apply my business philosophy to the Covid situation. My mailing list, now 22 years old, includes some of my biggest collectors and most loyal students. So, I began having virtual shows, fun hands-on “happy hour” livestreams. I started a Facebook group for creatives and, finally, designed, filmed and implemented what I believe is a unique and inspiring, three-month course called “Circle Celebration" that I launched, successfully, in December 2020 (using Kerstin’s teachings in her then “Classroom” course.)
So while I had to change the logistics, what didn’t change is the way I connected in heartfelt, authentic ways with my clients and students.
3) What are the challenges and rewards?
The main challenge is that I am very extroverted and the endless days of not being able to actually connect with others is hard and often lonely. In the midst of Covid, our family suffered other losses that compounded the challenges, including the loss of my partner’s job, the home we’d planned to buy being sold out from under us, and the death of my ex-husband. Some days it was really hard to make art and just enough to get through my emails.
The rewards have often been more conceptual, more abstract, and have a great deal to do with really getting to know myself by sitting in this discomfort and finding ways to keep going. These are not pleasant things to deal with, but I believe that this is where we learn the really important coping things that help us in future challenges, and where we literally test our mettle. Other rewards are more jubilant— feedback from people who see and still purchase my work and, especially, the positive responses from my students who are finding their own ways to cope with this moment through the making of art with me. I have always been filled up by helping and nurturing others, particularly through art, and this symbiosis takes on a new importance in this moment for sure.
4) What does your self-care look like these days?
Long walks. I try to take a walk every day, and if I’m having a particularly rough day, these walks can be three hours long! When I’m walking I problem solve in my head as I absorb the colors, shapes and sounds of nature. I stay hydrated, eat healthy, home-cooked food and I spend quality time with my partner and my oldest son, who has been with us since his father passed, and we all try to keep each other afloat!
5) Do you have any tips for other entrepreneurs during these uncertain times?
Stay connected with anyone you can, however you can and, from a business perspective, especially your audience or client base. Exchange ideas with people in your life whom you trust and talk about what’s working instead of what isn’t— we humans seem to be designed to see what’s wrong, but something changes when we look at what is.
Ask questions! Our brains love questions more than anything and, even when we don’t know the “answer,” an effective question can knock around in the parts of our brain that are ignited during problem-solving— that’s real brain science!
Break things down into the smallest steps you can— maybe today it’s just writing that one email, or sending out that newsletter… or maybe it’s just making a list, but resist looking at the giant, intimidating whole of whatever it is because it will crush and immobilize you.
Find spots of joy among the challenges. Be around people who make you laugh. Try to remember that this isn’t forever; it’s just for now.
