Mind Over Medium
A Podcast for artists who want to make money doing what they love. Each week you will learn how to attract your ideal commissions, approach galleries for representation, have a great online launch of your work and how to do it all with less overwhelm and confusion. You will hear from amazing artists who will share how they have built their successful creative businesses. My hope is to create a space where artists and the creative curious can learn about one of the most important tools creative entrepreneurs need in their tool box, their mindset.
Mind Over Medium
Full-Time Artistry: Delight Rogers' Creative Journey
Imagine leaving a stable career to pursue a creative passion full-time. That's exactly what mixed media artist and former teacher, Delight Rogers, did. Join us as we explore her riveting journey into the world of art, driven by a challenging family situation and a thirst for healing. With a fascinating background in archaeology and photography, Delight's artistry is as unique as her experiences. We delve into the trials and triumphs she faced during this life-altering transition and the precious insights she uncovered along the way.
Ever wondered about the balance between creativity, isolation, and community? Get ready to dive head-first into a profound discussion with our guest artist. Delight shares her experience of replacing social outlets with the companionship of the creative process, and how she built a community through live workshops and an art collective. Gain practical advice on handling creative blocks and learn about her daily creative routine that might just inspire your own.
Balancing creativity, business, and self-acceptance can be an uphill battle. In the concluding part of our discussion, we converse with Delight about how she manages her creative business and protects the joy of personal art creation. Hear firsthand about overcoming rejection, harnessing the therapeutic power of art and the challenges of being a creative entrepreneur. Whether you're an artist yourself, a creative business owner, or just an art enthusiast, this episode promises invaluable insights into the world of creative entrepreneurship.
Connect with Delight Here and on Instagram
Connect with Lea Ann on Instagram
Welcome to Mind Over Medium, a podcast for artists who want to make money doing what they love. When you tune in a twink you will learn how to attract your ideal commissions, approach galleries for representation, have a great online launch of your work, and how to do it all with less overwhelm and confusion. You will have the opportunity to hear from amazing artists who will share how they have built their successful creative businesses. My hope is to create a space where artists and the creative curious can gather to learn about one of the most important tools creative entrepreneurs need in their toolbox their mindset. Thanks so much for tuning in to Mind Over Medium podcast. Let's get started.
Lea Ann:Hi everyone, before we get into today's episode, I wanted to let you know that the waitlist is now open for my 12-week course Artful Decision Making how to transform your artistic journey from scattered dreams to focused success. If you feel like you are stuck on the hamster wheel, would love not only some support, but practical tools to create a business that makes you feel overjoyed more than overwhelmed. You should get on the list, and I will offer special pricing for people on the waitlist, so you should definitely sign up. The link will be in my show notes and on my website. So head on over to leanslotkincom to sign up. Hello, today I am excited to chat with Delight Rogers. She is a mixed media artist with a background in archaeology, photography and teaching. I really appreciate you being here today.
Delight:Oh, thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here, yeah.
Lea Ann:I'm excited to hear more about your story and to get us, you know, going in that direction. I'd like to ask everybody a couple questions, and one of them is just introduce yourself. Who are you, where do you live and what do you do, and then I'll ask you another question after that.
Delight:Sure, so my name is Delight Rogers. As we already talked about, I live in a small village, population 800, in Auburn, ontario, canada, and it's a pretty special place that's why I gave you the details. And I create art, mixed media art, and I also create mixed media art workshops.
Lea Ann:That's great. I bet it's cold where you are.
Delight:It's cold, it's snowing right now out my window.
Lea Ann:Oh that's so nice, I miss snow. I don't get snow here.
Delight:My brother lives in California, in Los Angeles, and I visit him pretty often and I have that whole mental thought of wouldn't it be nice to just live in nice weather all the time? But I don't know, I'm not there yet. I like the seasons for sure.
Lea Ann:Yeah definitely, and I think, as long as you have the right gear.
Delight:You do, and I taught outdoor ed for a number of years and that's when I learned. If you have the right gear on, you can absolutely enjoy yourself out there.
Lea Ann:Yeah, definitely. I do not have the right gear anymore, so I would have to stock up. Well, thanks for sharing that. I would like to ask you another question to describe the time in your life when you felt the most creative.
Delight:Okay, that's a great question and I'll preface it by saying I've always felt creative, but it has always come out and manifested in very different ways throughout my life. Art actually creating on a canvas is fairly new. The last 15 years and the most creative I felt would be over the last, I would say, three years I ended up there was a difficult family situation and I ended up on a medical leave from teaching and I dove into art in a way that I'd never had before. Like it's kind of what I did. I did it all day, every day, and it was my escape, it was my healing, it was kind of my everything, and that was a huge kind of I don't know what the word would be, but a breaking point as far as creating and my creativity. I realized it's just such a big part of me that I can't continue to keep it on the sidelines. I need to just let it be the full-time thing.
Lea Ann:Yeah, that's really interesting and thank you for sharing that. I've talked to I don't know over a dozen people now on the podcast and almost everyone has said the same thing. It's something in you that had to come out and I find that so fascinating.
Delight:Yeah, and it is fascinating. And once you've kind of acknowledged that and said, opened yourself up to it and said, okay, this is, I'm going to honor this and I'm going to go forward in this direction, you start to see all the signs that have been there for a long time, telling you that you've been just trying to kind of manage because you think you have to stay on the path that you're on at that time, which, for me, was my teaching career.
Lea Ann:Yeah, Well, I'm sure you can see a through line, because you know you're a photographer and I would imagine being an archaeologist is somewhat creative, is it not? I would think it is I don't know much about it and you get to sketch a lot of the things you find, and yeah.
Delight:I mean I've, like I said, I've always been able to find creativity in whatever I've been doing, even if it's a new mom with a baby at home, you can play with setting up a pretty display on a table right, yeah, I always called myself until I started creating full-time.
Lea Ann:Like I was always a little creative creating full-time. Like I was always in a creative adjacent job. You know it had a little bit of it, but I was not fully in it until I was. So, yeah, it sounds like maybe that was similar for you too.
Delight:Yeah absolutely.
Lea Ann:What did that transition look like for you when you decided to go all in on Creating your mixed media work?
Delight:Big and scary, yeah, and I mean leaving a teaching career, and I still haven't absolutely closed that door. It'll all depend on my health, but it's a big thing to leave the security of it, the pension. But I just knew. I knew that I am just not a kind of person who can just live a life and say, okay, this is what I have to do till I'm 65. And then I can do all these things I want to do. I just I can't get my head around that. So it was more.
Lea Ann:I cannot spend the next however many years in my life doing something that isn't feeding my soul, so I was just wondering, and I completely understand what you're saying and that does answer the question but then also, practically speaking, what did it look like for you?
Delight:It looked like trying to find my way on my own and doing what I thought were all the right steps the website, getting things in galleries, setting up a free online art course, and all the pieces were in place, and then nothing happened and I really had no idea.
Delight:Well, I continued to research and listen to podcasts and read books, trying to figure it out, but I realized that I really needed I needed someone to guide me, and that's when I heard Kelly Winn had talked about starting the artful league, and I waited a long time for her to finally actually start it. But that has given me the clear pathway and the community to really understand what I need to do, how I need to do it, that everything I'm feeling is kind of okay and normal and you just got to go for it. Yes, it's hard work. Yes, it's worth it. So that's kind of it's been a. It's been a bit of a journey, but I now feel like I've found the right spot to grow, both as more so as a art workshop instructor. Art I make myself is still kind of my own thing aside, yeah.
Lea Ann:Yeah, yeah, it is hard work, yeah, and I think sometimes it can be deceiving because, like we said at the beginning, you're doing this thing that you were called to do and so it feels like then the rest should be a little bit easier, but it really isn't. It can be a little. That can be a little confusing for me sometimes, like why is this part hard? If this part, I mean it's hard, but in a different way? Like creating the work is hard in a different way, then running a business yeah, absolutely.
Delight:It's a completely different mindset one from the other. And the one is creating is easy and natural and enjoyable, and all the good things and the art business can be all that, but it's a lot of work too.
Lea Ann:You know, I just had this realization, like just very recently, like the part of creating that I find exciting are like figuring it out, like it's kind of like a puzzle that you're trying to figure out, being surprised when things don't turn out the way you thought they should. And there was something else I can't remember and it just dawned on me recently that I need to be thinking about my business this way, like I had a very different and it's not. I haven't quite transitioned fully, but what does that ring true for you at all? I mean, I feel like I thought the business should be, I don't know.
Delight:Just, I wanted a template, okay, yeah, and I understand that I'm a little different. So when I create it's very intuitive. I very seldom have a plan at all, but if I do, I never actually create whatever it was that I had in mind. And with business, I kind of I've kind of the art business. I approach it in the same way, just kind of intuitively, feeling my way along, trying things out.
Delight:I tried to vlog on YouTube. That's a lot of work I'm going to. I wouldn't there's such a learning curve on the editing and all the things to make it look like it should. I'm going to put that aside right now and I'm going to go to where the blog feels good. I love writing. I love still images. I'm going to keep going there and testing out ads, testing out Pinterest, just kind of like a wood in a piece of art. I'm just kind of playing around and trying different things and if they don't work, that's okay. Maybe I'll come back to them, maybe I won't, but it sounds like it's. Maybe it's a different approach than you're talking about.
Lea Ann:Well, I wish I had started out with that approach. Yeah, Mine was probably a little bit more kind of looking outside myself and seeing other people like in my mind having it figured out and being like why can I not figure that out? Like if they can do it, I should be. You know, I think it was more just me being hard on myself, honestly.
Delight:Yeah, and I get that and, given sort of the situation I've had with my own mental health, I'm really I give myself a lot of self compassion, so I really allow myself that. No big deal. It didn't work out, that's okay, don't beat yourself up about it, let's try this. You're still a great person, you're still a great artist, you're still, you know, developing a great business. You just that didn't work and that's okay. So I'm really trying hard because I know I have to. So I'm consciously aware of just giving myself the kind of compassion and grace that we would give our friends, but not necessarily ourselves.
Lea Ann:You know, why is it so easy to do it for other people? But we have to really, I have to work on it to do it for myself. But as I've gotten older, it's gotten better.
Delight:I agree yeah.
Lea Ann:So has that been a process for you, kind of learning that self love and compassion and grace, or were you, was that something you've always been able to give yourself?
Delight:To a certain extent I have. I know I was involved with a women's leadership group through my teaching union for a number of years and we learned a lot about how women have, by nature, tend to feel like they need to be an expert in something before they actually dive into the ring or put themselves out there where men tend to like. I have a bit of an idea of that. I'm just going to go for it and, for whatever reason, I have more of the masculine perspective on that. Where I've done a lot of things, just gone for it, it was like I know I can do that, I'm just going to go for it. So that's been maybe a bit different for me.
Lea Ann:Yeah, you, just you trust your ability to be able to figure it out.
Delight:I do, and it's meant I've had a lot of pretty amazing experiences in my life because I just gone for it.
Lea Ann:So yeah, that's great, that is really good. So, going from being a teacher and all the other things you've done, to being, you know, a course creator and painter, does the isolation of the work ever bother you and, if so, how do you handle it?
Delight:It doesn't bother me, because creating art is kind of my companion, it's my other.
Delight:When I'm in creating I don't feel lonely, I don't feel any of that, so I it feeds me in a way that often replaces my need for all the social outlets that we tend to need otherwise. So that hasn't been hard, as I'm starting to feel better. I'm starting to feel a bit of a pull to get out, which is good, and I recently joined an art collective which is a really super bunch of creative people and I'm just I'm tiptoeing into that because it's going to be from being at home and just creating all the time and working on my business. That's a big move forward, but I think it'll be a good addition. And I recently taught a live workshop and again, that created. I had no idea would be like that during the live, but it created just a feeling, a community that I didn't expect and we're all still in touch and the personal growth we all made, the connections we made, that was pretty special to. So even here at home I can kind of build a community.
Lea Ann:Yeah, that's great. Is the place you live? Is it a creative type community?
Delight:It is. I'm just on the edge of an area called Muskoka and it's kind of people say it's the Hamptons of Canada. So yeah, there's, it's a really creative community. A lot of people retire here, a lot of artists come here because it's so beautiful to create and I'm just on the edge of that so it's yeah, it's a great community.
Lea Ann:Do you ever feel overwhelmed with the amount of ideas that you have and, if so, how do you deal with that?
Delight:I do, I think, as creative people. That's one of the common threads is we have all these amazing ideas. I give myself time to create every day and even if it's a short period of time, I have that, so I can I kind of have that creative outlet to even just start on whatever the idea. It is, what the ideas I have, or create on whatever happens to be what's on my easel at the time and that is still. It kind of can redirect my creative urges. So that definitely helps. And I know some people it'll be a day a week, some people pick a month a year to create and honor that, especially when you're having an art business and there's a bit of a you know, competition for your creative time. But I really need to do it every day and if I miss a day, that's okay. If I miss a few days, I really am aware of how I feel and that it's not good. Yeah.
Lea Ann:Yeah, do you. Do you have a way of getting back into your creative rhythm after you've taken time away, or is it pretty natural for you?
Delight:It's usually a bit of a struggle. I'll kind of ease myself into it by maybe doing something really small, either finishing something in a way that there's not a lot of thinking involved, I just know this particular thing has to be done, or the other thing. That's kind of what I love to do for just relaxation, and my active meditation would be just laying down a collage, paper collage, and so I'll do that too, because that's just kind of just absolutely free and I can just leave my mind and get back into the flow. That will always get me back into my flow.
Lea Ann:Yeah, that's great. That's really good. How did you land on Mix Media?
Delight:I was invited by a girlfriend to a workshop and it was a Mix Media workshop here, actually in the village that I live in, and it was a place called Circling Hawks and there was a little fairy garden in Maze. You had to go through to get to this barn and it was in the loft of the barn and I thought, well, I don't know what Mix Media is, but I love that place and that venue. So, okay, I'll go. And it was interesting because it wasn't a full organized workshop with a direction. It was more of an exploration. This is Mix Media.
Delight:These are some of the materials, these are some of the processes. These are some of the things you can do. Go for it. Oh, wow, yeah, and I think back now and I haven't created any type of courses like that, obviously, maybe not, obviously, maybe I should, but it really was a great way to dive in. And so I went home that night with a completed canvas and other than high school art I really hadn't created on a canvas before and that was it. I just I never looked back. I was very prolific and just painted. I would get secondhand canvases from thrift stores, yard sales, I would buy lots of art supplies on eBay and I just tried everything and just created.
Lea Ann:So at that time, it was just my weekends, though, so my weekend the art time. That's great. Yeah, that's pretty unusual to go to a workshop and have that much freedom. I mean the ones I've been to. There's been quite a lot of people who have been to the art shop. There's been quite a bit of structure, so that sounds like that was a real gift for you at the time.
Delight:It was pretty amazing and I've thought about it now teaching these mixed media workshops and thinking about the amount of beautiful paint we squeezed out each of us right to do these things, and how much waste was involved. And you know, I don't think she may have run one more workshop after the one I attended, but that would have been it. Yeah, it was probably a real mess we left behind.
Lea Ann:Oh, I can't imagine. Yeah, that's pretty funny. If you think about it that way, that's great. Tell me about your teaching and who you like to call into your courses and what you provide for them.
Delight:Well, mixed media and my signature course. So my main course is a personal portraits mixed media workshop, but with a heavy emphasis on the mixed media piece. So it's exploring different types of mixed media, different applications, different processes and then also providing a simple pathway to be able to create a portrait. So by doing an image transfer not an image transfer but transferring something onto the canvas so you've kind of got the face shape and the positioning, the feature, distance between features, the stuff that can be really fiddling and frustrating.
Delight:Yeah, Kind of getting that Intimidating, yeah, and just having fun with the self-expiration and the self-portrait, and I tend I haven't had a real range of people all women, but I think, a real range of people with different backgrounds. In my recent run of personal portraits I had a number of portrait artists and really accomplished artists, so that was interesting and they were there more to explore the mixed media piece, which I liked, and, yeah, women from all over the world, different ages, and it seems like people, everybody gets their own thing out of it, which I think is pretty special too. Yeah definitely.
Lea Ann:How do you support your creativity? Like do you journal? Sounds like you meditate? I think you said that, yeah.
Delight:What do you do? I meditate, I do yin yoga, which is kind of a passive, fairly meditative type of yoga, and I also incorporate journaling into my art. I'll often start by journaling and then maybe, after a layer or two, I'll stop and do some more journaling. But yeah, my art is my. Everything I do with my art to me is honoring that?
Lea Ann:Yeah, that's great. So when you say you'll write on the canvas, essentially is that usually yeah? That's cool. I used to do that. I've gotten away from that. It just reminded me.
Delight:Yeah, it's often like that. I look back at things I used to do and think, oh, I should be doing that still. But we just come up as artists, we just sort of follow the path of brainstorming of whatever looks exciting.
Lea Ann:Then we want to do that. Yeah, and I feel like my memory for those kind of things too, it's like so quick and I forget about it. Yeah, I know I was looking through a bunch of photos and videos today just trying to get organized, and I was like, oh, I remember this. I remember when I did this and it was nice, it was a nice reminder. Yeah, just other tools in my creative toolbox.
Delight:Yeah, yeah, and I think it's probably a good practice that I don't know how many artists actually do, but to circle back and kind of revisit things that you explored earlier. That might be because as we grow as artists and our skills are always developing, so to go back to something you were doing before with your current set of skills would be interesting just to see what happens?
Lea Ann:I think so too, and I think we're so drawn to just always pushing forward with our work, but I do think reflection is equally as important in our creative work. Yeah, yeah, do you ever have creative blocks?
Delight:I have and I've sort of, like I talked about before, I've sort of eased myself back in. My biggest one was, I guess, just over a year ago because it would have been early fall of 2022, I had a solo show that was supposed to run for a month, which I was super excited about. It was my first one. The show opened opening night. It was fantastic. I sold 10 big pieces. Women were. We just really responded so amazingly and emotionally to my art and tears and connections and it was just amazing.
Lea Ann:It was you know sort of beyond your wildest dreams.
Delight:And then the show had to be canceled, there was some family issues with the gallery owner, and so I had to just pack up my art and it was all over. And it was a real letdown and I just felt like, ok, that had been opened up to me and it was amazing and I want more of that. But I have no channels to create that right now and it just really shut me down creatively for quite a while. And that's when I started to create the mini muses, which is my free art workshop, because they were just tiny little cards and they were my favorite thing.
Delight:I started with the paper collage and then I would either, you know, if I could, if I was feeling creative enough, I would hand draw the face, but otherwise I would transfer them and then I would just play with fabrics and lace and whatever and build these little outfits and hats, and it was just absolutely creative play with no pressure. And the thing about them is they're so small. You could kind of sit down and finish one in a sitting, which I really needed that to, because there was a lot of unfinished art, because I just wasn't I did, it wasn't in my flow. So that's how I got back to that, and then I'll often do the same thing if I'm feeling kind of stale is I'll just pick something tiny and just say I'm just going to sit here and do this tiny little thing, and that's interesting.
Lea Ann:Yeah, because your personal work is pretty large in scale. So it's funny that yeah, that the difference between the two is fascinating. Like I'll do that as well. Not, but going from big to small or painting to collage can almost always like like snap me out of a low point, like a creative low point.
Delight:Yeah, so that's similar yeah.
Lea Ann:Let's talk about rejection, because in our line of work it happens A lot. It can happen. How do you deal with it? Does it bother you?
Delight:I would love to be able to say it doesn't bother me.
Lea Ann:Superhuman?
Delight:Yeah, I don't know if anybody could honestly say it doesn't bother me at all. But I'm really resilient and I fortunately maybe it's the age I'm out, but I'm able to put it in its place. Take it in. If there's learning to be drawn from it, take the learning in. But just again, giving myself that compassion that okay, well, that didn't work out, or okay, that person doesn't like my work, let's just keep going forward, just forward. And there's always a new thing, that, a new thing that I can focus on, a positive thing I can focus on. And I tend to try to do that just, and I don't think I've always been like that, but I'm just giving myself all that nice forgiveness that we need.
Lea Ann:Yeah, and I think too, like when I'm working with coaching clients, that's a. It can be a big hurdle and I think I don't know if it's when we're starting out or just kind of the thicker skin you develop when you've been doing this longer. But separating our personal value from the rejection because it really doesn't have anything to do with us as a person, sometimes that can be a tricky thing for people to untangle. Has that ever been an issue for you?
Delight:Well, I and I haven't come. I've come to this really recently sort of understanding a almost a division in my art and my art business where the art I create is just, it comes from inside and I can't, I don't plan it, I don't know what's going to happen and it's just, it just has to come out of me. And I'm fortunate now to have a local gallery to have my art in and if things sell which they seem to, that's awesome. I just think, wow, that's great, somebody like that. Whereas the online art is more of the focus. Where I'm trying to maybe that's my most personal part, that's me out on the canvas.
Delight:The art workshops is a bit more of a combination. They're absolutely me, they come from the heart, but they also have that layer of my teaching background in them and just it's just, it's a bit different. So I'm sharing them and I really want people to like them and maybe because it's a new thing to teaching art online, I've taught a lot. I've taught online a lot, but I haven't taken my art and taught it online, so I'm more vulnerable, baby, and more looking for am I doing this right or people enjoying this? And so I'm a little more. I'm not necessarily negatively impacted by it, but I'm aware of it and I want to make changes based on it, whereas with my own personal art I'd be like yeah, you didn't like it, that's okay, I'm still going to do it, just exactly the same way. Yeah.
Lea Ann:Isn't that interesting. I wonder what that is. Yeah, it could be because it's new. Yeah, or newer.
Delight:Yeah.
Lea Ann:Yeah, yeah. And I wonder too, like, with an online course, do you get a lot of? With how yours is structured, do you get a lot of immediate things? Do you get a lot of immediate feedback, or?
Delight:And I haven't until this most recent run I did of the live the Zoom classes for six weeks personal portraits and that that was a huge confidence booster because I was with the group and getting their immediate feedback and seeing also all the progress they were making and all the excitement with all the new things they were learning, and it was really good just to let me know yeah, this is good, what I'm offering is really useful to people, it's helping them grow as artists, it's feeding them spiritually and personally and, yeah, this is good. Yeah, so that was, I think, and as a result, I think I'm going to continue to offer that course as a live course because I just think it's special, it's a little bit different and having that feedback they get the feedback, I get feedback I think it causes a lot more growth as an artist. Having taken a lot of online courses and a few Zoom, I really saw the difference.
Lea Ann:Yeah, I can see that. That makes sense to me for sure. Well, practically speaking, how do you manage the business part of your life and the creative part?
Delight:With the help of my therapist, I have it pretty well mapped out. So the mornings, are great.
Lea Ann:I might need their number.
Delight:The mornings are my creative time, so I kind of have my phone on do not it's automatically goes to do not disturb and I walk my dog. I have this little routine. And then I'm in the studio and I'm creating, and I usually create at least till I come up for food at lunch or something. I may go back down, but at least give myself that morning time of creativity. And then the afternoon is often the business of the art business.
Delight:So returning emails, checking on things, responding to whatever I need to be responding to, and then and I'm not sure if this is good or not, but in the evening I'll come back around to my computer and that's when I'll do creative things on my. So I'm designing ads, I'm designing, maybe, social media posts, I'm working on a sales page, so they're creative. So I'm doing that, but it's just. It's just, yeah, getting a little more done, and I don't know if I could really manage if I wasn't doing all three things each day, which isn't great and may change over time, but for now it's what I'm doing and it's working.
Lea Ann:Did it take you a while to tweak it to figure out what worked for you?
Delight:It did, especially once I started working with Kelly Winn in the art business mentorship, because I realized all the different things I needed to do and the type of person I am. I think most of us actually in the group are like this, where we just kind of dove in and full tilt like got to do all these things and realize there's just no way. You know, I have to give myself these milestones and work towards them and it's not all going to happen right now. Realistically, everything I'd like to have in place is probably going to take a year to get in place and me working day and night, seven days a week, isn't going to, isn't the best path. I may not get there at all if I continue on that path.
Lea Ann:Yeah, yeah, I mean, I do think. Sometimes I just have to remind myself like slow and steady wins the race. Just keep putting your head down and doing the work.
Delight:Yeah, absolutely, and I'll do that with. Now. I'll break it down even more. So, okay, this is what I need to do that month. And then I've broken it down by week. And I often have to break it down by day. It's like okay today, because I get really overwhelmed by the big picture, so I have to scale it down, and scale it down to one thing after one thing, and then I get through it and I'm like actually that wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, but only because I ignored everything, but the thing I absolutely have to do right then.
Lea Ann:Yeah, that's really smart. That's very smart. What do you think about your ability to create your own success?
Delight:Interesting question. I think the only way that, for me, that I will be successful is based on my own ability, and it's just a matter of deciding that this is what you want. Envisioning it. These are the steps I'm going to need to take to make it happen, and if it's going to happen, it's going to be because I did all these things and I am that person who's bringing all these things to the table to go on this pathway.
Lea Ann:Yeah, I like what you said about it being a decision. Yeah, because I think it's easy to get distracted, overwhelmed. I think as creative people we kind of have that draw towards that shiny object syndrome like ooh, the new, the exciting, the, and it can be hard to stay the course on the one thing.
Delight:Yeah, no, absolutely. And I mean I didn't come to this quickly or easily, to the decision to focus on this mixed media art as a business. When I had my photography business and once photography was my hobby and my creative outlet, and once it was monetized over time I had the business for 10 years I lost photography as that, as my creative outlet, as this thing that I enjoyed, and it took me a long time to be able to come back around to photography in that way, and so I really took a long time before deciding to put my art out there. For a number of years people would come to my home and they would just they would love the arts and they would say this is a gallery, I would buy it and you have to get your work out there. And I would just say, okay, which one do you like? And I would.
Delight:They would leave with that painting because I was determined not to monetize it, because the fear was, if I do that, it's going to take some of the joy out or maybe all the joy out of it. I can't take a chance on that. So when I did get to the point where it was okay, this is the direction I'm going to turn this into a business. I'm going to put my art out there for sale. Yeah, I knew that. I kind of had to. It was just it was. There was no more ignoring. That was the direction I was heading in. Whether I was trying to slow it down or ignore it, it was happening anyway.
Lea Ann:What do you do to protect the joy, then, of creating the work Just?
Delight:that balance of the personal art as opposed to the art and the art business. There really is a division there and I've had to meditate on that a lot to kind of come to that point of understanding. Okay, how do I do that? How do I keep them separate, how do I honor them both but make it work in a balanced way? And I'm still working on it, but it's working at this point and I'm just going to keep developing it, but it's that it's the art is a personal thing and the art I create for my art workshops, and that it's just, it's separate.
Lea Ann:Sounds like it's kind of a dance that you're figuring out or have figured out.
Delight:Yeah, figuring out, I would say, and maybe I always will be, because I don't want to let art go as just a healing tool of my own Like, and I can't let it go, I feel like. So I have to figure out a way to keep it all moving forward, but in a healthy, balanced way.
Lea Ann:Well, it sounds like art's been really pivotal for you personally in your hailing journey. I mean, do you want to talk about that? You don't have to at all, I mean, but you've that's come up a couple of times, so it caught my interest.
Delight:Well, it's just, art is my therapy and so my teaching for about the last 10 years, before I stopped working, was in a mental health treatment center and I worked with teens so 12 to 17 that were that lived there. So they've been removed from their homes and their schools. They had pretty significant mental health struggles. And working with them and getting them to work with them and working on the art as an outlet and art, that healing piece, it almost came naturally to me when things got really difficult for me and my family and I just it's just I knew this is a place I can go, that feels really good and it's safe, and I just kind of that's what I did.
Delight:And I just did it day after day and actually at one point asked my therapist like, can it be? Because she said art's amazing, it kind of encompasses all the things that you would want to encompass in your therapy, it feeds all these pieces and in this one place. But I remember one time I came to her and said, well, can it be too much, you know, and it kind of the point where it's like no longer healthy, because that was my concern is I kind of felt like it's just all I do, and you know I got thinking about it and I wake up and I can't wait to get to it, but she assured me that, no, that's okay.
Lea Ann:That's great. That's good. I'm glad you got that reassurance. Thank you for sharing that. That's great. It is very therapeutic and yeah, it's just this amazing thing and I don't know, it sounds like you were probably a creative kid and all that I mean. I just remember it being a very safe, comfortable thing for me to do when things maybe didn't feel that way at all. Yeah, absolutely, and it's continued to.
Delight:Yeah, and thank goodness we have something like that as an outlet oh my gosh. Yes.
Lea Ann:I'm glad too that I didn't have the internet.
Delight:Me too, and as a parent of young adults I see that too. I just sometimes I feel sad because I feel like there's things that they're not really getting that I think are a pretty important part of your growth and development.
Lea Ann:Yeah, it's funny. I was talking to my boys over Thanksgiving about something just like you know, when they were young I'd put all these like restrictions and blocks, and I mean the minute I'd put one on they would be able to get a. I mean it was just like whack them all, like I could not keep up. Yeah, I remember doing the same stuff. Oh my gosh, it felt so defeated.
Delight:Yeah.
Lea Ann:But they were laughing and basically telling me how untax savvy I was and sometimes continue to be. I'm like I knew it at the time, but thanks for confirming it.
Delight:Yeah Well, you still try right.
Lea Ann:I know exactly. You definitely have to still try. What does self acceptance mean to you?
Delight:Well, I kind of feel like I've talked about that a bit. It's accepting yourself as you are, accepting your mistakes, expecting, accepting maybe shortcomings, you know, maybe accepting limitations that you feel like you have, but just loving yourself anyway and just, and also focusing on the things that are great, because, I mean, I would say this with students, with my own kids we all have things that we're really good at and they're not the same as anybody else, and wouldn't it be complicated if you were really good at a whole bunch of things? Yeah, so just giving, accepting, okay. Well, this is a strong point for me, you know, and this is not so good over here, so I really need to, I need some extra help in that area but knowing yourself and accepting yourself as you are because, yeah, we're all, yeah, we're all different people and offer different things to the world.
Lea Ann:Definitely this has been a delightful, delightful conversation, which I just set that up Organically. Sorry that is okay. Does that happen to you a lot.
Delight:It does yeah.
Lea Ann:And then you ask what's the origin of your name?
Delight:It's, yeah, my father chose it. They'd had two boys and they really wanted a daughter, so there's, it was kind of appropriate in that way. And my dad was an avid genealogist and in our, with the Puritan history, there's a lot of names hope, charity, chastity, delight is one of those names. It's just not a common one and it was, I guess, in our family tree at some point and yeah, so that's how he came up with that. It's a lot to live with sometimes A grumpy nobody wants a grumpy delight.
Lea Ann:I was going to ask him, like, do you have to shy away from being in a bad mood? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, Well, this conversation has been lovely.
Delight:Yeah, thank you. It was a pleasure, lots of great interesting questions and a great conversation, so thank you for that.
Lea Ann:Oh, it's my pleasure. Where can people find you, and what do you have going on that you want to share you?
Delight:can find me at delightrogerscom, my website, and that will lead you to my art workshops. It'll lead you to my original art and you will also find a couple free offers. So there's my mini-muse mixed media workshop that I referred to, who we were talking earlier, and I also have a 30-day creative kickstart in there. That's free, as well as things to kind of check out what I'm all about, and I am very active on Instagram If you want to see what I'm doing there. I do send out a newsletter with a blog each week, so when you're on my website, you can subscribe for that as well, and it's usually full of lots of good things. Amazingly, I get responses almost every week to my blog and my newsletter. That's wonderful. There's some pretty positive stuff, so I love that. That's great.
Lea Ann:Well, again, thank you for being here. Thank you for tolerating my coughing fit that I've been editing Like cough drops, so it was a real pleasure.
Delight:Thanks for showing up, even though you weren't feeling well.
Lea Ann:Oh, of course, yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for listening to Mind Over Medium podcast today. If you found the episode inspiring, please share it with a friend or post it on social media and tag me on Instagram at Leigh-Anne Slotkin, or head to my website, wwwleigh-anneslotkincom to book a discovery call to find out more about working with me one on one. You can also head to my website to get a great tool I've created for you to use when planning your own online launch of your artwork. It's an exercise I've taken many of my coaching clients through and it's been very helpful. It's my way of saying thank you and keep creating.