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I came to art-making later in life. While I had always wanted to be an artist, it never seemed like an appropriate choice to dedicate my life and time to—at least, that was the message I had internalized and turned into a belief. Life was filled with pleasing others, career pursuits, and forging a path that offered financial stability and responsibility. But the ache of not honouring my truth of being the artist I wanted to be was ever-present. I finally stepped into the art world in my 40s when I decided to enroll in a three-year Fine Arts program. In many ways, those three years were transformative, but they also left me utterly unprepared for a sustainable art practice and career. As a mature student, I felt equipped with all that was necessary to make this work—I had life experience, I was devoted to learning, and I had some skill. Thankfully, my art was picked up by a local gallery not long after I completed my diploma, and I felt that I was on my way. Then something happened that I was ill-prepared for. I found myself stuck in cycles of unproductive—and sometimes downright debilitating—thinking. The weight of it made it almost impossible to make my work, and what I did manage to create often felt inauthentic. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was bumping up against limiting beliefs and a fixed mindset. I was spending far too much energy worrying about what others thought of my work, instead of focusing on my own thoughts and feelings. I wasn’t truly in the work—it felt performative rather than connected. This is when resistance set in, and I struggled to get to the studio. I had so much noise inside me, so much to clear away before I could even begin. It was exhausting. That’s when I began asking the question that changed everything for me: How could I want to make art so deeply and yet feel so much angst when I do? I needed to find the answer to this conundrum, or I was going to quit. It had become that hard for me. So my pursuit began in earnest, and I soon discovered it was all about my mindset.
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