Celebrate Your Many Interests

Am I all over the place with my art? I regularly joke that I could stock my own art supply store. What about you? One of the most common things I hear from fellow artists is, “I feel all over the place with my art.” But what does that really mean? 

Hey there! 👋 I’m Carrie. Here on Artist Strong, I help self-taught artists with home studios who feel stuck with their art move from wondering what’s next to confidently expressing themselves through unique, original art. To date, thousands have joined the community.

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When I break down the idea of being all over the place with one’s art, it’s about lots of art materials, playing with many media, and juggling various ideas and projects. But we also have a negative association with this belief. Somehow, we are lacking or something is missing from our art and this experience is evidence of that lack. 

Today, let’s talk about what it means to be all over the place with your art, how artists across history have managed their varied ideas and interests, and how you can use this to your advantage to make better art.

Embrace the Chaos

Exploring Helps You Find Your Path

Here’s the thing: you *should* be all over the place with your art. Yes, I said it. Here’s why. Exploring different materials and ideas helps you figure out what captures your attention and keeps you motivated, even when it gets hard. While art is something fun we do, if you’re here watching this you are also interested in building your skill, perhaps exhibiting and selling your art. And that involves growth. Remember, to grow is to be uncomfortable. Learning is uncomfortable. (I have a short article on the role of discomfort in being an artist linked below). So being engaged with our materials and ideas is vital to our ability to stick with your art when it feels difficult.

Being all over the place with your art is also a great way to build your skills, as different media can inform and enhance your work. Right now I have a student inside my skill building program called Self-Taught to Self-Confident who is focused on drawing and colored pencil, but also works in wood carving. He has repeatedly shared how doing both is informing the way he sees things and that his drawing is absolutely improving his carving. (And I’m sure his carving has helped him with his observational skills as well!). 

What a wonderful way to keep making art but have something completely different to explore and play around with when we need a break from a particular medium or project.

The more time we put into our art, the stronger our skill will become.

Developing Your Unique Voice

Going through this exploratory stage (one of the three phases of artistic expression, which I talk about in this video here) is crucial to uncovering your unique voice. Without making a lot of art and experimenting, you can’t truly refine your style. You need to have plenty of work to begin to see what makes your art uniquely yours, and then consciously embrace those qualities to really let it shine forth.

Yayoi Kusama’s work spans painting, sculpture, performance, and installation art. Her distinctive use of polka dots and repetitive patterns is a hallmark that ties her diverse body of work together. Her media isn’t what connects her art, but the use of patterns across her work.

Kara Walker is known for her provocative silhouettes and installations that explore themes of race, gender, and identity. Her work includes drawing, painting, film, and sculpture, illustrating the power of a multi-disciplinary approach. This approach awarded her a MacArthur Fellowship (also called The Genius Grant) at the age of 28.

What would we be missing out on if these artists felt limited to one medium or idea? What are we missing out on because fellow creatives, maybe you, feel something is wrong with being “all over the place” with their art?

If you’re ready to make art a priority in your life and want to explore making art in a unique style, I have just the thing. It’s called Self-Taught to Self-Confident, and it will help you move from feeling stuck, wondering what’s next to confidently creating a series of artworks that you can share with loved ones (and even sell).

👉🏽👉🏽👉🏽Choose a time from my calendar here so we can discuss where you are at with your art, where you want to be, and how to get where you want to go.

Plus, let’s not forget the most important reason of all: you enjoy it! If you love making art and exploring different media, you should absolutely indulge in that passion. Research by Dr. Stuart Brown found a correlation between lack of play in the lives of children and later acts of violence as adults. When people talk about Bronnie Ware and the regrets of the dying, it certainly isn’t to work more, or to spend more time on Tiktok. Making your art not only improves your life, and thus the lives of people around you, it is taking a stand to say making time for our creative interests is valuable, important, and worthy of everyone’s time.

I think of my mother modeling such curiosity and interest in all kinds of art and craft activities while I was a child, and how that told me now as a mother myself having my own interests and modeling that for my daughter is something I can now pass on. It touches the lives of so many and creates a ripple effect that positively affects our communities.

Make your art.

Addressing the Myths

Dispelling the Myth of Failure

Feeling all over the place with your art is not a sign of failure. It’s not an indication that you or your art are lacking in any way. Internalized definitions of success, cruel inner critics, and lack of confidence can make us question our art journey. These thoughts are simply your brain’s way of trying to protect you from fear and uncertainty.

Two artists who embraced multiple media and who experienced success during their lifetimes are Georgia O’Keeffe and Louise Bourgeois. 

Georgia O’Keeffe is primarily known for her paintings of flowers and Southwestern landscapes, but she also worked in charcoal, watercolor, and pastels. Her ability to convey her unique vision across different media is a powerful example of artistic versatility.

Louise Bourgeois’ work spans over seven decades and includes sculpture, installation, drawing, and printmaking. Her explorations of themes like identity, family, and memory are consistent, even as she used a wide array of materials and techniques.

👉🏽👉🏽👉🏽I’m curious: why do you think we have such a negative association with being “all over the place” with our art? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Rejecting Negative Thoughts

Ask yourself: does listening to that negative self-talk actually help? My experience is that it only worsens the pain. In my heart, I want to show up and make art, and not creating feels like a rejection of myself. So, instead of giving in to these lies our brain tells us to try and protect us, focus on what truly matters: your passion for art.

Personally ignoring or trying to push away my negative thoughts doesn’t work. Acknowledging them and my feelings and then moving forward anyway has helped me quiet them. I have an article all about the mindset shifts we can cultivate as artists linked for you below.

Creating Structure Within Exploration

How can you work with these varied interests? There are ways we can create some structure to guide our explorations if (note my use of the word IF) feeling all over the place has you feeling stuck.

Working in Series

One way to create structure is by working in series. I wholeheartedly believe in this practice. A series is a collection of artworks, usually between 5 to 25 pieces, that share a theme, medium, or other connecting thread. 

I have a video about Why Artists work in a Series linked for you here.

You can stick with your many materials and create a group of artworks by medium or use them all together to explore a theme.

There are many ways to use your varied interests and communicate consistency for gallerists or collectors, for example, but I find this is the simplest way to curate my art and present it with a level of consistency.

Balancing Play and Focus

Why not give yourself a period to play while also choosing one project or idea for a deeper dive? Art is about both exploration and digging deeper. By working on both, you can maintain a sense of freedom and opportunity, while also feeling motivated to keep showing up, challenged, and growing.

If you are a recovering perfectionist like me, black and white thinking can really get us into trouble. We limit ourselves with all or nothing approaches. What if we can have both? 

👉🏽👉🏽👉🏽What would that look like for you? Tell me more in the comments below.

Exploring Mixed Media

Another way to create some structure with your feeling all over the place is to choose a grouping of materials to explore as mixed media. What happens when you use various materials to complete a single artwork or series? This can challenge you conceptually and technically. It encourages you to create harmony and unity across the piece, pushing you to grow as an artist.

👉🏽👉🏽👉🏽What other strategies can you use that help you embrace feeling all over the place as a sign of progress, process, and doing the work? Let’s create a resource in the comments that supports fellow artists as they move through this experience.

Today we talked about how feeling all over the place with our art is actually a normal part of the creative process. While collectively we talk about it like its a sign of failure, or evidence that something is wrong with our art (or even ourselves), it’s a great way to build skill, explore and develop your many curiosities to see where it all might lead as well as what topics or materials you want to spend more time with. 

We mentioned several artists like Kara Walker and Georgia O’Keeffe and how they did not limit themselves to one material or exact style. You do not have to make cookie cutter art where everything is the same colors, same topic, same size…etc. YOU get to decide what your artist practice looks like and I can’t wait to see what you decide.

Being all over the place with your art is not a sign of failure; it’s proof that you’re on your way to developing and refining your voice as an artist. It’s evidence that you are, in fact, an artist. So celebrate your many interests, explore freely, and let your unique artistic journey unfold.

Thank you so much for watching. Please like and subscribe to help spread today’s message and as always, remember:

Proudly call yourself as artist.

Together we are Artist Strong.