What is the thread that connects the winding path of becoming who you are? It’s always good to have a life coach friend in Zeva Bellel. She recently helped me dip my toes into how a gap year in Paris morphed into a career as an artist, author and standup comedian in her fabulous new podcast On Becoming (moveover Terry Gross! She’s got wonderful questions!). After 15 years in Paris, I often forget about the early lost years when I was so scrappy, so poor and had no faith that I could make this place work for me. Life is better with the luxury of retrospect, ladies and gentlemen and everything in between. This first season of On Becoming is dedicated to the power of women living in Paris and how they are continually challenged to find opportunity, reinvent themselves and create their own paths. It’s very much like getting coffee with Zeva. It moves from hilarious to deep in a hot second.
You may recognize a certain watercolor je ne sais quoi in the cover art. C’est moi. Funnily enough, the image was actually almost 10 years in the making. Zeva and I had coffee when she was at a crossroads professionally. She was just let go from a cushy job at Yelp and didn’t know how it would transform into her next professional steps. Zeva wanted to do something in service of women and guiding them on their often winding career paths. We talked about the idea of circles connecting women. The ties that are bound. The overlap in stories. The connections that build strength in exchanging knowledge and life experience. We put a proverbial pin in that (foreshadowing!)...
Fast forward to now, Zeva has morphed into a super successful life coach. When she asked me to design her podcast cover art, I was strolling through the Drawing Now Art Fair and was struck by a Joachim Bandau watercolor of squares within squares, almost like overlapping squares of silk chiffon. I usually work quickly, but this painting was meticulously time consuming. Strategizing each layer and letting each one dry meticulously before building the next. Something clicked between my conversations with Zeva and this painting. I grabbed my watercolors tout suite and started to paint.
I delved into variations on the theme and started painting circles. Some looked a little too beet tartare. Some looks a little too nipple-esque. The universal yes was the circles within circles, in the spirit of Joachim Bandau. What was revealed was almost like the circles of a tree trunk. The passage of time, the overlap of eras, it was the perfect visual metaphor.
A few takeaways / food for thought:
-What creative seeds have you planted with friends? How can you nourish or expand on them? For me, I had the idea of circles within circles, but it took years to snap out of my figurative era and paint more abstractly. And I need to see that Joachim Bandau watercolor to fuel my idea…
-Creativity is not a passive act. Discovery is found in play. Even if I knew in my heart of hearts the final concept for the cover art, I needed to play around with different variations of circles within circles. Through the process of elimination and a lot of scrapped watercolors, I found the strongest option. Don’t underestimate the value of scrapped work….it takes you one step closer to a stronger final product.
-Nothing is inherently original. I’ve gotta give to fellow Substacker, author and artist
whose Ted Talk I show to my drawing students the first day of class. Young art students know they like to draw, but don’t know what to draw. I’m paraphrasing here, but Kleon says “good artists borrow. Great artists steal the best of what came before.” An artist is a product of all of the artists that came before. It’s ok that I found inspiration in another watercolorist’s work because I adapted it the needs of a new project.-Artists are collectors of things, ideas and inspirations. How do you organize these things (in a moodboard, sketchbook, external hardrive)? Are they accessible when you are looking for Inspiration? Sometimes the best ideas strike when you are far from your paintbrush and palette. Keep a careful record of those little things that can inject energy into a brut idea.
Was this helpful/interesting/inspiring? Please let me know in the comment section below. And please share with friend who needs a weekly jolt of inspiration.
Stay inspired and don’t drink the watercolor water. -jkw
Love these thoughts Jessie. And the art! I think it’s so interesting of how the scraps of things (ideas, sketches, physical scraps, or otherwise) build to something over time, and how hard it is to see that in the moment. Which is why it’s so important to have that reflection when you can so you can remember that the next time you’re on a creative path forward. Thank you for the inspiration as alway.