It Begins With Conversation

Every meaningful part of my art career starts with a conversation. Not with a painting. Not with a gallery. Not even with a sale.

With a conversation.

Someone wanders into my studio. Or stops by during Open Studios. They ask a question. I answer. We talk about color, creativity, or why anyone (raising my hand here) would paint over a perfectly good painting—the one they fell in love with last year.

Sometimes they buy a painting or a print. Sometimes they sign up for a class. Sometimes they invite me to exhibit in their space.

And sometimes they become friends.

Every one of those moments starts exactly the same way.

Two strangers saying hello. And the conversation that follows.

One Conversation Can Change Everything

When we moved to the Olympic Peninsula, I knew no one.

I had paintings in storage.. Ideas in my head. What I didn’t have was a community. Or even a studio.

A few months ago, I did something that felt surprisingly vulnerable. I reached out to another local artist and asked if she’d like to meet for coffee. I wrote about it in an earlier post, Landscape of Connection.

That one conversation reminded me how much I missed being part of an art community.

I came home and said to Mr. Spouse, “I want to be in Open Studios. Can we get the studio built by August?

Not start someday. Start now.

Until then, we’d been talking about it in the future tense. There were still decisions to make. Budgets. Construction schedules. A hundred perfectly sensible reasons to wait.

I was done being sensible.

The coffee hadn’t changed my plans. It had changed me.

 It wasn’t just that I wanted a place to paint. I wanted a place where people would walk through the door.

When I told him I wanted to be in Open Studios THIS YEAR, he knew exactly what I meant.

Open Studios has never been just an art event.

It’s been the beginning of so many good things—teaching opportunities, gallery representation, collectors, friendships, and conversations that still make me smile years later.

None of them were planned.

They all began with someone saying hello.

Now, in just a few days, I’ll be opening this studio for the first time.

To strangers.

That feels oddly familiar.

Most visitors won’t know the story of this place. They won’t know about the excavator ballet, the skylights, or why I went a bit overboard when painting the potty.

They’ll simply walk through the door.

And we’ll start talking.

Yes, I hope they enjoy the paintings.

I hope a few find new homes.

But what I’m really looking forward to is the person who can’t stop staring at one painting. The unexpected rabbit hole. The story that appears because a painting unlocked a memory. Or evoked a sense of curiosity.

Paintings are wonderful conversation starters. But the real art is the connection that follows.

Back in February, I said I wanted to be ready by summer. But I wasn’t really talking about the studio, I was talking about myself.

The Next Conversation

So if you’re visiting Port Angeles Open Studios this weekend, I hope you’ll stop by.

We’ll look at paintings. We’ll probably end up talking about creativity. Or books. Or ravens. Or squirrels. Or why any reasonable person would paint a studio bathroom with an orange ceiling and raspberry walls.

I’ve learned not to underestimate what can happen when two strangers decide to say hello.

After all–every meaningful part of my art career starts with a conversation.

This week’s creative prompt: Start a conversation that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

You may be surprised at where it leads.

Try it. And then come back and tell me where you ended up.

Until next week–