Dallas Mixed Media Artist Rebecca Collins Discusses Processing Fear When Creating Art

Host Christopher Miller interviews Dallas mixed-media artist Rebecca Collins on her process of working with and through fear when creating art. Rebecca shares her insights  dealing with Stage 4 Cancer and a global Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to these external fears, Rebecca discusses showing up and the use of detachment while struggling with internal fears of failure. Collins details her use of meditative sketching while drawing healthy cancer cells and terms the process as a form of cellular mythology. Episode also reviews mindful mark making and the healing practice of art. For more information on Rebecca's art, http://rebeccacollins.com/. Chris Miller is an artist and producer of the Urban Artist Market. Visit www.cjmillerart.com or www.urbanartistmarket.com for more information.

Transcript

spk_0:   0:00
Welcome to the spiritual artist podcast. This is Chris Miller. I invite you to join me as I interview artists from a variety of disciplines. We'll share powerful stories and lessons learned while making their art. Today, I'm in conversation with Rebecca Collins. I first met Rebecca when she applied for my show, the Urban Artist Market in Dallas, Texas. She's become a good friend of mine, and I think she is the perfect candidate for the first episode of the spirituals artist podcast. As we enter into this new world where a pandemic is shutting down our resources and making us be socially distant, I've realized that Rebecca, who has dealt with Stage 4 cancer and continues to do so, has some incredible insights for us. As artists she has managed to work within fear and through fear while producing her wonderful work. She creates collage, drawing, mixed media, you name it, but it's her infectious personality and her can do attitude that has drawn me to her. Good morning, Rebecca.

spk_1:   1:15
Good morning, Chris.

spk_0:   1:17
How are you today?

spk_1:   1:18
I'm doing good,

spk_0:   1:20
Rebecca. You know, we were just talking and and I wanted to remind the audience of how impressed I am with your work. It's something that you notice right away that you're very consciously president when you do your work.

spk_1:   1:35
Thank you. I like to play. For me, the being present is what it's all about. Trying not to think about the end product. So, yeah, I thank you for noticing.

spk_0:   1:45
You're welcome. I do. I love your work. And it's something I spot with certain artists where you see that they're not just rushing to the end. You know, it's about being in that moment. And so in this issue, I wanted to talk about working with fear and how we as artists process through fear when we do work, how do we step out there and and create art in a in a fearful environment and also the fear inside of our heads? Are we good enough?

spk_1:   2:13
Yeah, there's situational things, there is fear that you can break down into categories, I guess, because there's the situation, like now we're all afraid of the virus. You know, five years ago I was diagnosed with Stage four cancer, and that was a situational fear. But what you're talking about, it's like, Yeah, I mean beyond what's going on in your environment. We have what's going on inside of ourselves, and that is that could be even more limiting than the situational things that are going through. You're going through a divorce or there is a virus trying to kill you. Or cancer is trying to kill you. You know you've got all the situational things, but beyond that, there's the stuff inside of us. Like you said, it says I'm not good enough or I'm gonna put it out there and nobody's gonna respond to it. Then that's the fear that is, I think, the most immobilizing for people. They get really stuck in what's in front of them and what's inside of them and not, you know, not necessarily the fears of their environment. But the fears of is this thing I'm working on going to work. I'm putting all this time into it. Is it gonna be good enough, and that is just that's just as paralyzing. I think for some people and, um, I I have, ah, the ability to I think part of it is because is they don't rush through things, and I don't rush through things, but at the same time, I have the ability to work quickly on a thing. And I picked that up when I was doing a handmade greeting card line back in the nineties, and I had to design quickly for each season. We had to change out our card designs and create something new every year. So learning those production techniques, I bring that into my fine artwork. And so I'm able to quickly work through things at a pace that doesn't paralyze me and make me think, Um, just you know this is taking me three weeks. It might. It might be horrible. So I don't have that because I kind of approach everything as a sketch. You know, everything is an experiment and a sketch and that's that helps me to move forward.

spk_0:   4:31
Well, it's funny. I remember when I was learning to paint that we would do just gestural drawings where you're trained to work fast  an image, work fast, see an image work fast. And so I think that production experience with you with the cards teaches you to go through the process quickly. Um, and and maybe that is one way that you could get through fear is to just work out it really quick and just keep going and keep going through.  

spk_0:   4:59
spk_1                 You just have to move forward. You know, you just have to move forward and give yourself permission to suck. That's the other thing. You have your perfect yourself for missing the bail and realize with each failure, you know, it's really a win. Because if you fail it a thing, you know you're gonna be better the next time. And you know that's done. You're not gonna have that exact failure again. Well, hopefully

spk_0:   5:25
hopefully not. I think that's interesting because, you know, you mentioned the virus and there's so many people frozen in that fear, worried about the future, worried about the past and what they've lost. And I think you're right. It's just you just have to do it. You just do it.

spk_1:   5:42
You show up and do it again. What I try to get across to my students is approaching it as a practice not, you know, to get a little detached from what's in front of you. The project in front of you, the painting in front of you, the mosaic in front of you, whatever it is you're working on have to get a little emotionally detached from it and realize the practice is just showing up, you know, it's a practice. It's not what you end up with that matters. It's not the piece of art that matters. And if you can approach it that way, and then over the course of 23 years, you're gonna look back at your stuff you did 2-3 years ago. How much better today? Because it's a practice, you know, it's like yoga. You know, people don't go to the mat the first time they go to a yoga class and expect, you know, to master the tree pose are whatever you know any of those contortionist style poses. You don't expect to do that and your instructor, if it's a good instructor they don't expect you to be able to do that. And it's the same with are you know, you just have to show up to the mat or to the drawing board every day. You know,

spk_0:   6:55
I think it's important that you mentioned that you find a good instructor, and in this case, the instructor is often times to you. I mean, you're your own instructor in this socially distant world that we're being creative in right now, there is nobody to walk you through, right. You're in your studio alone and and you just have to walk through it. And I imagine that ties into your health situation for the last few years. I mean, it's probably hard to get people understand how you feel when you're when you're struggling with cancer. 

spk_1:   7:26
Unless you've been there and done it, you don't you don't understand it. And stage four cancer with what I'm dealing with is a completely different game, too, because I often look okay hot for health. They often feel good. I often feel good. And if you look at me and you don't see a person that has a terminal illness and so you know, family and friends saying, Oh, well, Rebecca Student, Great. She's in remission. You don't get to use that word remission. And so it's still present is always present. But, um, I think the gift it is giving me, though having a terminal illness has been that ability to be, um, to be more present in the work I'm creating to be more present in my daily life in general, because I'm always, um, much like you. You're kind of a type A person? You often thinking, where am I gonna be in five years kind of guy, right? I know I was always that person. And now I don't think in five year increments and, like, I don't even think Where am I gonna be next month? You know, I'm just I really have harness inability to show up daily and approach it that way.

spk_0:   8:45
So part of your working through that it's just speak present every day,

spk_1:   8:50
Every day, exactly every day. And, you know, and in terms of the working through the fear, um, I find the practice of the art and and drawing specifically is something that completely will lower a person's blood pressure. And, you know, it's like these adult coloring books, you know, We don't seriously an artist's. We don't think you are. I'm gonna go get an adult coloring book. And but people that do that really do lower their blood pressure. And I applaud people that maybe they they don't have an innate artistic ability. But they pick up that adult coloring book and color because just it's it is so calming. Just take a pencil in hand and just get lost in the line. Get lost in the color in mark, making um, to just completely get lost in that it's some I totally believe it's it, and it gets you to help your place. Physically, I think it's very healing so

spk_0:   9:54
well, I agree. I think that I find that I have two kinds of painting. Some of it is what I call flow paintin, where you just it goes through you and other is very meditative, and I especially wanted to talk about your mosaic work because of how you've incorporated your cancer situation. And so it's described that a little bit. These mosaics, they're so beautiful that you've been working on,

spk_1:   10:20
um, so back in twin 15 I had the cancer diagnosis and I didn't feel like making serious art. And so and I was always at the hospital is always a doctor's appointment. Always an infusion, always something going on at Baylor, where I get my treatments. And I just decided what I can do is take my sketchbook so I would take my sketch book to my appointments, because you always you're always waiting every medical procedure. It's nothing but sitting around, and most people play on their phones. Are they have a friend with, um and you know, when my husband works, sometimes you go with me, or sometimes I'd have a friend with me, but mostly I was on my own. And so I take my sketchbook and I asked my doctor like him, think like that by the second or third appointment. I'm like, What does a healthy cell look like? It's just like a is pretty much just a circle with a dot in the middle of it. And so I I'm gonna doodle healthy cells, you know, And so I would go get my infusion and they hooked me up to the rip, and I would just start doodling these healthy cells. And in the beginning they were just really basic because I was really just kind of concentrating on making really perfectly round circles. And little did I know, you know, and because I wanted them to be healthy. No irregularity. And that's quickly gay way thio, whatever was going on in my head. And so, you know, I call it kind of their pseudoscience drawings, you know, they start out as little cells, and then I get these little squiggly he's going on and these little amoeba shapes. And pretty soon I was just creating abstract art. And so I kind of saw the cell. Doodily nous kind of a gateway drug into abstract because I've always been more figurative. Um, I've always had a hard time working in tow abstracts, but doing these little cell sketches was totally the doorway I needed to find meaning in it. And that was one problem with me and abstract because I know the artist creating the painting may have had. Maybe they're just playing with the design basics, you know, maybe there's playing with composition in line and color and value in all the good stuff that makes the soup. Just do you know, maybe that's all they're doing that often they do have, um, you know, either an energy to it or something in it. It's a dance. To them, it's a It's a piece of music to them. It's something to them, but you don't always have a doorway into it to understand it. And so having this meaning this layer of meaning behind it, just really it clicks for me. I'm like, Oh, and not only has it made me able to do abstract are unable to appreciate other people's inspector heart much more, you know. And I realized I don't have to literally know what they were thinking to make my own story up about the piece that's in front of me if I met a gallery or something, looking at something, and so it's much more accessible to me now. So that's what that

spk_0:   13:18
well I do. I think that the mosaic so that your choice of color and the composition they are so beautiful. I invite the listeners after this toe, look you up on the Web and look at this work because I think that conscious presence, that awareness and that living in the moment it transcends in that artwork, you know, I just recently purchased your mosaic sort of collage work of that hour. And and she does, uh, Rebecca does whimsical drawings and little monsters, but I saw an hour. I just had to have it. Ah, there's something. Something about the eyes and the feeling in it and the presence. And it's every bit the most beautiful thing I have in my room. So yeah, and so I do. I think that's amazing. So,

spk_1:   14:11
yeah, and the sell stuff it was so exciting to me. Like you're too. And I started feeling better to wear these benches. They did make their way into glass. You know, that was exciting when I got back to mosaic work and cutting glass and layering it actually have the abstract cellular stuff underneath the glass showing up, uh, in more labor intensive works other than just the, you know, in the collage. And I've got a lot of cellular collages, and, um, the sets my husband came up with the phrase cellular mythology. I really like that. Because it we are making our own mythology as we create these bodies and works tomb.

spk_0:   14:52
That's a wonderful way of putting it. Yeah. Yeah. So What about these little monsters and the whimsical characters you do? Is that just coming Doesn't come out of the cellular workers. It just a totally

spk_1:   15:03
different really Don't, right. It's what I do when I need to cleanse my palate. You know, it's like you. You know, Have you ever watched like, a really scary movie? And then you gotta put on something lighter before you can go to that thing that the monsters are for me because they're just so silly and goofy. They're monsters. Yeah, but well, and I didn't robots for awhile. Done a lot of robots and the robots have kind of been put on the back burner to do these little kind of hairy monsters. And I'm creating those in mosaic and monsters right now, are. So it is such a palate cleanser from what's going on with mice, more serious work and just what's going on in the world because they're such scary stuff, you know, the virus itself is a monster that is killing people. And so I don't know, I just making these more tall, like, you know, naive, innocent kind of monsters, um, makes me, I just It just it tickles me. It's just my way of kind of keeping myself laughing. They

spk_0:   16:07
do they They're great, you know? So after, based on what you say, And I know that you also teach, you teach a lot of these skills and classes for people. What would you tell someone that's in their house right now? Maybe, uh, they're they're socially distant and they have artistic drive. How would you tell them to walk through this or use this?

spk_1:   16:28
I would say again, it's just back to the practice. And it depends on what level of discipline they have in terms of of and not discipline. But, you know, ability, I guess. Are they crafters? Which is fine, you know, maybe you want to make something for the garden or something, but tohave for people who are just more on the crafty level. Upset? Go for it. Just come up with something you know to make to put out in the garden. If it's like a mosaic or something, or if you're doing stuff for the for the house, just just play, you know? And if you have Children at home, play with him, you know, get them, get whatever use their city, their art supplies. Because I've got the sit down in the coloring table with your kids and you play and you, you you get it going. And also, if you're really stuck, look online for people who offer up props. There are a lot of artists and blog's out there of people who do daily props and that sort of thing, And you can follow people that do that something. You find him on YouTube in front of my instagram. Just look for daily art trumped and you'll get ideas of what to do. Sometimes I'll do, you know, I'll focus on color and I'll just tackle a color a week and go, Okay, I'm just gonna make everything pink this week, or I'm gonna make everything blew. You know, I'm just gonna explore one color this week, but yeah, just bigger, something out. You know, regardless of your ability or, you know, just set it up on and take over that not everybody has a fancy studio. Take over the dining room table, just take over the house and make stuff, you know? So

spk_0:   18:10
just go and just walk through it and just do it. Just do it,

spk_1:   18:13
right? Yeah. I mean, you can totally find online videos that will walk you through classes right now. And there's more and more educational content being created. I'm creating some to online for people. And so you had fun stuff online to get you going. Or just say, if you've got art supplies sitting around that you haven't played with in years or, you know, steal your kids aren't supplies, just just play. Just do it, you know, just set up and just have fun. And don't put put the pressure on yourself that it has to go in the fridge. You know, you don't have to make something worthy of the refrigerator. Oh, it's okay. Display, you know?

spk_0:   18:53
Well, I appreciate this insight. You know, we could talk and talk, you know, Probably have to have you back because I just love talking to you. I love your energy. And I love how you've brought a way of being to your art. And and I wanted, you know, I do see it. And I do see, I think people see that. So

spk_1:   19:13
thank you made my day talking with you. Thanks for having me on this. This loss

spk_0:   19:20
It was wonderful having you out my very first podcast. You definitely meant to be there. You were meant to be there. I look forward to hearing more about you and seeing your work around the city and online. I encouraged listeners to go and check her out at the bottom. In the definitions line, there'll be a description of your website and everything else on dhe. She does so much more than we talked about. Rebecca, right? Mixed media

spk_1:   19:46
rant for having me today. This was fun.

spk_0:   19:50
It was fun. And I'm glad you helped walk me through this. So take care and we'll talk to you soon.