Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Barbara McCulloch. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Barbara thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
The biggest risk I ever took was leaving a successful art career at 55 in my own studio/gallery in order to chase a dream. It was a terrifying, but exhilarating leap into the unknown after a lifetime of using my skills to create income.
Born into a strict military family, I learned to be flexible and self sufficient in new locations and also learned to ‘stand inspection’ and hide my fear and loneliness under a mask with a pleasant frozen expression.
My freedom was anywhere outdoors where I could explore the natural world alone and use my one inborn talent of drawing. But when I was around people I put on that mask. It became a comfortable survival skill that eventually crippled all creative self expression.
My first attempt at escape was to run away from home at 15 and spend the summer on Cape Cod with my pastels, drawing portraits for $20 each. I discovered that it might be possible to support myself as a working artist. I returned in order to finish school but any hope of art school evaporated into hearing fixed ideas on how my life would become as a traditional housewife – which didn’t involve my beloved ‘dirty paint splattered jeans’.
My second attempt at finding freedom led me into a 15 year career as a technical illustrator in the aero space industry in Phoenix. It brought in a good income and with overtime I grew a savings account and another escape plan from creating for others into finding a creative life.
In that third attempt, I moved to the mountains, bought that dream trail horse and opened a pottery with the new skill I had taught myself from a book. I actually thought I had arrived in heaven to have the freedom to ride any time on the scenic mountain trails. I was surrounded by solitude and natural beauty and created a successful wholesale pottery business. Life was almost perfect – except I still didn’t understand how to have healthy relationships and I continued to crave artistic growth with painting. Ten years later, I just knew I had the right answer this time and sold the pottery to open a watercolor studio/gallery in a popular tourist town.
That fourth attempt just had to be the charm – I thought! In the next seven years of business, I worked long hours growing the gallery, hiring sales reps for my prints, adding a frame shop, joining community organizations, painting commission after commission and made a lot of money. But even though that was what I thought would help me feel complete, I felt emptier each day. I softened my exhaustion and depression by drinking at work. It was exactly the wrong solution, but it felt like my only freedom at the time. I didn’t realize that I was growing more and more depressed and closed off from any solutions. That continued for three more years and no one offered help because I still wore that old mask and no one noticed that my spirit was dying inside.
My biggest risk came on the day when I lost the willingness to keep doing this and had lost the belief that I would ever be creative or happy. I was done, really done. I quit fighting. I traded my gallery for a spot in it to hang my work – with no ideas for a future.
That seemed to be the exact point that I let go and stopped thinking if I just worked harder, happiness would follow success. I had nothing left to lose. I didn’t even believe it would work, but I took the risk and asked for help. I had a beginners mind, setting aside everything I thought I knew to learn that I had to first discover who I really and truly was so that I could create from place of authenticity.
The good news is that because I was so empty it came in waves and filled me. Anything I was curious about, I asked someone to teach me. I was a sponge.
One day someone asked me to show them how to paint in watercolor, I gratefully said yes and that ‘yes’ led to years of teaching watercolor workshops and mentoring other artists on their journey.
That was twenty years ago and I can only feel joy in being an artist now because I took a huge risk and let go of what I thought I knew in order to learn that creativity is an inside job and continues to grow when shared.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Today I introduce myself as Barbara McCulloch artist, instructor and author.
When I took the leap of faith 20 years ago into a search for authenticity in creative expression, I had no way to know how exciting life would become.
I married the love of my life and when he retired from teaching philosophy we moved to Santa Fe so that I could focus more deeply on creativity and teaching. I found a ‘studio with a house attached’, as I call our modest home with an attached two car garage. With 9’ ceiling skylights, big sink, new paint and flooring – that garage converted to my studio.
I paint almost daily exploring new techniques for expression. My acrylic work has become more abstract with transparency of forms and introduction of collage and drawn line. Creativity means making something that has never been made before!
As soon as I begin to get comfortable in a successful style, for me that style loses its excitement. So I change it up, a little or a lot. Being uncomfortable tells me it’s uncharted territory and that is where creativity comes from.
Emotions are universal so if I add a pinch of emotion, it’s possible to connect to a viewer with the emotion and at the same time to excite them with the newness!
In 2022, I was inspired to write and self-publish:
The Unstoppable Artist, discovering the artist inside yourself,
a workbook to help artists go from stuck to unstoppable.
This book is dedicated to artists searching for a strong creative voice to empower their vision for a better world.
It contains 5 steps and 55 illustrated projects to guide the artist to discover possibilities, freedom, purpose and skills as they weave soulful creativity into their art and life.
Not having attended college, I was surprised and honored to receive 3 top writing awards:
American Writing Awards 2022 won the Art Category
Independent Author Network 2022 won the Book of the Year Award for Outstanding Non Fiction
Literary Titan Silver Book Award
I am represented by Art Is Gallery, in the popular art district of Canyon Road in Santa Fe. This gracious gallery supports and enjoys my need to change styles and materials as the spirit moves me. The consistency in my work, whether I am plein air painting in oil and translating those studies into abstract landscapes, or working with line and texture in acrylic is a reverence for our place in nature.
My next exhibition “This Enchanted Land” will be presented at Art Is Gallery 8/16/24-9/4/24.
This collection of paintings honor the spirit of mystery and connection in this high desert of New Mexico. An enveloping silence, camouflaged inhabitants and a feeling of spiritual connection flows through this amazing land. And occasional COLOR, glorious color, that becomes a loud and joyful pop of attraction to say “Bienvenido” to the land of enchantment!
Flora, fauna and charming adobe structures inspired this series.
I would love for these paintings to become a doorway for your imagination.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
It’s become trendy to ask artists, “What’s your Why?”. Actually that’s a very valid question, but it’s a lot easier to answer that by thinking about our purpose, goal or mission. So thank you for those words!
I learned from bitter experience that working out of fear of financial disaster led me to lose creativity by only producing secure salable work. When I crashed emotionally and needed to just stop doing that, I realized that my purpose had been to work from a strictly self-reliant place. That had served me financially, but not emotionally or spiritually.
The change that came for me then has served me well for over twenty years, and that is to expand my purpose to serve the greater good, even if I don’t identify or label a benefactor. Just the mindset of working with a purpose of serving something or someone beyond myself has allowed me to grow in my creativity because I let go of the need to predetermine the outcome. It has allowed me to feel a part of a community, rather than protective of my process. Sharing my discoveries has grown my business even as I try to give it away – at least in the spirit of generously sharing knowledge.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
Certainly a business model of “What’s in it for me?” is the exact opposite of a thriving supportive ecosystem. But approaching civic or local government funding groups with that approach could open their eyes to the financial and social benefit to supporting the growth of a healthy creative community.
A problem, as I see it is that artists typically are low income, yet they are frequently promised exposure instead of income in order to donate their artwork for a worthwhile project. If the artists were fairly compensated, the community would receive higher quality artwork, more engaged artists and develop a new group of role models.
Some ideas that occur to me are:
Unused facilities could be purchased by cities and dedicated as art centers which provide free or discounted studio space in exchange for time to teach art skills to youth, seniors, unemployed or disabled. This art center could also contain a gallery that provided recognition, exposure and a share of the sales income to the artists and a share back to the city. The potential to create more employed people is good.
A city could offer rent to an empty store as a pop-up art center until it was sold. Again with the same benefits to all involved.
‘Art in public places’ programs do help a few artists, but they could have a further reach if the artist used local talented students, also paid by the community, to assist in the production with the understanding that those students would then also ‘give back’. In addition to rewarding the students with some income and new skills, they experience sharing those skills by teaching another group of people perhaps older than themselves, which would be a valuable boost of self-esteem and might inspire future teachers.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://barbaramcculloch.com
- Instagram: barbaramccullochart
- Facebook: Barbara McCulloch
Image Credits
Gabriella Marks Photo