We were lucky to catch up with Carla Falb recently and have shared our conversation below.

Carla, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

In high school, I had a strong desire to find a creative outlet to explore my identity, so I took a class in drawing and was hooked. By my junior year I was absolutely determined to be an artist, so I applied for early admission, and was accepted to Philadelphia College of Art (PCA) at age sixteen. After spending three semesters at PCA, I decided that I wanted to learn traditional painting techniques, so I began taking my studio classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) – the oldest art school in the United States.

I now see my undergraduate education as being the best of both worlds. At PCA I received a solid background in 2D design, and studying at PAFA developed my traditional, observational drawing and painting skills. Now I carefully select and crop the compositions of my paintings by taking screenshots from videos that I record on roller coaster rides with my GoPro. This process reflects my passion for dynamic design. When I execute my work, I use traditional oil painting techniques that I learned while I studied at PAFA. I also utilize both my skill sets when I teach my drawing and design classes at Fullerton College, where I am a professor.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Since 2002, I have been creating paintings of roller coasters based on photos I take while riding in the front car. The adrenaline rush I experience is infused into my work – like a 21st century J.M.W. Turner tied to the mast of a ship witnessing a storm at sea. To the casual viewer, my series depicts mere amusements, yet my underlying intention is that the roller coasters symbolize our journey on this planet, with all its peaks and valleys.

More than twenty years later, I am still making paintings based on roller coaster rides, although my emphasis has shifted to nighttime imagery. My attraction to light streaming through the darkness dates back to my childhood. I have vivid memories of riding in the backseat of our car at night, transfixed by the white and red car lights speeding by, as well as sitting on my father’s shoulders at a crowded Fourth of July fireworks display, mesmerized by the explosions of lights in the sky. One of my most poignant memories are Christmas Eve church services when my father, who was a Methodist minister, had all the members of the congregation light candles and hold them up in the darkened church. He then challenged everyone to bring their light into the world. In a similar manner, the light in my paintings represents our divine sparks, or higher selves, connected to one another in a universal field of consciousness. This mystical quality of light emerging from darkness, traveling on a circuitous route through space and time, in our quest for ecstatic experience, is the driving force behind my current work.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I started on my path as an artist, I was determined to be a painter; I was not interested in any other career. Then my parents gave me an ultimatum. If I didn’t change my major, they would not help with my college tuition. Back in the early 1980s, I believed that I had two choices to earn a living in the arts – either commercial art or art education. Because I was committed to exploring existential questions and revealing my inner spirit through my art making, I had no desire to enter a field where I would be working under a director, being told what to create; especially if it involved selling products. Thus, becoming an art educator seemed logical. After all, my mother was an English teacher, and my father was a preacher, so by default, teaching won out. Although, I didn’t change my painting major, but took on a second major – liberal arts, to acquire my art education certificate.

Over the years that I have been an art educator, I never gave up my desire to be an artist and have been creating and exhibiting my work since graduating from college. In the beginning, I believed this path would be easy, since I was taken into the stable of a Brooklyn gallery when I was in my early twenties and had my first solo show there when I was twenty-five. At the time, I was working in a neo-expressionist style that was popular, with imagery from my dreams and visions. Unfortunately, sales were sparse from that era and have remained sporadic throughout my career.

About two years after my first exhibit, my father died, and I was devastated. I felt I needed to escape my home in New Jersey and moved to South Carolina with my soon-to-be husband. Relocating away from the New York area was a setback to my emerging art career, but at that point I needed to focus on healing. I began teaching elementary art in a rural community and found that working with young children gave me joy. I dropped out of the art scene for more than ten years but continued creating on my own, making abstract art as part of my healing journey.

Now more than forty years after I decided to become an artist, I am a tenured Professor of Art at Fullerton College in Orange County, California and am represented by the Billis Williams Gallery in Los Angeles where I am about to have my second solo show, “Life in the Vast Lane.” In the decades between South Carolina and Southern California, my husband and I moved to New England for three years, then back to New Jersey for seventeen years to be close to our aging parents. During my entire career I continued making art while I taught full time, eventually transitioning to teaching high school in 2000. Then in 2003, at age 42, I earned my MFA degree from the University of the Arts, back in Philadelphia. It has been a circuitous journey for me in the art world, much like the roller coasters I paint. After more than four decades, my goal had been constant: to make art that reflects my soul, that can connect with people of all ages and walks of life, and to share the love and light in my heart with the world.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Over the years, I would hear the same comment from parents at art shows of my students’ work that would particularly bother me. They would exclaim, how much talent their children had! I realize that they meant this as a high compliment, but it never felt right to me. As if the students’ dedication, hours of intense focused work, and good instruction had little to do with their accomplishments.

During my early career, most people believed that talent and intelligence were fixed traits – which were genetically inherited and could not be changed. Then with advances in neuroscience and the publication of Stanford Professor Carol Dweck’s book in 2006, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, we were introduced to the possibility that intelligence can grow and develop through practice. This is called the Growth Mindset and is based on the plasticity of the brain; our neural pathways change, grow, strengthen, and make new connections through learning and practice. That is why it feels difficult when we are learning something, we do not have the neural network to support the new knowledge yet. As we continue to research and practice new tasks, like art-making, our neural pathways become wider and stronger, more like freeways. After this happens, the activity begins to feel like fun, like we are working on automatic pilot, allowing us to enter flow states.

I am not saying there is no such thing as talent, or what I like to call natural ability. The main understanding I would like “non-creative” people to know is that everyone has the capacity to be creative according to Growth Mindset. I agree with psychologist, author, and University of Pennsylvania Professor Angela Duckworth, who explains that “grit” – a strong inner drive, and tenacity over the long term, is essential to lasting success as an artist, or anything in life for that matter!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.carlafalb.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carlafalb/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carla.falb
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@carlafalb2199
• Other: http://www.billiswilliams.com/carla-falb.html