We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Danielle Bjorndalen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Danielle, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Learning art is incredibly hard. Not just for the amount of information, studying, and practice it takes to draw a single hand, but for the mindset you have to cultivate to not get discouraged when learning new things. I have been studying science and research since I was in high school. Went to a science and technology program and then a Honors College afterwards. I’ve collected research, conducted experiments and written long technical documents on my research. Yet, art continues to be the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to learn. It’s why I continue to explore it. I love things that are challenging and confusing. I am more fulfilled when the problem finally clicks.

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

I got into art after becoming disabled. I was diagnosed with brain damage and a host of other symptoms from my illness for over 4 years. I couldn’t do much of anything, let alone continue my Master’s studies or read and write. I found a box of old watercolors in our basement and started painting because it was sedentary and I could make simple images if I concentrated hard enough. Then I started getting interested in making complicated things and it spiraled from there. I learned most of what I knew from free online sources such as youtube and drawabox.com.

I got better over the years and after 2 years of obsessive drawing and painting Covid hit. Everything went online, including prestigious art school classes. I signed up for them and got more of a formal education in art. The classes led me to a webinar on art & business. The speaker mentioned how you didn’t need to believe in your art or even your abilities to succeed. You just needed to pretend. “What would you do if you did believe in yourself? What risks would you take? What opportunities would you sign up for or create?” So, I signed up for events I didn’t believe I could get into and I did.

Most of my art is based on mindfulness because meditation and staying present were the things that got me, sanely, through my illness. I want to share this feeling with my viewers. I want people to feel wonder in even the smallest pieces of their lives because we don’t have much time on this Earth to ignore all the beauty around us.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Frequently, when people find out I’m an artist they usually say, “that must be so relaxing.” I laugh every time because you think it would be. I assumed before I became an artist that drawing was an innate talent and people just rolled out of bed saw a scene, internalized it and were able to copy it from memory later on the page with little to no turmoil. I wish it was anything like that, but in reality art requires 1000s of hours of practice and hard study to become a hardwired skill. I’ve heard and seen countless instances of people damaging their relationships, bodies, and minds without the guarantee to receive any recognition or success in the art world.

Confusingly, it can also be a career of privilege. Artist get to create. Art is not a necessary part of life. You don’t need it to survive, but a society without art is seen as stagnant and unrefined. It’s seen as a marker of civilization and cultural connection. The movies we watch, the books we read, and even the patterns on the clothes we wear are art. Yet, the artists themselves are not considered as valuable as what they create, seen in the conditions and pay they receive to make the cultural icons we love so much.

Art saves lives and destroys them. Art can change people’s views of others, can spread doctrine, or simply entertain. It’s a confusing mass of consumption, experimentation, and apathy. Yes, artists get to create and they should be grateful that they can make a living off of making pretty pictures, but we need to value artists as human beings as well. Seeing their creativity as labor and not just a product.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding part of being a creative is how much you see that others don’t. I used to feel as though my life were constantly moving faster than I could grasp. I was always busy, always workings, always looking for the next opportunity. The amount of hours I worked, the amount of money I made, quantity was all that mattered.

Fear of failure was a constant obstacle you shoved out of your way to the next job. After becoming an artist you can’t create if you don’t deal with fear. Fear teaches you what is important. As human beings, everything we do is based around fear. Ignoring it, conquering it or letting it control us is how we make decisions. In art, fear is a friend and a mentor. It leads you to where the challenges are and brings you to your highest sense of self and accomplishment.

You have to be mindful to face your fears. You have to talk to it, find out what it needs, and accept it for the constant companion it is, but you cannot let it take control of the direction of your art. I practice mindfulness every time I paint. You need to be present to capture light and movement in your pieces. As an artist you get to see the wonder in every subject you interact with, even in your fears.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.glacearts.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/thor_elicious