We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Darcie Denton. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Darcie below.

Alright, Darcie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

It’s hard to choose a “most meaningful” project, but I’d say the work I do for my solo shows is where I pour most of my heart into. I’ve had two shows so far, not including group shows. The first happened in 2021 at the end of my time in university. In this show, titled “Memorialize,” I explored ideas of nostalgia and memory. The process of thinking and making work on this subject taught me about the sacredness of mundane moments and holding gratitude for the people who have been in and out of my life. It’s funny how the universe responds to what you’re thinking about at the moment. I find that when I’m working towards a show, my whole life takes on the themes in my work. I become more sensitive to those topics and pay attention whenever someone is speaking about them. The creating process infuses into my whole life for those months of creation.

This was true for my second show as well, “Silent in Deeper Places,” which just opened on June 23 of this year at The Camp House Gallery in Chattanooga. This exhibition was a collaboration between me and my dad – I took inspiration from his poetry and displayed it alongside my work. During the time of creation, my life became thoughtful and poetic. I discovered Mary Oliver for the first time, I spent many hours outside in the beautiful spring weather, I even grew a stronger relationship with my dad as we talked on the phone every week. Materials and subjects that I had developed an interest in even before knowing the show was going to happen wove themselves into this body of work. I learned about stillness and peace and deepening relationships.

This most recent show was also a sort of exercise in faith. I’ve been learning to see creativity as an almost spiritual practice. I’ve learned to see it as something that is alive and flows out from the Source – in my world view, this would be God. As I’ve only had two shows, this was one of my first experiences with creating a body of work on a deadline. I had to have faith that the creativity would flow and patience knowing that it would not come all at once. And it really came through for me.

Darcie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a visual artist who lives and works in the Chattanooga area. I love long, quiet mornings, tea, walks outside, colorful art on my walls, candles and cozy atmospheres, experiences that get me out of my comfort zone, and having themed house parties with my friends. Among other things.

I’ve been an artist for as long as I can remember, but late high school is when I decided to pursue it as a career. This was thanks to the support and encouragement from friends and family, and the wonderful community of artists I found online where I built my own following and supporter base. Some of my proudest work, aside from my actual artwork, is what I create for YouTube. During my time in college, I documented my life and posted these Art College Vlogs regularly, amassing over 60 of them from all four years. I continued vlogging after graduation, and though I don’t upload as regularly as I used to, I plan to continue this practice for as long as I can. By recording and posting my own experiences, I hope to provide inspiration, ideas, and encouragement for other people following a similar path. I also see these vlogs as an art project of documentation, and I love revisiting old vlogs and reliving those memories and accomplishments.

In addition to creating personal work, like that of the two shows mentioned above, I also do a lot of commissions. One of my biggest and most recent commissions was for the Lynn H. Wood Archaeological Museum at my alma mater. I worked with the art history professor there to create three large digital paintings for their latest exhibit. Most of my other commissions are for individuals, usually as Christmas or birthday presents for their loved ones. My favorites out of these are when people order a memory painting, which I paint in the same impressionistic style as those in my Memorialize series.

Finally, I also sell work in markets around Chattanooga. Though I do have a shop online, I always find it easier to sell in person. This gives me the added bonus of having conversations with other people. Connecting over art, whether at a market or at an art show, is one of my favorite parts of being an artist. The moment when another person’s perspective meets my own portrayed in a painting is when the artwork truly comes alive.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

At the end of my first year in high school, I started my Instagram, and the year after that, my YouTube. I think of that time as the “golden age of Instagram.” It was easier to grow back then, and the communities on there were smaller. I remember the art community was always a fun place to be. There were many contests that I participated in – the prizes were usually shoutouts and follows. Sometimes there were physical prizes. My favorites were the reference photo contests. Usually a group of art accounts would come together to host, and each account would post the reference picture you were supposed to recreate. There was often a realistic category and a creative category – you could choose whether to aim for realism or take your own spin on the reference. I had so much fun with these. That first summer on Instagram, growing my account and drawing constantly, is such a good memory.

The beginning of my YouTube channel was fun too – I participated in many challenges, posted speed drawings, tried filming some tutorials, and edited everything on the iMovie phone/iPad app (I still use iMovie, but I’ve graduated to a laptop). I eventually moved into vlogging. I created two or three of those in high school, but the vlogging really started with my first day of college. The following four years of my college experience were my YouTube channel’s golden age. The Art College Vlog series was pretty successful, and this mixed with the surprising success of another video I posted towards the end of high school. That video, in which I painted 22 tiny canvases for birthday favors, is my most viewed video to date with over a million views. I really couldn’t tell you how it got so popular, but I’m thankful for it.

Like almost everyone else who’s been on Instagram and YouTube for several years, my accounts have experienced major drops and changes in engagement. My Instagram following plateaued at the beginning of college, and my YouTube stopped growing around the end of college. I used to let this bother me, but I’ve made peace with it. I’ve detached my sense of success from how well my social media is doing, realizing that social media is always going to be an unsteady thing and that I should only treat it as an accessory to my art career. And that would be my number one piece of advice for anyone starting on social media: social media isn’t the end-all-be-all.

Though I’ve experienced ups and downs with it, I’m actually happy with where my Instagram is these days. While my following still isn’t experiencing noticeable growth, my engagement has certainly grown. Reels have helped me reach new people again and start to reappear on my followers’ feeds. I never stopped posting, even while my Instagram struggled, so my second piece of advice is to stay consistent. This is honestly easier if the first “rule” is followed and your emotions aren’t tied up in how well your social media is doing. It can be hard and frustrating to continue posting if you are discouraged by the lack of response. It requires a lot of patience, but consistency is so important. Find reasons to keep posting, even if it’s just for the sake of having a good digital record that you can go back to, see your progress, and be proud of.

Of course, aesthetic matters on social media. The quality of the photos, the general aesthetic appeal of your feed, the clarity and readability of the caption, these all have their own importance. There are so many videos about this already all over YouTube, so I’m not going to go too in-depth. But I do want to say, whatever you choose to post, whatever you choose to make your posts look like, I highly encourage you to remain true to your artistry and your tastes. Maybe this piece of advice isn’t important for everyone, and you can certainly choose to ignore it. But in my own experience, I’ve found that trying to always follow trends or overthinking how my feed looks only serves to paralyze my creativity on social media. Plus, it’s usually the unique accounts that catch my eye the most.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Asking what society can do to nourish the creative community is such a good question. To start, however, I want to say that I believe everyone is creative. I know it’s easy for an artist to say this, but I truly believe that everyone has new ideas and/or the desire to produce/create something new in the world. It’s in our nature as humans. And we all need to nourish our creativity. One of the biggest societal norms that is threatening creativity is hustle culture. I think we all know this, especially since anti-hustle culture is becoming more and more prominent these days. I’m not here saying that work is bad. I think hard work is important – we need it for ourselves, our families, and our society to thrive. But I also think it’s very apparent that our society has never been great at finding the balance in things, and work vs rest is one of these areas.

While we as a society tend to value hard work, productivity, capital gain, and discipline, creativity thrives most in rest and play and silence. I believe we need to continue this anti-hustle culture trend – not swinging too far to the other side, because then we’ll find ourselves in another balancing issue – but we need to give family, health, and the enjoyment of life more of a priority. I find that creativity shows up for me more when I strive to live a more well-rounded life. To help this change take place in society, we should be good influences on each other. Business owners should remind themselves and their employees that, in the long-run, taking care of ourselves holistically, giving time for rest, fun, and human connection, actually makes us more productive and efficient in our work. “All work and no play made Jack a dull boy.” All work and no play dulls our creativity.    

Contact Info:

• Website: www.darciedenton.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/_thatoneartist_
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/that1artist
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/thatoneartist
• Other: www.tiktok.com/@_thatoneartist_
• Email: [email protected]