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

Dorielle, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

I think it’s important to have someone in an artist’s upbringing who fully support their becoming an artist. My parents were always seriously supportive of my interest in The Art. My dad always bought me real, high-quality art supplies when I was a kid. I never really got the cheap fun little art kits from hobby lobby that my friends had and I was ok with that. I believe their support helped me to see myself clearly as an adult who was also a professional artist who took herself and her art seriously…but not too seriously.

Dorielle, 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 am an oil painter. I’ve always had an interest in painting the human body, particularly women’s bodies, including my own. When I went to art school at Cornish College of the Arts, I decided that it was important for me to take real responsibility for women as my subject-matter. By responsibility, I mean that I felt the urgency to portray the female form in an honest and real way…that I was no longer allowed to objectify women in my paintings, or portray them as flat, pretty things to look at. I realized that I needed to talk about the real stuff that we deal with: the truth of our experiences. So I paint women in a more psychological and spiritual context that reimagines the archetypes around the feminine.

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

This story is about the Now and of stubbornness. The most impactful obstacle an artist will face is moving through time. As time goes by, you’re taken further and further from your youth, the dreams you had then, and the people who officially gave you permission to be a Creative. You will start to feel your own mortality and wonder if it’s all worth it. At least, that’s how it’s been for me. Where I’ve experienced my own resilience as an artist is in remembering how much I wanted this in my teens and 20s and how hard I worked then, setting myself up with good creative habits and daily routines. Now I’m 38 and I rely on the routines that my younger self set up for me. I remember that I believed I could move mountains if I just showed up even for one hour in my studio and did something every day. Because of my younger self’s love and belief in me, I get my current self into my studio every single day and do something…anything. I truly believe this is resiliency: doing a little bit in the Here and Now; every single day as time pushes us ever forward, daring us to forfeit and forget our dreams. And I’m too stubborn to forget and give up.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

When you create, you have to have a deeper reason to do it; deeper than the applause and boos of an audience. You have to be able to dance and struggle with unseen entities that can feel complex, elating, and sometimes downright terrifying. You have to learn to trust your intuition for hours on end in solitude. You have to remember to eat. Because of these things, you will learn Who You Are. As I get older, I see so many people who feel lost and latch onto other people, programs, theories, etc., because they don’t trust themselves; they don’t know what their gut is telling them, so they forfeit their agency to agencies that have no real interest in who they really are. Yes, it is a rare type of life to be an artist: you will have to go through your own suffering alone. But when you come out the other side of it, you will be able to understand and feel the joy in birds singing outside because of your own sensitivities to something greater than yourself. Those will be the good days. Other days, you just show up and do your job; most days you won’t even know if there will be someone to care about what you’re creating, but you will know yourself and that, I believe, is the greatest reward in being an artist.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dorielle.com
• Instagram: @doriellecaimi