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

Jill, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I believe we live the lives we’re meant to live, yet sometimes I wonder where I’d be if I had pursued my art career sooner. To be clear, I’m thrilled with my life now as a mixed-media artist and psychotherapist, but I’d be lying if I said it was easy or straightforward getting here.

My life has been a zig-zag of choices and experiences, and I wonder where I’d be if I’d been able to go for it as an artist sooner. Would I have a huge career? Or would I be an artist at all? The part of me that allows me to make the art I do requires me to bare my soul and be vulnerable. Life has helped me develop a tougher skin, but as a sensitive young woman, I might not have been able to tolerate criticism or stand on my own with my art. Maybe I knew that and knew to protect myself.

I grew up in the NYC metro area in a creative family. My mother was a dancer and a poet, my father was a science writer. I was surrounded by an eclectic mix of family friends who influenced me artistically and academically. My childhood home was filled with beautiful paintings from their artist friends and pieces my parents brought back from their world travels. I was always an artist and seriously considered going to art school three different times, but I always played it safe and pursued other career paths. I kept art on the side — a private affair.

I earned a BA and MA in anthropology, did curatorial and exhibition work in two natural history museums, managed an art gallery in LA, then became a development director in NYC, raising money for two hospitals, a university and a dance company. A lifelong fascination with family dynamics and the power of therapy and healing then led me to study psychology. I went back to school at age 50 for an MSW and became a therapist myself. This winding road of self discovery also led me back to answering my lifelong call to make art. My side gig started moving center.

Two major life events pushed me to answer the call more quickly. A painful divorce in 2011 required extensive processing and healing, and it was making art that got me through. I began taking classes and workshops in drawing, painting and collage, and I created a visual journal that helped me reconnect with my artist self and gain clarity on my shifting identity. A huge wake-up call then came in 2016 with diagnosis of an aggressive breast cancer, followed by a year of treatment. I experienced a major shift in priorities from that difficult time, and I listened to the now-or-never lessons that cancer had to teach. I felt compelled to step up my art practice, dive deep and find my artistic voice. I started putting my work out in the world and have been showing and selling it ever since.

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

I’m a mixed-media artist and a psychotherapist. These two parts of me now interweave and balance each other perfectly. Each one makes the other stronger, and doing both keeps me grounded. As a therapist, I help other people heal and grow. I help them clarify and connect with who they are and what they want and work through the things that hold them back. As an artist, I do the same for myself. I hope by becoming more fully aligned with my own authentic self, I inspire others to do the same.

I’ve lived a life full of winding roads and challenges, which helps me bring compassion and empathy to my work with others. The journey I take with a client to help them create a more intentional life requires sensitivity, openness and intuition. I’m an eclectic practitioner, using theories and techniques drawn from many schools of thought, but much of the work is about the relationship and what I bring to it. Helping people make change in their lives is a very intuitive process that I can’t plan out. We have goals, but knowing what someone is ready to hear or what questions to ask can happen only in the moment.

The way I work as a mixed-media artist is also very intuitive. I know what I like or what feels good, but I don’t have a plan and I don’t know what’s going to happen when I step into the studio. What excites me is the pulling together of many different ideas, emotions and materials. Working this way gives me an exhilarating sense of freedom and possibility.

I use a variety of materials — acrylic paint, oil sticks, graphite, charcoal, and collage materials that engage me; these might be old letters, photos, handmade papers, sheets of music, or painted papers I make myself. I create multiple layers of paint and collage, I make marks with charcoal, pastels, graphite, and I often sand or scrape into the surface with a variety of tools. Some of the collage materials have personal meaning and some don’t, but through the marks, shapes and patterns I create, there’s a logic, a rationale, even if I can’t explain it. It’s an unconscious and intuitive process. The result is a deeply layered and complex history that I create and uncover in each painting.

While inspiration comes from many sources — maybe a beautiful place or maybe a conversation I heard — I’m also working through my own emotions as I’m working on a painting. Difficult ones I’m sometimes aware of — maybe associated with loss, disconnection, longing — are there, but seem to get transformed into something more positive. This is not a conscious process, but it’s my underlying drive to make things better. While I struggle at times or feel challenged by dark emotions, even despair, I don’t stay there. My paintings are generally not dark or brooding. They are full of color and often playful, whimsical, quirky. A viewer recently told me she felt a universe of joy looking at my paintings.

I don’t deny the pain, the hardship, the challenges we face in our lives and in the world. I don’t pretend it’s not there. My paintings are not happy-go-lucky, la di da, everything’s great. They’re not that. I acknowledge the difficulties, and there’s evidence of the struggle and the fight to make it better in all the layers and the history I create. Different paintings have more or less of this, but it’s always there.

Many sections are covered over, yet they still exist — remnants of things past. I can’t erase what has happened to me or what has happened in the world, but I can reframe it, find a new way to look at it. Maybe I can change the mood and bring a moment of peace, hope, even joy, My paintings invite the viewer to share and experience my quest to make peace with the chaos and complexity of being human and feel a sense of resolution, even if the resolution is momentary.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I think a lot about how I want to walk in this world and what meaningful engagement looks like at this time in my life. It turns out my mission is to make the world a better place. That’s a lofty goal, but I mean it. I’ve been through a lot in my life. Things have happened, I’ve been challenged, I’ve struggled, and I’ve been in the deepest, darkest pits at times. Life is hard, and it’s easy to feel stuck, frustrated and angry and get lost in those dark places, but I’ve refused to stay there. I have an inner drive to find a way out, and I’m determined to make things better. I feel honored to do the work I do as a therapist and as an artist. Both touch my soul and allow me to revel in my search for growth, transformation and healing for myself and others.

As a therapist, I work directly with people who want to make change in their lives, and it is incredibly gratifying seeing it happen. I can’t change circumstances, but I can help people do better and be a better version of themselves.

Being an artist allows me to explore and express who I am in this world. Painting for me is a process of organizing my experiences and grappling with many challenging ideas and emotions. It’s both therapeutic and spiritual. Being creative connects me to possibility, which I see as a pathway to change. If I’m open to whatever comes, even unknown or unexpected or strange in the moment, then I’m open to allowing things to be different. I don’t know what’s going to happen when I step into my studio. I don’t have a goal, and I don’t know where I’ll end up, but each step leads to the next if I let it. My best work comes when I trust the process and allow ideas, thoughts and emotions to pass through me, inspire me and lead me.

Making art also allows me to communicate and share my experience — not just talk to myself, but engage with others. I get a lot of good feedback when I show my work, and I hear comments like uplifting, calming, joyful. I take my role seriously as someone with the potential to inspire and create change, no matter how small or imperceptible. My goal is to pass along my truth, my experience, and my belief in the possibility of a better world. If I can create a moment of peace, hope or understanding for even one person, then I’ve contributed something worthwhile.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I’ve been through a number of very challenging experiences in my life, all of which taught me about struggle and the complexities of life. What I’ve come away with, to coin a phrase: what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger…. Literally…

In 2016, I was diagnosed with a very aggressive breast cancer. I have a long and deep family history of cancer, including my mother who had breast cancer and then died of pancreatic cancer after 12 years of remission. I had already tested positive for BRCA 1, the genetic mutation that put me at extremely high risk for breast and ovarian cancer. I knew this and fortunately had been monitored regularly so that my cancer was found while it was still treatable. But I’ll never forget the phone call from the radiologist with biopsy results on May 11, 2016. The phone call that began with “Unfortunately…”

I was scheduled for an immediate double mastectomy, followed by chemotherapy. It was terrifying. I made the mistake one day early on of googling my diagnosis and what all the numbers and measurements meant. Never again.

It was eight years ago, and I don’t dwell on it. I am grateful to be alive for however long I have, and I plan on it being a long time. At the same time, what I went through is worth revisiting because the lessons learned and takeaways from that time were life changing.

The refocusing of priorities happened immediately. I let go of a few toxic relationships, I started taking care of myself in a new way, and I knew if I got through this, I needed to step up and attend to my artist self in a way I hadn’t before. The irony was that at the time of diagnosis, I had just finally completed all my schooling, training, supervised hours and licensing requirements to begin my own private practice as a therapist. I had just resigned from the mental health agency I worked at, just finished decorating the office space I had rented, and had my first clients scheduled for May 16, 2016 — five days after my diagnosis.

We can plan all we want, but life does its thing. I had worked so hard to get where I was, I wasn’t about to quit or not start my practice. I worked around my surgery and chemo and somehow began and maintained a still thriving private therapy practice.

But it was hard. The six-hour bi-lateral mastectomy and breast reconstruction, along with subsequent surgeries, were monumental and painful, and recovery was long. Chemo began a month later when I was thought to be strong enough to withstand it. There was only one protocol for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer, and that’s the one I went through. I lost my hair, and I lost my breasts. I refused to lose my spirit, but it was a fight to hold onto it.

I felt sick a lot of the time, I was exhausted, I could barely eat. Food tasted like it came out of the garbage dump. I was scared. And as brutal as chemo was, I was more afraid for it to be over. Would the cancer come back? I still wonder. My mother’s did. But I don’t think about it now. I don’t let myself.

Throughout those months I felt despair a lot of the time. I kept a daily journal of what I was going through because I thought it would help me and potentially help others going through the same thing if I could find a way to share it. I wrote a lot, I made art, and I began my therapy practice.

I had a round of chemo every three weeks. I could feel the poison in my body. The first 9 days of each round were bad, and it was cumulative, so it got worse with each infusion. I was sick. I had aches and pains and stomach issues. I felt deprived of my life, and I was depressed. By Day 10 of each round, I started feeling a little better, and I found I could schedule clients until my next chemo 11 days later. That helped me. It forced me to get dressed, put my wig on, and be there for other people — to be in their lives and their heads instead of my own. That felt a lot better.

Between chemo rounds 5 and 6 my father died. My dear father. It makes my head spin to look back at this time. I was devastated. I grieved. When I could, I wrote and made art about it. Somehow I refused to let it completely own me or define me. Especially the cancer part. I was determined to step into my power and rise above it. I used it to find new meaning and purpose in my life. I dragged myself out of despair Day 10 of every round by remembering and finding a way to connect with possibility. I got incredible support from family, friends and my community, which also helped me immeasurably. I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did without that.

For me, the opposite of despair is not hope, it’s possibility. Hope feels passive — having faith, yes, but waiting, hoping — while possibility feels active. It suggests being able to connect with something positive and make something different happen.

It’s through creativity that I connect with possibility and feel inspired to go on and do better. I pulled myself out of my despair by forcing myself to imagine something better, read something inspiring, go for a walk, do something different. Writing and making art helped me process my experiences and think about how I could maybe help and inspire others going through the same thing or something similar. It really helped. It wasn’t just hoping for something better, it was working to make it happen.

I was determined not to stay in the pit of despair I kept finding myself in. I fought it. My work, my art, getting out of myself and connecting with something bigger kept me going. My refrain was: you can take my hair, you can take my breasts, but you can’t take my spirit. I lived by that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jillhellman.com
• Instagram: @jill.hellman
• Facebook: Jill Hellman

Image Credits

Dana Goldstein