We recently connected with Josephine Cardin-Vargo and have shared our conversation below.

Josephine, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t pulled to be an artist. I was drawn to art and performing as soon as I could walk, and by the age of five, I decided I needed to tell the adults in my life how serious I was. With tiny ballet shoes and my little bun, I dragged my parents into my dance studio after class to have a “meeting” with my dance teacher. That would be the day I would tell them how serious I was about wanting to perform. “I’m not like the other kids. They all want to play, but I’m serious!” I’d love to say it was smooth sailing from there and off I ventured into a life-long career as an artist, but life most certainly got in the way of that. As an immigrant to the U.S. money was tight and we moved around quite a bit, so training was inconsistent and sometimes non-existent. It didn’t phase me though, as my imagination was as big as the passion I had for the arts. I’d only watch PBS, catching musicals, theater, and old classic movies; I’d borrow every book on dance, acting, and drawing that I could get my hands on; and managed to find the self-discipline to learn on my own when I couldn’t be in a class. I’m way more self-taught in most of my talents than people realize.

Josephine, 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?

My talents are as eclectic as my background. I was a dancer first and foremost, was always drawing and creating something with my hands, but my heart was always in acting. I spent most of my early career in ballet, eventually dancing professionally in Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. At the same time, my father, who is an amateur photographer, gave me my first film camera. So, photography was something I was always doing on the side. I was the annoying kid/friend/person with a camera around my neck at all times. I traveled a bit and went to college while dancing, and after some injuries took some time off to finish school, where I studies fine arts and journalism. Influenced by my Spanish heritage, I then discovered flamenco, which I did for a few years. At this point, life took over and I eventually swerved away from performing and dove more into the day job. For the next decade, while raising my two incredible children, motherhood inspired me to get back to making art, which is when I started experimenting with self-portraiture work. What started as an experiment to learn lighting and Photoshop, turned into a fine art career after sharing some of my images with artist friends. I began posting work on social media and quickly gained a following, representation, and buyers around the world. In the last year, I’ve also returned to performing as an actor, which has been a fulfilling and exciting ride so far.

What sets me apart in my visual artwork is that it’s very personal to me. Every one of my images is more of a piece of my history and psyche than it is just something I made for people to like. The work I make is intended for people to feel something and not feel so alone in the world. You don’t have to know what my experience was, but the feeling it evokes can hopefully make a viewer say, “ah… I’ve felt THAT before.” What I’m most proud of is diving into the human condition and telling visual stories that help connect us. This translates to my work as an actor as well. Human stories inspire me so much, and the empathy of the human experience allows me to morph into all kinds of interesting characters.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

That there is such a thing as “too late.” There truly isn’t. The only thing that holds us back from achieving anything we want in life is ourselves. It’s not a cliche. Our mindset, our beliefs, our old stories, and the energy we live and breathe each day is what dictates which direction we go. I spent many years listening to the old voices of lack, scarcity, and not believing enough in myself and my talents. I pursued and achieved a lot even with that, yes, but it was harder than it needed to be. I wasn’t enjoying the journey a much as I could have been. There was fear, disbelief, fear of losing things, and worry. It took me losing my day job to finally let go of the idea that it was too late. That day, I decided I was never going back to working for someone else and that I would pursue all of the things I loved and make a living from it. Since then I’ve been selling my art and working as an actor, and have done a lot of personal growth work around changing my mindset to one of self-love, self-trust, and self-compassion.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Getting to tell stories and help connect humanity. That translated to the work that my wife and I are doing now. She is a therapist, and after I became a certified life coach last year, we started a coaching business together, where we run Collaborative Group Healing groups that focus on helping people connect to themselves. Our company name is Full Expression: The Human Condition and it is a literal love story between the two of us. Missing puzzle pieces. Full Expression is a program that Christine came up with years ago, and The Human Condition was a portraiture series that I created a decade ago. When we met we both that these projects on the back burner, and quickly realized we were each other’s missing piece in more ways than one. Since then we have created two programs, one for individuals, and the other geared towards relationships, and have helped some incredible people make huge changes in their lives. Our philosophy—that by transforming how you understand yourself and how you engage within your relationships, you can understand and dive into how these habits have served you. With this awareness, you can begin the practice of tapping into your inner purpose and passion, consciously connecting with your core values and emotions, living with intention, understanding the power of choice, and living a life of Full Expression. We have had many creatives in our programs and it’s been incredibly rewarding to watch them grow in their careers.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cardinphotography.com
• Instagram: josephinecardinvargo
• Other: www.fullexpressionhc.com