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

Hi Kelly, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I grew up in a household where art was considered to be a silly pursuit, but it kept me quiet for large chunks of time so I was encouraged to go create it. I had an extremely active imagination and I enjoyed exercising it, so when I was not making art, I was often loud – maybe a little rambunctious, mischievously curious – a general neusense. So if I went off to doodle alone, I guess it was a relief – a moment of silence for dear mother. There were four of us, and I was ‘the one who needed the most attention”. That’s what the therapist told her anyway. I’m sure he was wrong. I just needed the freedom to be a little more expressive. I grew up in a very regimented and spotless catholic household. We were always told to trust in God and don’t ask questions, but I was not very good at that :)

My Grandmother Alice lived in the Pocono mountains and I stayed with her for a couple of weeks every summer –which was great. She saw my rambunctious nature as spirited – we ate ice cream every day – and there were lots of crafts. I was about 5 when she first broke out the Walter Foster oil painting books. I remember the smell of the paint. I remember the first time I laid one color next to another and created the illusion of depth. I was amazed – amazed at myself, amazed at the medium. I started out gingerly experimenting and grandma said “Don’t be shy with Paint”. She meant it, and I listed. At the end of this two week shindig she had her knitting circle over and I had my first exhibition – with rave reviews. I thought – I think I do this forever!

Kelly, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I like to call myself an ‘arts crusader’ because I think the world needs way more of it!

I was living in SF in the early 90’s. The education budgets were being slashed, and the arts were the first thing to go. I dreamt of producing a show, one that was hands-on and interactive. I went to every networking event I could find and talked to anyone who would entertain this idea I had.

I got Haagen-Dazs to sponsor the event. They gave us a ton of ice-cream and hardly any money. I had rallied 15 diverse artists from around the city and convinced them to do this show and set up working studios for a week. Now I had to explain that the budget to get it all done was $200 each… and all the ice cream we could eat.

We all made it work– and kids from the deep inner city got to come in and paint, sculp, make masks, and paper, create mixed media pieces, and make music. We gave them the lay of the land, and permission to explore. So many of these kids had never had the opportunity to set their inner creative soul free for a day – and they really liked it.

One of the teachers explained her experience of putting 40 hard city kids on a public bus to get them to the event on the other side of the city. She said the hardness of these kids intimidated riders all along the way. She could feel the tension as passengers stepped on the bus, and the further from they got from the projects, the higher the tension rose.

The ride home was quite different. They were silly and singing. Their laughter was so exuberant, that they were cracking up the other riders the whole way home. They were filled with the power of art. They got to explore, and express, and be powerful creators – and it changed the way they looked at world around them, and the way that world reacted to them. It gave rise to peace.

This event gave rise to something else that I had not considered. I ran the painting section, with $200. I couldn’t afford brushes, so I bought one big canvas and cheap acrylic paint and produce my first collaborative finger painting – I called it a FingerSmear. Since that time, I’ve had over 100,000 people stick their fingers in paint to be part of my work, including a few folks you might know (Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, Harrison Ford, to name a few). That need to imagine an alternative solution, the need to innovate, gave birth to a pretty delightful career of finger painting at events all over the world.

That is not to say that the experience of creating art is always delightful.
Our minds are challenged to continually make choices- one after the other. This process of choosing triggers anxiety – it’s a physiological reaction. You might feel that if I ask you stick your fingers in paint or hum a tune- but move through it. Because the more we are forced to choose, the less anxious we become about making decisions. With confidence we decide – I’ll take that, I’ll go there, I’ll try this –we become – explorers. We are absorbed in the process, without being attached to the outcome.

I’m fascinated by neuroscience today, and the plasticity of the brain, and how science is showing that our process, really does ‘sculpt’ our lives. how the choices we make, and the WAY we think, WHAT we imagine…. Changes not only our external worlds, but the internal structure of our brains. I’ve been a professional artist for 30 years, and I just recently learned, that our imagination is like a muscle – it’s a use it or lose it kind of thing. I was saddened to realize that there are people in the world who have nearly shut down their ability to imagine. I was inspired to learn that they can reignite it.

How many people were told to stop day dreaming too many times, – so they did? How many people live in a gray existence because somewhere along the line they were told that all of that color was just a luxury? Color is not a luxury, and daydreaming is vitally important to progress. Our imagination gives us the ability to envision change – to see something different than what we are presented with. It allows us to contemplate what could be – and THAT is the first step toward action. Without it, we are robotic. Efficient perhaps, but inspired, passionate, able to create change or lead a movement? No.

We also have to be willing to get it wrong, and to move on. I’ve put faith in places it didn’t belong and lost everything. I’ve allowed my ego to turn me toward what was big, instead of what was right. I’ve spent too much time yelling when I should have been listening. Just being an active, participating member of the human race affords us the opportunity to screw up, over and over. But willingness and persistence helps us get it right more and more.

In 2007 I was invited to be the resident artist a small school in Wyoming. I was challenged to design an arts curriculum that was good enough to win a state grant. The theme for that year was recycling, but what I really wanted to do was inspire peace. The school said OK, and together we crafted a proposal that would involve an art exchange between 7 sister schools around the world. Each grade would work throughout the year to learn about their sister school’s country – their people, their culture, their music, their food, their faith. They would also produce art based on their own lives and all the schools would exchange paintings and poetry. We won the grant.

We didn’t give them what they asked for, we gave them something we IMAGINED would be better – and got it. The project culminated with a community wide FingerSmear and a show of art, and poetry, and song and dance from around the world. I sat in the back row of their year-end performance and watched their happy, worldly little faces and thought – wow, wow – let’s recycle that!

What if I took it on the road? Could I use a FingerSmear to empower and connect girls around the world? Imagining this possibility gave birth to Mighty Fingers Facing Change. In each location we collaborate with existing organizations and the girls all participate in one global FingerSmear. They also create a piece of art that is all about themselves. It’s a ‘super-self-portrait’ based on a conversation about community, their place it in, and their opinions about it. They are insightful, and inspiring, and have plenty to say. It’s an ongoing project and we’ve been able to produce it in 19 locations around the world.

My eyes have been opened to places where girls are expected to have s*x for any minor advancement – or a mere piece of soap. Places where access to medical care is non-existent… villages where husbands, without punishment, mutilate their wives for baseless fears of infidelity. Places where human trafficking is a constant and very real threat. Many of these hardships are amplified by widespread alcoholism, because homemade booze is an inexpensive opiate, and makes a poor community infinitely more hopeless, and for young girls… more dangerous.

Faced with these kinds of obstacles, I would sometimes wonder – can art really change any of this?

But I did it anyway, because I believed it could, and I keep doing it, because I’ve seen that having the opportunity to create, and speak, and share, and make bold statements about your own power – and to do it all around a piece of tangible art that will remind you again and again of that power – and that possibility – holds value.

I’ve seen quiet girls discover their voice and lead their peers to action. I’ve seen girls imagine bringing medical care to their community, and graduate nursing school at the top of their class. I’ve seen communities ravaged by natural disaster, take broken bits of rubble and turn it into the most amazing mosaic murals that now draw tourism dollars from around the world. I’ve seen what happens when people imagine that it can be different, and work to create that change.

Art is that powerful. But… it is powerfully neutral – it amplifies the nature and intent of its creator. Many use it to influence the masses for the sake of politics and profit.

We are driven by the power of that art. We are fed sound, and visuals streams, constantly and that art is used to influence the way we think, and dress, act, and buy. If we are not aware of this manipulation, it’s very easy to become frustrated and disappointed – and that frustration can turn toward anger and aggression, or perhaps equally as destructive –malaise and indifference.

Practicing the arts – the introspection, the exploration, the expression – the state you enter when you create it is ancient, and hardwired, and to be in it is transformative. It’s important that we understand how to communicate from this place that starts on the inside and is given out, rather than operating from a place where we only have external, market driven content, continually pushed in. Because this place on the inside, is where we ignite, and develop and nurture all the beautiful things that keep us connected, and happy, and healthy.

I spend a lot of time in this place ‘on the inside’, processing what I see on the outside and translating it oil paint. My oil paintings (not co-created with others, rather in the silence of my own mind with brushes instead of fingers) are traditional/impressionistic in style, and creating them brings me great peace and pleasure. I travel continually in exploration of new places, faces, and experiences. I also maintain a lovely studio that is open to the public most of the time in Lambertville, NJ. Visitors can experience the color and compositions inspired by global travel and they can also exercise their own creative expression by adding marks to an ongoing Paint Team project (a digital piece of collaborative art)

I make a lot of art, but in order to really flourish professionally and personally, it takes more than just paint. Math shows up at my easel in elements of composition and the balance of light and dark, science is everywhere, and history is invaluable in studying the masters, or simply working to understand human nature. I integrate math, science, and history into my life every day. In the same way, those inclined toward more structured and predictable pursuits, benefit from adding a little art and imagination in their lives everyday. And it’s not difficult – daydreaming counts, singing in the shower counts, dancing in your living room counts. But take it outside once in a while become it’s not just good for you, it’s good for your entire community. Creativity does’t operate from fear of diversity; it has a genuine appreciation for it. It chooses discovery over conquer, and beauty over battle.

Even in this crazy world – I imagine that beauty and goodness wins. Let the arts stretch your imagination and you will quickly find that your current view of the world expands, colors become more vibrant, sounds become more sweet, your entire sensory perception of living becomes more rich. Thoughts and ideas, creative solutions, conceptual thinking, vision, becomes more fluid. Harmony happens, inside and out.

I imagine that art can help create peace – in people, and in nations.
It too, like war, requires practice, planning, and action. I believe that art prevents war. I do. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have to fight for it. So go fight for it, in the most peaceful and powerful way possible – Exercise your imagination. Create some art. Sing in the shower, write poems for people you love, draw in the sand, dance in your living room, and finger-paint!

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

This one is fresh, and I’m still trying to make sense of it – hoping the ‘why’ becomes clear down the line. I’ve spent the last 3.5 years and all of my income working to turn an old theater back into an art house. I live in a beautiful old village that has such a rich history in the arts, but there is no assembly space dedicated to it here, and there has not been one since this old strand theatre suffered a fire in 1969. My vision was to renovate the building into a mixed use venue that would host corporate clients mid week with art infused meetings, and produce new artistic works on the weekends for the benefit of our artists, our community and visitors alike. It took a year to get through the approval process and nearly $40,000. Based on approvals I invested another $70,000 in detailed architectural and mechanical plans. After all approvals were in place, the neighboring property (owed as a vacation home by an amazon executive) filed a lawsuit for adverse possession of the alleyway between the two buildings. Additionally, code violations and construction they did in the alleyway was causing ongoing water damage the the entire eastern side of this historic building. The city building department was non-responsive to multiple requests for enforcement and only acted when public outcry became loud enough, though in the end it was too little, far too late. The building department refused to communicate about the issue at all, siting their fear of being sued. While the city council advocated for our support, the city attorney and Mayor maintain closed lips and would not address the issue siting fear of litigation. Our attorneys initial estimate ‘worst case scenario’ was $20,000. Considering our extremely strong legal standing in the matter we opted to fight for our rights, and the benefit of this fully approved, community minded project. After two years in the legal system, and over $150,000 in legal bills, we received a new estimate from the attorneys on what it would take to get it through the trial process. The new estimate was additional $285,000! 3.5 years of this uphill struggle was causing a lot of stress, and the joy I normally find in life had all but vanished. Feeling slow boiled by the legal system, and discussed with the inner non-workings of our political system, I saw no viable choice but to sell the building or have a heart attach trying to save it. A development group who owns property on the other side of the theater purchased the theater, and I believe, the amazon executives house as well – ending the lawsuit, and our vision for an art space. I lost $150,00 in the process, and faith in our legal system which only seems to deliver justice to those who can afford to buy it. The ache of such a hard fought for and dashed dream is still fresh, so I hold onto faith that the lessons learned will find their way into a blossom at some point down the line. For now, in letting go, I’m finding that some of the joy and silliness that were a regular part of my day have returned. I again have the time and brain space to turn my focus back to my own creative work. I’m beginning to pour myself back into the far more fun and peaceful endeavor of art making. I have resumed traveling, writing, and a robust painting practice. I’m headed to the mountains of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming next week for a month, then onto Maine in September, followed by Greece and Italy in the fall. Pushing up agains 60, I’ve a made a commitment to myself to not give my energy or time to anything that creates unnecessary static in my life or in my head, to treat my body with as much goodness and as little toxins as possible, and to wake up each day feeling grateful and interested in what the day might bring.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

To live an inspired life of continual learning and exploration of the creative power, and to share that inspiration so that it creates more peace, compassion, and goodness in this world.      

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kellysullivanfineart.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellysullivanfineart/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kelly.sullivan.900
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFbhXRAp7-omYqQ4qXG0sQ
• Other: This is the global art project for girls: http://www.mightyfingersfacingchange.com/

Image Credits
The image of me in my studio at the easel: Photo by Laura Pedrick.
Me in front of the fingersmear done with The Rolling Stones: Photo by Cindy Fatsis.