We were lucky to catch up with Rebekah Molander recently and have shared our conversation below.
Rebekah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?
Well I definitely don’t wish I started later! That’s actually a hard question. I want to say yes, I wish I had really pursued Art as a career sooner, yes, I wish I had believed in myself sooner.
I told my parents when I was 5 I wanted to be an Artist, I’ve been drawing and painting and had this need to create things and show people my thoughts rather than telling them them my whole life. I always knew this is what I wanted to do, and whatever else I was doing to pay my bills over the years, this is where my heart always was. I worked in a coffee shop as a barista for nearly 20 years, and I always did all the sighs, usually off the clock on my own time, I was just so happy to get a chance to draw anything people would see.
Do I wish I started this sooner, I don’t know if I was ready. I really want to say yes, because yes, I do, but deep down honest, I think I started when it was right for me. By that I mean I don’t know that I would have succeed in my 20’s they way I have starting in my late 30’s. I came into this with a lot more life experiences than I had in my 20’s. I came in with a different support system, my husband Todd, that I didn’t have in my 20’s. Starting something new is hard no matter what it is, having someone in your corner supporting you, always on your side makes a big difference.
I think I got here exactly when I was supposed to, when I was ready to. Yes! I wish I spent my whole adult life doing what I love, but I don’t think I would be where I am now had I pursued this earlier. I really love where I am.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Rebekah Molander, I am a Contemporary Houston Artist. It didn’t take me long in life to fall in love with art, to know I wanted to spend my life creating things, pouring my heart onto canvas, but it did take me a long time to actually get here. In fact when I was 18 I almost completely gave up on the dream. After high school I got into the only two art colleges I applied to, I even got a pretty great scholarship and grants from one of the schools, which was great, because I was currently not in a place where I could afford it, but in the end, I let the people who didn’t believe in me too far into my head, and I stoped believing in myself, and I didn’t go.
Spencer, who by the way will always be the greatest thing I ever created, came along when I was twenty. He changed my whole world. He was my purpose, everything I did revolved around him, I wouldn’t have that any other way. Everything in my life was for him and about him, and he reminded me how strong I was capable of being.
I hear people say your twenties are your time to be selfish. It’s a time where it’s ok to make mistakes and learn to live. I went I different way in my twenties, I think they were the most serious time of my life. The first part of my twenties I was learning more to survive than to live, and the second half I spent learning how to live with a chronic illness.
It wasn’t till my mid thirties I started learning there was more to life than this survival mode, that there was a big difference between living and surviving.
I was around thirty five the first time I really picked up a paint brush since high school, and it was my husband Todd who came home from work and asked me why I wasn’t doing something with this.
Let me back up and say I met Todd the day I was supposed to leave for college, but didn’t. I believe with all my heart, I may not have not gone for the right reason, lack of belief in myself, but not going was the greatest decision of my life. If I could go back I would not go again, because not going put Todd and Spencer in my life, and wherever they are, is where I belong and is the only place I want to be.
Continuing forward, the answer to Todd’s question was most people don’t get to spend their life doing what they love, only a very lucky few get to actually make money from art and I can’t do that. I don’t even know from here how to even be a part of the art world.
All he said was, but you haven’t tired. Just try.
So I made him, and myself a promise, that I would try, and I looked into a few things and it turns out Houston has the most amazing art scene. Sawyer Yards in Houston is one of the Largest Working Artist Complexes in All of America. Trading off first place on and off only with California. So we made a plan to go walk around Sawyer Yards during Second Saturday Open Studios, and go to some First Saturday Art’s Events, and talk to some people and try and figure out how to get in to something, and that’s when COVID hit, and it all shut down.
I spent 2020 locked in our house ordering art supplies off Amazon and painting anything I could. I painted murals on our walls, I sanded down furniture and repainted it, I painted our counter tops and I painted our trash cans, and I painted a few canvases too. By August things were starting to open up a little bit, and that’s when I decided if I can’t get myself into this Art World right now, I can at least try and promote it, that would at least be being close to it. So I emailed Rod, from 94.5 the Buzz’s Rod Ryan Show and I asked him to please when you tell people to shop local and eat local these businesses need you right now, please tell them to Art Local. Artist need people to come back too.
Not only did he tell people to Art Local, but he told people to look me up, like I was a real artist. And people did, and I sold my very first painting that day to one of his listeners while he was on the air. But then he emailed his good buddy Taft McWhorter about me, and that’s where everything really changed for me.
Taft and Dana McWhorter have built their life around their philosophy that has become their family’s mantra “Pursue Your Passion”
I have no idea why Rod actually read my email and got involved. Almost four years later I still don’t know why Taft called me and spent so much time talking to me about the business side of art and how if it’s what I love it is a possible goal, it’s not just for the lucky few who make it, it’s there for anyone who has a true passion and is truly willing to pursue it, it’s a real life.
So I followed everything Taft and Dana said to me about the business side, I already new how to paint, but I had no idea how to be a business. They didn’t help me get my LLC, they said I needed to one, so I looked it up, I put in the time, I figured it out. They didn’t tell me how to build a website, they told me I need one, so I learned to make a website. In January of 2021 they invited me to be a part of their Artist Collective “The Seekers”. They took a chance on me and believed in me and gave me a space to actually display my art in their personal studio.
Fast forward a couple of years and I am very proud to say Taft and Dana are still a big part of our life as some of our closest friends, and since Todd and I started building and stretching all of my canvases ourselves, we also now are proud to build not only Taft’s canvases for him, but we’ve also been building them for several other artiest as well.
I am no longer exhibiting my work out of their studio, but out of my own! The 110 Art Den is a space my very good and extremely talented friend Michelle L. Huff I created in Studio B110 in Winter Street Studios in Sawyer Yards.
Having two Gallery Exhibits in The Woodlands, I am now a officially a Fine Art Gallery Artist, to date, I have put over 175 pieces of my Original Art in homes, I have been featured in several articles in local papers and magazines. I have also gotten to work with several local charities painting live or donating art to raise funds. Art is my passion, every time I paint I put part of myself on the canvas. Painting for myself is an emotional journey, but getting to paint for others gives it true meaning, in the two years Todd and I have been working with charities we are very proud to have raised a little over $10,000 with my art.
This was my dream my whole life, and here I am living my #ArtLife, with my husband and son right here with me through every moment of it, because nothing in life is really worth it if you can’t have the people you love most in life there with you when you do it.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
Yes and no. No, I don’t have a place that to me says I want to make it to this point and then that’s it, thats the End Goal, BUT yes, I have goals, I have things I’m working towards. I think everything we do in life we set goals for ourselves.
I had the goal to get my art work seen, and then I had space in someone else’s studio to do that, and then the goal moved up to have my own space, my own public studio to display my art in and last month, October of 2023 Michelle and I opened the 110 Art Den, Studio B110 in Winter Street Studios in Sawyer Yards.
But goals are more than just growing where my art is seen, I have goals for how I do my art as well. I hope I am forever growing and changing as an artist, so I guess if I had to pick a what is your Ultimate Goal, that would be it, to never stop growing, to never stop learning, to constantly be trying new things. I don’t want to master one thing and do it over and over a thousand times, I want to find something, a technique, a style, a subject and play with and practice it and work with it till understand it and then figure out how I can change it in to something different. My goal is to always ask questions and always be curious. I want to not get too comfortable. There’s too much out there, too many styles too many new things to try, too much to just be standing still comfortable in one place. I hope no matter how long I get to do this, I am always learning something new.
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’s a right way to do things. I think we are all sorta taught if you want to do something there’s a right way, a right order, a right process, but I don’t think that’s right.
Don’t get me wrong! There are steps to things, I don’t varnish a canvas then prime it then paint on it, you prime a canvas, you paint a canvas, you varnish it last, there’s an order, that’s not what I mean.
I don’t think there is right path to being an artist, and if you don’t get on it, you aren’t making it. I don’t think there is a “right” way to work on a painting. I was taught you sketch your ideas in a book, and then you sketch the one you like on canvas, and then you paint inside and around those lines. This is how you create a painting.
This is not how I create a painting. I haven’t sketched a painting in a book in years. I have sketch books, I’m not saying I never use them, but I almost never sketch out plans for a painting in a book first.
Three years ago I did always start with rough pencil lines on my canvas, but I almost never even do that any more. This worked when I was starting with a subject and painting a background around it, but now I start with a background and paint a subject into it, sometimes I start with a background and I don’t even know what the subject is until I see it in it.
I’m not saying I threw out everything I learned in all those years of art classes! I learned a lot and use a lot of things still every day, especially about shading and light. In fact I have an entire series I do called my “Consciousness Series” and I start with the background and then I usually paint these bubble floating across it and people ask me how do you do that, make them look like they are floating like that, and I always tell them, it’s very simple, I’m not painting a bubble, I’m just going in and painting the shadows and the highlights, that’s it. So I’m using those same core techniques I learned as a teenager in art classes, but I’m applying them in a totally different way then I was taught to.
You have to practice basic skills, you have to work, but there isn’t a “right” way to do art or path to become an artist. In fact that’s actually one of my favorite things about art, and one of the reasons I love Sawyer Yards so much. There are so many artist, and you can walk from studio to studio and see so many pieces of art, and nothing repeats. You never see the same things twice. Everyone is doing their own thing in their own way. We have to. How boring would that be if we were all doing the same thing in the same way over and over again. But hundreds of artists, thousands of pieces of art and everyone has their own story, their own path here, and for very few of us was it the path we were taught you take to become an artist. Very few of us are making art in the “right” way, we’re making art in our own way.
My art changed, I got better as an artist when I stopped trying to make art the way I was taught to make art and started making it my own way.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.followyourartbyreka.com
- Instagram: @FollowYourArtByReka
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RebekahMolander & https://www.facebook.com/FollowYourArtbyReka
- Youtube: Follow Your Art ~ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6uJRjBN4WLfNVGsGhEeGjg
- Other: TikTok: FollowYourArtByReka ~ https://www.tiktok.com/@followyourartbyreka?lang=en