We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sophia Rodionov a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Sophia, appreciate you joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?
It was long way to create income that covers all living costs and bills and it wasn’t from the day one of course. After getting a BFA I worked as employer first in Glass Art Studio (stained glass, fusing glass and so on) and then as artist in studio for design of playing rooms in hotels. I’ve started my freelance carrier after by daughter was born and she is 12 y.o. now. And first 5 years I couldn’t survive without help of my husband and family. I didn’t earned enough.
And it was really hard – to continue when you don’t see results you want to see. But I believed I could do it anyway. Perhaps I was naive, perhaps it was silly to think so, but now I could say that it was crucial to think this way. If not this belief I would give up for sure for many many times.
I did a lot of mistakes, I tested a lot of things and learned a lot from my own experience. Perhaps I could avoid those mistakes and do something better and faster, but I think that without all those I couldn’t be at the point I’m in now. Every step was needed for next one.
And for me the main is was about changing mindset. To start think about artistic career as about business. To be able to set up goals for myself. To work on things I don’t love like marketing or counting documents. To learn communication and to be able not to take everything too personal.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m visual artist based in Israel, working primarily in watercolor and mixed-media art. I grew up in a family of scientists and thought to devote her life to science when I entered the chemical faculty of the Technion (Israel Institute). But in a process of studying, I
realized that art actually took up most of my life and decided radically to change all the plans. I received BFA (Visual Arts) from Haifa University in 2006.
In University I learned at East-Asian art and philosophy studies faculty also
So my paintings draw from experiences and
impressions of my own life through Japanese culture concept of pause or in quantum science words –
antimatter of Universe interpretation. My interest and deep love to nature impacting my subject’s
choice and artistic language in usage of organic shapes and forms on a verge of reality and abstractions.
I believe that art is reflection of other fields of human reality both visible and invisible while art is
also the language which allows to think and create new essences.
I want to inspire people daily. This is my main mission – to inspire and to create the connection between spiritual world and real physical world. For this I create my art and making art prints based on my original paintings, which could be more affordable than original artworks. But they still would bring joy to homes and spaces, would help to create more individual space for their collectors.
There is such a thing as the energy conservation law. You can’t just accept gifts without giving anything in return. Sooner or later, such a story will turn into a nightmare for a person who only accepts. This energy imbalance will hurt, and each time it will be harder and harder to get out until it becomes impossible.
Therefore, I perceive my profession and job not just as a gift from heaven, abilities given from above or as a gift. But as the highest degree of responsibility to create and give the fruits of my work to the world, be it paintings, prints, inspiration, my experience, my thoughts.
And the larger the advance given to me, the more responsibility I have.
For me creative process is following and this I’m trying to show in my art, my Instagram account and things I create:
A soul comes to Earth and incarnates in this physical dual world in order to live through specific experience. Everyone has their own tasks in a specific embodiment.
The particular is part of the one, and the whole is part of the particular. Everything is connected at the energy level with each other and with the source from which everything came. It is insanely difficult to realize this being a physical body in the material dual world in which we are.
It is quite difficult to find out what is important to us: why I am here, what is the main value for me, and so on. To do this, gradually, step by step, we move through life lessons: victories and defeats, joys and troubles, various relationships with other souls. We understand some things, and some things we don’t. And then we go through this or that lesson over and over again in a different form. Until it gets there. Until we get to the bottom of our true selves and reconnect with the source that we forgot about when we incarnated into this world.
Creative process – allows to connect to the source very quickly and easily. In fact, creativity is the process of “connecting to the source”. Creativity is a natural manifestation of the divine in us. Therefore, by engaging in creativity, we know ourselves and the divine nature of things. We play in the physical world using paints and pencils or other tools, and thereby get the hormones of happiness that our physical body needs. We play in the energy field natural to our spirit and the spirit “remembers” itself. In the process of creativity the spirit meets itself.
The materializations of creativity, be it drawing, sculpture, musical composition, photography, video, performance, are manifestation (materialization) through visual, auditory or emotional images of that boundless universe to which we connect as to a bottomless well when we create. And the cleaner and stronger the “connection”, the more powerful and stronger the images that we can manifest in the real world.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
I think society is doing a lot for artists now. I’m personally do see the change from let’s say 20 years ago: People now share a lot of information about themselves thanks to social media. They show what they are eating, which movies they are watching, placed they love to go and so on. And if they love art, they definitely show it also.
However there is always place to do better )) So I would say: share if you see something you love. Just share with your friends and family. It is really easy. But this allows to artists to get more exposure.
Also I would mention the problem I see all the time and this is undervalue of artworks, undervalue of artist’s work.
And this always wonders me again and again: this doesn’t happen with work of doctors, or lawyers or any other work. But creative professions are still suffering from undervaluation. And this could be changed by education of the society only, however anyone who understand the value of creative profession could speak up. This could change a lot!
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
My story in social media and expanding the presence there is really simple and a keyword is regularity. It could be hard for creative, I know about. There are times we inspired and want to share a lot and there are sometimes we just want to be with ourselves and to dive into creative process only.
But regularity works. So my advise is just to find your personal way to create for yourself comfortable way to share things at social media regularly. And yes, you are allowed to make breaks from! Make breaks regularly also!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.canotstop.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/canotstoppainting/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CanotStopPainting
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Canotstoppaint
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CanotStopPainting
- Other: Prints shops: https://www.canotstopprints.etsy.com https://www.canotstop.etsy.com
Image Credits
@missshadrina – photographer