Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Terra Keck. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Terra, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

My initial reaction to this question is to tell you that questions of happiness and longing can be deceptive. At various points in my life, I’ve had what you’d call a “regular job.” I’ve been a receptionist in Indiana, a barista in Oregon, an educator in Hawaii, and a production manager at a robotics studio in Brooklyn. Each of these roles brought moments of real fulfillment. It would be dishonest to discount them. I excelled in each of these positions and I loved my coworkers—one of whom was even in my wedding. In 2023, while working at the robotics company, I was called into the owner’s office to receive a substantial raise, one of the few awarded that year. When I left for the day, I called my dad in tears, and I told him I was fraud.

The company was about to invest significantly in my professional development, but I’d been planning on quitting for months, journalling and running resignation letters by friends. I felt like I was betraying the trust of everyone there (this is a red flag for anyone else thinking of quitting their job). But I knew the deeper betrayal would have been to myself if I stayed. Standing on the sidewalk with my dad on speakerphone, I drafted an email to my boss, asking for a meeting first thing the next morning. There was no way out. My dad told me he loved me and to call him when it was over.

When I think back on that memory, it doesn’t feel like bravery or a triumphant turning point where I “chose” myself. It feels like a small death—the death of a persona I’d spent years cultivating. I have watched women in my family, both biological and chosen, endure abject poverty for “the dream.” My reaction to their struggle was to throw myself into my day jobs, hoarding every dollar and sacrificing the core, creative part of myself because I believed my work wasn’t good enough to justify the risk of throwing myself fully into it. This persona acted as the chief justice in the court of my own worth, and alongside a shadow panel of various bullies I’ve collected in my life, condemned my dream of “being an artist” as delusional, and, honestly, embarrassing.

When I quit, I gave myself permission to make the worst art of my life; to be embarrassing. I needed to purge the stale, rancid ideas I’d been storing in the back of the fridge of my mind since graduate school. It was like turning on a faucet that hadn’t been run all winter: at first, all that came out was zombified echoes of art I’d seen on Instagram. I strained it over and over again until the water ran clean.

To this day, I feel that pang when I return to the studio after a holiday or the flu. But everything in my life now is in service to keeping that basin clean and flowing. Whenever I feel a nostalgic pull toward the “old days,” I remember how alien it felt to stand in my own studio as a stranger to my creative self. I think of the women in my life who had to give up their dreams because of financial or family burdens. And I also think of the other artists in my community who run alongside me. I can’t let them down. They mean too much to me.

I know there will come a day when I’ll have to slow down. But until then, I feel it’s my responsibility to keep going for as long as I can.

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 am a fine artist based in New York. I received my BFA from Ball State University and my MFA from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. My work explores themes of the mysterious and the uncanny, particularly through the lens of occult history, UFOs and the stories we tell about them. In the past, I’ve worked in printmaking and performance art, but in the past two years I’ve developed a technique using erasers and graphite, inspired by the reductive process of woodcut printmaking. By layering graphite, and watercolor washes, and working back into the surface with erasers, I create images that allude to the uncertainty of the “other-world.” I hold the strong conviction that I am not the point of origin for my work. I view each piece as a collaboration between myself and some greater “something.” I rarely go into a piece married to any kind of idea but instead work intuitively and conversationally.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I’m sure many of you are familiar with them but The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert are two books that gave me the confidence to continue my journey as an artist after being flattened by the pressures of surviving in New York City during the pandemic. These books regularly cycle through artist communities every few years (The Artist’s Way is on its 25th edition), reviving the spirits of shadow artists and burnt-out makers, and they are books I return to often in moments of crisis in the studio. Though Elizabeth Gilbert advises against quitting your day job—sorry, Elizabeth.

I also often think back to an interview with Kiki Smith, possibly with Art21, where she talks about her print titled Pieta. After her cat died, she created a large edition of prints depicting herself holding her dead cat. It’s an emotional work that is now in the Whitney’s collection. But at the time, not a single one sold. I remember being maybe 19 watching Kiki Smith laugh about spending so much time and money memorializing her relationship with this beautiful being she was mourning, only to find no one wanted a print of her dead cat, leaving her stuck with all these prints of her dead cat. How many times have you metaphorically “made a print of a dead cat?” I have many times. Her humor and perspective remind me to laugh at these moments and share the stories of my blunders often. Whether the work is eventually acquired by the Whitney or rots away in some flat file, the critical reception of a piece means nothing about its true value, especially at the moment of its creation.

Lastly, getting myself into the room with other artists has done everything for my practice. Even if it’s for drinks and we don’t talk about art at all (probably especially those times). New York Crit Club, in particular, has been a meaningful resource for me. They offer online and in-person seminars and critique classes that attract a high caliber of artists and guest lecturers. While their programs are expensive, the connections, insights, and value they provide have been well worth the investment.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

As an American, my gut reaction to this question is that there simply must be a way to unionize Artists. As an Aunt to small children, my gut reaction is to stop glorifying artists into this category of something you either are or are not (I’ve seen it create resentment and resignation). As a New Yorker, my gut reaction is to go to city hall with a mob and demand more local funding for more grants for more art spaces, and more individuals. But all of these answers don’t heal this core wounding we have as a “society” which is the same thing that kept me from prioritizing my own studio practice for years. We live in a culture run by scarcity. You’ll never have enough and you’ll never be enough. Even the billionaires feel it. It’s a sickness that keeps you attached to your phone and in a bad relationship and stuck in a job you hate (even if you don’t want to be a painter).

I believe that people who fill that hole of scarcity with art, music, poetry, dance and storytelling, whether they are making it or seeking it out, are tapping into a primordial medicine that fills one’s spirit with a sense of plenty. It connects us to something ancient that humans (and other earthlings) have been participating for millenia. At the risk of sounding a bit woo, how many of you are or know someone who doesn’t like to do Karaoke? You may have a lot of reasons: You get stage fright, or you don’t think you can sing. But I would say that both of those fears are fundamental misunderstandings of what karaoke is, which is, a divine experience of singing in church without needing to get up early on a Sunday. You do not need to be good, and most of the time you don’t even need to stand up on stage. You just need to pick a song that you and everyone in the bar love. Then you are transported to a place outside of time where you, your coworker, and 20 strangers are singing Rocketman together. Because if only the people who can sing like Chappell Roan got to chant H-O-T-T-O-G-O, every concert would be a funeral dirge. It is in these mid-Mary Oliver poem moments that we are filled with the transdimensional message that we are plenty enough.

I say this to remind you, members of society, to resist the scarcity mindset. Prioritize places that make you feel full, and sing poorly often. And find a way to unionize artists because that one is still important to me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.terrakeck.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/herlovelyface