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

Alright, Tove thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I have been doing art my whole life, and it is something I have been told from a young age that I am naturally gifted at. Despite having a natural talent for it, I didn’t think that that was enough because, from a young age, we are fed a societal narrative that in order to be successful at something, we must attend college, trade school, or some kind of higher education. So, after I graduated high school, that is exactly what I did, and I went to college for Art for two years before realizing I wasn’t learning much that I couldn’t teach myself on my own. I know that may sound cocky, but what I mean is that art is so much deeper than skills learned in a classroom. It’s an interpretation of the most vulnerable, beautiful parts of ourselves. Learning how to let that vulnerability and beauty flow through naturally in your art, no matter the form, is not something that can be taught. Once you do learn how to do this though, it’s incredible how drastically it changes the final product. That, and being ok with making mistakes and with starting over as many times as is needed. I remember back in elementary school; our art teacher took all the erasers off the pencils in the art room. She refused to let us have erasers in there. Her reasoning was that we had to learn how to work any mistakes we made into our art, because in life, you can’t erase the mistakes you make, and you have to learn how to make them work. Looking back on it, that was a pretty deep lesson for a 5th grader, but it stuck. I learned how to work over and around mistakes in both life and art and (after many years) I learned how to be ok with admitting that sometimes you just need to scrap all the progress you have made and start as fresh as you can. The canvas won’t be as blank and blemish free as it was in the beginning, but you will still be able to create something beautiful with it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My art name is Tove (pronounced Tovah) Lee, and I am an interdisciplinary artist based in the Twin Cities. I have been an artist my whole life, however, it wasn’t until about two years ago that I began to pursue art in a professional capacity thanks to the encouragement of my close friend and collaborative partner, Angel Beloved. One day, Angel brought a large canvas, an easel, and some paint over to my apartment and told me to create something. He assured me that he and the MPLSHOUSE collaborative would sell it. I was intimidated by this, as I had never produced a painting, or any art for that matter, with the intention of selling it. It took me a while, however, once the painting was completed, the very first art pop-up we had it at, it sold. I was shocked that it sold so fast, but from there I felt confident in moving forward with continuing to pursue art professionally. As mentioned, I am an interdisciplinary artist, but I specialize in digital portraits and acrylic paint portraits. For a while, I was taking commissions, but I quickly realized that that was not my thing, as I like to create whatever I want to create. Being told what to make, even if I am being paid for it, makes me lose interest and motivation so quickly. So, now I stick to creating what I want. I am currently working on building a large enough collection of works to have my own gallery show. In the meantime, I continue to be proud of everything I create, and the story that every piece tells. I strongly value authenticity and vulnerability in my everyday life, and that overflows into the art I create as well. I pour so much of myself, my history, my emotions, my traumas, and my experiences with love (both negative and positive), into my pieces. It sincerely is such a therapeutic process. My hope is that viewers can look at my paintings and really feel the emotions dripping off the canvases. Because what good are the experiences and lessons we learn from life if we don’t pass them on, share them, and bond over them with others? If people look at what I create and are able to see pieces of themselves and/or their own life experiences represented in the work, I will know I have accomplished what I desire to with my art.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A lesson that I had to unlearn, and am actually still working on unlearning, is the idea that I will be fully satisfied with a piece of art I create, and therefore also be able to easily identify when it is finished. Especially when I first began painting again, I had this idea in my mind that I would know with certainty when a piece was complete. That I would make a few final brush strokes and be able to confidentially say it was finished. In reality, what actually happens is that I can always find something new to fix, more details to add, a color that is not quite right, etc. Because of this, it takes me a frustratingly long time to complete pieces, especially paintings. I have to get to a point where I eventually look at the artwork, and say “It’s ok to stop. This is beautiful as it is”. I have to remind myself constantly that I am my own worse critic, and that chances are, no one else is looking at my art with the same eyes I am. Things aren’t meant to be perfect, especially art, and it is ok for me to never be fully satisfied with the final product. And in reality, the unrelenting thought that my art could always be improved only drives me to be a better artist and to further work towards mastering my crafts.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I would say that authenticity is what drives me the most. We live in a social media-influenced world that constantly over-saturates us with content from familiar faces and strangers alike. A lot of this content is incredibly curated because we only want people to see the beautiful, picture-esque versions of us. Don’t get me wrong, I am one hundred percent guilty of this, too. But, aren’t you tired of seeing so much “perfection”? Cause I know I am. Especially over the past six years, when I was going through some of the most traumatic things I have ever experienced, I was so over these flawless-looking lives. I wanted to see the messy, emotional, real side of things from people. That’s what more often than not creates connections in the first place, right? People bond over their shared human experiences, not their shared human perfection. That’s what drives my work. I do my best to move through life and my relationships with others in a way that is unapologetically emotional and authentic. I still have a long way to go, but I am doing the work, and I want that to show through in my art. I want raw, heartfelt emotion pouring through. I want my paintings to be beautiful, of course, but more than anything I want them dripping with emotion. I want people to be able to look at my work and say “I have felt that”, even if they don’t know the words to describe exactly what “that” is. I want people to see my work and be affirmed that they are not alone in what they have experienced and moved through, both positive and negative.    

Contact Info:

• Website: linktr.ee/theartoftovelee