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For today's episode, we sat down with Sarah Yeoman, a full-time watercolorist and instructor with 45 years of painting experience, who discovered her passion for watercolor after also exploring various artistic mediums like music and sculpture. We discuss her artistic approach which focuses on capturing the essence of subjects through light, shadow, and abstract shapes, particularly evident in her renowned crow and Adirondack series paintings. Sarah emphasizes the importance of consistent practice, encouraging artists to commit to a creative routine and finding their unique visual voice rather than copying others' styles. She tells us about her creative process which involves embracing unpredictability, especially in watercolor, where she uses intentional drips, large brushes, and works on an angle to create dynamic, fluid paintings. For our viewers, Sarah gives us a quick demonstration on how she starts out her crow paintings! Sarah also tells us how she has balanced her art-making with teaching, using workshops and online classes to supplement her income and share her artistic philosophy. Finally, Sarah tell us about her upcoming shows and upcoming workshops including one coming up at the end of this month where she will be teaching how she paints blue poppies!
Sarah's FASO site:
https://www.sarahyeoman.com/
Sarah's upcoming workshops:
https://www.sarahyeoman.com/workshops
Sarah's social media:
https://www.facebook.com/sarahyeomanart/
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Transcript:
Sarah Yeoman: 0:00
There's no way around that. You have to practice. There's no magic feather. There's no secret formula. I don't have a I don't have a particular brush that makes me better. I don't have a particular pigment, because everybody's like, Oh, what brush is that? Oh, what paint it? And it has nothing to do that. It just has to do with how many hours you put into practicing. So that would be my advice, is you have to, you have to treat it like it really matters to you. The only way to it's the only way to move forward with it. And it's hard, but it's the most wonderful thing you can do for yourself, is to give yourself that that time and space to create. Welcome
Laura Arango Baier: 0:49
to the bold brush show where we believe that fortune favors the bold brush. My name is Laura Arango Baier, and I'm your host. For those of you who are new to the podcast, we are a podcast that covers art marketing techniques and all sorts of business tips specifically to help artists learn to better sell their work. We interview artists at all stages of their careers, as well as others who are in careers tatting the art world, in order to hear their advice and insights. For today's episode, we sat down with Sarah young, a full time watercolorist and instructor who discovered her passion for watercolor after also exploring various artistic mediums like music and sculpture, we discuss her artistic approach, which focuses on capturing the essence of subjects through light, shadow and abstract shapes, particularly evident in her renowned Crow and Adirondack series paintings, Sarah emphasizes the importance of consistent practice, encouraging artists to commit to a creative routine and finding their unique visual voice, rather than copying other styles. She tells us about her creative process, which involves embracing unpredictability, especially in watercolor, where she uses intentional drips, large brushes and works on an angle to create dynamic, fluid paintings for our viewers. Sarah gives us a quick demonstration on how she starts out her crow paintings. Sarah also tells us how she has balanced her art making with teaching, using workshops and online classes to supplement her income and share her artistic philosophy. Finally, Sarah tells us about her upcoming shows and workshops, including one coming up at the end of this month, where she will be teaching how she paints blue puppies. Welcome Sarah to the BoldBrush show. How are you today?
Sarah Yeoman: 2:22
Thank you. Laura, very good. Thank you.
Laura Arango Baier: 2:25
Yeah, I'm happy to have you. I'm so excited to talk to you, because you are a wonderful painter. Your water color just so gorgeous. And I love the the quality of abstract and realism that you have, because all of your shapes seem to be abstract, of course, but they create very realistic images anyway. And that goes for your crow series and also your Adirondack series. I think both of them are so beautiful, and I have so much respect for watercraft. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you Welcome, yeah. But before we dive into your gorgeous work, do you mind telling us a bit more about who you are and what you do?
Sarah Yeoman: 3:04
Full time water colorist and instructor, I've been teaching for 30 years or so, 35 years and painting with water colors since I was in my mid 20s, so quite a long time. 45 years or so. And just love the medium started I when I was in college, I studied music and metal smithing and sculpture. So I always had a really diverse interest in the arts. I could never really decide what it was that I wanted to focus on. And ended up taking one watercolor class once I left college, and just something sparked in me, something came alive, and I really understood how to use the the medium pretty quickly. So I have painted with oils and sculpture, and I do acrylic and powdered charcoal and pastel, but watercolor is really my first love.
Laura Arango Baier: 4:04
Yeah, and then you also have such an interesting life, because I know that you actually started out being a singer, and I think that is so fascinating, because I find that interestingly, there is quite a lot of parallel between, you know, music and painting, even implicitly, or even in terms of the genres of expression within music and within painting. You know how there's like a romantic period of music and then there's also the Romantic period of painting, but actually that that also makes me wonder, you know, when did you begin to follow the path of the artist?
Sarah Yeoman: 4:41
I think even from a very young age, I was creative that way. I always sang, I always drew, I always painted, I always found solace in and being outdoors and looking at. Light and shape and shadow. And I mean, I think it fascinated me a little more than both young people. So I think from an very early age, and I wrote at a young age. I wrote poetry in when I was a teenager, and and then that poetry became lyrics, if you want to call it a lyric, and play guitar, when I was a, you know, teenager into college and did coffee houses and and then took that musical interest and joined a couple of bands and did some traveling as a singer songwriter. And really, music was my first love. I never imagined that I would do anything but music. Meanwhile, I was still drawing and painting and and in college, studied painting and metal smithing and sort of were. I was doing all of those things, singing in coffee houses and and then just decided that I was going to really try to focus on on painting. It's difficult as a musician, because you're depending on other musicians if you're in a band, so painting is a wonderfully solitary thing, and you have to depend on yourself and set yourself a schedule and really work on it every day to to get better. So mostly self taught with watercolor, took a couple of early classes, but really just learned how to do it mostly, mostly on my own,
Laura Arango Baier: 6:32
amazing, amazing, and I really love that you've had such a breadth of experience in in creative stuff, because I think in a previous conversation we had, you also mentioned that you've worn many different hats, right? But you've always felt like you've always been an artist underneath it all right? Because the that internal desire to create is so natural, and I feel like you've been able to find all of these different ways of expressing right, from being an actual painter to being a singer to being a business owner to, you know, all of these amazing careers and different hats that you've worn in your life. I think it's really amazing. And then also, I actually wonder if you find that there is a bit of similarity in terms of, you know, composing music and composing paintings. Do you find that there's a bit of a cross over there? They
Sarah Yeoman: 7:27
are so intertwined. For me, because I will often, when I'm deep into a painting and really concentrating, I often have lyrics come to me. I have language, I have poetry com and I'll often write in on the sides of the paintings, because sometimes I don't want to, and it's not, I'm not even looking for the language or the lyric or the poetry. It just, if I open that door a little bit, it just sort of comes. So I it's, it is all intertwined, and it's very similar, and then I'm just, I'm compelled to create, and as I think most artists are, that you don't really have a choice but to express yourself that way. From for me, it's very difficult to write, like writing a paper for college or writing even my own bio. For me is very difficult. But if you ask me to write a poem, I would have no problem doing that. I could, I could, I could express it that way, almost as a because I'm, because I'm creating a visual picture with words. So yes, for me, they're, they're very intertwined.
Laura Arango Baier: 8:42
Yeah, that that makes it seem almost like you're always, maybe not always inspired. Because I feel like inspiration can sometimes feel a bit heavy, if you, you know, think about it that way, but it seems almost like you're always open to or being a vessel for inspiration. Yeah, really important. Yeah.
Sarah Yeoman: 9:00
And I think we're all I think we're all vessels for I think we're born with that innate curiosity and that ability to translate our world that way. I think that it just is not encouraged enough when we're young, or we have experiences that where we're told that we're not good enough to try that or so I feel very fortunate that I was able to pursue that and continue to pursue it, and and then also be able to maybe open the door for my students and people that paint with me, to sort of open the door enough so that they feel comfortable to to create, because everybody's so afraid of making a mistake and afraid that they don't have something to say. But given the right circumstance, I think anybody can be creative, anybody can really paint, anybody can write. It's just giving yourself the time and the place and the and the solitude, and that's what it takes some time. Really is that, is that lack of everything else around you. You really have to learn to sit with yourself and open up to what, to what comes and then also get out and experience things that that make you feel something. You know, I'm out in the woods. I well, I try to hike every day. There's not a lot here in Delaware for hiking, but, you know, I walk a couple miles a day. But it's always about light and shadow, everything, and it's, it's funny, because I'm always, I have a friend that, you know, we roomed together when we were in our 20s and and years later, she said, You know, I always wondered, did you have something wrong with your eyes? And I'm like, No, I'm just squinting because it helps me see the shadows, the light in the shadows, and let go of what the thing is and really focus on that beautiful design shape. You know that again, that beautiful abstract that lies beneath anything that that is a good composition, and Andrew Wyeth always talked about that too, is that there's, there's a strong abstract under any of his paintings. So that's what I'm that's what I'm always sort of looking for. It's we're not, I'm not painting the thing, the name thing. I'm painting the light and the shadow that created, you know, gradually revealing form by finding the light in the shadow and not always saying it directly, but hinting at it, you know, just just enough that maybe it can be visualized by the by the audience, by someone that's looking at it. So that's, that's the place that I like to explore is is right on that edge of being real and abstract. So that's, that's my inspiration. That's what I'm what I'm looking for. And it can be something simple, you know, it doesn't have to be a complicated subject. It's, it's really just about light and tattoo and shape,
Laura Arango Baier: 12:14
yeah, yeah. And those are all really important points, because I love that you mentioned the trying to hold on to that abstract light shadow. And because that really it's so easy for us to get caught up in the logical brain that tells you this is a cup, or this is a treat, and it has this. But when you really dig into this, the more creative side of your brain right, which people refer to as the right and left sides of the brain. Sides of the brain. When you when you dig into that right side of the brain that focuses on abstract, it's so much more real when you produce something from the perspective of, I'm going to allow this object to come to life, instead of me telling it what it is, right, right?
Sarah Yeoman: 13:03
Yes, yeah. Like the, like a sculptor, the, you know, saying the form actually exists within the marble, my job is just to find it. So that's having been a sculptor working with metal. When I was in college. I love a three dimensional form. I mean, I love to just create shape. So that's what I try to do with my watercolors on a two dimensional surface. I feel that the forms exist within that page, and my job is to, is to sort of carve away at it and bring it forth So, and that's how, you know, that's how my brain works when I'm and often when I'm doing my Crow, oh, that way to my crow series that that's very often how I'm thinking when, when I'm working on those crows is, is that they do exist within the space already, and I'm just, you know, carving them out and looking for those edges, Lost and Found edges, excuse me,
Laura Arango Baier: 14:06
yeah, yeah, totally. And I think the other really interesting thing about the that abstract search, that carving is also there, and something that I think we also discussed last time, which is labels. Right the moment you label something, you are boxing it into the only possible thing it could be, whereas, if you allow for that box to open up, right, maybe that tree that you're painting or the crow that you're painting has more life because it's no longer being forced to exist within this tiny label of a box, right? I totally write that in your
Sarah Yeoman: 14:41
work too. Right not the not the left brain language interpretation, but the right brain, shape and form and edge and light and dark and hard and soft and Lost and Found and all of those other words that you can use. To describe things named things, yes,
Laura Arango Baier: 15:06
yeah, yeah. I mean, it's and I think that's the beautiful part about painting as well, is that the visual language of something goes so far beyond words that that's what makes it so important to Yes, I recognize that this is a tree, but I'm not going to allow that to prevent myself from painting its essence. Because,
Sarah Yeoman: 15:30
you see, and that's what I say to my students, we're not painting the tree, we're painting what we feel about the tree, like, how do you feel? What does it move in you. And you know, so often people want to when we say tree, you know, our eight year old brain is like, Oh, I'm going to show you. I'm going to paint you a tree. And of course, you start with all the lines and the details, as opposed to saying, what does this shape look like? What does the shape look like, but what also does the negative shape around the form look like? Because so often the negative shape is just as important as the positive shape. And when I design my crows, I'm always thinking about that. Well, even with all my Adirondack work and my florals, you know you always have to think about the shape around the shape, if that makes sense, because that's that's part of the design. You know, when you're if you have a square, you're working in a square format, or a vertical or a horizontal. The four most important parts of the design are those. Are those four outside edges. You have to literally design every one of those edges as you're laying in your tree or your crows or your boat people or something. So you're always you have to. You're not just putting an object onto a flat piece of paper. You are placing it in there and then finding the way for it to best sit in there and speak about what you're what you're feeling. So,
Laura Arango Baier: 17:04
yeah, totally, totally. And to your point about the the negative, positive shape, right? I feel like that's also such an interesting repetition of also the idea of light and shadow, right? Because obviously everything in the world exists with light and shadow. And I think if you really think about it in a philosophical way as well, right? We have to accept an entire image as it is, or an entire like the world as it is, with its light and shadow, in order to be able to see it more clearly, right, without that that left brain language coming in and imposing itself on things, whereas we want the visual things to impose themselves on our canvas or and through, you know, our our brain and out our hands, right? Which is, think it's very poetic, yeah,
Sarah Yeoman: 17:51
right, yeah, yeah. And, and trusting, you know, as an artist working in the creative process, trusting yourself on that journey and not being attached to what the outcome may be, because that will stop you right in your tracks from trying something new. And really, the way I paint, and I think the way a lot of artists work, is you don't always know the outcome. You're, you're on a journey. You're You're it's a it's a path. You're working towards something, but you don't know what the end is. And if you already have, if you already have a plan what kind of frame you're going to put it in, you're really not present to the process. And the process itself is, I think, what is most important. It's very easy to forget that, especially as a professional artist who's you know, you got to make money, you have deadlines. And sometimes I paint because I have to have this many paintings to go to this gallery on this day. And it's sometimes, it's lot of times it's not my best work. The best work really comes when I'm painting for myself, for nothing else but myself and and trying to answer a question, trying to pushing myself to paint something I have not painted before. You know, discovering something, stepping over a line that might be a little bit scary, a little bit new. You know, maybe one in 10 paintings i i Take a risk that takes me someplace new. And that's the best feeling when you are able to cross into a different place creatively and paint something you have not painted. And I think that's why I have such a such an array of different subjects, that I do because I'm so curious about so many things. I having a formula for me is really difficult. I can't paint the same thing over and over because I get I get really bored, and I lose my. I lose my inspiration, so I like to do things in series, maybe a series of three crows, you know, let them speak, and then move on to some of my Adirondack work, or some florals. And then I have the teaching that I do a lot as well. So that kind of will interrupt that that cycle a little bit, which can be good for me as an artist, because it's completely different to be a teacher than it is to paint for yourself. People so often think it's the exact same thing, and it it's a completely different experience. You know, teaching a room of 20 people in person, or 90 people on a zoom class than than having two weeks in my studio where I don't have to talk to anybody, where I can just really be present to what something that might have been churning inside that I might want to say, and I'm not even sure what that is. So some days it's just put paint to paper, just keep touching the page, keep drawing, keep keep the energy moving. And that's often when you get those little sparks, is when you're not expecting something to happen, but you're just exploring.
Laura Arango Baier: 21:16
Yeah, yeah. Exploring is very important. And like you said, I mean, there's those interruptions, right? Teaching the daily life, those are really good, because you have to step away from that work, and then when you come back, you can face it with new eyes and say, Ah, a solution to this problem. Yeah, hmm. I thought this looked great, but then now I feel like I could totally tweak it and make it even better, right?
Sarah Yeoman: 21:40
Oh, it'll look completely different the next day, you know, some days I'm like, Oh, my God, I'm so good. Look how great that is. And then the next morning I wake up, look at it. I'm like, What was I thinking? You know, and often, and I say this to students a lot too, you know, I'll take a painting that I'm working on a lot. Some people will have mirrors in their studio. I just put it across the put it on an easel across the studio. Really often turn it upside down, and then walk away from it, you know, I turn my back on it, walk away as far as I can in my skinny little house here, you know, 2030, feet away from it, and then turn around and look at it, and you're able to really judge it that way better, I think, especially if it's upside down, because it becomes more of an abstract so you'll know if it's working or not when you step away from it like that. It's really hard to see your work when you're on top of it for eight hours a day, especially, you know, as artists, we work. It's a very solitary profession. It's a really solitary job. And, you know, as a hermit, I kind of love it, but it's so great too to interact with other artists and get feedback from other artists. And so I'll often do that with friends who are painters. You know, have them have a get together, have them come over and just sit with each other's work and give ideas, you know, critiques that are, that are welcome, right? You're looking for feedback. So I'll do that sometimes, and I do that for my students as well. You know, I teach here in my in my house. This is my half of well, three quarters of my house is a studio. So that's good for taxes. You can write it all off, but I'll have students. I have students that have worked me for 1015, years, and when they come here for classes, you know, I'll do demos and everything. But I also mentor people, and I work with them as individuals. So they'll bring their work, and I'll kind of throw some ideas at them, and, you know, challenge them to again, think outside the box a little bit. Don't, don't have a formula. Try something. Try something you're afraid of. You know, try the stuff that scares you. And you know, often people will, you know, they're using these little, tiny water color brushes. I'm like, no, no, you're going to use a big, big brush. You're going to use a brush that scares you. You're going to tilt your board steeper than you're used to, because we want that. We want gravity to kind of mess with us a little bit, right? So a little bit on that edge of being out of control. And that's where the magic happens is again, when you're when you're not trying to force something, when you're open to see what happens, and that's especially for me with as a watercolors, you cannot predict what's going to happen any given day. With watercolor, that material is going to act differently depending on the humidity, depending on I don't know what you know if you've got if you picked your magic brush up that day or not, you just, you never know what's going to what you're going to get. So,
Laura Arango Baier: 24:46
yeah, there's a lot of chaos that comes in to the process of creation, for sure, yeah, and especially with watercolor. Watercolors, to me, it's such an intimidating medium, because, you know, like you said, there's this balance of. Of you have a kind of like a plan, but then the watercolor has its own plan to and you kind of have to meet halfway see what could work, which is so scary to me, because with oil paint, of course, it's so it's very low risk in terms of, you know, fixing mistakes, or, you know, Oh well, I painted this, but I could just repaint it.
Sarah Yeoman: 25:21
Yeah, yeah. I started as an oil painter, and that's sort of how I learned to see. Was as an oil painter, I studied with someone whose philosophy was one color next to another exactly as you see it. So you start in one spot and you just work your way out, shape, shape, shape, color, color. So I learned to see when I was an oil painter, and then as I started learning how to do watercolor, I use that same technique to teach myself about how to see with watercolor, how to mix with watercolor paint. And when I first started with watercolor, I was very tight and used it like an oil painter, and over the years, have just sort of let go of that, and now I'm kind of at the other extreme, where, especially with, you know, my crow series, they're so loose and so unpredictable. And I do these and I don't always know what the outcome is going to be. I have a drawing on my piece of paper. But as soon as that paint starts to move, I don't know what's going to happen. And sometimes they work and sometimes they don't, and you just have to kind of accept that and either try the same idea again or move on and and, you know, put the crows down for a little bit, and then I'll just paint some people in boats for a while or but with, you know, painting the crows, it's, I use spray bottles a lot. I'm spraying edges away. I'm taking a big brush full of paint and just throwing it at the at the piece of paper. I'll take the board and tilt it straight up and down and bang it on the ground to kind of get intentional drips. So it's a it's a very it's almost like dancing with the with these crows. And again, the they, they start with an idea. They start with a little bit of a narrative. But it may end up at the end of the painting that it, it's, there's a whole new story there that that sort of shows itself to me, and I just have to be willing to say, alright, that's what you want to say. I'll, I'll go there with you. So, yes, so sometimes the paint is dictating to us what, what it wants us to do, for
Laura Arango Baier: 27:40
sure, for sure. Yeah, there's that. Like you said, it's a dance also in the creative act, but it's a dance also in terms of the dialog that you have with your work. Because even in oil painting, the painting is going to ask you for something, and you have to be ready to let go of expectations and answer that call and tell it Okay, I will do as you say. And just, you know, like you said earlier, which is such a great point, you know, just focusing on that process, letting go of the expectation of the result, whether it's good or bad or, you know, sometimes it'll be quote, unquote bad to us when we first see it, but then, and it's never
Sarah Yeoman: 28:16
bad, it's just again. It's just a step to the next painting. And and we as human beings who have, you know, monkey on our shoulder, the critic that says, Oh, you're a failure. You can't paint. So if you have one day of painting, that's not exactly what you wanted to be. We get discouraged. And we we think, Well, why? Why am I even? Even bothering? I'm no good at this. Well, you only get good at it by practicing exactly you have to practice. You have to commit to it. It's not something you can do once a month and think that you're going to discover something new. So, you know, my advice to people that want to find their own voice is you really have to commit to it. And it's, it takes a lot. It takes a lot. It's like committing to exercising every day or eating right every day. You know, if you took 10 minutes a day and just got out your brush and moved some paint on a piece of watercolor paper, you know, work on an angle, even just, I just call it like color therapy. Just throw some color on a piece of watercolor paper. It is so joyful. It feels so good. And it doesn't have to be anything, but it does release something in you and it and it will wake something up. And the more you do it, the easier it gets to do it. So I to students that say, Yeah, I just can't find the time. I don't have the right lighting. I'm like, Look, you're going to find every reason why you can't do it 10 minutes a day. Put a little table somewhere in your house. Leave it set up. Don't put it away, because then then it's so much work to get it back out again. So. Uh, so give yourself that gift of a little space that belongs to you. Just get a good light, leave the paint out, leave a piece of clean water, color paper out, and throw a little paint once a day, you'll be much happier because of it. Yeah, and it doesn't have to be something, it doesn't have to have a resolution. Doesn't have to have a crescendo or or the end. It can just be whatever that it was really just your experience brought to fruition by color on a page or and then you can use those little studies the next day, you could do want to straw. You could draw something on top of it, start to do a little firm reform on top of it, suggest light and shadow. So you could just lay paint down as an underpainting. And again, it doesn't have to be something for it to be useful to you as a creative individual,
Laura Arango Baier: 31:03
exactly, exactly, very, very, well said, it is so important to and I know that it's gonna sound sucky to call it build a discipline around it, but it is, it is a discipline. It is a discipline. And, you know, some people might have a bit of a tense relationship with that word. And I totally get it, because I have had that in the past, but it is so important, you know, it's like you said, like going to the gym, or, you know, changing your your the way that you eat, or changing any habit, or starting a new habit, it's going to be really hard at first, and you know, you're going to have all the excuses in the world, like you said. So it's good to really get that going. And actually, what I was going to say too about, you know, a failed or a bad painting is, sometimes we'll set it aside, and then we'll come back to it and realize, Oh, it wasn't that bad. And this is actually really great, because, you know, our perspective and our view, like you said, we have that monkey on our shoulder, and it's going to, you know, talk some crap about our work to us while we're painting, and we have to really have the patience to ignore it or listen to it a little bit and then read it.
Sarah Yeoman: 32:08
Say, look, I'll talk to you later. I'm going to get back to work. I'm going to play with color and light and shape and water or whatever medium you work in. You know, you can criticize me later, but right now, I'm going to just paint. I'm going to do something kind for myself, exactly,
Laura Arango Baier: 32:28
and that's a little bit like how children like to create. You know, they're just creating because it's such a natural impulse and they don't have, you know, maybe, like, we develop that critical voice because, you know, as we grow up, we hear the critical voices of our parents or teachers or whomever, and that's how we build that critical voice. But then as children, if we try to imagine ourselves as a seven year old with the really awesome skills of someone who can actually paint and
Sarah Yeoman: 32:50
no fear, no fear, right? Fear is what stops us from, you know, playing this way. And it's funny, because I'll tell people I'm an artist and, you know, and I'll talk about being a teacher, and the pat answer from 99% of people is, oh, I can't even draw a stick figure. I'm like, I'm not going to ask you to draw a stick figure. I'm going to show you how to move paint. I'm just going to show you how to move the paint and show you how much joy there is in that process, no stick figures involved.
Laura Arango Baier: 33:24
Yeah, yeah. And oh my gosh, if I had a penny for every time I heard the six figure thing, right? It's pretty funny because, I mean, I think it's that also it's so funny because that also brings back the childhood aspect, right? When we're children, we do draw stick figures, and it's almost like they got stuck.
Sarah Yeoman: 33:42
We all got stuck there around eight years ago, exactly. Yeah, we're
Laura Arango Baier: 33:46
still doing stick figures to try to represent people, right? But that is so funny. And then actually, I'm really excited now, because I know that you have a beautiful slideshow of your painting. So for our viewers, I hope you enjoy this. For our listeners, please go to her website to look at these because they're gorgeous. But yeah, do you mind telling us a bit also about the inspiration that you try to get when you're out, you know, kayaking, or you're out in nature? Can you tell us a bit about that while we see your beautiful slideshow?
Sarah Yeoman: 34:18
I've been fortunate enough my family has a an off grid cabin that was built in 1917 by my great grand uncle, Buster. We are still off grid, so I have just had the wonderful experience of being able to go up there and spend my summers. My mother was a school teacher, and I still get to spend the whole summer up there. I teach and I paint, and I've been teaching at a couple of the spots up there for almost 25 years. I regularly get out and paddle and hike, and I just love being outdoors up there. And you know. Here's a photo someone took of me paddling. So you know that here her I am in the landscape being inspired. And I'm not a real big plein air painter, but I do like to go out. I have an 18 pound carbon fiber Kevlar canoe kayak hybrid that I can just put on my shoulder and take it for miles into the woods, and then I find these really remote spots and get out and get photo references, and then come back to my cabin and paint. This is fun. These guys in this guide boat. This was actually a father and son and then their best friend. I photograph them on a beach near me, and they actually all were shirtless, with just shorts and no hats. So what I do is I get, I take my photo reference, and I turn it into what I want the experience to be. So I turn them into Adirondack guide boat guys with, you know, the right kind of hats and the stripy shirts. Here's another group of friends that I paddle with. We all have these really lightweight boats. I'm a big fan of Winslow Homer. He did paint in the Adirondacks, very close to where my cabin is. So I do take inspiration from a lot of his outdoor work. Again, another friend of mine in their boat. This was early morning on a local river near us, and it's funny, my my friends who paddle with me know that they should wear the right kind of hat when they paddle with me, because, you know, they're going to end up in one of my paintings. This is my brother fly fishing. I did follow my brother all over what he's fishing and photograph him. This is a trail close to where my cabin is. I climbed this mountain 26 times one summer so I could walk this trail without even thinking. So photograph this early one morning. Came back that same day and painted this. It's just early morning light on the trail. Very limited palette, very suggested. It's it's not super realized, but we do get the sense of the light and the shadow, and again, from one of my paddles up there, a place you can't get to on foot. You have to get in a boat and go to it again. Another paddling subject here, limited palette, three color. Get another place where I paddle very early on the morning. I was on this lake at about 430 in the morning because we were looking waiting for the sunrise. So this was the sun, the first taste of the sun coming up again. Here's the same men that were these. Are this? This is the same boat that had the three men in it. Well, I took one of the men out, gave them different shirts, different hat, put them in a different landscape. So just and this is a pretty big painting. I think it was about 24 by 30 water color, again, inspired a little bit by wins the Homer, more boat people, very kind of sketchy, fluid interpretation of a local pond where I paddle top of A mountain. So I don't just paddle, I climb mountains and then photograph from from the top of the mountain, and then paint three color exercise. This is actually powdered charcoal and fluid acrylics collage. So again, I sort of will branch out of my watercolor ideas. This is very similar to the earlier one. This was a three color painting. Again, I love working. This is my the view from my dock. Again, the view from my dock in the mountains. A little more painterly here. Field of daisies with an old cabin. I call this one Cabin Fever, my brother in our guide boat. Again, very abstracted, another person. You can see, I have a thing for men in boats here. This is, again, another powder, charcoal, fluid, acrylic collage. And more boats, more boats. So I just, I find and this is completely made up, seeing the whole background is made up. And just took the photo of a friend of mine in our guide boat, and then kind of transposed it into this imagined landscape, water lilies. I did a whole series of these water lilies, just reflection on the surface. More water lilies, a little bit abstracted. Another person in this is from my. A friend of mine came over in their guide boat, and this was a sunny day, super sunny day, you know, no shadow, no light. But I took the photograph and then gave it this kind of atmospheric feeling and a very limited palette. It's mostly a two color painting.
Laura Arango Baier: 40:21
Oh, gorgeous. So.
Sarah Yeoman: 40:23
And then that's a local waterfall near me. So that is, that's a selection of some of the Adirondack work that I do. Oh, thank you very much.
Laura Arango Baier: 40:35
Yeah. Oh, for our listeners, I was clapping gently. That was, that was wonderful. It's such a feast for the eyes. Truly. I love the Lost edges and the I think one of the really striking things is your play with the value scale. Like I love, oh yes, I really love how some of the images are very stark in terms of their their values, but then other images are much more atmospheric in terms of the value lay that you have, like one of the canoes was very light, much
Sarah Yeoman: 41:07
closer, value, right? Yes. Value, delicious, delicious,
Laura Arango Baier: 41:15
yes. And I love that. I love that so much because I mean one of the important things, and I love that you mentioned this so much, is that you reinterpret the images that you have. And that is so important, and that can only really happen if you know you learn how to observe the place that you're in and to know what the camera is editing out, but also how to repurpose photo references so that they they are more, gosh, they're they're more in the sense of how the human eye likes to perceive things, because the camera is also going to be imposing its own view to us. Whereas, if you've experienced the place, and you've been at the place, and you already know how it's going to be, and you've you've built this repertoire of lived memories of the place. It's so much easier to dig into those memories while looking at this photo reference, and yeah, you can create an even more beautiful piece and reinterpret which is awesome, right?
Sarah Yeoman: 42:12
You're painting from that that experience, that deep experience, of being in a place, breathing that place, knowing the light and the sound and the energy and the form, as opposed to just taking a photograph and coming back and, you know, copying it exactly. So I try to never copy something exactly. I take the essence and then I will take it one direction, or take it another direction, or take a person out of a bow. Put a shirt on somebody that doesn't have a shirt on. Give them an adirondack hat. You know, create the, create the world that you want to say that you're trying to speak about.
Laura Arango Baier: 42:55
Very important, yeah, because, I mean, you know, for a very early student, right, who's trying to become good? Of course, it's very important to learn to interpret the world around you as accurately as possible, and then it's easier to play because you already have the language, right, the visual language to be able to do what you want, right? And that is so important. And so much of painting is so much about observation and just allowing the images to come through and to just like, for example, a while back, I was at the beach, and I'm sure you've experienced this too, when you're on the water, is just observing the lights in the water and how it moves, yeah, colors that are perceived when it moves. I mean, there's nothing more complicated than water as a medium page because it's on still, it is so challenging.
Sarah Yeoman: 43:44
Yeah, yes. And it's just a pattern, though. It's just and, and the more you observe, the more more you'll start to understand those patterns. And you can break it apart into a set of shapes. It doesn't it's not the whole complicated image. It is shaped next to shape, next to shape, next to shape, and that helps you kind of simplify it a little bit and not let it overwhelm you with feeling like it's too big to interpret.
Laura Arango Baier: 44:14
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Sarah Yeoman: 47:22
yeah, so I have been painting crows for about, well, crows and ravens, corvids for 1213, years, my husband and I, my late husband and I used to feed them and photograph them. And after he passed, I started sort of taking his photographs and my photographs and and started to try to narrate stories through through these crows. So I would take one crow from one photo and one crow from another photo, and kind of put the put them together compositionally, move the photos around, designing the the crows themselves, but also the negative space around the crows. So this was really the this is the first one in the series that I did and, and you'll see in that top right corner this. This actually represents my husband after, after I lost him. So a lot of my crow paintings have this same there he is again, of the same bird that's leaving. These are done with a limited palette, and they're all very large, usually at least 22 by 30. Some are smaller, but I really need to work large in order to get this really fluid, dynamic, unpredictable pain application, again, pretty large. This was probably 24 by 38 unframed, just just the paper. Mostly, I do these on hot press paper because I like the way the paint moves on the Hot Press. It's very slick. And, again, a limited palette. This is Cerulean Blue and Payne's gray. Most of them, most of the paintings, are Cerulean Blue and either Payne's gray or neutral tint. So again, these three birds were just kind of sitting. One was sitting on the bird bath, and two were on the ground, and they were all in different photographs. So I just sort of took them and arrange them together. They did not have this reflection there. That's just a made up. I just, I didn't know at the beginning how I was going to I knew I was going to sit them on this edge here, but I didn't know what the reflection was going to look like. So again, that was just experimental. We used to feed the crows dog food in this little black garden bucket. So you'll often see the bucket in here, and again, you can see pull all the way at the top of the painting. The bird that's leaving this was actually the same bird photographed at different spots in my yard on the same day, but I just. Took them and put them together and then designed a door. And thought, Well, okay, the light's going to be coming from behind them. So what would the shadow look like? Here's two birds that are very abstracted that I photographed. They were just up in the air fighting over a piece of kibble, again, mostly Cerulean Blue and Payne's gray. This one, these were some Ravens. Very abstracted, again, very large piece, just a single bird. What's all about edges, Lost and Found edges, spray bottle, losing an edge, finding it again, losing it. Again, intentionally splattering, intentionally using a spray bottle, tilting the board different angles so I can get those intentional drips. And again, not knowing what the outcome is going to be. I like not knowing this one is actually 43 by 43 pretty big. This one was a little bit smaller, maybe 20 by 28 again, these birds were all in different photographs. These birds were all in different photographs. And there's Paul, again, up in the top right corner. So this was a collage. I took all my reject paintings that didn't work, and I cut out all the crows, and then I collage them onto a piece of watercolor paper, and then I took a little drip bottle and put paint in it, and then just dripped all these lines in different directions. This is actually called map of the world, because it feels a little bit like a globe to me, because it has all the longitudinal and Latin latitudinal line. So anyway, again, another interpretation. This was done with just shadow violet and cerulean blue, so two color wet and wet. Pretty large painting. This was probably 24 by 41 some love birds. Again, just a simple ex, a single bird can can say so much. This is actually, I do some water based oils, the Cobra oils. So this is a two color Cobra oil painting on panel. Again, the same thing. Two color Cobra oils on panel. And here's a raven with a little bit more color to it, and a single bird. Again, here's a larger story with more birds in it. And again, Paul in the painting ravens in the snow. So a real, um, variety of stories, and I never know what the story is going to be. At the beginning of a painting, I'll just start with one bird and say, you're going to be my narrator. What do you have to say? Who do you want to talk to? So then I'll look through all my other photographs, and I'll find you know who the second person, or the second bird, the second character, is in this narrative, and start to move them around the page to see what kind of dynamics I can create with them, what kind of negative space I'm Creating as I'm moving them around. Sometimes there's just a single bird that wants to speak all by themselves. Here's one with a lot of intentional drips. And sometimes the birds get so they disappear. So much I come back and I actually use like a gesso, and I'll come back and paint gesso back on to find the edges, and I sometimes have used acrylic or Chinese white, but you want something that's going to stay put. So I found that gesso is really interesting because then you can paint back over top of the gesso with the water color and get really interesting textures. Again, none of these birds are in the same photo, I just created a space for them to be and interact with each other. And again, it's just as much about that negative space as it is about the positive space. So you know who was the narrator? Second bird in from the right, right? That's where. That's who it all started with. And they all gathered one at a time to kind of create this, this narrative. This is a more recent painting. This is pretty large. It was 24 by like 36 I think you can see, there's a little bit of gesso in there, a little more realistic. And this is a I did this one just a couple weeks ago. This was actually the day Jimmy Carter passed. So I was starting a crow painting, and I was thinking of Jimmy Carter as a builder and, and sort of, this was a tribute to him and, and that the birds are carrying sticks. So Jimmy Carter. Is the is the bird that is flying, carrying a stick. And anyway, sort of a you never know when you're going to get an inspiration. So that was my first inspiration, by by Jimmy Carter, again, just a single bird by himself, a grouping. And here's, I shot these a couple weeks ago at my local health food store. These these crows. So came home and painted them so they were, they were underneath a bird feeder at the bird store. So you never know where you're going to find your inspiration. It can be at the health food store. It can be. And I'm, you know, I'm always, I always have my camera, my phone camera, with me, because you never know when you're going to run or run across a crow, because they're, they're everywhere. And I'm fortunate enough, people send me around the country and the world will send me photos of crows or ravens that they've taken and say, Here, would you like these are yours to use. Help yourself to using these, these photos, I have hundreds of them, but sometimes I run out of ideas with my own bird, so sometimes it's nice to get a little bit of a new inspiration. So
Laura Arango Baier: 56:13
yes, yeah. And I think what's, what's kind of funny that, you know, you mentioned that inspiration could be anywhere. It's really interesting, because obviously, a lot of your inspiration comes from nature. And in general, I think most artists very inspired by nature. And it's it's interesting how we as people have chosen to almost separate ourselves from nature in a way, I know, with technology and the way that we live and the newer way of of experiencing the world today, which is so technological that, yeah, I mean, it's normal that inspiration could be literally anywhere, since nature is always there. You know, in the background, it's waiting for us to notice it, yeah. And it's so important to just go out and, you know, look at a tree, touch some grass. And I love your crow painting so much because, oh, thank you. You're welcome. There's this beautiful way that you paint the wings or the beaks or the bodies. It just, it's so it captures so much of the essence of the crows without
Sarah Yeoman: 57:14
there's no detail, right? There's very little detail. Like, I'm never like painting the eye or individual feathers because you don't it's not about it's not a portrait of a Corvette or a crow or Raven. It is a it is a celebration of flight, of flying, of their interactions with each other, and seeing them as storytellers. And to me, they are crows and ravens are kind of right at the veil between our world and the spiritual world. So to me, they kind of help me get a little closer to that. I think that they are messengers somehow. And I just, I need to. I use them as my storytellers, as my way to speak about spirit. So I'm always sort of searching for a place to express that. And I do that through my, through my crow paintings and my Adirondack paintings. But I think more through my, through my crows,
Laura Arango Baier: 58:22
yeah, and I feel like birds in general are such a great representation of that flight of the Spirit. And it's so beautiful that you've also, you know, included these portraits with that have, you know, the with the crow that's flying away to represent your late husband, because it's way of you, you know, keeping him in your memory and keeping him in your work, because it's so important to us. So, you know, remember those, those people that you know aren't here with us anymore, but they are in that spiritual Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And actually, now I'm really excited too, because you're going to give us a tiny demo of how you work with your crows.
Sarah Yeoman: 59:01
Oh yeah, running through that. And I have a I'm a lefty, so my palettes on my left hand side, this is just a piece of hot pressed paper. I have a little bit of a drawing on here ready to go. And I'll just show you a little bit how I'm going to stand up, get off the stool here a second. And and I'll just show you a little bit how I start. I would always start with, like, a really large brush again. Use that brush that scares you. If I started with a small brush, I would ended up with small shapes. But so you know what I'll often do when I'm looking at I work top to bottom. I am working on an angle. I do have a little bit of a block here. It's like a six by six inch wood block. Again, gravity is our friend when we're working as water colors. So, all right, so I would put a little bit of water. Gosh, there's still yellow paint in there. Won't worry about that. Put a little bit of water on an edge here. Baier, because I want to sort of show a wing in flight. So if you put water down, watch what happens when you pick up your paint. I'm just grabbing a little cerulean blue here, so you end up with a beautiful, soft edge to start, because you've already wet that page there, already put a little water on there. I also would even do a little bit of splattering at this point, just to kind of loosen edges. And again, because I'm working on an angle, the paint will move down the page with very little effort. Again, do a little splattering. And again, water color. It's got this beautiful bead here. So all you have to do is sort of lead this bead down the page, and I'll grab a teeny bit of a Payne's Gray, and you could use any dark with this. I found the Payne's gray works well with the Cerulean Blue, because the Payne's gray does have a little bit of blue in it. So when I do these crows, I usually start with one wash top to bottom and just sort of start to establish where the shapes are going to be. I don't really worry too much about getting my darks in to start. Every once in a while, I'll get the painting to work in the first go, the paint that I put down is, is what I end up with. But most the time it's it's just working this way, and I'm just sort of finding some of the shape in here. So again, I can still touch some of that Cerulean right in there, or just do a little splattering. So again, not worrying about it looking like a crow to begin with, I'm using the outline a little bit, but it doesn't matter if it drips. You know, drips are good, and I can introduce water to an edge and lose an edge to begin with, because everything's going to dry so light, it won't even matter, because I'm going to come back and put a second wash back on top of it. And I actually could do I'll show you what some of the darker darks look like, so you can push it much deeper as well. So that starts to show you what the body of the bird would look like in the second application. So that's just a little introduction to how I start to lay that paint down. Very fluid, very free painting outside the edges. It doesn't matter if paint gets somewhere you didn't think it was going to go because really it doesn't matter. In the end, it won't even even show up. And you can always take a spray bottle and spray it off after it's dry, but really, I just try to incorporate all those happy accidents in into the painting and follow them where they where they take me, right?
Laura Arango Baier: 1:03:23
Yeah. And I, what I love about it too, is that the, all of the, you know, movement of the water itself also brings more life into the baker. You're, you're allowing the medium to be alive and to do its thing, while you're also, you know, trying to guide it a bit, right? You're, you're like this, like, you know, like you're the one in the canoe, right? The water thing, and you're in the canoe
Sarah Yeoman: 1:03:45
just, I'm trying to steer, not oversteer, right? Not don't steer too much,
Laura Arango Baier: 1:03:53
yes, yeah, because you have to work with the flow of the water, yeah, most of the time, or as much as you can. And that's thank you so much for the demo. I think it's going to be so wonderful for our viewers, also to be able to see that, because it's so I love how live it looked. I love how, yeah, it's awesome. It
Sarah Yeoman: 1:04:12
looks like paint. It looks like water, color, right? Fluid, fun, again, unpredictable. You just don't know what's going to happen. And then what's so neat on the hot press paper, because the Cerulean has a lot of sediment in it, you get some really, really beautiful texture and granulation with it. So that's why I enjoy using it on this hot press paper. Amazing,
Laura Arango Baier: 1:04:38
amazing. And I'm also a huge fan of hot pressed paper too, because it's actually really nice for drawing too. You get nice. Oh,
Sarah Yeoman: 1:04:44
it's great. Yeah, it's like, because it's like a bristol board or something like that. It's a little trickier using watercolor on on hot press, though, because the paint just sits right on the top. So it's harder to layer the paint when you're working on hot press. It's much easier when you're working on a cold. Us to do all of the transparent glazing. But I use, when I do my Adirondack work, I use the cold press.
Laura Arango Baier: 1:05:11
Yeah, it's and I think also the really cool thing about the hot press too is that it really lets the medium slide around a bit more, because, yeah,
Sarah Yeoman: 1:05:20
yeah. And that's what I that's what I like with, with the crow paintings, because, like, I want that drippiness, I want the paint to move,
Laura Arango Baier: 1:05:28
yes, yeah. And you know, of course, that that actually, you know, brings a very important point, which is, you know, you have to work with the mediums that you have, right? And of newfound a specific effect, you have better mediums for it, right? So you have your cold press for, like, more detailed work, and then you have the hot press for gets more of that challenging, sort of washy kind of feeling. Of course, you could still do detailed stuff on a hot press, but I feel like it might, it might, you know, lend itself more for, like, the type of work that you do with the crows, right, which is a lot more fluid, a lot more alive in allowing the paint to do its thing. Little
Sarah Yeoman: 1:06:03
more experimental, yes, a little more unpredictable than than the than the cold press,
Laura Arango Baier: 1:06:10
for sure, sure, and and now I actually want to ask you a bit more about you know, when you became a full time artist, because this is one of those things that a lot of our listeners might be going through right where they're trying to make that jump into becoming a full time artist. What was that like for you when you finally said, I'm just going to paint?
Sarah Yeoman: 1:06:36
Well, I always said that, but then you have to make a living. So that's the tricky thing, you know, you know, I, when I was in my 20s, I was singing in a band. Didn't have any commitments, so I was, I was working in restaurants and bartending, singing in a band, painting, occasionally selling, occasionally, ended up getting married, having kids, and worked in the restaurant business. We own a four story stone barn from the early 1700s in outside of Westchester, Pennsylvania. So I washed dishes, I bartended. I did all the floral arranging. My paintings were all over the walls. So and I still painted, and I started teaching. Then I had young kids, I still thought of myself as an artist. Was I making, you know, a full career of it. Not really. I wasn't supporting myself on that, but I was working at it. So it took many years, really to I always thought of myself as a full time artist. I didn't have to make a living for a long time, and when my late husband passed, second husband passed 12 years ago, I kind of had to, like, get my self organized and do it as a full time artist. So, and it's been a challenge, and it still continues to be a challenge. I love what I do. It's, it's always a little tenuous, you know, week to week, month to month, are we going to make enough to pay the bills? So I have always taught for, you know, 35 years or so, so teaching has been a great supplement to my income. And I do sell a lot of original work. I sell prints. I do work with large printing houses who take my work and sell it to hotels and Pier One and those kinds of places. So there's a little bit of a supplemental income that way. So teaching has actually been very lucrative. When the pandemic happened, I started doing the online classes, the Zoom classes with the Lake Placid Center for the Arts, and we're still doing that four years later, once a month, I teach with them. I also do classes here in my studio. I've been teaching in upstate New York, in the Adirondacks, where my cabin is in the summertime, for 25 years I've been teaching there so so you have to kind of be a master of many areas of it, not I do sell work. Ideally, I could just sit in the studio and paint and still work that way. But I do enjoy all of the other aspects of it too. I do enjoy teaching. I did get to travel to Europe for a couple years and teach some plein air classes over in Tuscany, and that's been that was really lovely doing that. So how long have I been a full time? It's hard to say, you know, I just tell people, just call yourself an artist, get to work and and and try things that are, maybe are outside of your comfort zone. And I do. I've done a lot of volunteering. Of my time. I'll do. Free demos for organizations. I'll do fundraisers for organizations, because it gets your name out there in the community. Working with a nonprofit like the Lake Placid Center for the Arts has been wonderful for me. I also show in their gallery up in Lake Placid, which has been really good for me as well, because they have an international clientele there so and I've been fortunate enough to have been published in French magazines, and US magazines, some of my crows were used in the Ellie Saab, who was a designer the hook tour Paris runway shows, they use some of my crow paintings in their catalog one year when they had a theme of like, kings or queens or something, and they wanted the the crows represented. So some of the dresses had the resemblance to crows. So again, you never know where these things are going to come from. So I've been very fortunate that way, that I've that I've had those opportunities,
Laura Arango Baier: 1:11:05
yeah, that's awesome, and that, you know, that that's really interesting, because there's, I see a little bit of a parallel with, you know, the the sort of chaotic way that painting can happen in the creative process can happen, and the very unpredictable way that also life can happen. Once created these things, right? You never know who's going to see it and who's going to respond to it, and then decide to use it for something totally unexpected, like totally who
Sarah Yeoman: 1:11:30
thought I would be in a runway show in France? That's
Laura Arango Baier: 1:11:35
awesome. That is so fun. Yeah, and you know, like you said, being an artist isn't it's not an easy thing, and it's something that it's quite selfish in a way, because, you know, we're Yeah, because we love it, and because we have this this pull towards the creative process of making images and, you know, putting something out there. And you know, that obviously comes with the consequences of, well, now I have to, you know, should I have a day job, or should I, you know, have some supplemental income on the side so that I can work? And, you know, it's one of those, you know, balanced things that has to happen when you're an artist. And which, actually, you know, I know that for a while you worked at a gallery, and, yeah, which is, again, many hats, and I think also really useful experience to have had if, if someone wants to approach a gallery to sell their work with a gallery, what would you recommend?
Sarah Yeoman: 1:12:34
Well, you'd have to go onto their website. Most galleries nowadays have a form you have to submit that they ask you to not just walk in with a portfolio. They want you to submit your work that way, or they or twice a year, they'll have a call where they'll have, you know, they'll ask people to send in work. And I get rejected. I've been rejected over and over and over again from galleries I'd love to be in, but that's okay, because, because then, you know, a week later, somebody calls you and says, we'd love to have your work in our gallery. So again, you can't give up on it. And galleries are really wonderful. But with what's happened with social media and, you know, Faso websites, I do a lot of sales directly through my Faso website, which I probably had for 1210, or 12 years now, I started way back when, and so I think now we have a much it's much easier for people to connect with the artist directly. They don't have to find you through a gallery. If someone is interested, if they love crows and ravens. They can go in and Google and say, watercolor paintings of corvids, crows and ravens, and my name is going to come up just because I've been out there for quite a long time. So galleries are wonderful. I have really good relationships with galleries. But you can also, as an artist, use social media to get your work out there and to be seen. And that really means consistency. And again, what it comes back to we talked about in the beginning is you gotta, you gotta treat it like a business. You gotta practice every day. You have to paint every you have and you have to, I think, really be careful about not, you know, we take workshops with all these other people. You know, after a while, it's time to stop taking workshops and decide what your voice is, because you don't want to paint with someone else's voice. And you'll see that so often, a lot a lot of times with watercolor is, I can tell who someone's painted with because they paint, they try to paint exactly like them, and it'll always be that instructor's voice that they're trying to copy. So take workshops, but then you've got to do the work and and figure out what it is you want to say and how you want to say it. And that can be you. Can be tricky. I had had some students with me who had painted with me for 678, years, and they were really, really good painters, but there was nothing else I could give them, because they were taking all my ideas, like all my what I had sort of figured out that no one had taught me, and they were using those ideas. So then they ended up putting their work out into the world, and people were like, Oh, that looks like a Sarah Yeoman, well, that's That's no way to you, don't. You don't necessarily want that. You want to have your own voice. So I have said to students, time for you to time for you to go, because there's nothing else I can There's nothing else I can give you. You haven't. You have the chops to go out and do it yourself and and again, find your own style.
Laura Arango Baier: 1:15:46
Yeah, they have to spread their wings, yeah, like your crows, yeah, yeah. And that's a, that's an excellent point. You know, all the points made really, because one, it's important to have a good website, and, you know, preferably one with E commerce, where people can buy directly. But of course, you can also rely on galleries, so it's a bit of a balance. And then it is very important to just give yourself the time and space to be able to experiment, like you said, you know, take those workshops, but also allow yourself to explore yourself before putting all the economic pressure on I feel like that. That would be the perfect time to have a day job or have some sort of something economic, some economic stability that you can rely on before, you know, you can start reaching out to galleries. Then once you're ready, of course, then you can start tapering off. Or, you know, if you've saved up enough, then you can, you know, make the jump officially and
Sarah Yeoman: 1:16:41
make sure that your voice is unique, because there's a lot of people doing the same thing. Really, really try to speak in your own in your own visual voice, and that that does take time. It doesn't necessarily come when you're young. It can take 20 years, 30 years, to really find that. But if you stay committed, you're gonna, you're gonna find it. Yeah,
Laura Arango Baier: 1:17:11
yeah. And you know, to your point, earlier about, you know, consistency, the more often you do it, the closer you'll be able to meet that goal. Because again, it takes time, and for some people It'll be quicker. For some people it'll be longer, but that's also dependent on how much effort and consistency you've been putting into it. So it's that balance this isn't right, and spotting
Sarah Yeoman: 1:17:36
the balance between creating and marketing. Like, yes, you talk to business, people are like, oh, you should be doing 75% marketing and 25% painting. Well, I would shrivel up and die if I tried to do that. I mean, that's just I would have nothing to say, because marketing is painful for me. I have a it's a lot of mental work. It's the side of my brain that's like, No, I'm not. I'm I don't want to do that. So, you know, ideally, I guess it's 5050, often, people will say, Well, why don't you pay somebody to do your marketing for you? I'm like, Well, I don't have that kind of money to pay someone to do my marketing. So you have to, you know, maybe get a business degree to go along with being an artist, because you really, you do have to understand business, which is, you wouldn't, you don't want to have to say that to people, but it's important to be able to run a business unless you have, unless you're successful enough that you have Someone that manages your career, which is very unusual.
Laura Arango Baier: 1:18:43
Yeah, it's a, again, it's a tricky thing. It's a very tricky thing. And maybe some people are just naturally good at marketing, and that's fine, or some people might want to, you know, like, is that hire someone, or some people might want to do it themselves. But maybe it might be good to take, like, a business class of some right? Yes, of some sort, because the type of work that we do is so artisanal, right? It's so crafts personally, that it doesn't quite meet the same type of standards as, you know, small businesses that create a product over and over, like, we have such different little you know, we're like, in such a specific niche that it's yeah, those things that yeah, you can try to do what the marketing people do for, you know, basic products. But it's not quite the same, because it's still such a human thing, right? We're still making these, these, like single products that are very human unless, of course, you're selling prints, but then that's very different. But yeah, you know, it's a lot of working around all of these, these little tidbits of being an artist, and you know, the responsibility that it takes to be a full time artist and to be able to pay the bills. You know, it's that's how it is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then actually, I wanted to ask you if you have any final advice for someone who wants to be an artist, and, you know, figure out what their their thing is,
Sarah Yeoman: 1:20:15
just paint. Just paint. You have to practice. There's no There's no Matt. There's no way around that you have to practice. There's no magic feather. There's no secret formula. I don't have a I don't have a particular brush that makes me better. I don't have a particular pigment, because everybody's like, Oh, what brush is that? Oh, what paint it? And it has nothing to do that. It just has to do with how many hours you put into practicing. So that would be my advice, is you have to, you have to treat it like it really matters to you. The only way to it's the only way to move forward with it. And it's hard, but it's the most wonderful thing you can do for yourself, is to give yourself that that time and space to create.
Laura Arango Baier: 1:21:12
Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, and you have to be so sure about it too, like, if this is a career that you really love and you're not afraid of all the crazy responsibility that comes with it and all the freedom, right? Then, then, you know, you got to make do with that. And then if you find that, oh, maybe this is more of a hobby thing, that's totally fine, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's Yeah, totally agree. It just it takes. It takes the time it takes, for sure, but yeah. And then if someone wants to learn from you, do you have any upcoming workshops or classes that you would like to promote?
Sarah Yeoman: 1:21:48
Well, you can go to my website, my Faso website, Sarah yeoman.com, and there's a workshop section there. You can see that I do monthly workshops with the lake Faso center for the art. So I have one coming up on the 30th of this month. We're going to be painting blue poppies, which were are at Longwood Gardens, which is just down the street from me. So it's a two hour class. You're if you sign up, you're also helping a nonprofit. So I make a little money. The nonprofit makes a little money, so we usually do those once a month. And then I teach all summer in upstate New York at Abenaki studios. You can find all that under my website, heading on my again. Sarah yeoman.com, website through Faso Fine Art Studio online. So
Laura Arango Baier: 1:22:37
yeah. And then, do you have any upcoming exhibitions that you would also like to promote,
Sarah Yeoman: 1:22:42
oh, not really. I do some group exhibitions in the summer up in the Adirondacks, at gallery 46 in Lake Placid, and then at Abenaki Studios, which is where I paint, but no specific gallery shows.
Laura Arango Baier: 1:23:00
Well, thank you so much, Sarah, for all the wonderful slide shows and the demo and all the wonderful advice. I'm also going to be taking some notes from this, and I'm going to be applying it for my own work. So thank you. Oh,
Sarah Yeoman: 1:23:14
well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed speaking with you and speaking with your larger audience. Yeah,
Laura Arango Baier: 1:23:21
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