Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to Storyteller in Depth, a podcast where we go behind the scenes to learn more about the school of Communications, media arts and designs, people, places and things. I'm your host, pat Quigley, and in today's episode we'll be going on an artistic journey with Kamar Thomas, the program coordinator of our fine arts studio program, filled with fantastic advice, as well as some insight into his experience as an artist and what led him to where he is today. This episode is totally a deep dive into Kumar's expertise. Kamar also shares details about his new book titled The Artist's Create a Vision, how to Create Art that makes Change and Earns a Living. You definitely don't want to miss it. Thank you Kamar, so much for being on the podcast today.
Speaker 2 00:00:55 Thank you. I had nothing better to do other than teach glasses, write a book and paint. Nothing yet <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:01:02 Well, you know, it's great that you could spend some time with us and, and talk a little bit about things. Uh, but kind of just to get started, can you briefly introduce yourself, you know, your profession and the type of art you create to our listeners?
Speaker 2 00:01:15 Yes, I am Kamar Thomas. I am an artist. I am Professor of Art and program coordinator at Centennial College, and I wrote a book called Artists Creative Vision. I make large oil and canvas paintings that are about identity and how identity changes depending on the context, depending on the environment.
Speaker 0 00:01:44 Wow. So what kind of sparked your interest in becoming an artist and what interests you in art altogether?
Speaker 2 00:01:51 I'm glad you asked. So I'm from Jamaica and raised there, lived there, and then I moved to the United States for college. I went to Wesleyan University and I learned a few things. I learned some physics, I learned some math, and I found out that I was a black person on a rifle. It's, it's not a thing <laugh>, it's not a thing. It's not a very meaningful distinction. It's not a category that carries any weight. And my using art is the way that I've interrogated this question. What exactly do you mean by black? What is this cultural category? Who gets to be in it? Who gets to decide? And also a sort of celebration of the act of becoming something else. While I didn't know that I was that thing, this is, uh, universal human, it's a universal part of being human that I see in culture that is happening at a rate that is unprecedented in history. At home, you are one person at work, you're another person in your romantic relationships, you're another person. And hopefully the work and the romantic never overlapped <laugh>. But my artwork is to answer and ask questions that interrogate identity and how complicated it is.
Speaker 0 00:03:20 Right. So what, what led you to the medium you use? Like you were talking, you use oil paints. Why, why did you choose the, the medium you chose to create your art?
Speaker 2 00:03:30 Yeah, I had an art professor in my undergrad. Her name is two Lael Fair, and she was two things, one brilliant and two rich. If you combine those two things individually, powerful, but together, she was a painter that made landscape painting. And her enthusiasm for the medium really rubbed off on me. Her just how much fun it was to make something up out of nothing was such a wonderful thing to attempt that when I decided, when I was thinking about these questions, it is itself a kind of a mask. It's color, it's uh, basically colored dirt made from heavy metals that's largely poisonous. And we believe it's a face, we believe it's a person. We believe it's a three-dimensional object and we talk about what it means even though I made it up so it matches the subject of my work, which is why I chose oil painting.
Speaker 0 00:04:34 Wow. So do you find that you have like a common theme to, to all your art? And if so, like what is it and what techniques do you use to portray that theme and communicate your messages?
Speaker 2 00:04:45 I sure too. So my art can be summed up in basically three broad metaphors. There's masks, there's performances, and then there's both a mask wearing, uh, a performance wearing a mask. So think about carnival, think about what people do to go to carnival, um, Caribana in Toronto, for example, or the pride parade. People put on an outfit that you do not wear this at work or a school or a church. You put on an outfit and you behave in ways you would never in your life do on the ttc. And we are all cool with it. In fact, we expect it. In fact, when you put the mask on, we are happy that you're behaving this way. The weer gets the joy, pleasure, and opportunity to become more than what they were. So in thinking of something like black identity or Jewish identity, um, one gets to become more than what they think that they are now.
Speaker 2 00:05:45 Is it wearable? In some instance, when you go to the police, they don't typically go, you are black <laugh>. I have questions. When you go to the hospital, you have a bullet wound. They kind of just, so it's identity changes like that as a theme when it comes to performance, the person who performs their identity. So it's not enough to just put on the police uniform. You have to go out there and do some police stuff. It's not enough to wear the outfit for Caribana in your house. You have to go to the parade and do caribana things. You can't just be proud in your house. You gotta get out there and march. And this performance is a self-reinforcing event. It makes it more real for you. And my idea was if identity is a life like that, then people for whom their identities are a problem or are negative, then they, it might be possible for them to, to try on other identities in order to escape whatever their reality is.
Speaker 2 00:06:50 Well, if not to escape it, at least to look at a different way of overcoming it. So masks and performance and then both is just mixing the two, wearing a mask while you in the performance. And I made series of paintings. The first one I made was called me, myself and I, and it was seven paintings of my own face that I actually painted abstract paintings with face paint. And then I made seven abstract paintings on my face and I repainted them. And I told nobody it was me, even though I named it me, myself, and I, and nobody noticed that it was me, <laugh>, nobody brought up race in America, which doesn't sound remarkable in Canada, but in America everything is about race. So if you can manage to do anything where it's not brought up, you have subverted and introduced a different topic within the conversation.
Speaker 2 00:07:46 The second performance, I had a series called selfies. Very few people take a selfie and not do anything. They always do a bit of a performance. Remember the duck lips? Remember that <laugh>? Yeah. You would do duck lips and other poses and the butt cheek over the kitchen sink, <laugh> in the bathroom with their arm pushed out, those kinds of things as a performance. And I made a whole series of selfies, but I made them so big and so colorful and so loud that they had to be taken seriously. And I made so many of them that it, you know, was a nice look at kind of what selfies were and the purpose they served. And then the a series I made mixing both was called, um, Midas from the King that touched everything that, uh, turned gold ideas. Well, on the one hand, one wants to be king, but what if you do get what you want? <laugh> how helpful is it? What are the consequences? So that is how masks performance and both together show up in series of paintings.
Speaker 0 00:08:59 That's really, really cool. Like just kind of combining, you know, these, all of these different ideas into, you know, the two different ideas into one idea creates an entirely different thing. Yes. Right. And so, so what is it like from, you know, a, a viewer's perspective? Like what, what's kind of been the, um, what's been the response to your artwork?
Speaker 2 00:09:22 It's, well, it depends on the person. So the people that were, that are older people have a house to put them in to buy them, they go, how much is it? And can I have two? And their response is more, well, I find that their response is to the artwork, but they want to see what's next. And younger viewers, their response is a little bit more connected to me as a person. So they want to find out more about my life specifically and how these things are connected. It's a thing that people over 50 don't really have so much of <laugh>, they don't really, they're not interested kind of what you do if you're married or not <laugh>, that sort of thing. Whereas the younger people, they wanna have the connection to my own identity, which in some sense it is connected and they want to, they want to learn and find out how to make something like that. But all in all positive response here. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:10:31 So is there something that plays an integral role in your creative process or something that helps you kind of carry out an art piece from conception to finished product?
Speaker 2 00:10:41 Oh yeah. Um, reading, whenever I find a book that contains challenging ideas, it almost always gives me a different way of looking at the world. And my task is to now translate that into paint. So for example, the book I'm reading now is called Curiosity, how Science Became Interested in Everything And it tracks the history of science in its scholastic groups in Monotones and before that. And how being curious was largely a negative, particularly in, you know, if you're particularly if you're very, very curious about something that could be seen as question in God's work. And as science progressed as industrialism, industrialization, industrialism, <laugh>, like it's a religion, as industrialization spread, um, ideas changed and science changed from wanting to know only about, from wanting to explore what we already know, to wanting to know some new things, depending on its connection to God. And now wants to know everything all the time, everywhere in whatever universe exists, which is a wild and completely counterintuitive assertion because there's no real survival need for us to know that.
Speaker 2 00:12:09 And also it takes up a good chunk of the economy. <laugh> is as expended on doing this. While am I reading this, what does this have to do with art? So it turns out my good students, God bless them, are uh, many of them are largely pessimistic about the future. They're, when they think about what the world will be 30 years, in 50 years, it's not a good, uh, feeling that they have. And I give them the time machine test, you have a time machine, you have to go back, pick a year, I'll send you. And then they go and then I tell them what it's was actually like. Then they actually put a pla in a the actual place. If you want to go back, don't be a woman, bad move. So half of you can't go <laugh> half you can't go to begin with.
Speaker 2 00:12:58 If it's before 1914, you're gonna die in World War I, if it's after 19 15, 17, you're gonna die in World War ii <laugh>, which country you want, because few of them exists, large empires. Um, as even within fields it was unfathomably and unquestionably worse, the further back we go, even if we can find instances where things were normal, but normal was rarely the norm to live an unmolested life, an unbothered life, get up, you farm, you die, your kids bury you was actually the exception. There was, uh, large movements. So how do I put that into art? Well, now is a time where you get to pick your identity. You can actually pick up your stuff and move. If you're surrounded by assholes, <laugh>, where you live, you can leave <laugh>. That's, uh, that's uh, an option in life. Um, where other areas, mobile, sure you could move, but wherever you went, if there are people already there, you had to kill 'em or they would kill you. It was very difficult to just go and live here now. Very difficult. So this source of reading is always kind of swirling in the blender of my mind, trying to make a really to deliver up in painting somewhere.
Speaker 0 00:14:25 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Cool. And so you're, you know, talking, speaking about reading, obviously, you know, you were in the, you wrote a book or you were in the process of writing a book. So talk a little bit about what that was like. What is, what is the process of writing a book?
Speaker 2 00:14:39 Yeah, I wrote it. It's out. Uh, writing a book is the same way for making a, a eight foot painting a little at a time every day. And you can't skip any of the days. I initially had the idea because I don't want to make any more starving artists. We have enough. You don't have to be a starving artist, you don't have to add to that population for sure get some money. And then if you wanna star make the choice. So the why is okay, I need to make fewer starving artists. That's my job at Centennial. How do you do that? Well, they must make things people want. So how does one do that specifically? People will find that out. And as it turns out, my whole life has been preparing me to answer that question because I had to figure it out myself. And it's a, a particular formula.
Speaker 2 00:15:34 You look at art history or the history of photography you're in, you look at your particular biography. So your life, what you have going on, that's my one contribution to it. And then you pick something that you're interesting and notice I interested in and notice I said pick cuz it doesn't really matter if it is of a high importance to you other than that you're just interested in it. You like flowers is, that's one thing. There's a whole bunch of people who painted flowers before you. What did, what did it look like? They'll show you how to do it. And then what are you interested in about flowers? What um, specific role could it play in your life? That's, it sounds simple, but so is saving money and I know a lot of people who not save any money. <laugh> very simple but difficult in practice.
Speaker 2 00:16:30 So how to write the book, join the group. I joined a group, we met maybe twice a week and the group taught me about publishing. I eventually, I got a publisher through them. But really what it is, is a group of people to whom I would feel such embarrassment for not writing that I just kept writing every week. Those 2000 words added up over 15 weeks. Two times 15, you're at 30,000 words. That's a small manuscript. You keep that up for 30 weeks, you have 60,000 words, you got a book. 30 weeks is two semesters.
Speaker 0 00:17:05 Yeah. Since it seems easy enough to write a book in, in kind of that, in that language, like it's, you know, but when it really gets down to it, like it's a lot of time obviously went into this.
Speaker 2 00:17:17 Yes, a lot of the actual writing is not a lot of time in the way that the actual physical painting. A painting is not really that much. It's editing that's an issue. So you have 15, 16 weeks of thoughts that are not particularly connected. It's making the connection that is the difficult part. So actually writing might take you 12 to 15 weeks. Editing might be six months <laugh> or seven months because it's difficult to know beforehand in what order should you introduce these ideas such that you will seduce the reader enough to keep reading and make them work enough so that the reward of the answer is actually implemented. Same thing with saving money. If you just tell somebody save money, they're gonna just continue with whatever they were doing that day. But if you embed it into a story about the kind of change it made in someone's life after they've saved some money, it will help.
Speaker 2 00:18:29 If the person that you're telling them about and the story is relatable, then they're more likely to save that money. So, um, I have the ideas, um, I've been, I've had to think about it. I've lived them, I've sold the paintings, so now I have to write down all that I know. And that's the writing fairly easy. Finding the stories that make it palatable fairly easy. Connecting the lessons with the stories, peculiar in effort, <laugh> losing sleep over that one. Those you call up the girlfriend, Hey, could you read this? And she's like, but I'm <laugh> doing a thing. And you're like, just read. And she reads it and she's not quite there because it's such a long lead time between when you get feedback and when you write it. That's why it's difficult. The writing is, it's not itself difficult.
Speaker 0 00:19:22 Yeah, for sure. I know, I know that feedback process cuz I use my fiance the exact same way where, you know, it's, I've got this project, I've got this finished product, please watch this. So I know that from a viewer's perspective or a reader's perspective in your case, you know, does this make sense? Did I yeah, did I make sense in the, the puzzle that I've created, does it make a picture at the end? Because it makes a picture here but doesn't make a picture to you. Yes. Right.
Speaker 2 00:19:47 And then there are so, you know, stylistic choices. I'm a flamboyant person if I can say it in six words rather than two. I'll say it in six <laugh>. If I can use roust about and rabble ruse or somewhere I'm fitting it in. So things like that, they, they add.
Speaker 0 00:20:05 Yeah, you used that word of the day calendar to the best of its ability, don't you
Speaker 2 00:20:10 <laugh>? I haven't in a while. I should.
Speaker 0 00:20:12 Oh, <laugh>. There you go. Good idea for later. So what kind of key lessons did you want to include in your book?
Speaker 2 00:20:19 So there is two lessons. There are the overt lessons and then they're the hidden ones. And I'll tell you the hidden ones. <laugh> first and then I'll give you the overt ones. The hidden ones is the hidden lesson is consistency and patience will overcome all known advantages including money, consistency. Um, I don't really, I'm not a highly motivated person, but I exercise every day and I paint every day. And I don't miss why, because that's what I did yesterday and that's what I'm going to do tomorrow. I'm not motivated to do it. I do it because it's Tuesday, it's 7:00 AM and that's what I do. And when it comes to producing work, if you do it in the most benal, if you make the starting to do it such a non-event and the bar is so low, you will overcome all prejudices, <laugh>, all of the isms that can be thrown at you.
Speaker 2 00:21:27 If you throw a decade of consistent work at it, you'll be fine. So that's the underlying message. The the second underlying message is the one of optimism. Sure, thermonuclear war might be on the horizon, but it was there last week and the week before and it was way worse in the eighties. And before that we had World War I <laugh> sure the economy and inequality seem to be the largest, um, concern macroeconomically right now. But they're way more poor. Way more why? I was one of them lived in Jamaica. I saw my country go from, I had no running water to then getting running water, can't drink it, gotta boil it first to now don't have to boil it to sorry, running water in a community pipe to running water in the house in one generation. And nobody had to starve for it. So the second one is one of hope.
Speaker 2 00:22:31 And the third one was just tactics. This is how you connect with people who are not you, who don't think like you do. They don't sound like you do, they don't, they don't, they don't know what you know. And you must tell them about what you make in a way that they want to hear it in order to feel what you want 'em to feel. And in return they will give you money, cash, cheese, coin dough, bread, whatever you wanna call it so that you can do it again. So my, an example chapter is called Fantasy Fears, failures and False. And it is all that I've learned about art market in one chapter, art marketing in one chapter, people will believe you if you help them live out their fantasies or you help them confirm what they are afraid of their fears or you help them justify their failure or explain it away, or you help them throw rocks at whatever enemies they got. That's it in marketing, <laugh>, if you, if your art can assuage someone's fear, build a fantasy world, it doesn't exist yet, but you can imagine it help people just hate on something that they really hate. <laugh> those. If you can embed that in the process of making your work and talking about your work, then give it five years, you will be fine financially. <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:24:03 So all, all roads of, of your life have kind of led you to teaching at Centennial College at the Story Art Center. So what led you there and what has been your favorite part about teaching at the college?
Speaker 2 00:24:15 Um, I'll answer the second question first. My favorite part is that none of my students work look similar to each other at all. There are people there building installations in my thesis class. There are people there, none of their work or even their ideas have any overlap with each other. There are people essentially making their own graphic novel. There are people there making installations, there are people making paintings. There are people making like zines and books. There are people that have creative characters. They truly have found their own creative vision, <laugh>. And I'm very proud <laugh>, I feel like a proud dad where their son can now run. And I've been teaching them to run, look at this. That's the my favorite part. And what led me here is, so after my undergraduate in the us I don't know if you know this, but the US is not looking for people.
Speaker 2 00:25:11 They have enough and they'll tell you, <laugh>, I'll tell you <laugh>, it's time to go. Your visa is up. So I had to do that. Um, my visa expired, had to move back to Jamaica, taught for a year, came back to the US to grad school, kept teaching, and then things turned up for me. Instagram came out. Um, nobody would pick me for the artwork. It's art world, excuse me. It's kind of difficult to get picked. Um, you have to move to New York City, you're a large metropolitan area so the, the curators can see you and consistently show up for three, four years. Can't do that. I'm poor. My parents are in Jamaica. Exchange rate is 110 hundred and 20 to one. That's, it ain't happening. So I have to figure out how to market and figure out how to find people and talk to them about what they see the world have.
Speaker 2 00:26:00 How can I tell their story with my artwork that they didn't ask me to make and then ask them for money so I can do it again. So moving around and now I have to learn this skill and build the website and start meeting people in the nonprofit space. So they're literally trying to do good in the world. They're teaching me about marketing as well. They're teaching me about, you know, come to the, the fundraising dinner, come meet some of our clientele and we go from there and we have exhibitions and sell. And then my, my visa is up again, <laugh>. I come to Canada and where do I move to in Canada? Is it the, the English part where I can speak English? Not at all. Right into Quebec City, <laugh> where I have to learn French and I have to restart, learn to sell the paintings again.
Speaker 2 00:26:50 <laugh>, learn French in, you know, six, seven months. And I'm doing that and I'm, I start teaching online. So because the pandemic is happening, and so now I'm outfitting my, my space for teaching as well as selling the paintings. So when the job posting for the coordinator and the professor job opened up and I read it was like, you know, must have like international exhibition experience. I was like, you should have put my name on it. <laugh> kind of have students develop their own body of work and coordinate the program. I was like, I've been running a small business in three different countries, <laugh>, this is, you should have just written my name and emailed me <laugh>, I don't know who else, where are they? And so I applied and it, it worked out that I was, and I'm deploying all of those things that I've learned in the nonprofit space in selling the people in marketing.
Speaker 2 00:27:48 Because if you think about it, nowhere I've been to, none of the people are like me, <laugh>. So I have to, I make what I wanna make, but I have to talk about it to people who I don't know in a way that they care about it and that they'll come back again. That's what I'm doing in the program now for each student. They come in, I wanna make work about X and I go, awesome. You need to learn these skills <laugh>. And they go, all right, I'll try. And then they try and learn it, it doesn't work. I said, no problem. Here are another set of skills. They learn those skills and then we go, great. Who are we going to sell it to? I've never thought about that before. And I said, well, other people have the money <laugh>, they need to, what story will they tell themselves when they make a purchase? And this is what we talk about in class in addition to the technical. And this is how you draw a stand here, keep your head steady, keep it at this level. This is how you measure angles, et cetera. So it's been, uh, a real pleasure.
Speaker 0 00:28:53 Awesome. I was actually gonna ask you like what kind of things have you taken from your experience and brought those to the program and brought those to your classroom? Like obviously, you know, you're bringing the, the money sense and the marketing sense, but like what other techniques and, and like little skills have you brought to your classroom to help level up the students more?
Speaker 2 00:29:15 Yeah, I even, something, well, firstly I'm ruthlessly pragmatic. I don't really, if it works, let's do it one more time. It is not our business why it works. We can figure that out after. But if it works, run it back <laugh>. And then after you have a a base under you, then we can, so I'm bringing out spreadsheets, we're making budgets, so we need to, we need to find out. And a question I ask my students, how much does your life cost now? How much a month are you spending Now if your rent is 500, it's theoretical, no rent is 500 unless you and the landlord are boyfriend and girlfriend. <laugh>, your rent's 500 food is 400. Uh, you spend a hundred on transportation, that's a thousand dollars. You need to make a thousand from your artwork to cover your life. This is the number that you need to make and let's work backwards from there because we are already saturated with ideas because my students already have a fairly strong sense of art history.
Speaker 2 00:30:23 So that's the first thing. Get ruthlessly practical. I found that out when I graduated because I was so very high minded about my ideals and wanting to pursue identity in all its permutations that I forgot that it's other people's money <laugh>, that I have to ask them for <laugh> so that they could give me a chance to make it again. So I have to package it up so that they understand what I'm trying to say. So that's the first. The second is, never underestimate a good attitude. Never underestimate a good attitude in a bad situation. So if you are faced with, you simply don't have enough time, you're not gonna finish this piece of art on time. If you have a good attitude and you try anyway right up until the last minute and the person you are making it for sees that you tried up until the last minute and you show up and you say, look, I tried up until the last minute I gave my actual best effort.
Speaker 2 00:31:30 They'll probably give you an extension. They'll probably work with you if your family does not support your choice of career at all, justifiably, because the majority of people that they know in it don't have any money, <laugh>. And you show up with a good attitude. Listen, I get you someday they'll come around. So that's the, the second one. My, my parents are from Jamaica. My dad is an e m t, an emergency medical. He shows up when your legs blown off from your motorcycle, his son paints pictures for money. That's a real tough cell, real tough cell. And my father had no idea that this is what I was doing until my graduation day. So to overcome that, I had a real good attitude about the whole thing. And I waited, I had some sales, but I waited until the exhibition when he was there for the people to give me the, the checks, the money. And so it was see <laugh>, it's working out.
Speaker 0 00:32:36 So there are students all the time who are looking at, you know, going away to college and, and wanting to join fine arts programs, you know, what would you give some, what advice would you give to these students who are maybe looking at Centennial College to come to the fine arts program?
Speaker 2 00:32:53 The strength of the fine arts program. The strength above all other strengths. It's not the facilities. They're okay. How, how amazing can a room get really to paint something <laugh>? It can only do so much. The the professors, they can only teach you so much. What it is, is attention. It is that we will, we are looking at the whole of your interests, all of your skills, and then your capabilities to try and direct you in such a way that you can create your own kind of art and then sell it. Never forget the, and then sell it. So if you are looking for making your own sort of thing, then this, this is sort of the place for you because you need attention for that. You need time, you need the kind of feedback that is in no way, general, when we in the thesis class set out an assignment, I don't know how you're gonna do it.
Speaker 2 00:33:51 There is no answer <laugh> to what we're trying to do. There's just, these are the parameters. Figure it out. When you come back, uh, see what you've done. I'll tell you, this is what you said. Is that what you meant? If no, run it back, do it again. We do it again. This is what you said. Is this what you meant closer? Great. Let's find somebody who's looking to hear that. You find them. You have your first sale, now you have an extra $500, you love yourself more. You can buy more art materials, you can be a professional. Well, you are a professional. So what I would say is if you are thinking of being one of one, this, this is the spot for you. And what you can do is start reading some more. Start exposing yourself to more ideas. Start feeling up your head with stuff that A, makes you feel good.
Speaker 2 00:34:45 <laugh> about your chances. Don't worry, the world will depress you. You don't need <laugh>, you don't need anymore. Start filling your head with stuff that will, that gives you possibility. Find people who are making work like you wanna make, or having the impact that you wanna make. Follow them on the internet. Look where they and where they are exhibiting. Find as much influence if you're into anime. Get deep into anime. Go read the credits, find out who drew it, um, find out where they worked. Get really deep into your interests so that when you show up, I can go. Great. You're interested in this, this is what you're trying to say. We're off to the races.
Speaker 0 00:35:30 What's something you tell your students that you wish you would've known when you started out in the first place?
Speaker 2 00:35:36 Uh, what a good question. I, and I knew this at the time, I just didn't do it. I knew I was supposed to write down more things and make backups. I didn't do it. I lost not one, not two, but three laptops worth of ideas. And you think I would've learned <laugh> the first time. <laugh>, I lost a laptop. I go, all right, that's not gonna happen again. Let me buy a backup drive before my new laptop. Put everything on the backup drive the backup crashes instead of the laptop <laugh>, that's number two. And the third laptop I moved to Canada and in the rattling and shaking in the back of the, the drop, everything, everything died. So I wish I had just paid whatever money to drop pots and saved it somewhere. Or that I had written down some of the things as they had happened to me to remember what the experience was like as I was in it.
Speaker 2 00:36:38 Because I find now, when I'm trying to remember to put it down, I am a little older and I don't care. This, this, this thinging isn't as bad as it was at the time. I don't feel the same rise because I, I'm over it. And I wish I had wrote down how mad I got or how great it felt at the time. So that now when I'm teaching or now when I need to relate to my students, I could draw from a place of this is how it was when it happened. So for those out there, take pictures of the bad paintings, please. I have no pictures of my terrible paintings. I got rid of all of them. Which, because I thought, okay, I want to be good. I don't need to be looking at my terrible paintings <laugh>. I just got them. They're out of the way. The problem is people find me on the internet and they scroll down and they go, you've always been great. That's not good because they think they can't, they think it's not a learned skill. Despite my obvious physical deficiencies in the glasses I'm wearing <laugh>. I was born with terrible eyes. You need those to paint <laugh>. And you know, I think I, I got glasses when I was 17, 18, so I had to learn this as an adult. Yes, I really wish I wrote down. If you, if you're <laugh> just starting document, write it down.
Speaker 0 00:38:03 And I think that's wonderful advice to, to end off our chat for today. Uh, thank you so much for being on the podcast and, and chatting with me about your life and your works and, and it's, it was awesome to, to get to know you a little bit.
Speaker 2 00:38:18 No problem. Thank you for having me. And I hope this helps somebody out there. If it doesn't, it already happened.
Speaker 0 00:38:25 <laugh> true. Very, very true. Well, thank you again. Thank you so much Kamara, for coming on the podcast today. What an insightful conversation. Your advice can be applied to so many different kinds of creative fields, and it is very deeply appreciated. So now that you've heard a little bit more about Kamara's book, we wanna offer you the chance to win your own copy. Head over to our Instagram at Story Art Center for details on how you can win. Until next time, I'm Pat Quigley and this is Storyteller in Death.
