28 - Erin Oostra - Unleashing Creativity: Lean in, Have Fun and Watch What Happens

SHOW NOTES

Erin Oostra is a visual artist, graphic designer and the owner of Nuwavegallery in Ellensburg Washington. Her work is bold and beautifully striking and is most often inspired by the mountains and waters of the pacific northwest. We talk about how to begin to recognize how creativity wants to move through your system so that it van flow better, the importance of leaning into creative nudges, and importantly ‘mistakes’ in life and in the art studio. She shares her tips for how to conjure flow states and muses about how though many of us are put into boxes as children in terms of who we ‘are’ whether that’s athlete or artist - how we can question that at any time and begin to try the things we love. 

I want to share a beautiful review with you that came in last week, it’s from Connie Wyatt

Connie writes,  I have found my tribe with Kate and her guests in a world where these people aren’t easy to find! I resonate with every single episode and get so much from this podcast. Thank you so much, Kate for sharing your heart with fellow artists. I can’t say enough good things about the Creative Genius podcast and I’m so thankful you felt the need to create this platform! Sending Love and hugs your way. 

Thank you Connie. I am so glad we have found our way to each other, and I sense that this is just the beginning of an incredible journey together. I am so glad you are here. Please leave a review if you have not yet!

I’d like to invite you all to join our private Facebook group ‘The Creative Genius Family’ a safe space to share about your creative struggles and triumphs and connect in person with other listeners for support & inspiration. 

Erin calls herself an escape artist, which i love. 

She is an visual artist, graphic designer and the owner of Nu wavegallery in Ellensburg Washington.  Her work is bold and beautifully striking and is most often inspired by the mountains and waters of the pacific northwest. We have a terrific conversation that covers a lot of ground with everything from how to begin to recognize how creativity wants to move through your system so that you can flow through it better to the importance of leaning into creative nudges, and importantly ‘mistakes’ in life and in the art studio. She shares her tips for how to conjure flow states and muses about how though many of us are put into boxes as children in terms of who we ‘are’ whether that’s athlete or artist - how we can question that at any time and begin to try the things we love. 

I love that she asked me about what brings me JOY - it was lovely for me to see the answer that bubbled up for me. it ‘s a good question and one we might really benefit from asking ourselves more. Asking ourselves what kinds of feelings we want to feel and then noticing what kinds of feelings we most often feel can give us great clues about what we need to change in our lives. For example maybe as a trauma response to something earlier in our lives, we have become accustomed to feelings of overwhelm and stress, maybe we’ve become masterful at stress and overwhelm, maybe if we look really closely we’ll see that we are the ones setting ourselves up to be in and create situations where we will continue to get to feel those things because that has inadvertently become our comfort zone… but maybe if we had a choice we would want to fill our lives with other feelings. Guess what? There is always a choice. It all depends on what we are focusing on and giving our attention to - and we have control over that. 

And I loved erin’s Billboard - be sure to listen to the show to hear it, it comes towards the end. 

And there is some lovely homework in this episode that is designed to help you get in touch with and practice connecting with your inner knowing and intuition, which are how creativity speaks to us!

Things Erin and I talk about

-Breaking through the weight of fear doing new kinds of art

-How you have to be the one to give yourself nudges 

-Aphantasia

-What it feels like to have to dumb our creativity down to not upset people in our day to day lives who wish they were being more creative

-How hard it can be to start saying out loud, I am an artist

-How we get put in boxes in school. Artist, academic, sports person and recognizing the box you may have been put in as a child and seeing if you still want to be in it or if you want to get out and how to begin to let yourself out of the box

-How to make time for your art even if you have another full time job

-How to creates space and conjure flow states

-How even ‘mistakes’ in the studio provide some of the best opportunities for creativity 

-Creative fuelling - how she feeds her creativity