14. Art Is Your Superpower with Leah Guzman

Written By Emily Sharp

Somewhere along the way, most of us picked up the idea that creativity is something you have to earn — that you need the right studio space, the right technical skills, and a long stretch of free time before you're allowed to make anything. Our conversation today our our creativity podcast takes all of that apart.

Leah Guzman is a board-certified art therapist with twenty years in the field, an artist, and the author of five books on creativity and healing. She's spent twenty-two years working in school systems, and she founded the Creative Soul Society, an online community that meets weekly to make art together — and that turns six the week we recorded.

We love how practical this creativity conversation is. Leah talks about how showing up is the hardest part of any creative practice, and how that's a solvable problem. She talks about the systems that get her there: art journals small enough to travel, creative time written into the calendar like an appointment, a thirty-dollar table that means she can leave a mess out and come back to it. She also talks about what she's learned watching people arrive in her community from every possible starting point, including the ones who show up certain they aren't artists.

If you've been meaning to get back to something, this is a good one to have on while you do.

In this episode:

  • The six-layer birthday cake art journal Leah built for her community's anniversary, and how to make one for yourself

  • Why showing up is the hard part, and the systems that get you past it — travel-sized art journals, creative time in the calendar, a mess you're allowed to leave out

  • Emily on carving linoleum when every part of her brain said there wasn't time

  • The three questions Leah asks herself every morning, answered with a scribble and a bit of watercolor in about five minutes

  • Why the people in her community keep coming back, and what she thinks is really happening when creative people gather

  • Allie on the reframe that gets used most: who said anything about painting?

  • The member who spent years refusing to call herself an artist — and the day she stopped

  • What Leah says, without hedging, to anyone who has decided they aren't creative

  • The stretch of Leah's life when she was giving creativity away all day and keeping none of it, and how she found her way back

What happens when the person teaching everyone else to make art stops making it for herself?

Leah Guzman has been a board-certified art therapist for twenty year and has written five books on creativity and healing, while working in school systems. She has also had a stretch of her life where everything looked good on paper and nothing felt good underneath it — a period she describes as her dark night of the soul, when she was giving creativity away all day and making none of it for herself.

Resources & Links:

Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ or visit our ⁠website⁠ to learn more. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, you can apply ⁠here.⁠

You can find Allie on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠, and you can find Emily on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠ to learn more about all they do and stay connected

You can find Austin on ⁠Instagram⁠ for all of your podcasting and musical needs

If you enjoyed this episode, follow along and share it with someone who could use a little more creativity in their life.

And this is your reminder that you don't have to be an artist to benefit from creativity. You're welcome, as you are, in this creative community.

Emily Sharp
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13. Please Let Yourself Be Bad at Something