What I Wish I'd Known When I Stopped Making Art with Jennifer Chiles
For about ten years, Jen barely made art. She was training to become a PA, starting a career in pediatric cardiac surgery, and raising small kids, and in her head, making art meant a big acrylic painting and enough time to finish it. Looking back, she wishes someone had told her she could just carry a little watercolor sketchbook around in her tote bag.
Jennifer Chiles is a painter, ceramicist, and art educator who has taught kids and adults for years, and she co-founded Creative Club Retreats with Emily. She talks about how her art came back when she took a break from medicine and moved to Denmark, how she lost the playfulness somewhere between art school grades and commission work, and what it looks like now to keep both careers going at once.
In this episode, they discuss:
Why Jen is the person at work who gets asked to draw the medical diagram for a family
How art school grades and commission work made her a perfectionist, and how a much more casual sketchbook habit changed that
Painting flowers with her dad as a kid, and how he kept nudging her to make things
What her creative week looks like now, from sketching with her son at the bagel place to sketchbooks that never quite make it onto the walls
Why adults come to an art table with more hesitation than kids, and why people talk more easily when they're making something side by side
And the sketchbook argument continues: first page, or wherever it opens
Resources & Links
Jennifer Chiles: jenniferchilesart.com and Instagram: @jenniferchiles.art
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