Creativity can be challenging. It can get especially challenging when you get the urge of inspiration to be creating while you are at your full-time job, right before you fall asleep or even when you are taking care of your kids who require your full attention. What do you then? Meet Samantha Marion, a professional artist who not only encourages others to create but who also shares her own creative journey – the good and the bad. Read my interview with the artist below.
What are your current goals and why you want to achieve them?
I want to become a professional full-time artist and creativity encourager. Right now I am working on my upcoming group exhibition called “What is Enough?” which features all of the art I created in those in-between moments in my life – during the hour break for lunch and when I can’t sleep at night. And at 4:30 am before my infant daughter wakes up.
Can you please tell me about becoming a creativity encourager? Can you elaborate on that?
On my Instagram page, I always share my creative process, both the good and the bad experiences I have had. I show people through my art that actually very little time is needed to dedicate to creativity or anything that brings you joy, and that it’s just about looking for those free moments in your day and to fill them with intentional activities that make you happy.
Can you tell me more about the art that you create? Where do you get your inspiration? What is your favorite part about the artwork that you create?
I create vibrant watercolor and acrylic paintings in a variety of themes: meditation, rainbow hair, mandalas, feathers, quotes and movement of color, which is my abstract work. I am inspired by each and every moment I take for myself and sit down to paint, painting is my meditation, and I love getting into the flow of my art, my mind becomes still, and everything disappears. My favorite part about the artwork I create is the way I continuously strive to play and let go of the outcome, I have negative thoughts just like anyone else but with painting, I can more clearly see the patterns of my thoughts and I can allow them to move through me.
My action, in painting, puts the doubts that arise to rest. I love to see the painting go from that unsure stage to its completion, regardless of how beautiful it is, to me it is important only that I have finished it and remembered that “done is better than good.”
What has been the happiest moment of your life? The saddest?
The happiest moment in my life was the day I got on the plane leaving from Philadelphia to Thailand to peruse my dream of traveling the world and establishing myself as a luxury hospitality professional in the hotel industry.
The saddest moment in my life was the day that I was accused of putting someone I love in danger when in reality I was just beginning to set boundaries within a number of unhealthy relationships. This moment taught me that I needed to continue to choose joy and myself no matter how difficult that would be.
Did you have any struggles/ setbacks in your life, and if you did how did you overcome it?
Yes, I have had many struggles and setbacks in my life. I grew up around unhealthy relationships, and I had to unlearn everything I was taught about what it meant to be loved in order to be able to sit where I am now. Where I am now is balanced, joyful, loving and safe.
I began this journey by putting myself and my health first by quitting smoking, and I began painting every day to keep myself busy and to express myself in ways I had been longing to my whole life.
What has been the biggest lesson in life that you have learned so far?
That it’s possible to choose joy every day and that this begins by putting yourself first, because when we all put ourselves first in our own lives, then everyone will always be taken care of.
What are most afraid of right now?
That I will become as successful of an artist as I hope to be and that I won’t be able to create when I am asked to co-create a commissioned painting.
If you could give a piece of advice to a room full of strangers, what would you say?
You have enough time to do all of the things you want to do.
Follow Samantha and her journey on Instagram.
