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Welcome to Your Art Is A Spell, the podcast that ignites inspiring and transformative conversations about art as a magical practice. I'm your host, Edgar Fabián Frías—a multi-passionate artist, witch, therapist, and proud mutant shape-shifter. My art spells have reached audiences through social media, billboards, and skyscrapers and have even been placed on the surface of the moon! Join us as we explore how reclaiming your unique artistic voice and embracing bold creativity can transform your life and the world around you. Subscribe to the podcast and sign up for our newsletter at www.yourartisaspell.com to stay connected!
I'm not an artist. I can't draw. I don't have the
skills. If I had a penny for every time I've heard
people say this or every time I've actually
thought this myself, I'd be a millionaire by
now. What if I told you that it isn't skill or
technique that's holding you back as an artist?
Actually, as you get into the higher realms of
contemporary art, skill and technique matter less
and less. What if I told you it was a mindset
issue that you might be having instead? Stay
tuned till the end of this episode as I'm going
to break this down for you. Even if you don't
know how to draw or paint, you might be an artist
after all. Welcome, or welcome back to Your Art
is a Spell. Today we're talking about why your
art vision isn't a skill problem, it's an artist
mindset problem. and we're going to dismantle
the lies we've been taught about what makes a
good artist. The real enemy of your creative
freedom isn't a lack of technique. The real
enemy is a mindset that we've inherited from a
very rigid and outdated system. We're conditioned
from childhood to believe that good art equals
technical perfection, defined very narrowly. So,
I'm going to share a pretty vulnerable story
about me as a young person. I was in second
grade. I remember being given a map of somewhere
in the United States. I forget where. I think it
was Louisiana. And I was given a box of crayons
and I was so happy. coloring, mixing colors,
experimenting, really allowing my intuition to
guide me. I remember how excited I was when I
showed my finished work to my teacher only to be
surprised that she seemed really upset by what I
had created. Not only did she tell me that I had
really messed up and not colored within the lines,
I had not used the right colors, I had mixed the
colors incorrectly. She was so upset by this that
she called a meeting with my parents. She had
my parents come to the school and shared with
them how worried she was about me because of how
messy I was as an artist. She even went as far as
to say that it might mean something was wrong with
me developmentally. Unfortunately, I was someone
who was born with rheumatic fever and the doctors
were concerned that I might not develop well. And
so this played into my parents' biggest fears that
there might be something wrong with me. Of course,
as a young child, I took this on. For years, I
felt like I was not an artist. There was no way
I could be an artist because I was admonished so
intensely for my intuitive desires to play and to
mix colors. Unfortunately, when we internalize
that kind of conditioning, we can spend years
trying to fix our technique. When we should
be nurturing our ideas and our intuition,
we let the mechanics of art making gatekeep from
the magic of art making. Before we get into some
examples of how you break free and develop what I
call your art vision, I want to let you know that
I'm turning today's philosophy into a concrete
stepbystep guide. This week I'm publishing an
article called 10 mindset shifts for artists that
matter more than technical skill. I'm giving away
the first half for free over at mutant-magic.com
where you're welcome to sign up for my free
newsletter where I share updates about my artist
practice and ways that you can connect with me.
But if you want the full 10 steps, you can join
the membership over at Mutant Magic for just
$11 a month. Within this membership site, I
drop the real truth bombs about being a working
artist as well as host the exclusive Mutant
Magic podcast where I go deeper into these
themes and share experiences from my own life
as a working artist. Go to mutant-magic.com
to subscribe and read this article. Now, on to
the rest of the show. So, how do we unlearn this?
For me, it took me so many years of trial and
tribulation of healing some of these deep wounds
I had around my identity as an artist. Recently,
I had an experience that felt really ironic to
say the least around this topic. So, one of my
most popular videos on YouTube is a video where
I share the exact portfolio that I used to get
into UC Berkeley's highly coveted MFA art practice
program. I'm putting a link here if you're
interested in seeing that video. It will also
be in the description of this episode if you're
listening to this as a podcast. And recently,
someone left a comment on this video asking me
how much technical skill played into me getting
my degree and having success within it once I was
inside. I remember almost laughing when I read
this comment because I realized that technical
skill was one of the last things we ever talked
about within the MFA program. Of course, there was
an expectation of us having some sort of ability
within different mediums and at the same time we
were incredibly encouraged to take on new forms
in our work. And so professors understood when we
were beginners in different mediums or concepts
within our practices. There was so much room for
us to experiment, for us to play, and for us to
be beginners again. Not only that, but a huge
part of being in an MFA program is being a part
of critique. And this is when you share your work
and you get feedback, questions or people offer
resources about your work. One of the biggest
things that I took away from that experience
was that professors really valued things that were
outside of the technical realm. They valued your
ideas, the connections you made, the research that
went into your work, the different disciplines you
wo in to your practice. There was so much that
we spoke about that rarely had anything to do
with the actual technique of art making. And
this was a big realization or remembering for
me connecting it back to my childhood self that
the higher you move up in the realm of art and in
the contemporary art world, technique becomes
secondary. Mimicking a style or being able to
reproduce something perfectly doesn't make you a
great artist. Having a vision does. So, one of the
things that I do in my studio practice is I like
to have days where I go out to get inspired to
look at art in other museums and galleries. And
I'll put on my art consultant hat to take
notes to really see how artists are working, what
they're bringing into their craft. And I'm also
looking at what curators are interested in, the
ways in which they're contextualizing artists and
what they're paying attention to right now. And
I can tell you one of the things I've noticed as
a theme is that curators are really interested in
artists that are presenting a complete universe,
not perfect technique. Let me give you three
recent examples that blew me away. First and most
recently, I saw Guadalupe Maravilla's artwork at the
Hammer Museum. Maravilla creates these incredible
sculptures. One of his sculptures, Disease Thrower
Number 1212 2012, which was completed in 2022,
was inspired by the artist's own experience with
cancer and how the systemic abuse of immigrants
manifests in the body. His sculptures are made
of steel, wood, cotton, glue, plastic, loofah,
and objects that were collected from a ritual
retracing the artist's original migration route
from El Salvador. These artworks are precise, but
they're also wonderfully messy, raw, and wild.
The technique here isn't about traditional
sculpting. The technique is his ability to
weave in indigenous cosmology, therapeutic and
healing practices, his own personal story and
sacred understanding into this physical object.
The concept is the medium. Then you look at
Satie Barnett's installation, How to Fly, which is
currently up at the California African American Museum
in Los Angeles. It's a massive site-specific photo
mural in the museum's atrium. You can feel the joy
radiating off this piece of art as soon as you
enter into the building. She isn't necessarily
taking a brush to canvas. She's pulling from her
own family archives and blowing them up against a
giant rainbow background. There is definitely
skill involved in creating such a large scale
photo collage mural, but the focus really isn't
the technique. She didn't really need traditional
drawing skills to take over the museum's atrium.
She needed a powerful, deeply felt conceptual
vision forged digitally through photo collage
software, for example, like Photoshop or G1MP
if you're using open-source software. This is an
artwork that's really inspired me as someone who
also uses similar mediums within my work. and
the play and joy and mixture of rhinestones,
gems, sparkly things, and ephemera from our
contemporary life within this photo collage
have all really spoken to my sensitivities
and sensibilities as an artist. And finally,
if you want to see the total dissolution of high
and low brow art, look at the PLY WOULD exhibition
by Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin at the Morán Morán Gallery in LA. They literally built a
sculptural theater inside the gallery. You walk in
and you're surrounded by weatherboard, cladding,
carpet, and sofas watching these chaotic videos
that makes animation and digital manipulation.
There are no rules here about what materials an
artist should use. These artists are building a
world with the materials they have at hand.
Now when you look at these three artists,
none of them are bound by the rules of classic
technique. They are bringing their intersecting
identities, their weirdness, their archives, and
their obsessions into the room. That is an art
vision. And that is what the highest levels of the
art world actually value. So no, you don't need to
be born with a magical technical gift to be a real
artist. You just need the courage to trust your
artistic vision, your ideas, your intuition. When
you stop worrying about coloring within the lines,
you give yourself permission to draw an
entirely new map. You're allowed to be messy.
Your ideas are valid. Your art is a spell
and it will change your life and the world
around us. Thank you so much for listening.
If this episode resonated with you and you
want to help shape the future of this podcast, I
would love for you to join our Patreon. For just
$5 a month, you can become a part of the
SPELLCASTERS CIRCLE. You can leave comments,
ask me follow-up questions, and connect with
other artists who are unlearning these same
mindsets. The link to the Patreon is in the
show notes. If you found this episode helpful,
I would love to encourage you to send this episode
to someone who should hear it. If you're watching
this on YouTube, I want to encourage you to
subscribe, leave a comment, give us a thumbs up,
play with the algorithm. If you're listening
to this as a podcast, I want to encourage you
to follow and leave a review. Now, keep making
your magic, and I'll see you in the next episode.