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I Love Your Stories is a soulful conversation series hosted by artist and creative guide Hava Gurevich, where art meets authenticity. Each episode invites you into an intimate dialogue with artists, makers, and visionaries who are courageously crafting lives rooted in creativity, purpose, and self-expression.
From painters and poets to healers and community builders, these are the stories behind the work—the moments of doubt, discovery, grief, joy, and transformation. Through honest, heart-centred conversations, Hava explores how creativity can be both a healing force and a path to personal truth.
If you’re an artist, a dreamer, or someone drawn to a more intuitive and intentional way of living, this podcast will remind you that your story matters—and that the act of creating is a sacred, revolutionary act.
[MUSIC]
What does it actually take to build a
sustainable life in the arts?
Not just creatively, but practically.
Welcome back to I Love Your Stories.
I'm your host, Hava Gurvitch.
And today I'm joined by artist, curator,
and writer, Lindsay Payton, for
a wide ranging conversation about
creative evolution, reinvention, and
what it really takes to
build a lasting life in the arts.
Lindsay shares her journey from a
creatively rich childhood through
photojournalism, painting, curating, and
returning to graduate
school later in life.
And how storytelling has remained the
connective thread throughout her work.
Join us as we dive into the reality of
maintaining an art career,
the often invisible business and
promotion work behind getting art seen.
And how creativity moves across
disciplines, including writing,
exhibitions, and new tools like AI.
If you're an artist thinking beyond the
studio about longevity, strategy, and
staying creatively alive, this
conversation is for you.
Lindsay, welcome to this episode.
Now, quick word from our sponsor, and
then we'll get right back to the show.
When I started selling my art, I had
absolutely no idea how to actually turn
it into a business, a
professional business.
And then I came across Art Storefronts,
and that was a game changer.
I've been a customer now for years, and
they've been instrumental every step of
the way of helping me succeed.
I have a gorgeous,
powerful commerce website.
I have marketing tools and a membership
to a community that
is very supportive and
teaches me how to succeed as an artist.
Check them out, artstorefronts.com, and
tell them how I sent you.
Welcome back, and I'm really excited.
My guest today is Lindsay Payton, and
Lindsay is an artist.
You paint primarily, but I think you also
do installation type art.
Lindsay has also done journalism, and
she is the director of a traveling
exhibitions company called Art2Art.
And so we'll talk about that as well.
Lindsay, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, and
thanks for having me today.
I'm so excited.
Let's start, wouldn't you tell us a
little bit about yourself,
your background, what you studied, how
you got into all the
things you got yourself
into?
[LAUGH]
Okay, great, yeah, so
thinking about that question,
cuz you get asked that a
lot, how did you get into art?
And I think, for me,
it kinda goes way back.
I had this really creative kind of
childhood where we have a lot of toys,
but we had big buckets
of crayons and clay, and
we were always writing a play
or doing something creative.
My grandmother was an artist, and so she
taught me how to draw a face
proportionally when I was 10 years old.
And then my mom signed me up for a
drawing class, and I was six.
But I feel like when I was in high
school, that's when I really had this
falling in love experience with painting.
I had this really amazing art teacher,
and we had a very unique kind of
class style where our teachers weren't
actually art teachers.
They were art professionals, and they
were doing an Atelier style teaching.
So she would be painting at her easel in
the middle of our classroom.
And we would get to see
her work through a painting.
And so that was just, it
was the coolest thing, and
I just really took a lot away from that.
And then it was my
senior year of high school.
We had this new guy come in,
and his name is Bob Moser, and
he's one of the best art teachers that
I've ever experienced
through college too.
That he built a dark room my very last
year of high school.
And I asked if I could take the class,
and my principal was like,
no, you can't because you
already have a full schedule.
And I was like, well,
can I audit the class?
And so I took photography
kind of like on the sly, can't.
[LAUGH] I was already like madly
in love with painting and
would skip classes to go
clean my paint brushes.
But then you get into the dark room, and
it's also this super magical experience
where you're seeing images kind of come
up to the top of the paper and
the dark and the water is trickling.
It's just this really cool experience.
So it kind of was doing both.
And then went to college to pursue
photojournalism because I was like,
well, I might as well keep
pushing forward with this.
And so that's kind of where
writing and photography and
I was still painting at home when I could
kind of came together.
And then I went back to school later and
to my grad school later
when I was turning 40.
And took painting, so I finally kind of
closed the chapter on that education
component, but I had been painting and
doing kind of art
adjacent work all that time.
So- Wow, okay.
I'm sorry.
I had a lot of questions.
No, I just, I'm trying.
I'm trying very hard
enough to like jump in.
It's awesome.
One of the things that, and you answered
it before I could even ask the question,
like it really sounded that you came from
an artistic family and one that really
encouraged your creativity early on.
And that's just kind of amazing.
That's, you're so
lucky that you had that.
And it's twofold in my opinion.
One of them is just
that you had the tools.
So you were provided, like you said, most
of your toys were like things that
encouraged creativity and that in itself,
and all kids are artists.
Where all kids want to scribble and it's
just like our first
form of communication.
But also it sounds like you had a lot of
positive role models,
starting with your grandmother and then
your teachers in high school.
And so you just have this like foundation
of like both having role models to look
up to, but also all the
resources to find your own voice.
That's- Yeah, I'm really grateful for it.
And I do feel like, you know, you kind of
look back on some of those people that
you've met throughout your life and
who've kind of shaped you.
And it's like if they hadn't, I mean,
like if that teacher hadn't come my last
year of high school and decided to build
a dark room and like a closet, you know,
like I would have never gotten into
photography and like, no.
So tell me about photojournalism.
You know, how did that
chapter in your life unfold?
Yeah.
Well, as I know, you love photojournalism
and photography too.
So, and I'm sure you also
have like dark room experiences.
But yeah, like I think that for me, the
magic was really like the dark room.
And I think I could have easily gone into
like fine art
photography, but I thought that
wasn't very practical.
So it was like the journalism was kind of
like second to me to that.
And I didn't, you know, I did end up
doing some photojournalism for a while.
But for me, like art has always been the
kind of like anchor
actual focus, you know,
like when I was in photography, I felt
like it was honing my
eye for my painting later.
And also like, I'm a big believer that
art shouldn't just
come from your studio and
like your other artists friends.
I think that art should come from life.
And that's one thing I really value about
journalism is it's
kind of a career that like
forces you to go out and like meet people
and learn about subjects that, you know,
maybe you have a beat, like I had a beat
of medicine that I
didn't know anything about.
And all the sudden I'm
learning all these things.
And then you end up
bringing that back into your art.
Yeah.
And so like, I really appreciate that
about artists who are
kind of drawing from life,
you know.
Photography feels like it has, inherently
has that storytelling component.
And since, you know, creative writing is
something that you gravitated towards
anyway, like writing
storytelling, it feels like
a, like it was a good match.
What made you go back to grad school?
Well, so, it was kind of, so when I
graduated from photo J,
like I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
it was a very intense program.
And like we started with like 500
students in our class and
then we whittled it down.
So when I graduated, it was maybe 10.
Wow.
Yeah, it was really intense.
And so like, you know, I just felt like I
was trying to survive
and that, and when I
got out, I was like, whew, I
did not want to do that at all.
Like that was crazy,
really intense, you know.
So I, I graduated and I started like a
construction company with my parents.
So we did stained concrete
floors for maybe five years.
And then I wanted to get back into art.
So I started teaching art after school.
And I also started, I was an assistant to
an art department at a high school.
So I kind of helped, I, I
ran the full darkroom there.
I helped with like
their screen printing lab.
I helped with the painting teachers and
the sculpture teachers.
And that was really fun, but I didn't
have the ability to like
move forward and teach.
That's when I was like at that school, I
started curating too,
because they had four galleries
and I had to keep the walls, you know,
managed or hung or
whatever at all times with student
work.
And I really fell in love with curating.
So then I started curating independently,
like around Houston,
which is my hometown.
And I also like ran a gallery for a year
that was painting and
sculpture and photography.
Wow.
Yeah.
And so I know I'm
like all over the place.
But again, like I, I realized that, you
know, I really loved curating.
I love teaching, but I did
not have the, the paper, right?
So like, I had kind of all that time
thought, well, maybe I
can get back to school or it
doesn't seem practical.
And I just was
constantly debating about it.
And finally I was talking to my mom and
she said, like, you
know, if you want to do it,
you should just do it.
And I'm like, okay, maybe in a couple of
years, she's like, no, now.
So you know, thanks
to mom for that advice.
Yeah.
So I, I finally just, you know, at the
time I was editing, I was
the editor at a newspaper
in Seattle and I had to kind of, you
know, sadly leave
because I loved that paper.
I didn't go to grad
school and in Washington state.
But it really was kind of like a, just a
leap of like faith and
trying to do something that
I knew I wanted to do, but that I had
kind of written off as
something that I wasn't
going to be able to do.
You know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, okay.
Curator, gallery owner, journalist,
painter, photographer, a lot of hats.
What are you most
passionate about right now?
I mean, it's just the root of painting.
It's painting was like I said, it's like
a fell in love with
experience and I just like
still feel that way about it.
You know, I, it's what I love to do.
I paint every day.
And it's the root of, you know, it's
like, I love curating,
but I'm always going to go
home and want to like go to my
easel, you know, that's just.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So curating, what is it about?
Like, I mean, we can describe it.
There's like a definition what curating
means, but what does it
mean to you curating and
what is it about
curating that appeals to you?
Yeah.
I think, you know, it was interesting
because when I first
started doing it at the high
school, I was like, Oh, this is kind of
like a whole new
creative process because you're
kind of seeing like what goes, you know,
what goes next to another
painting or kind of like
seeing common thoughts or common
aesthetics and piecing things together.
But then, you know, translating that to a
professional artist
and like really pulling
in work that was exciting to you.
And also like, you know, that enabled you
to go to artist studios and meet them and
see what they were working on.
What was exciting about that and start
pulling that together.
That was really exciting.
I wonder if you have any like a
particular story or two
about that process that were
meaningful for you.
Yeah.
Like, for example, there was a nonprofit
in Houston called
Space Taker and they opened
the gallery in their space and I was able
to curate their
inaugural show in that space,
which is like a pretty big honor for me.
And I had met, you know,
some different women artists.
So I brought in three different artists
who were looking at the body.
And it was so cool because, you know,
like one was one of my
really good friends, but
like two, you know, I was meeting and
getting to see their work
and then kind of bringing
those women, the three women together and
seeing them kind of
start vibing with each
other and dreaming up what they wanted
their show to look like.
It was just a really cool experience and
it's just creative and it's community and
it's just like, you know, supporting
other artists and kind of
shining a light on something
that you care about.
In that sense, it is a
very creative process.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Like I was like, you're painting, but
it's, you know, you're painting.
Yes.
Which is, you know, it's funny because
it's kind of like
installation in a way too.
It's like you're creating an environment,
but it's more collaborative.
You know, and it never like, I never
really thought about it
that way, but to some degree,
the curator is kind of like the link
between the artist and the community.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's exactly how I think of it.
And it's a really fun, it's really fun if
you can do it in that way.
And so now you are working with
exhibitions as well.
And I thought this would be a good
opportunity to talk a little
bit about this kind of niche
service that museums all use.
Pretty much every museum uses traveling
exhibitions to some degree,
but being an artist who's,
you know, from the outside, nobody really
knows about it unless you've been part of
it.
So let's talk about that for a minute.
Do you want to talk a little bit about
what it is that you do
and what does traveling
exhibitions mean?
Yeah, no, it's interesting what you say
because I think it is kind
of like not something that
you would realize.
I didn't realize it
until I was in the field.
But, you know, I work for Art2Art, which
is a traveling
exhibitions company that's focused
on photography.
And we rent shows to
museums all over the country.
And this is such a great service because
basically it's like a
ready-made show that comes in
a box.
And you get to work with some interesting
people, you know, aside
from the museum people,
there's also like
organizations like Magnum Photos.
And Magnum Photos is amazing.
And then just meeting like really
interesting artists.
I personally felt like I learned a lot
from being part of that world.
And me personally, I've also
worked in retail galleries.
And seeing how different that is, that
something that might
resonate with collectors might
not necessarily resonate with museums
because they have different needs.
I think it adds, overall, it adds to the
idea that art in
general is very subjective.
So with all of the different things that
you've done, all the
different paths and where you
are right now, how would you define,
personally define success for yourself?
And how has it evolved over time?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I think for me right now, success means
having time to paint.
And I'm sure that's something that
resonates with a lot of people.
I think that when I was younger, I really
wanted to be famous and make money and do
all these, have shows that
were all across the country.
That's what I thought
were markers of success.
The truth is having time to be in your
studio and not feeling
like, "Oh, I just have to
squeeze in this hour
because that's all I have."
Or like, "I'm so stressed out that I'm
painting, but I'm not
really able to mentally be there.
I'm not present."
Real success, I feel, is having some
control over your time and
also having your creativity
be part of your life and not just feeling
like work is your whole life.
Making time for yourself to have
creativity, I think, is success.
And that has definitely
changed over time for me.
What inspires you?
What gets you to stay creative?
Yeah, I think it's a
few different things.
I think one thing that's always been true
for me is I'm really
driven by music and I'm
always interested in performing arts too,
like dance and theater.
I love to see other people's creativity.
I think that's a big inspiration for me.
Even as silly as it sounds, being on
Instagram and having your
friends post what they're
working on and you're
like, "Oh, that's so exciting."
It makes me want to do stuff too.
I think being part of the community, you
and I have talked about
that, is really important
too and it keeps you working.
Do you ever get stretches of time where
you just have a
creative block or you're not...
Has that happened to you?
100%.
Yeah.
I love that.
I feel like that's like...
It's such a real thing and it's something
that isn't always talked about.
One thing that I think is key is to say,
"That's okay," and take time off.
Even say, "I'm not allowed to paint for a
week," and just give
yourself a real break.
And then another thing is
I will do small studies.
I've always done that.
Basically, it's like playing
scales when you're a musician.
Maybe you're not writing music, but
you're playing your
scales and you're working your
fingers on the guitar,
but nothing's coming out.
But at least you're, as they call it,
building your chops.
That's what I do.
Maybe I'm not feeling really creative, so
I'm just cranking out
still lifes for a year.
I think that's really important.
Then the other thing,
so give yourself a break.
Give yourself time just to work on skills
and then visually feed yourself.
So, go to museums or read books about
artists that you like or
look at art that inspires
you and let that fill your tank for a
while and I think
something will come out of that
eventually.
What are your goals
for your art personally?
Are you exhibiting, selling?
Or is it just something
that you do for yourself?
Yeah, I think it's all of the above.
I really come to realize how important it
is just for my own mental health to paint
regularly and do that because
it's such a core of who I am.
I definitely see it as valid if it were
just me and the painting
and I finish them, I roll
them up and put them under my bed.
That's fine.
I just moved to New York maybe three
years ago and so I've had
a couple of shows in the
Hudson Valley, so that's been really fun.
That's really cool.
I'm actually building a little commerce-y
kind of website right now.
My goal is in the beginning of the year
to have that as a
platform for selling too.
I've often had a way to sell smaller
paintings, but I like to
have affordable art too.
Maybe since I'm on a podcast that you
don't know my art, but it's really big
and all-encompassing,
so it's not something that you
necessarily sell what I would show.
It's been multifaceted parts of my life.
I recall that you also, your toolbox,
your trade toolbox, you've
done marketing or promotional
for artists, right?
In addition to my other stuff, basically
what happened was when
I got out of college and
I had the journalism degree, I had
learned some PR stuff too.
I would have a show in Houston and all
these people would come
to the show because I wrote
a press release for it and
sent it out to the newspaper.
Other artists would come up to me and
say, "How did you do that?
Can you help me do that?"
What ended up happening
is that I built a company.
I had my own company for a while doing PR
for artists and it
ended up being really cool.
I also worked for museums doing that and
small businesses and
just creative people.
It was really fun and, again, promoting
other people's art and arts in general.
Even I worked for a melodrama company.
Different people were
just a mom's fitness company.
Just different people were doing their
own thing and that was really fun too.
Maybe I'm speaking just for myself, but
having both the creative
writing but also the journalism
background is so ideal for writing press
releases, especially if
you actually know the art.
For somebody who wants to be able to tap
into that, what advice would you give?
I think it's something that I've heard
you address on your podcast before.
It's like you're an artist and then that
means that you're a
business owner too because you're
running the business of
your hava's art or whatever.
It is something that I think you really
do have to
compartmentalize and think that way.
It's like I would tell people if you're
having a show, it's like
if you don't tell people
that it's happening, nobody
knows that it's happening.
People also will say,
"Well, nobody's buying my art."
It's like, "Well, how do they buy it?"
You have to get it out there somehow.
I think luckily these days, which is
different from when I
started out, we were just trying
to get press releases
into newspapers and like-
I'm axing them press releases.
Yeah, exactly.
And then calling the radio station and
seeing if they would
do a PSA for a museum.
And nowadays, you have social media.
So it's like you really have this power
to reach a lot of people.
Now at the same time, everybody is over
inundated with mold and stuff.
And there's the
algorithms and blah, blah, blah.
So you can kind of get lost still.
So it's a question of how
do you reach out to people?
And that's basically what PR is.
It's like how do you reach out to people
and get them to know what you're doing?
And I think that it's
worth thinking about.
That would be my advice.
Definitely take the time to consider how
am I reaching my audience?
Do they know that I'm showing?
Do they know that I'm
trying to sell my work?
And take the time to do that well.
Whether that means hiring someone to take
a photo of your work,
which is something that
I kick myself sometimes for
not doing when I had a show.
I'm like, why didn't I hire a
professional photographer?
Or getting a public
relations person to help you.
Or checking a book out from the library
that tells you how to do that.
It's just find a way to take a little
extra time to make
sure that you're doing it.
Because otherwise people just don't know.
A lot of times there's that misconception
of like, if I build they will come.
But no, that's not enough.
Because I have to lead them.
You have to lead them.
I'm curious with your background in
writing, journalism, PR.
I'm curious what your thoughts are on AI.
Yeah, for writing, I can see it as a very
helpful tool for artists who can't write.
But it basically eliminates the need for
my PR business that I had, for example.
It definitely has negatively
affected the newspaper industry.
I'm not like, as an artist,
I'm not as threatened by it.
I know a lot of artists are really
worried about it because
they're like, look at the
paintings it can do.
But I don't see that as the reason why
people connect with art.
That's a really good point.
Yeah, it was a good point.
That's a good point.
You want to connect with the artist and
there's this human
emotion that you're interested
in.
So I don't really see it
as a threat in that way.
I don't think people are
going to buy AI painting.
I mean, I could be
totally wrong like this.
But I do see it as an important tool in
the science perspective.
My niece is going to grad school right
now in a more medical
kind of research field.
And she's using it to run all these lab
samples to try to
find cures for epilepsy.
I just think that it's
going to have a much wider role.
And I think it's something
that's still to be realized.
I don't think it's something that we need
to do everything for
us kind of the way it's
being pushed.
It doesn't need to do
all of our Google searches.
But great if it could be
used for a greater purpose.
Yeah.
I really like that point you made because
for me, I do see it
as a tool primarily to
help me with things
that I'm not very good at.
My emails have gotten so professional now
because I'll write what I need to say and
then I will ask ChatGPT to
make it polite and professional.
That really helps.
And it does help me
polish my artist statement.
And I'm typically really blown away with
how that comes together.
I even mentioned it to ChatGPT.
How are you doing that?
It just really sounds like there's some
consciousness behind here.
Assured me that there
is no awareness there.
They're really good at
creating meaning through language.
It's a language model.
I think what's really interesting about
it, it's kind of like
you and I went to this AI
museum.
Oh my gosh, the other...
Yeah.
And that really got me thinking about it
in an interesting way.
I am interested in it as a tool.
That museum was
questioning what is it drawing from.
For me personally, it's
not replacing humanity.
If anything, it
brings out my own humanity.
And it's a mirror.
It reflects back what you put in there.
It reflects your tone.
It's very good at predicting what you
want to in what you're doing.
For me personally, I find it a benevolent
and very, very useful tool.
Though I do see how it's putting a whole
industry or several
industries out of business.
I think it's going to put several
industries out of business.
And I think that the writers are the
first people who have
kind of sounded the alarm
like that's what was
happening with the SAG strike.
It's interesting.
I think that it's like you said, I think
if people understand
that that's a tool that
is reflecting them,
that's kind of the key.
It's like you could do the...
There's a writing trick where you just
take a tape recorder and
record your thoughts and
then listen to them and then use that to
inform your artist statement or whatever.
And that's essentially what you're doing.
It's just kind of helping
you see the connections.
But I really do believe that that's kind
of why we look at art.
It's just why we listen to music.
It's like, "Oh, somebody
else feels what I feel."
Or, "I never thought of that."
Or whatever.
We're looking for a connection to
somebody and a human understanding.
Yeah.
I like that.
So if somebody wanted to learn more about
you, where can they find you?
Yeah, lindsaypateantart.com.
I think that's it.
Yeah.
It's lindsaypateantlpgalorie.art.
Yes.
When we will put those in the notes.
Are you on social media?
Yes.
And I'm on social media.
I think it's Lindsay Paton Art as well.
Do you have any exhibitions
coming up or anything that's...
I'm currently about the Woodstock Art
Alliance and Museum.
And I just had a show at the Jane Street
Art Center in Socrates,
which is a really cool
woman-owned gallery.
So, yeah.
That's fingers crossed for
getting from the future yet.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Well, conversation and good luck to you.
Thank you so much, Hava.
Thanks again for tuning in.
That's our episode.
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And before we go, I want to give a huge
shout out to our sponsor
and producer, Art Storefronts.
If you've been thinking about turning
your art into a real
business or just want to level
up your online presence, now is honestly
the best time, especially
with the holiday selling
season coming up in Q4.
I can't stress this enough.
Art Storefronts isn't
just a website builder.
They're a full-blown
partner for your art business.
They give you the tools, education and
marketing support to
actually make sales, not just sit
online and hope.
And if you're unsure whether your art
will sell, no worries.
Just head to
artstorefronts.com and sign up for a demo.
They'll give you a free art review and a
marketing assessment of
your art to show you exactly
what's possible.
So go to artstorefronts.com, tell them
Hava sent you and I'll
catch you on the next episode.