Meet Jenny Phillips

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jenny Phillips. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jenny below.

Jenny, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?

Variety. It’s very easy as an artist to get stuck in a bit of a rut, especially with pressures from Social Media. I used to spend a lot of time comparing myself to others and allowing the pressure from trying to please an algorithm by doing the same thing every day. It has been so stifling that it would massively impact how creative I could be. Ever since I said “you know what, I don’t want to get stuck in this little box” and started adding variety to my artwork, I found my creativity to be more alive than ever. Whether that’s trying a new medium or practicing a different style, that simple activity really fires my brain up!

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

My everyday is made up from art practice, painting, drawing and being generally creative. I also work as a part time laboratory technician. I love science and being a part of that is really cool.

One of the things I am most proud of from my career as an artist, however, is the founding of a beautiful community called the Inspiration to Creation Collective. It’s something that I created about a year ago with the mission to connect fellow artists with each other with regular online hang ups. Something I realised was that many artists go about things on their own. Creating with friends isn’t that common, so we can feel quite isolated. By setting up a space away from social media pressures, where we can grab our art supplies and switch on zoom each week to hang out with friends, I have seen artists really open up and blossom. I am so in awe of all of them. We are always looking for new folks to join us, so the invitation is open to all artists looking for a bit of support and care!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Resilience, rest and trying EVERYTHING. When I first started out, I had no idea what to expect. I was pretty new to being a professional artist, I had no idea about marketing, business, anything. But all of those things can be learned. You just have to say YES to knowledge and opportunity.

Next, you have to be able to look after yourself. You’ll never be able to keep going when times are tough without actually stopping and having a break once in a while. I kind of learned this the hard way by working pretty much daily on my art career for months straight and feeling exhausted and unproductive. But when I began to welcome rest, I felt so much more growth.

The last thing is resilience. Being able to take a knock on the chin and know to get back up again is a difficult trait, but it’s essential. And it’s something I will keep with me forever. Nothing keeps me down for long any more.

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?

This is a very familiar feeling for me. Like you have a dozen computer screens and they’re all running something different. A million projects on the go, nothing finished. List, after list, after list.

Honestly, the first thing I do is stop. I assess and I think “which of these things needs my attention the soonest?”. And I find the easiest, quickest thing to tick off the list so I feel that sense of accomplishment.

There’s also the 3, 3, 3 rule which I love. In a day, you should only ever aim to spend 3 hours on your most important project, finish 3 smaller tasks you’ve been avoiding and do 3 maintenance tasks (like chores around the house, or things that help keep life in order). Being able to make progress and keeping it as manageable as possible massively helps with overwhelm.

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Image Credits

All images are my own.

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