Meet Lily Roman

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

Lily, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

When it comes to my art, the confidence I’ve gained is first and foremost this:

When I muse on the brains capacity to have endless potential, even an imperfect brain, it gives me great confidence that my thoughts and feelings directly impact what I create. Thus, whether it becomes something considered beautiful or ugly doesn’t really matter, because I’m listen to my creative voice and allowing myself to connect with other humans through the outcome. This fascinates me!

I’ve also gained more confidence and self through therapy. Some people say art is therapeutic. And I wholeheartedly support that! For myself, taking a dive into another form of therapy, EMDR specifically, really aided me in discovering subconscious, negative thinking patterns that were unknowingly stifling my creativity.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Professionally I have two main interests. I am a painter of exciting, colorful portraits and other figurative works, but I also do some work as an ASL interpreter. I think this is important to mention this as some Creatives feel that if they are not working as an artist full-time then they can’t make a success of it. For myself, I have a sweet balance. Not to say that I would never work longer hours with my art, but I currently find purpose and satisfaction as an interpreter in the Deaf community as well, so I’m not ready to give that up just yet. Also, I feel the two professions, while different, really are quite symbiotic. Creating helps me feel good, feel alive, energized, so many things really. When I pause my art and begin an interpreting job I’m in an even better place to give in this way. Then, interpreting helps me grow in my compassion for mankind. When I vicariously experience firsthand the oppression and frustrations experienced by the seriously marginalized, it helps me feel more in tune with humanity, which I believe is essential to form truly meaningful connections with others through my art.

More specifically about my art, my most recent burst of excitement seemingly sprang out of nowhere. With my portraits I recently started to exaggeratedly elongate their collars. The “cat collars” as I call them (because they remind me of my cats huge ears!), started as a way for me to feel like the kitties were “in” the paintings. Yet, I kept having this pull to make the collars really long and I feel this is a metaphor symbolizing the desire for the good moments to never ever end. I believe in eternity. Even though it’s not what we are currently experiencing of course, I do believe a time will come when our desire to live continuously will be a reality. For now, our desire for life’s wonderful moments to never end is currently reflected in these long collars. If it’s a passing phase or part of my brand is yet to be determined, but I personally love the feel.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Color, Courage, Curiosity.

Do not be afraid of color. Do not try to look at a photo and paint it to look like that photo. Try something different! You don’t know what you want to try? Research art online or in the library. Find art that speaks to you, that makes you feel good and then you can learn what kind of art you want to create. Do not copying others, but learn from their techniques, their use of color, symbols, shapes, mediums. Perhaps even try to create something for yourself that uses some of the techniques you see others use. When you finish, how do you feel? Do you love it? Why? Do you hate it? Why? Feel nothing? Why? Be courageous and curious enough to learn about yourself.

Tell us what your ideal client would be like?

At this stage, for me, the ideal client would be someone that gave me total creative freedom (within reason of course). I imagine this is understandably hard to come by! I am really in the thick of developing my true expression, so when I take on a commission and the client has a very specific outline of what they want with color, composition, style etc. If the piece is micromanaged I find it so much more challenging to put the emotion into it that would make me feel excited to start and satisfied at completion. And yet, commission work is largely about the client’s satisfaction, not mine! Still, I would love someone to trust me enough to say something like “Here’s a theme, here is a color palette, now have at it!”

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Credit to Robb Webb for the studio shot.

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