We’re looking forward to introducing you to Kate Sullivan. Check out our conversation below.
Kate, really appreciate you sharing your stories and insights with us. The world would have so much more understanding and empathy if we all were a bit more open about our stories and how they have helped shaped our journey and worldview. Let’s jump in with a fun one: Are you walking a path—or wandering?
I have finally begun to see the pattern of my creative life. I have found joy and discovery in many different areas. If anyone asks, I would tell them I am a musician first. But wait, I have spent several years deep into painting. And then shortly before COVID, I started to take my writing seriously. At that point, I had spent a few years playing and singing bossa nova jazz. It was lots of fun, but, I there came a point when I really didn’t want to be out playing gigs at night. I decided to rekindle my love of writing.
I spent the next five plus years, taking courses in poetry, prose poetry, flash fiction…whatever grabbed my fancy. I have published in many literary journals and recently published SMOKE and MIRRORS (available at Bookshop.org), a collection of writings and paintings. But I could feel the tug of music. I can’t live without it.
I have read advice over the years, that an artist must choose one path and let other interests go. I could not.
I cannot live without all three. They just shift position from time to time!
I have finally landed on the metaphor for all of this.
Several years ago I visited a small town in southern France, which is surrounded by water, the tributaries of rivers that flow from the mountain, especially from “La Fontaine de Vaucluse”, which is the source. The ‘fountain’ is so deep, not even Jacques Cousteau, in his submersible submarine, was able to find the bottom. The fountain is steeped in magic and myth, entrancing ancient Romans as well as modern tourists.
I swim in three rivers of my own creation, each one vital to my existence. The rivers merge and separate, flow around ideas and curiosity. I can sense when a river is drying up, when I’m exhausted by one and the other two are calling.
The source of creativity is a mystery. Vaucluse is a perfect metaphor.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
The Wanderings of a Creator
I was playing tennis at the local playground when a truck with the logo YOU DUMP IT, WE PUMP IT, drove slowly over the nearby basketball court. I was serving 0-40, feeling a bit overwhelmed, but I couldn’t help but notice that the porta-potty guy was singing a happy little tune to himself as he maneuvered his truck close enough to pump it out.
Would he say that his job made him sing, that he enjoyed the steadiness of his work, the satisfaction of a singular job well done, the peace of it all?
Made me wonder, what I would write about my work…that every year I plan to get control of the chaos in the upstairs bedroom I use for a studio, that I will turn over a new fall leaf, organize the art supplies, put the charcoals and pastels in one place, the acrylics and oils in another. Then I will set up the digital piano again, hook it up to the computer (if I can remember how), so I will be able to write the music for videos and any string quartet that might occur to me. And I will remove all the works on paper from the flat files – catalog them, then put them back in the file, organized by medium or by year. Then I will neaten up the writing journals and the smooth-as-silk pens on the writing table, which will have to be moved to make room for the keyboard. I will also perhaps think about finishing that memoir or try to wrestle again with that screenplay I wrote ten years ago.
Then I would move my guitar, which I haven’t been playing lately, into the corner nearer to the art cabinet, being careful not to block the door to the supplies, which all leads me every year to wonder…am I the scholar? the loafer? the linguist? the guitarist? the piano-playing singing/schmoozing entertainer? the one who never really learned how to practice and can’t play a classical piece without the same mistakes over and over? the mother? the playright? the stage performer? the disappearer? the traveler? the poet? the cartoonist? the lover of Latin? the one who went out on limbs many others would not have? the one who suffered for that? soared because of that? the defensive youngest of a large family? the more ignored and therefore more liberated member of a large family? the high flying real estate investor? the utterly lost bankruptcy declarer? the composer of a piece played in Carnegie Hall by the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra? …the one who played the musical saw in the NY subway? the one who can feel worthless in contrast to others? the winner of prizes? the loser of self-esteem? the flake? the steady-as-she-goes, disciplined creator of things, the one who is filled with quiet, lady-like rage at being perceived as a flake? the author of children’s books? the painter of portraits? the one with money, the one without money, the one with compassion for having been there, the one who is critical, the life of the party, the one who’d rather be alone? the one whose eyes can now fill with tears at the oddest times because of the vulnerability of us all?
Or would it just be better to back the truck up to the porta-potty, attach the hose and sing a simpler song?
Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. Who saw you clearly before you could see yourself?
I was the fifth of six children in a boisterous Irish Catholic family. Piano lessons were a requirement. (Thanks, Mother) Humor and performance were part of life. (Thanks, Dad). I came of age in the sixties which shook the culture and caused a tectonic shift in norms.
Younger children in large families are always freed a bit from the old order. My older siblings were part of a former story. That, and the fact that my younger brother faced serious health issues, left me on my own, free up from how life was ‘supposed to go’ – although not quite as much of many of my contemporaries, who were questioning deeply the role of women, marriage, cultural expectations etc. etc.
I missed that memo, married at age 20 and went on to have four beautiful children.
At midlife, I began to undergo a great rumble of awakening, an earthquake of an upheaval. It was during this period that it became clear to me that I was called to be a creator. I passed up a steady job to teach Spanish in a ritzy public school in favor of writing songs, creating and producing plays and on and on. My mother worried. (I worried, when I wasn’t flying high!) My siblings worried. I worried too, but there was no closing the door once I had opened it.
Along the way, my aunt Joan reached out. She had been a nun for many years, but had gone through her own life explosion, leaving the convent and landing as professor of the classics at the University of Southern Illinois in Carbondale. Her support gave me the quiet message that I had to follow my path. She did me the favor of paying too much money for one of my first paintings, and sent encouraging notes (with checks enclosed).
I was able to thank her years later when she moved to my town to spend her last years. My husband and I ushered her through several beautiful years, then onward towards her peaceful death. She changed my life. I will be forever grateful to dear Aunt Joan.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Writers are storytellers, tellers of tall and not-so-tall tales. We tell what happened, what didn’t happen, what would never happen, what we’d like to have happen. Sometimes we admit our faults, sometimes we whitewash the truth, sometimes we embellish or diminish. We use semicolons, then erase them, quotation marks, then italics, line breaks, run-one, stream-of-consciousness or stunted stubs of sentences.
Words are magical. They can be arranged, rearranged, deleted, strung together to make us laugh, cry and wonder why.
After we have massaged, edited, amended, deleted, un-deleted, changed the beginning, or the ending, removed what we thought was the middle, put that middle at the end; after all that, we send it off to literary magazines, hoping one will agree that what we’ve crafted is as good as we think it is. The response is often, ‘Thank you for the opportunity to read your piece, but we have decided it is not for us etc. etc.’
Getting published is a slow, humbling experience. And of course, painting, music, all present the same pitfalls. We make stabs to express what we’re feeling.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What truths are so foundational in your life that you rarely articulate them?
People are walking storybooks. Every person I see on the sidewalk, in our little movie theater, the hardware store, or in our second home, the grocery store – every person has a unique face, a unique world they have knitted together over many years.
I’m starting to resemble the old person in the Progressive ads, the ones where Dr. Rick is trying to teach 40-somethings how not to act like their parents. I stop to talk with strangers, sharing small laughs, similar experiences, lamenting sorrows. People soften. They feel seen.
Newborns will stare you down in the most glorious way, not yet having been taught that you’re not supposed to stare. Babies, glowing with innocence and holiness, are the unassailable proof of the divine. But it doesn’t stop there. We are all part of the universal company of souls – all weaving our stories here on earth – some in ways strain the connection to a kindness of spirit, but I steer clear of that. I’m no psychotherapist.
I have painted and sketched many faces. I’m not interested in formal portraiture. I prefer the brief capture of the mystery of us all.
Three years ago, I began to write on Substack, to capture the many stories that surround all the creative work I’ve done. This project has been a delight!
And of course, the new work continues.
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
Life can be difficult. My Irish culture (and my father) gave me the gift of humor. A good laugh can help us take ourselves less seriously. Life is short and in the grand scheme of things, we are not as important as we might think! Humility wins the day. Humor and kindness can alleviate the sadness and suffering that we all experience from time to time.
People have enjoyed the fruits of my creative work for years, from singing to acting to writing to painting, but I will be very pleased if people remember me more for the joyous contrails of laughter and kindness.
Contact Info:
- Website: sullyarts.substack.com; sullyarts.com
- Instagram: @sullyarts
- Facebook: sullyarts
- Youtube: @SullyArtsVideos
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