Meet Emily Bourassa

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emily Bourassa a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Emily, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

I have three lists hanging on the wall in my studio, and they’re embarrassing enough that I hang them up behind the door, so that no one sees them. I keep them on the wall even though I really don’t want you to see them, because they’re a really powerful tool for me. The titles are Grow, Learn, and Achieve, and there are 10 or more things listed out for each of those areas. Creativity is elusive, and it’s a moving target. Somedays I’ll be really focused on a project and then a week later, I’ll want nothing to do with it? But then I’ll pick it back up six months later? You can easily lose focus and get frustrated like this. Enter the lists. They help me identify and separate barriers to creativity. Here’s an example- one thing that is crossed off the list is “repeat patterns.” I had a feeling my work would be good for a repeat pattern, but didn’t really know how to make one. It needed to go on the “Learn” list so that I could focus on the creative aspect, rather than the learning aspect. Separating out the piece that needed its own space and time, learning how to create a repeating pattern, allowed me to continue to generate ideas for patterns without getting stuck on the fact that I didn’t even know how to make one. It sat on the list for awhile, while I happily painted all of the things that would eventually go into a pattern, and one day, I had an abundance of small paintings and the desire to actually figure this pattern stuff out, and I sat down and did it. I like to think of this as untangling learning from creating- or identifying technical skills vs pure creative flow- because those technical skills have a way of tangling themselves up in the creative places, and showing up at the wrong time.
Beyond the lists, I like to keep myself active in artistic places that are not visual art. For me, it’s mostly books. Reading fires my imagination brain, and I’ll start to see pieces reveal themselves while I’m in the middle of a book. Recently, I was reading Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik and I kept picturing the Hollywood literary party scene in the 1960s and what did that look and feel like? Last week I finished a pattern filled with this type of painting- lipstick stained cigarettes, cocktail garnishes on the table, wrinkled napkins- glamorous party detritus. I try not to look at what’s on the market until after I generate my ideas, and create mood boards, or gather references, so that I can carry out my own vision and not worry about what other artists are doing.

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

I start all of my Day in the Life videos the same way, I’m an artist, a mom, and a grad student. I am a freelance illustrator- focusing on paper goods & patterns right now. I am getting my MFA in Illustration from Savannah College of Art and Design, and I am mom to two kids! We live in Hermosa Beach, CA, quite a distance from Savannah- so all of my classes are online and it’s the best. I sell my work on my website, and share painting and drawing tips on my socials.

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?

Three important things for artists:

Let yourself suck. There will always be a time when you are learning something new, or trying something new and it will not look good, and it will feel even worse. If I’m really struggling with it, I tell myself, “this is the moment where it sucks!” Sometimes, I’ll tell myself, it’s just underdeveloped! Like, right now, I want to start creating on You Tube, but I don’t really have the time to sit down and focus on developing those skills. So instead of thinking, I suck at starting my You Tube, I remind myself that it’s an area of growth and learning that is underdeveloped.

Find a way to measure your progress that works for you. When I first started learning to draw and paint I saw SO MUCH advice telling me to draw everyday! A little bit daily! Just ten minutes a day! It was so enthusiastic and it seemed so simple! Except I already had a thousand things to “simply do” everyday, that it wasn’t simple to add one more thing to the list. It felt like a chore, and that I was failing at something that should be easy. Instead, I started thinking of things in terms of hours- did I get my hours in this week/this month? Because it was a lot easier for me to get practice done in large spurts of energy once or twice a week, rather than daily- and it all adds up to the same in the end.

Embrace the intermediate. I don’t see people talking about this phase too much- there is a ton of energy towards starting making art, and then a similar amount of energy in turning your art into a business. I guess those two things are a lot more marketable/exciting? It makes sense too, because the middle is messy, and everyone is at a different point in their development, so there is no universal approach. But in a sense, we exist in the intermediate into perpetuity!? Show me one artist that isn’t trying something new, or has a gap in their learning somewhere and could spend time improving. Even the greatest of the greats have things they are working towards.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

Ouch, this one is tricky. My current obstacle is my own self. I like to take on 30 things at a time and then inch them all forward. The good news, is that every few years, I hit my goals all at the same time, do a victory lap, and then start it all back up again. The bad news is that I feel spread thin most of the time and confuse everyone around me!? I’m sorry to my loved ones! My people know that this is how I function and that it will work out. But yeah, I like to keep it really interesting for myself and take on too much and stress myself out. I weirdly get a lot done this way. It’s like living at a buffet and only taking small bites of everything rather than eating one meal at a time.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Molly Lowe-White
Raegan Waite

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