We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rebekah Molander a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Rebekah, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
That’s an easy and a hard question at the same time. The very simple answer is you follow your passion and it becomes your purpose. I remember being passionate about art and creating when I was 5. All I ever wanted to do was look at the ordinary things that everyone looks at and just walks past and make them into something special, something that wasn’t ordinary, something that made people stop and actually look at it. It wasn’t until high school that I really started painting, and that’s when I realized when I wasn’t painting what I was told to paint, that it was actually easier for me to lay my thoughts and feelings out than it was to actually talk to people. I mean, we can talk all day long and not actually say anything, but painting truly says something for me.
Back to the question, finding a purpose wasn’t hard, pursuing it, as an adult, and making it a profession, is what took me so long to figure out.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
It didn’t take me long in life to fall in love with art, to know I wanted to spend my life creating things, pouring my heart onto canvas, but it did take me a long time to actually get here. In fact when I was 18 I almost completely gave up on the dream. After high school I got into the only two art colleges I applied to, I even got a pretty great scholarship and grants from one of the schools, which was great, because I was currently not in a place where I could afford it, but in the end, I let the people who didn’t believe in me too far into my head, and I stopped believing in myself, and I didn’t go.
Spencer, who by the way will always be the greatest thing I ever created, came along when I was twenty. He changed my whole world. He was my purpose, as cheesy as that sounds, it’s true. Everything in my life was for him and about him, and he reminded me how strong I was capable of being.
I hear people say your twenties are your time to be selfish. It’s a time where it’s ok to make mistakes and learn to live. I went a different way in my twenties, I think they were the most serious time of my life. The first part of my twenties I was learning more to survive than to live, and the second half I spent learning how to live with a chronic illness.
It wasn’t till my mid thirties I started learning there was more to life than this survival mode, that there was a big difference between living and surviving.
I was around thirty five the first time I really picked up a paint brush since high school, and it was my husband Todd who came home from work and asked me why I wasn’t doing something with this.
Let me back up and say I met Todd the day I was supposed to leave for college, but didn’t. I believe with all my heart, I may not have not gone for the right reason, lack of belief in myself, but not going was the greatest decision of my life. If I could go back I would not go again, because not going put Todd and Spencer in my life, and wherever they are, is where I belong and is the only place I want to be.
Continuing forward, the answer to Todd’s question was most people don’t get to spend their life doing what they love, only a very lucky few get to actually make money from art and I can’t do that. I don’t even know from here how to even be a part of the art world.
All he said was, but you haven’t tired. Just try.
So I made him, and myself a promise, that I would try, and I looked into a few things and it turns out Houston has the most amazing art scene. Sawyer Yards in Houston is one of the Largest Working Artist Complexes in All of America. Trading off first place on and off only with California. So we made a plan to go walk around Sawyer Yards during Second Saturday Open Studios, and go to some First Saturday Art’s Events, and talk to some people and try and figure out how to get into something, and that’s when COVID hit, and it all shut down.
I spent 2020 locked in our house ordering art supplies off Amazon and painting anything I could. I painted murals on our walls, I sanded down furniture and repainted it, I painted our countertops and I painted our trash cans, and I painted a few canvases too. By August things were starting to open up a little bit, and that’s when I decided if I can’t get myself into this Art World right now, I can at least try and promote it, that would at least be being close to it. So I emailed Rod, from 94.5 the Buzz’s Rod Ryan Show and I asked him to please when you tell people to shop local and eat local these businesses need you right now, please tell them to Art Local. Artists need people to come back too.
Not only did he tell people to Art Local, but he told people to look me up, like I was a real artist. And people did, and I sold my very first painting that day to one of his listeners while he was on the air. But then he emailed his good buddy Taft McWhorter about me, and that’s where everything really changed for me.
Taft and Dana McWhorter have built their life around their philosophy that has become their family’s mantra “Pursue Your Passion”
I have no idea why Rod actually read my email and got involved. Three years later I still don’t know why Taft called me and spent so much time talking to me about the business side of art and how if it’s what I love it is a possible goal, it’s not just for the lucky few who make it, it’s there for anyone who has a true passion and is truly willing to pursue it, it’s a real life him and Dana are living.
So I followed everything Taft and Dana said to me about the business side, I already knew how to paint, but I had no idea how to be a business. They didn’t help me get my LLC, they said I needed one, so I looked it up, I put in the time, I figured it out. They didn’t tell me how to build a website, they told me I needed one, so I learned to make a website. In January of 2021 Taft and Dana invited me to be a part of their Artist Collective “The Seekers”. They took a chance on me and believed in me and gave me a space to actually display my art.
Fast forward a couple of years and I am still so proud to be part of “The Seekers” I have put over 115 pieces of my original art in homes, I’ve been featured in several local papers and The Houston Chronicle, I have followed in Taft and Dana’s foot steps and started painting live to use my art to help raise money for several charities. On March 9th the Duo Exhibit “Painting Out Loud” opened at Glade Gallery in The Woodlands featuring the art works of Taft McWhorter and Rebekah Molander, side by side my art hangs in a fine art gallery next to my very good friend and mentor.
This was my dream my whole life, and here I am living my #ArtLife, with my husband and son right here with me through every moment of it, because nothing in life is really worth it if you can’t have the people you love most in life there with you when you do it.
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?
I think the most important thing I was ever told was to “Pursue Your Passion”. But what does that really mean, let’s start with the part that says YOUR passion, it’s not about what someone else sees you being capable of, their goals or dreams for you. “Pursue YOUR Passion”
For me, Art is all about connection. I always tell people a piece of my art is a piece of my heart. A real connection is honest, and for people to connect with my art, I pour my honest heart onto the canvas. For someone who talks so much, it’s funny that I’m really not always great with my words, but where my words fail to express my true feelings and emotions is where the paint speaks. My art is just a collection of all my thoughts and dreams and feelings and stories I have never been able to figure out how to put into words, so I just put them on canvas and draw a line around them. And when someone else sees them, and you can see it in them, they get it, in painting my emotions, I painted theirs, and that is the most honest connection. It’s truly incredible.
Mistakes are how we learn. This was my favorite thing to say to Spencer when he was little. He used to get so frustrated with himself when he couldn’t get something right the first time, or even the second or third time sometimes. I think I must have said “it’s ok to make mistakes, mistakes are how we learn” thousands of times, I finally heard it and got it for myself just in the last year. Every painting doesn’t have to be good. It’s ok to make bad art. Don’t be so hard on yourself, don’t be so mean to yourself, so this one is bad, paint over it, it’s just paint.
I feel bad wasting paint and materials. I wasted time, the art looks bad, now I have to paint over it, more paint, more money all wasted… But it’s not. It’s not a waste, none of it is, it’s a period of learning and a period of growth and you don’t move forward without going through it. It’s ok to make mistakes, it’s ok to make bad art, it’s not ok to stop and give up. Just remember, Practice and Practice and Practice makes improvement, perfect isn’t real and it isn’t the goal.
What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?
Yes. Yes I think it’s good to know your strengths and lean into them. Yes, I think it’s important to constantly learn and grow and continue to change and evolve.
Just over three years ago I saw my first Acrylic Pour Painting. The colors, the movement, I was drawn to everything about it. I spent three months learning to mix paint to get it to the right consistency, if it’s too thick, it mixes like mud and sits like a glob and doesn’t move, too thin and you just have colored water. Once I figured out the right recipe for the right consistency for me, I had to learn how to control it, you can’t work with it like regular acrylic paint, you don’t put a brush in it, you pour it on the canvas and move it around with air. It’s a totally different thing.
Three years later I’m still doing Acrylic Pours but I’ve made them mine. I learned something and I still love them, I still do them, but very rarely do I do them in a traditional way. My art with them has grown and changed as I have over the years.
One year ago I didn’t know how to use resin. I ruined a small handful of paintings teaching myself to use it. Once I did though, I took that and kept moving, I learned how to color it, how to use it with wood in addition to canvas.
Now I don’t just paint, I make wood and resin serving boards and chess boards and pieces and I’m working on tables.
Yes, lean into your strengths, but don’t get comfortable there, if I did, I would be standing still, I would still be painting shoes in oil on canvas. After five or six paintings even I was getting bored. The saying is “Pursue Your Passion”. Pursue it, flow it, chase it, seek it, grow with it, question it. It’s ok to have periods where you sit in one place, it’s ok to not be the best in all types of art, it’s ok to not even be interested in some styles. But don’t limit yourself. Don’t ever tell yourself I can do this one thing and this one thing only.
It’s ok to have a favorite color, I do, there’s a lot of purple in a lot of my art, but I still paint with All the colors.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://followyourartbyreka.com
- Instagram: @FollowYourArtByReka https://www.instagram.com/followyourartbyreka/
- Facebook: Follow Your Art By Reka and Rebekah Molander
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6uJRjBN4WLfNVGsGhEeGjg
- Other: TikTok @FollowYourArtByReka
Image Credits
I take all my own photos, even the ones of myself I use a tripod for them.
