The truth is this is just me being me and I bring who I am to what I do, no matter what I do.
Dearest Doodle Soupster,
You may already know that I’m a multidisciplinary artist: I make visual art (paintings, drawings, mixed media works). I record my songs under my alter-ego musician name Alice Celeste. I write lyrics, poetry, reported articles, reflections like this blog post, fiction, and hybrids like my book Into the Light: traveling between peace and pain. I teach art and singing lessons.
I’ve been afraid to really own this variety about what I do. I worried: What if people don’t take me seriously because they think I haven’t narrowed myself enough? What if people don’t get the connection and misunderstand why I work across different art forms?
I think this might be why I’ve kept my work pretty siloed. Why I felt shy about sharing the connections between my art, music, writing, and teaching.
The truth is this is just me being me and I bring who I am to what I do, no matter what I do.
The truth is there’s no wall between mediums. It’s all creation, expression, connection. My approach to interviewing sources connects to my approach to teaching which connects to the way I approach art-making and songwriting. It’s curiosity. It’s asking questions. It’s patience. It’s my stance of openness and compassion. It’s exploration and perpetually complicating and simplifying, back and forth, loopdity loop, linking ideas, constantly learning and gathering observations, connecting new dots to old ones, finding synthesis.
The truth is maybe some will misunderstand me. Maybe, some will diminish my talents and capabilities because of their own assumptions. I can handle that. And some will get it. In fact, some will get me more precisely because I’m willing to let them see more of me.
When we genuinely put ourselves out there without trying to control how people perceive us, that’s how we find the people who’ll get it. Who’ll love us for who we are and not despite who we are. Who’ll appreciate our honesty instead of our silence. Who’ll enjoy our quirks instead of the way we hide them.
So, this is me putting myself out there, talking the talk and walking the walk, trusting myself to handle misunderstanding and rejection, trusting myself to cope with fear, and trusting that there are people out there who appreciate what I do and want me to be myself, want me to share from the depths of my soul.
It’s not easy. And that’s okay too. I can cope with challenges and hiccups along the way. This work is important to me and that matters.
In this spirit, I give you, my beautiful Doodle Soupsters, the new website I’ve built for my art. There’s lyrics. There’s a form to schedule your first singing lesson or lyrics coaching session with me. There’s the shop with my available artwork and private lesson packages.
Thank you for being a part of my art community and I’d love to hear your thoughts on the new website!
Embracing who I am and what I love to do,
Nicole Sylvia Javorsky
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