This is about what’s important to you as an artist.
It’s about what matters to you. About how you’re going to do it and feel good about it. About your time, ambitions, energy, skills, hopes, dreams, distractions – how will you be the artist you know you can be, making the art that is the most important to you?
Maybe you want a more regular art making practice. Or more attention for the art you make. Maybe you want accountability. A sense of direction. Proactivity in your art career. Sound art business skills.
But sometimes you feel overwhelmed.
Because it’s an overwhelming time. You have concerns you’ve never had before. Perhaps you also have new responsibilities. It’s a time of disruption and disorientation for so many people. Yet out of all this, you feel like there’s something more you want.
You ask yourself if you’re really creating as much as you could. Or as well. If there’s a way to get your art into the world more easily, or to feel less at the end of the day like you didn’t do what you wanted. And more like the productive, fulfilled and visible artist you dream about being.
If you have questions like these, you definitely aren’t alone. Managing multiple expectations, structuring your daily life so it supports regular art time, and feeling satisfied with your choices are ongoing struggles for many artists.
The good news? You can use your creative brain to figure all this out. You can ask different questions, questions that will help you be your best artist self without so much struggle.
What do you want?
What’s important?
What’s important enough so you can commit to it?
If you don’t know what’s important, how do you know whether to do it or not?
What does commitment mean?
And you know what you no longer want.
Procrastination. Self-criticism. Confusion. Frustration. Not enough information.
You’ve come to the right place.
I developed Artist Mentoring to help you live your best artist life.
Because I know how you feel. I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve been a working artist for over 30 years and exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally in more than two dozen solo and two-person exhibitions as well as over 40 group shows. I’ve worked as an organizer of exhibitions and as a curator, and from 2009 to 2014 I operated my own commercial gallery, Grasslands Gallery, in Val Marie, Saskatchewan at the gateway to Grasslands National Park, until I decided to close it so I could spend more time with my own studio practice. I love to learn. It’s a core value for me – I take classes, engage coaches, and conduct a self-education practice, so I can continue my own artistic and business growth.
I’ve also been a board member and Provincial Representative of CARFAC Saskatchewan, and a board member of CARFAC National and the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency. I was a founding board member of Canadian Artists Representation Copyright Collective (CARCC). From 1988 to 2013, I researched, wrote, and produced the Saskatchewan Visual Arts Handbook; in 2006-07 I produced a Visual Arts enhancement to The Art of Managing Your Career, published by the Cultural Human Resources Council. In 2008-09 I was writer with CARFAC Saskatchewan’s Visual Arts Sector Best Practices Development Project. And please feel free to ask any further questions you may have!
I know that living your life as an artist can be difficult. I also know that it’s possible for you, because you have a good creative brain and you can do this.
And everything I’ve learned is at your disposal – to help you create the artist’s life you want.
I will give you personalized support, assessment, encouragement and feedback as you make and take your art to the world.
Here’s how you begin:
You take the first step in your next direction. You make the commitment to your artist’s life. You decide that you want things to be different.
Then you contact me. You invest the time and focus needed to tell me what you’re dealing with, and I’ll invest the same in you.
Here are the questions I want you to answer.
- Your name
- Your email address
- Your time zone or nearest major city
- Your website and any relevant online portfolios or social networking profiles
- Your art form and how long you’ve been working in it
- How do you describe your artwork?
- What achievements are you most proud of?
- What challenges are you currently facing?
- Why are you interested in working with me right now?
I know it’s a lot of questions! I know this requires your time and will to dig deep. But I can promise you that if you answer them honestly, you will be further ahead.
All responses are strictly confidential.
You can click here to get to my contact page.
How do I work with you? You have two choices.
Sessions take place via telephone or Zoom.
ONE TIME IN-DEPTH CALL: For a single deep dive into your business to help you figure something out or for when you’re starting something new.
- One 75-minute call
- Super-focus on your questions and needs, for an intense workout
- Homework tasks and exercises to get you doing the work, as needed and according to the way you work best
Your investment: $165 CAD
LONG-TERM MENTORING: For regular accountability and support to help you direct and grow your art life, over more-or-less three months.
- Three x 1 hour calls
- No less focus on you, but with more chance for you to think, process and act
- Homework tasks and exercises to get you doing the work, as needed and according to the way you work best
Your investment: $435 CAD
These programs get results. My clients make the changes they’ve been dreaming of.
Are you ready to do the same thing?
Click here.
Laureen Marchand – Artist, Teacher, Artist Mentor
I always loved what I called making things, but as I was growing up I never met an artist or saw an original piece of art. Then, in eleventh grade, a new girl moved to my school—a girl who had spent her childhood in galleries and art classes. With her as my new sense of what was possible, I began college two years later as a painting major in a BFA program. Since then my art career has taken many twists and turns, but this has always been where my heart is and where all other goodness comes from.
Now I live and work in Val Marie, Saskatchewan, gateway to Grasslands National Park and one of Canada’s most beautiful and remote regions, where I paint full time. Inspired by the region’s subtlety and fragile beauty, my paintings reflect on the importance of the daily experiences we take for granted. Though these paintings look realistic, they’re not just about surface appearances. I believe that if I can paint someone or something so it looks the most like itself, it might help the viewer see not just the painting’s subject, but their own relationship to it.
My exhibition career spans over 30 years and more than two dozen solo and two-person exhibitions as well as over 40 group shows. My paintings have been recognized by the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the Canada Council, are held in many public and private collections, and have been represented in exhibition catalogues and reviewed in newspapers and magazines. I have contributed widely to Canada’s artistic community as organizer, teacher, mentor, writer, and curator. I hold the Canadian Artists Representation “Tony” Award for service to the visual arts in Saskatchewan and the Centennial Leadership Award for Service to the Province of Saskatchewan.
Contact me here.