Aaron Westerberg: 0:00

So teaching is it's interesting, it's fun, but you you learn more, you get better at your craft by teaching. So, I think that is is a great way to supplement your income.

Liz Haywood-Sullivan: 0:10

And it's allowed me to travel. It's like my God, my teaching has taken me to to to China, to Australia, to New Zealand, Hawaii, all through the U.S. Europe, and I get paid to do it. Oh my God!

Laura Arango Baier: 0:26

Welcome to the Faso Podcast, where we believe that fortune favors a BoldBrush. My name is Laura Baier, and I'm your host. For those of you who are new to the podcast, we are a podcast that covers art marketing techniques and all sorts of business tips, specifically to help artists learn to better sell their work, we interview artists at all stages of their careers, as well as others who are in careers tied to the art world, in order to hear their advice and insights. Most artists don't plan to teach; they plan to paint, to show, to sell. Teaching comes later, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of desperation, and sometimes almost by accident. But here's what every artist in today's

episode will tell you: 1:06

Once they started, something unexpected happened. Teaching didn't just pay the bills; it changed them. Today, we're talking about the studio that pays for itself, the teaching side of an artist's career that rarely gets discussed openly. How do you start? When are you ready? How does it actually make you money? And what does it give back that has nothing to do with money at all? Six artists, six different paths into the classroom. All of them still painting, still teaching, and still surprised by what one has done for the other. Let's start at the beginning with an artist who stumbled into teaching early, used it to survive, and discovered along the way that it was making him better.

Aaron Westerberg: 1:46

They allowed me to teach at the school at the California Art Institute, so I started teaching and getting students and doing that thing, that kind of thing, and and that was great because it's another income source, right? So so I taught, and then I moved to Santa Monica, and which was great because there was a borders in Santa Monica. So I I worked at the border store and taught and and slowly started getting into showing into galleries. Okay, so here's the thing. Okay, so this is this goes into like why you don't have to learn how to draw perfectly before you can get into painting, because you can do a painting with one color, you know, one color, you know, burnt umber, right? You can do fantastic paintings in burnt umber, or I would do my Schmid in Venetian red and Terra Rosa, so you'd have like a warm and a cool red, and get terrific paintings. And the other thing was, it was great because, you know, I could I could draw really well, right? But it it would take me almost longer to do a drawing than a painting, and you it's limiting. You know you can't do as many cool brushstroke things. And so the other thing is, if you're gonna sell the drawing. You gotta put a mat on it. You gotta have glass and a frame. If it's a painting, you just need a frame. You don't need a glass or a mat. It's way cheaper. And so that's how I got into galleries, doing these red drawings, basically, you know, an oil paint. And so yeah, I did tons of those and slowly progressed and learned color along the way, and so so that's why you don't need you can learn how to draw that way. You know you can learn how to draw with one color, and you know there's so many different kinds of you don't have to use a solvent now. You know you can use water. There's several oil-based paints. Cobra is one. It's sponsored by them. Sponsored by Rembrandt Paints, but but Cobra, they have like I just did a meeting. They have like more than 100 colors now in that water bay, and you can use them back and forth. You can use them with oil paints too. They're I don't know what that's called, but yeah, you can use them back and forth. Yeah, so so that's good, and and then slowly you can you know graduate into using white with the one color you know, and so instead of wiping away for your lights like you would do with charcoal drawing, you're actually adding white and opacity, and but slowly kind of adding more tools to your, you know, your your your base of knowledge, and so that was you know that was one good thing about not going to a school. Like I don't really have any rules that I I can't break or anything like that. It's just kind of like I I want to be archival, right? I don't want my paintings to fall off the canvases, but at the same time, there's no rules. You know, like no one taught me sight size. I mean, I got the the Charles Bard book and everything, but yeah, I I would never draw that way. It's so it's it's limiting. It's great to be anal. And you know, figure out how to draw really correctly and everything. But you know, comparative drawing is right on. You know, and just learning the tools, you know, plumb lines and things like that. That's important. But but yeah, that's that's pretty much how I my my beginning journey. I and then eventually I was teaching enough at the time in Santa Monica. There was probably five different art stores really close together, maybe like within five miles of each other. So I would put flyers in all those art stores, and that's how I got my students. And yeah, and so then I I quit my job at Borders, which is great because the one in Santa Monica is gross, is huge, but it's gross. Yeah, it's gross. But sorry, borders doesn't exist anymore. But you know, but but yeah. So I quit. I quit borders, and then taught and teaching supplemented my income while I slowly started, you know, working my way into galleries. You know, getting more more complex paintings and you know all that kind of stuff with galleries, and just slowly moved into into that. And that was I don't know what year it was, but a long time ago, and and then the other big change was social media. So that was huge. That was huge for me because I I didn't have to get into a gallery to sell my paintings, you know, which is great, you know. I I sold, you know, to some of my students and things like that. But being able to just sell directly to the collector was great, and it just it just happened by accident. I didn't even it wasn't intentional really. I was going to have a studio sale, and this is a long time ago. Everyone has studio sales now, but you know where you sell paintings that aren't finished all the way or not framed or anything like that. But I was going to have like a physical studio sale at my place, and you know invited all my students and everything like that. You know, two weeks, and I sold 90% of the work before the actual like physical studio sale, and I sold them to everybody like family members, collectors, galleries, new collectors, just everybody. All because of Instagram. It was all in Facebook too, a little bit, but it was Instagram. So that was huge for me. That was that was eye Eye-opening and and great. So, but that's that's kind of a a big one and one of of how I started.

Laura Arango Baier: 7:51

When you were, you know, like my my question now is more so towards like when you were teaching and then you know maybe you became a full time artist, right? Not that that transition, right? What was that like for you? Was it like slowly it you know kind of worked out that way, or were you able to just like cut and just go?

Aaron Westerberg: 8:13

Yeah, no, it was slow. It was over a few years for sure, because I didn't know what I was doing. You know, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just-I just wanted to be a fine artist. I wanted to be a gallery artist, you know. And so I was like, "What do I have to do to, you know, to do this? And I just wanted everything to culminate to where it would help facilitate that, you know. So working at Borders didn't really facilitate that, you know, too much, you know. So as soon as like I cut that out, I did. But but yeah, you know, you know, I think some of when you teach, like you know, a lot of times I would get, you know, because my drawings were they were they were pretty decent drawings when I was teaching because I would teach life drawing, and a lot of times I would get people to take my class, and they would see me, and you know I was like, you know, 20-something years old, and like, oh, you're just a kid, you know, like, I thought you'd be like an old man or something, and and I'm like, I think, but some of the best teachers are the ones that are, you know, just kind of learning, and you know, can do the things, but everything is kind of new and fresh to them. They're not like crusted over, and you know, they can actually express the ideas that maybe someone will just be like, "You just got to go through a million drawings to figure it out. So, you know, draw teaching. I think almost anyone can do that. You know, early on, you know, I think that's a really good way to start, and you know it. It doubles down on what you know. You're teaching somebody, you know, what you know, and so you have to vocalize it and basically explain it to somebody who has no clue. And it's also good. I have some good teaching stories because I've taught for a long time, and I've taught. I mean, I taught a guy. I'm positive he was in the witness relocation program. I mean, I'm positive. You know, this guy was like total Sopranos guy, and he had a pinky ring that was like as big as my thumb on his pinky, and he could just smash me in any time if you wanted to. He was humongous, but yeah, just so teaching is it's interesting, it's fun, but you you learn more, you get better at your craft by teaching. So, I think that is is a great way to supplement your income. And then, like the the thing I want to say with social media is you know it's it's easy to get bogged down in it and just kind of be negative towards it, but it's like a great opportunity for artists right now. I know tons of artists, and I'm sure most of the viewers do also that just sell, you know, directly or through their Instagram or whatever. They don't have a gallery, you know, and and it's it's also, you know, I think we all have a degree of creativity, and you just have to kind of put it into the into your posts, you know. You you know, like a lot of people do the same things over and over, like varnishing the paintings or whatever. I mean, I do that, but you know, but you just be creative with it. You know, when I when I first got that like aha moment, when I and I didn't get it the aha moment until after it happened. But what I did is for that studio sale, I laid out a whole bunch of paintings on my studio floor and I took a picture of it, and I'm like, I'm gonna have a studio sale, and this, all these are gonna be here, and frames, and all kinds of stuff. And then people started emailing me that picture back and circling the paintings. They're like, How much is this one? How much? Like a lot of people, and I'm like, oh wow, this is really, this really works, you know, just just kind of organic. I'm not trying to sell individual painting. I'm just kind of showing them what I'm doing, and it worked great. Like I said, I sold almost everything before the actual opening of the the studio sale, the physical opening. So I think it's just a matter of putting your creativity into the marketing side of your paintings, and and it can be anything. You know, it can be anything. There's tons of ways to do it. You know, stuff that's not been done yet, stuff that's been done with your own little twist on it. It can be anything, but it's you know when you sell your stuff yourself, you don't have to give a percentage to the gallery. You know, it's it's very nice. It's very nice, and you know the like a lot of galleries don't share information like who bought your painting, so so you know you get you develop a relationship with that person, and a lot of times those relationships last years, right? They continue to purchase from you, so you know it's it's good. And you, I mean, I like knowing who has my paintings. You know, I enjoy that a lot. And they send you a picture of it on their wall or whatever. It's so gratifying, you know. So so yeah, that is that's a really good side of kind of social media and being able to market yourself and be, you know, be a living artist today.

Laura Arango Baier: 13:31

Aaron found teaching by putting flyers in art stores. Thomas Schaller found it almost against his will, a deeply shy man who became an artist precisely because he thought it meant never having to talk to anyone, I

Thomas Schaller: 13:43

didn't have as much money saved as I should have. I made pretty good money as an architectural illustrator. I had some, so that was a cushion that others didn't have. I started teaching, if I'm honest, sooner than I should have, I think. I I do okay now, but I wanted to become an artist as a kid because I thought that's a great way I can spend my days, never having to talk to anybody, because I always had such a hard time speaking to people. I was so shy in school and so timid. I don't know, so I thought, oh, this is a great way. Maybe I can make a living painting, just sitting in my studio, and I never have to go to meetings or give presentations or or talk to people. So I started teaching, and I was incredibly fumbling and awkward. But what I recognized over a couple of years' time was, I did have skills and things I could share, so I didn't feel fraudulent in that way. But what I realized is that. If you're dedicated to teaching, you teach yourself as much as you teach your students. So what it afforded me was the opportunity to say out loud what I believed, and I'd never done that before. I'd written things down. I had a jumble of chaotic thoughts in my mind, but when you have to stand in front of a group of 20 or 30 people and say exactly how you feel about painting, for example, you realize did I really mean that? And either yes or no is the answer, or maybe partly I did. So I began to nuance and twist it and analyze it and think, and it's become a way for me to teach myself how I really feel, the direction I want to go, and so my whole thing about teaching is just not teaching it. It's sharing my my artistic journey, but it really is. So yes, I started teaching as a way to supplement my income because I wasn't selling anything at all in those days, and then I'm still teaching now because I I love it. I think in trying to teach others, we do really end up Teaching ourselves, I I have a I teach all over the world live classes, but I have an online course, two of them with terracotta, one in watercolor and one in drawing. But the thrust of both of those courses is not for me to teach students, you know, this laundry list of techniques to get better and better. Although, of course, we go into that. They're really structured around trying to help students find their own artistic voice within. It's a heavy lift sometimes, but it is so gratifying, and in doing that, it helps make it easier for me to do so as well. So yes, I teach them concentrate on the intention of your work, not just the specific painting, but why did you get up today and want to do a painting as opposed to anything else? Lying on the couch and watching Netflix or something. There's something in us that makes us want to do that. That actually makes us have to do that, and that's where I try to get students to investigate. Turn over those rocks. What's under those rocks? That thing inside you. I think we all have within us everything we need already to become truly great artists. The work is not just in the techniques, but it's in turning over enough of those psychological rocks and becoming comfortable with what we find that makes us reach higher and and go farther. So these kinds of discussions I have with my students are helpful for them. I like to think they are, but but also for me because that's the work I'm doing, so we're really all in it together. We're at on the same road. Some of us are at different spots along that road, but we're all on the same road, going to the same place, and we all have a slightly different way of getting there.

Laura Arango Baier: 18:40

If you've been enjoying the podcast and also want to ask our guests live questions, then you might want to join our monthly webinar, the Faso Show, where our guest artists discuss marketing tips, share inspiring stories, and answer your burning questions in real time. Whether you're a seasoned painter or just starting your creative journey, this is your chance to connect, learn, and spark new ideas. And whether you're stuck on a canvas or building your creative business, this is where breakthroughs happen. Don't miss out. Ignite your passion and transform your art practice by joining us. Our next Faso Show webinar is coming up on the 13th of August with our special guest Kathleen Dunphy. You can find the sign-up link in the show notes. Thomas describes teaching as a way of finding your own voice. Liz Haywood Sullivan takes a more practical view. She built her entire income strategy around it, precisely because art sales couldn't be relied upon.

Liz Haywood-Sullivan: 19:30

I've worked generally with one major gallery at at a time, and I've been with my gallery now since 2007, And so, I'm. I don't have the relationship I have with them. It's not you know you have to sell so many pieces a year or anything like that. So my my actual gallery sales have not necessarily been a. Driver for me, and part of the reason is that art sales are so intermittent and cannot be counted upon. So when I started to become working as a as a fine artist and looking to make a living at it, that's why I turned to teaching initially, because I could schedule my workshops, and I could count on that income. I can't count on sales income. You know they come and go. It it's some and even even you know if you're preparing for a show, you have a tremendous output of of funds. You know if you're having to buy frames and you know framing pastels is not cheap. So I have relied more upon my teaching to be my income driver, and then in the beginning, my workshops weren't selling very well. I'd had you know I'd have a percentage of them canceled. So that's when I decided to write a book. Back when you could write a book and get it published, and so that's when I worked with North Light. And the minute I had my book, and it took a year to produce it to write it, and so that was a goal for the year. You're not going to be doing all these other things because you're writing a book, okay? The minute I had that book, it just gave me the credibility that and the visibility that my workshops have always filled from that point forward, and so that was a that was a deliberate move on my part to do that, and then choosing to become president of IAPS was also put me in a very visible situation where I would have an audience of people who knew who I was. And at this point, I'm still advertised in the Pastel Journal magazine to keep my name out there to you know. And this is all okay, but this is all really driving my teaching. I have not applied the same methodology to building a collector base, so that's something that I would see myself moving more into at this point. But it's changed so much because the whole gallery situation has changed, and I don't have, just like anybody else, I don't have the answer to that. I don't, I don't have the answer to, you know, selling art online. And it would be great if I didn't have to frame things, and I didn't have to ship things with museum glass, you know. So there are models out there. There are there are opportunities out there that I'm I'm investigating. But so that's slightly different answer than what you were expecting. But

Laura Arango Baier: 23:15

no, that was that was actually a very perfect answer because you spoke obviously from your experience, and I think from your experience, what you set forth to do was a very sure path, right? Which is, like you said, you know, you can't always count on sales because sales. I needed to

Liz Haywood-Sullivan: 23:32

rely upon a certain amount of income. I absolutely, you know,

Laura Arango Baier: 23:36

exactly. And you knew teaching would be the way to do that. Writing this book would be a way to do that at the time, and it worked out. And I think that counts for so so much because maybe someone out there might be overly relying on these sales, and they might feel that insecurity because there is an insecurity that comes with sales, right? Maybe one month you don't sell at all. Maybe two, three months you don't sell at all because especially during certain seasons, during certain economic time periods, sales might not happen. But what can happen for sure is learning and teaching. There's always going to be someone who wants to learn, and

Liz Haywood-Sullivan: 24:10

if

Laura Arango Baier: 24:11

someone out there who's listening is open and receptive to wanting to teach, that's a sure way to make some some money. Especially if they have work, if they have you know social media, which is something else that's going on today, to reach those you know possible students, then it's worth a shot. Yeah,

Liz Haywood-Sullivan: 24:30

if you if you never taught, you know, find some place that'll let you give it a try. I mean, honestly, until you try teaching, you don't know whether you're going to be able to do it. You don't know whether you're going to like it, and you don't know whether you're going to be good at it. There are artists who can paint that shouldn't be teaching. There are teachers who are awesome teachers who are not the best painters. There's a whole. Continuum of it, but unless you give it a try, start out by doing a demonstration for an art association or for you know for a group of high school students or or whatever, and just see if you can you talk and paint at the same time. I remember when I started to do teaching. I was like, I don't even know what I'm doing. How am I supposed to demonstrate and put into words what I'm doing so that in actually in coherent sentences, so that somebody is going to understand what I'm saying? You know, I'm as surprised as anybody that I'm actually able to do it because that was just not who I was, you know, and just not who I considered myself to be is be able to do public speaking and all that, and and it's allowed me to travel. It's like my God, my teaching has taken me to to to China, to Australia, to New Zealand, Hawaii, all through the U.S. Europe, and I get paid to do it. Oh my God! So it's as you say, there are people who want to learn. People want to learn. I'd still love to be a student. I'm I'm toying around with the idea of looking for a workshop to take because I miss doing it. I really do. I miss being a student, and and occasionally I I took one a couple years ago at North River with a with a with a well known portrait artist, and it was so it was really very interesting because I was really struggling. I was trying to do oil with portraits, and and I did what all my students do. I was like, I finally got so frustrated after the second day. I was like, can I can I show you pictures of what I know how to do? I really am an artist. It was very humbling, very humbling. It's you know, we all do the same thing. It's like, but push yourself. What are you going to do? It's I you know one of those mantras is like do something every day that scares you. It's um, you know, keep it going, keep it going.

Laura Arango Baier: 27:20

Getting paid to travel the world to teach-that's the dream version. Barbara Jennicky's entry into teaching was considerably more humble. A drawing class for a church youth group, priced dirt cheap, just to see if she could do it at all.

Barbara Jaenicke: 27:32

I think, like a lot of artists, it was certainly gradual. It wasn't just you know quit the job one day and You know, you're a income generating fine artist. The the next, I mine was prompted by my company's layoff where I was working at the time, and so I was without a job at a weird point where my husband and I were wanting to start a family, and we're noticing. All right, we might have this little gap between, you know, now and when that might happen. Now we wanted to have me at least be home part time as you know a part time you know stay at home mom. That was the goal, and so we looked at finances and we said, well, let's let's try see what we can do, and we don't know how long you know it's going to take you know before we have a child. So we made it work, and you know it ended up being about a year and a half, maybe just under a year and a half before we had our son, and so I looked at that time between when I had my job and when I was a mom. I looked at that time like gold, and I didn't waste a second of it. I had thought, well, at that time I was getting back in, you know, into painting for a few years at that point, and somebody had had told me that you know I could consider teaching at you know one of the local art centers, and you know when I first heard that I thought, oh, am I good enough to do that? Is that something I want to do? I'm without a job, so I probably can't be too picky. But but anyway, during that time, you know, the first thing I thought is, you know, I need to really buckle down and get my skills up as much as I can. I need to be good at what I do if I want to teach it. And I was making a little bit of headway with the local art scene, getting into shows, selling a little bit of work, so I was on my way already. But I really wanted to push myself, and so I went to. This was in Atlanta at the time, and there, there was you know a lot since it's a bigger city. There was a lot happening there as far as opportunities to learn, and you know. Different groups to be involved in that sort of thing. So I went to, I attended anything that was free or affordable, to gain little tidbits of knowledge. I thought I want to constantly learn, open my eyes to just different types of art, types of skills, things that might help me, even if it's just understanding supplies, that sort of thing. Any little tidbit, better ways of framing, all all that sort of thing. You know, I really wanted to turn myself into a sponge and not waste a second of that time that I wasn't working a full time job. And really, within a well, funny, like the day I didn't particularly like my job at the time, so I wasn't all that unhappy with losing the job. But I, I have to say, I never stopped keeping my day planner. I'm still, I still keep a paper day planner. I'm not a little bit on my phone, but I I like a paper and pencil, and I have never stopped scheduling my time and being organized and efficient about what I want to get done each day, so I kept that up, and I just basically hit the ground running, so that within about a year, It was like through a coworker of my husband's who was looking for somebody to teach a drawing class for their young adult church group, and I thought I could do that. So that's where I started with teaching a drawing class. I priced it dirt cheap just in case I realized I wasn't very good at this, and so I tried it. And I understood. I think many artists would tell you this: that once you start teaching something that you've been working at for a while, you realize you you know more than you think you did about it, and it becomes just very rewarding to pass that knowledge on to to others, and especially if it's something you're passionate about. So, I realized I wasn't terrible at it, and and I thought I might enjoy this. So, so the teaching aspect progressed from there. Once I had a little bit of confidence in doing that, I approached a local art center and started teaching there. And then, you know, a few other local art centers. Eventually, I taught from my studio in Atlanta, and then from there started teaching workshops. After a few years, I started teaching the out-of-town workshops. But yeah, you know, my career grew just incrementally, and I think that does that for a lot of people. You know, as my son got a little older, you get a little bit more studio time, and really pushed myself with trying to enter shows, getting published in Art magazines, it just sort of progressed, you know, little by little from there. And I think that that's probably how it happens for for a lot of artists. You have to just build on it little by little. So both with the producing paintings and with the teaching, yeah, just kept working at it. And my son's in college now, so yeah, so I have a pretty full schedule now.

Laura Arango Baier: 33:25

Yeah, I can imagine, and I think what I like also is that you know I think what you what you mentioned too really emphasizes the that slow building, that you know steady, stable sort of okay. First we start with really you know getting good at this skill, and then okay, now that I'm good, I can teach, and then that actually builds the skill even more because you realize, huh, there's this tiny gap in my knowledge that I can notice now. But then I have the solutions as well because I've been doing this and I can understand it. And now you can learn these things three times better because when you teach, you need to know the subject extremely well, and then from there, of course, you know joining shows, painting societies, and then getting more, getting yourself out there. And I think a lot of people, and I've been mentioning this in many recent episodes, a lot of people who are artists don't realize how important it is to network and to socialize and to have community as an artist to really get your work out there. Otherwise, you know that I feel like the the stereotypical starving artist is an artist who stays in their studio and doesn't realize the importance of socializing. You know, you

Barbara Jaenicke: 34:34

work in a cocoon for quite a while, but yeah, teaching it definitely. In order to teach something to someone else. You have to figure it out yourself and make sure you know better ways of describing it. And I'm sure other people who have been on here have said this that it really force reinforces your own knowledge of skills that you teach to others. And I think that works in really any field,

Laura Arango Baier: 34:59

Barbara's story is about building confidence slowly. Matthew James Collins cuts straight to something most artists skip entirely: teaching is itself a skill, and most people have never been taught how to do

Matthew James Collins: 35:11

it. Teaching is a skill too, so this is where it's. I was lucky where I was where I studied. I got was an excellent teacher, so I learned teaching skills there, so teaching is communication. It's also empathy, and then it's also direction. And so, those three different kind of let's say elements come together. I think to make good teaching is where you have to empathize with what the students going through, doing, and then you have to be able to be able. You have to know what the what they should be doing, and then you have to give them direction to do it as well too, so, and that's and communicate that in a productive way too. Yeah, I've had lots and lots of really bad art teachers over the years, and so just just terrible. And so what I try to endeavor is not do what they did. So because I've had with studying fresco, they just hear and they just come and they say it's all wrong. It's terrible. It's all bad. I was like, well, that's thank you for the feedback, but then how do you make that better? Nothing. So it's like, so yeah, there's plenty of people that there's plenty of teachers that are and so teaching is a I think a great way if you're an artist to supplement and to let's say work and share the knowledge that you acquire, but I think first, as we mentioned before, and lots of the problems that let's say the the problems of let's say contemporary art schools where students are teaching, they are not teaching very much and they don't know how to teach, and so that becomes a problem too. So first, learn how to do something, and then being able to communicate it, then you become you can teach too. So, giving lessons and other things. Well, and obviously need a learning curve. It's not like you learn how to teach like that. It's practice, but so definitely teaching is a I think a nice way to augment your because being an artist is hard. It's it's a it's a terrible. It's the it's terrible. It's hard. It's stressful. It's some people are commercially minded and they can really make the jump. People are commercial artists going to fine art, but they become commercial fine arts, and that's fantastic. And they make very beautiful things. But if that's not your personality, you just have to kind of deal with that as well too. But I think in terms of teaching, you have to be able to, as you've experienced firsthand, you have to be able to transmit something and help people. If you can't, well, then that's you're you're benefiting, but the student's not benefiting as well. So that's kind of a shame in the end. So

Laura Arango Baier: 37:31

Matthew names the three pillars of good teaching. Tanner Steed lived them, spending three years as a school art teacher, drilling fundamentals, running solo shows out of collectors' homes and building toward the moment he finally made the leap.

Tanner Steed: 37:44

So it was it was fantastic. I I so I went to school for human development education. During that time, I this school I was working at actually asked me like, hey, the the art teaching position opened up. If you want, you could apply. You probably have a good chance. So I was like, "What? Okay, I'll I'll apply. And I I got that job and I I taught there for three years, and that was amazing for my artistic development and and I loved doing it. Loved working with the kids, but what I got to do for three years is practice and teach the fundamentals over and over and over and over again, and the school I worked at was very flexible in the the curriculum. So I I looked at Angel Academy and Florence Academy, and I was like, "All right, guys, we are drawing and painting from life. We're gonna do bark plates in sixth grade, and I got to practice all of that with the kids, and it was amazing. So, and during that time, COVID hit, and it was not great for the kids, but it was fantastic for me. Sorry to say. So when we had to teach online, I was teaching out of my studio, just you know over Zoom, and I had you know my demo going, and then as soon as class would end, I would work on my own work, and even while I was at the school, I would always have my easel right next to me, and every single break I had, I'd be working on it. And every day after school, I'd be working on my own work. And during that time, I accumulated a lot of many pieces, and I would put on my own mini solo show. I I had a couple collectors who were open to having the show at their their houses, and I would remove all of the. Other artwork on their walls, and hang up all of my own stuff. And I collected an email list, and I would do this annual solo show at different collectors' houses, and I gave them. I said, "Okay, you have an option. Either you can pick one of the paintings, and that's your piece, or you can get 10% of the proceeds. So they were getting something out of it, and they almost always just picked a painting. And I would sell quite a few, and I did that year after year while I was teaching, and you know I had to choose. Am I gonna be, you know, an educator for the rest of my life, or do I take this seriously? And I knew from a very young age that I was not going to have a very normal, you know, nine to five job career path. So I I made the jump, and I had already met Dan and Kwong at that time, and I had a you know a like a career jump off party where everyone met up at my parents' house, and we, yeah, I I just fully committed, and because I didn't really have many other income sources, it kind of forced me to say, okay, well now I have to sell paintings, I have to you know teach a little bit, and it's just it's worked out. It's fantastic, and it's only grown from there. And now I I feel very very successful and and happy. Yeah,

Laura Arango Baier: 41:54

six artists, six different ways into the classroom, and every single one of them will tell you the same

thing: 41:59

they didn't expect teaching to give back as much as it did. Not just the income, though that matters enormously, especially in the dry spells and the slow seasons when the sales just aren't there. But the clarity, the confidence, the way explaining something out loud forces you to actually understand it. If you've been on the fence about teaching, wondering whether you're ready, whether you're good enough, whether you'd even like it, the answer from everyone in today's episode is the same. You don't know until you try. Start small, price it cheap, show up. The studio that pays for itself is closer than you think. Thank you to everyone out there for listening to the podcast. Your continued support means a lot to us. If you've enjoyed the episode, please leave a review for the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or leave us a comment on YouTube. This helps us reach others who might also benefit from the excellent advice that our guests provide. Thank you.