"Art has always been a real solace" (Frances Yeoland bonus episode)

0:00Radim Malinic:Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of the Daring Forever podcast. This is my chance to zoom in on a few standout moments from this week's interview, finding the ones that deserve a second look and dig deeper into what makes them special. This week I spoke with Frances Yeoland, who is a Sydney-born and New York-based creative director and artist whose abstract paintings began as poetry, fragments of language turned into colour and rhythm of the page. In our conversation we talked about art galleries as a place of home Living eulogies, sitting comfortably with ambiguity And why doubt never really has to leave the room The episode published a few days ago was titled Dare to Doubt and Keep Going And it's about the tension between making a living and making art If you haven't checked out a full episode Let me share with you these four standout moments I think for me art has always been a real solace It's always been a place to go for me to be able to survive different things, survive understanding myself.

0:57And no matter where you are in the world, you can go to a museum or a gallery and you can find a kind of home there and connect with other people through art. So it's always been that place for me. And my parents were not particularly interested in visual art. But I think being in Sydney, I had access to different museums that I would go to as a teenager. And that has been something that I've continued to do throughout my life in a pretty voracious way, I would say.

1:26Radim Malinic:So Frances mentioned this almost in passing when she was tracing her story back to being a teenager in Sydney, a queer woman navigating a pretty conservative upbringing and finding the gallery spaces, a place where different ways of living were allowed to exist. It was the moment when I realised that she's been a lifelong artist before even her telling me that she's an artist. and I saw this as a fantastic sort of revelation about how a person lives and breathes what they believe in because you don't have to tell someone in many different ways who you are and what you do but if you tell them what you believe in I think we get to really understand who they are and what they stand for and in some way it was a beautiful lovely human way into our conversation they could have easily stayed on the surface of the job titles and the client work we very much talk about who Frances is and what's in her world?

2:18It's such a good question. And I feel like a lot of designers and creatives are listening to this. It's like you see a mistake and you're like, oh, I just want to fix it. But that's the impulse that I'm fighting in that moment. I think I just posted a photo on my Instagram and there was like a bit of the paint went over the line on the edge. And I was like, I could retouch it, but I really asked myself not to. I was like, this is what it means to be handmade and obviously i wish that i had done it neater or inside the lines or whatever but i think you have to it's a process of acceptance and being like okay that's what it means to make something and here it is this was an interesting second part of our conversation

2:58Radim Malinic:where we talked about the powers of being a digital artist or digital designers with digital tools they can fix any mistakes or anything that goes over the line when a loveman frances said that she caught herself wanting to fix something in post and stops herself and i think when she said this is what it means to be handmade she really talks about that small specific detail which is about more about a discipline of letting things be imperfect on purpose especially for someone whose day job is polished branding work it was a great contrast retouching everything at work retouching nothing in a studio kind of felt genuinely incredible to know So this is her principles and that's what she listens to from the signals from within.

3:45It's like, where does anyone's art come from? But for me, as I said, it comes from an emotional place and it's usually with language. So I also write poetry and those sort of fragments of language become the basis for the piece. So I am very interested in the momentum of language and something that has meaning that you can take out of that context. and put it in a new context and it takes on new meaning. So usually it starts with the language and there's a lot of feeling in that writing. And then I will make an artwork based on a line from one of those poems. And recently I've been exploring how you can create rhythm visually that parallels the rhythm of the language itself.

4:30So obviously it's abstract art that I make and it's a lot about color, but you know, as creative directors and designers, we know that color is imbued with a lot of emotions So the choices around the color equally is intuitive, but it's also about the places that I'm in. So I have an album on my phone that is color stories and I just take photos of different little like urban compositions and I pull the colors from that. But it's all a bit unknown. It's like when you start to mix the colors, I'm not an expert on color theory. And so the color often turns out to be something different. And again, got to go with it.

5:08It's not like you have an eyedropper and you can match it perfectly, right?

5:12Radim Malinic:So this was a genuine revelation. Again, I'll repeat myself, as I said every single week, I know very little about my guests. I know that sort of surface level and I get to find out the things pretty much at the same time as you do. What struck me incredibly was the fact that Frances starts her paintings with poetry. Poetry wasn't really obvious source of ideas from when you see her work. Now I have this information knowing that her captions of these pieces are not captions, but they're actually the starting salvo. It makes it really, really interesting. It was my aha moment in this episode because it says something bigger about the process, that the medium that she shows people isn't always the medium that the idea was born in.

5:57Radim Malinic:It's very much a nice permission slip for anyone who can't be struggling right now with finding a way to make pieces of work. feel like a very much an upside down process like you know sometimes you have a piece of work and you try to fit a piece title to it and sometimes the title symbolizes the piece yeah i doubt it all the time and sometimes i'm like i can't believe i've put so much time into this what am i doing and then i realize that it's not about the final product it's about the process for me And if someone connects with it, that's amazing. And someone enjoys the beauty of the work or finds beauty in the work, then that is a bonus.

6:41But yeah, it's quite a hard process. I think it's frustrating. And I've had two weeks just now going into the studio and it felt a bit like pushing a boulder up a hill. And I think I struggle because it's hard. It's difficult to do one day of the weekend or two days of the weekend and then go back to work Monday to Friday. And just as you get in the rhythm or you're opening up, you need to step away from the studio and go back to work. And I love my commercial work, my Monday to Friday, too. I find great satisfaction in that. But I think not having consecutive time for the art has been difficult and it's frustrating.

7:20Radim Malinic:The theme of doubt keeps resurfacing across the conversation throughout. And Frances never really tried to dress it up as something that she's potentially conquering herself she admits to looking at her own old work and cringing well we all do don't we to push through two weeks in a studio and for her pushing through two weeks of studios that feel like pushing the boulder up a hill sometimes you can ask yourself you know and when she asks herself what am i actually doing because that's the question we all ask ourselves what are we doing why are we doing this but in that moment of be doing it it's good to check in with ourselves and then let go and see what happens because it's our brains trying to let us keep us safe in a way our brains keep what's safe not what's dangerous and this is potentially why it sometimes feels so impossible when our dreaming brain and our judging brain are fighting each other and they're not always in agreement or tandem so when francis told me that it's never about a final product it's about a process because when someone connects with her work it's simply a bonus it's something extra on top and you know to sit with the dabs and keep going anyway it's one of the things that i cover in a book daring forever that's launching very soon as you might know which is you know feel the fear and do it and it's kind of reassuring moment when you realize that everyone feels the same that's how we are hardwired thank you for being here on this bonus episode.

8:50Radim Malinic:My conversation with Francis was a fantastic reminder of what it's like to have a view behind the scenes of an artist live who also is a commercial creative director. I've learned so much. I always admire, always know when people use a few sentences in a conversation how exciting that would be because many people have a wave of words. My job is so much easier. Thank you for being here and I'll catch you next week on the next episode. If you enjoyed this episode and would like more accessible resources to help you discover your daring creativity, you can pick up one of my books on themes of mindful creativity, creative business, branding and graphic design.

9:33Radim Malinic:Every physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle including an e-book and audio book to make the content accessible wherever you are and whatever you do. To get 10 % of your order, visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the code PODCAST. Have a look around and start living daringly.