At Some Point, My Art Studio Wasn’t Just an Art Studio Anymore

Coming Home With More Than I Could Possibly Try at Once

When I came home from the retreat, I had more ideas than I could possibly try at once. I had new techniques, new recipes, new ways of looking at my work, and a very long list of things I wanted to explore in my own studio.

What I didn’t know then was how much else was about to change.

While I was figuring out where all of those new ideas would take me creatively, Sweetgrass Art Studio was growing as a business too. Those two things were happening at exactly the same time, and I’ve spent the last few months figuring out how to make room for both.

At Some Point, My Art Studio Wasn’t Just an Art Studio Anymore

If y’all were following along on Instagram, you watched me repaint, reorganize, add my wall board and shelves, and completely rethink how I was using my studio. From the outside, it probably looked like I was just revamping my space. I knew I was doing something bigger.

I was making room for growth.

My studio needs to do more than it did before. There are frames. So many frames. Boxes in different sizes. Packing materials. Stickers, business cards, labels, and all the little things that somehow become necessary when something you love doing starts becoming something people actually want to buy.

I needed somewhere to store it all. I needed a place to frame finished work, another place to stage and photograph it, and a system for packing paintings safely when they head off to their new homes. Somewhere along the way, my art studio had become part painting studio, part framing station, part photography space, part storage room and part shipping department.

That’s just the physical stuff.

There are listings to create, photographs to edit, orders to pack, videos to film, voiceovers to record, YouTube videos to edit, descriptions to write, social media to keep up with, gallery opportunities to prepare for and, somewhere in the middle of all of that, I still need to actually paint.

None of this is a complaint. Quite the opposite. The boxes are there because paintings are leaving my studio. The frames are there because I’m finishing work I’m proud to put my name on. The videos take time because people are watching them, asking questions, and becoming interested in how I create.

Sweetgrass Art Studio is becoming the business I hoped it could become.

I’ve also started learning something I didn’t expect. Building an art business and being an artist are not always the same job. I’m still figuring out how to give both of them the time and attention they need without letting the business side take over the reason I started any of this in the first place.

The Very Unromantic Side of an Art Business

Nobody really puts the packing supply corner in the romantic version of being an artist. There isn’t usually a beautiful photograph of someone staring thoughtfully at a canvas while, just outside the frame, there’s a pile of shipping boxes and six frames they bought because they know they’ll eventually need them.

There’s a whole lot that happens after the paint dries that I never really thought about when I started painting.

A finished piece needs to be photographed and measured. It needs a title. Photos need to be edited. A listing needs to be created. Sometimes it needs to be framed. If it sells, there’s packing, figuring out shipping, printing labels and making sure something I spent hours creating can survive being handed over to a shipping company.

Then there are gallery deadlines, applications, inventory, displays and all the little administrative things that come with putting my work out into the world.

None of it is particularly glamorous.

It also represents something I’m incredibly grateful for.

Every shipping label means one of my paintings is going to a new home. Every frame means there’s a piece I’m proud enough to finish and put my name on. Every gallery deadline means my work is going somewhere I once might not have imagined it would.

Sometimes I look around and wonder when exactly painting became the easiest part of running an art studio.

Still, these are problems I once would have been thrilled to have.

It’s a pretty great problem to have when you think about it.

When Every Painting Starts Becoming Something Else

There’s another kind of space I’ve had to learn to protect too: creative space.

Once you start creating content around your art, it becomes very easy to look at every painting and immediately start thinking about what else it needs to become.

Did I film it? Would this make a good Short? Do I need closeups? Did I get enough footage? Should I explain this technique? Is this Sunday’s video? Do I need finished photos before the light changes?

Those things aren’t inherently bad. I actually enjoy sharing my process. One of my favorite parts of putting my work online has been seeing people notice the little details, ask questions, and become genuinely interested in why I make the choices I make.

I’ve realized I can’t let the need to document the art become more important than making it. Sometimes I need to be able to make a painting simply because I want to see what happens.

What Experimenting Looks Like Now

The last few months have given me plenty of opportunities to do exactly that. I’ve gone back to techniques I hadn’t touched in a long time, including Dutch pours after nearly two years away from them. I’ve played with wandering pours, worked on my swipes, changed recipes, tried different materials, and given myself permission to change direction when something isn’t working.

Somewhere in all of that, my expectations of myself have changed too.

I’ve had technical problems that have made me question everything I thought I knew. Consistency problems, crazing, and paint behaving beautifully one day and completely differently another have all been part of it. There are days when I walk into the studio feeling like I know exactly what I’m doing and other days when I wonder if I’ve ever touched paint before in my life.

The more I learn, the more I notice. The more I notice, the more I expect from myself. That can be exciting, but it can also be exhausting. Lately, I’ve had to remind myself that knowing more doesn’t mean every painting is suddenly going to be easy.

I’ve joked with friends more than once that maybe I’ve used up all my creativity. Maybe that’s it. Maybe there isn’t any more. They immediately tell me to shush, and we laugh about it, but if I’m being completely truthful, sometimes the joke starts to feel a little too real.

When you’re standing in front of another painting that isn’t doing what you wanted it to do, or you’ve spent more time editing, packing, framing and running a business than actually creating, a ridiculous little thought can start turning into a real fear. What if I don’t have another good painting in me? What if the ideas stop coming? What if the thing that built all of this suddenly isn’t there when I reach for it?

I know creativity doesn’t actually work that way. It isn’t a tank that eventually runs dry. Knowing that and feeling it are two very different things, though.

That fear has probably been sitting a little closer to the surface than I’ve wanted to admit.

Finding My Way Back Into the Paint

Then I had one of those days.

I wasn’t trying to reinvent anything or prove that I’d mastered a technique. I used a bloom recipe I’d learned from Sara, chose a palette that I genuinely loved, and started painting.

Everything clicked. The colors moved the way I wanted them to move. I loved what was happening on the surface and all the little interactions between colors. I loved both paintings. More importantly, I loved making them.

At one point I realized something that sounds ridiculously simple. I felt like an artist again. I remembered that I can paint.

That probably shouldn’t be something an artist needs to remember, but apparently sometimes it is.

I’m Still Figuring Out the Balance

I don’t think balance means dividing my time perfectly between painting and business. I don’t think there is a magical schedule where half of my time belongs to the artist and half belongs to the business owner and everybody stays politely on their side.

Some weeks the business needs more from me. There are paintings to ship, videos to edit, gallery deadlines, listings to finish and frames that need to stop living in whatever random corner I shoved them into. Other days, I need to paint. Not because I need content, something new for the website, or another finished piece to sell. I need to paint because I’m an artist, and making the work is the reason all of the other pieces exist.

Sweetgrass Art Studio is growing, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. I’m learning how to run a business at the same time I’m continuing to learn who I am as an artist. Maybe the goal isn’t to perfectly balance those two things. Maybe it’s simply learning to notice when one has gotten too loud.

The business needs the artist. Sometimes the artist needs everyone else to get out of the studio so she can play with paint.