#sparkchamber 011722 — Rebecca Gordon
Being bold and colorful and authentically true to self is a big part of the #sparkchamber megaphone. Today, we are thrilled to welcome Rebecca Gordon, an artist who made her own way through the beige — all the way to the big, bright, beautiful best!
In her own words:
My background and training is in graphic design — that’s what I eventually went to school for — but in high school I dropped art because becoming an artist for a living never even entered my mind. I decided I wanted to become a Marine Biologist and pushed through sciences. I had to retake courses over, I had to have tutors, it never came naturally to me, I was really fighting upstream. I wound up getting into a college that was affiliated with the University of Victoria in British Columbia but was really struggling and I just realized I couldn't spend the rest of my life forcing my brain to do something that just didn’t come naturally. Graphic Design was just starting to be offered and I decided to give it a try. I loved it! I wound up working for a number of agencies and built my own boutique agency.
After getting married and having three kids, I realized I needed more autonomy over my life and schedule, and I got out of graphic design all together. It was a great industry, but I was craving more freedom. My friend Mel was taking art courses and was trying to get me to come, but my kids were really little then, and it was hard to get to classes. That’s when I decided to buy art supplies and paint on my own.
I created many paintings over the years and attended an event called the Art Crawl in Collingwood, Ontario. This is where I met Sarah Filion from Matilda Swanson Gallery who now represents me. I made the leap into doing art full time. I tried to go down so many different paths but this one was undeniable. I feel blessed I get to wake up every day and do what I do.
1.] Where do ideas come from?
Ideas are all about aligning with your vibration. Different energies and energy fields exist all around us and I believe if you are open to an energy, it will find you and it will use you as a portal to come through. Ideas pop into my head, especially when I am actively doing something. Literally the more I do, the more things filter through and they’re not all good but they all lead to something better. People give up too quickly on things — you’ve got to put in the time and work. An idea wants to find a willing recipient who is actively working. An energy or idea will choose me because it knows I will help bring it into the world.
I love music and am big on lyrics, and when listening to a song while working out I’ll know immediately that a painting is coming through. I was listening to the Beastie Boys song The New Style and towards the end of the song, the lyric is burger to the bun, and I was inspired to paint a massive burger paired with that lyric. It’s weird, I just know inside when something is coming through. And I have to do it even if it’s not the greatest idea — I just have to do it. There’s an Andy Warhol quote that I love and gets at this idea of constantly creating without critiquing, “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
When I am feeling blocked, my husband will suggest that I step away because I’d often lean into it even more and fight it. I am learning that I need to take time off — it’s so much better to step away and really live and absorb life. It’s doing other things that will bring on other ideas. It’s almost like the universe is telling me I need to be well rounded. I’ll come back and I’ll see things in a totally different light.
2.] What is the itch you are scratching?
It’s just something that I have to do, I feel it and I do it. Maybe this is because I didn’t do it for years and the universe still kind of pushed me in a way. I’m kind of learning to be patient with the different steps and I’m evolving but it’s still very much about feeling the urge and doing it without trying to overthink it, it’s just a part of me that needs to be expressed.
I’ve always been really interested in people who are ostracized or marginalized, I feel I can understand them more than somebody who is shut off and living in a beige world. My mom, who is now passed, was from Montreal. It’s such a colorful city and she stood out everywhere she went, she was totally her own person. She had a mental illness and I feel like a lot of her struggle was that she was trying to conform. I am really drawn to colour and a bold graphic style because of my graphic design years. I live in a very supportive art-buying area, but people are drawn to more traditional art, like images of skiers or of Georgian Bay — it’s a very specific aesthetic. My art is different, much less traditional. COVID and the subsequent lockdown made me realize how important color and bold imagery really is. People wanted to escape during COVID and had to do it with their imaginations by creating a home environment that was livelier.
3.] Early bird or night owl? Tortoise or hare?
Having three kids, I have to utilize my time really well, I can’t wait around to get inspired and then go paint. I have to make the most of my time when the kids go to school. But they are also used to seeing me paint and leave me to my time in the studio. I come and go, put on some dinner, and go back in and continue painting. There are times when I go into a kind of state where I’ll paint for weeks and there’s paintings all over and the laundry is piling up, for sure it’s about balance, so I just kind of paint whenever I can.
4.] How do you know when you are done?
One of the toughest parts of the creative process is knowing when something is done. I’ve ruined a few paintings for sure by not stopping when it was truly finished. Depending on the style of painting, my more graphic art style is much easier to know when it’s finished. But my other paintings aren’t as obvious and I’m learning to just step away and then maybe I'll know in a couple of weeks whether it’s done or not done. But forcing never turns out well.
I used to really feel the need to produce lots of work and it’s only been since COVID that I’ve gotten out of that production mindset. I’d rather make quality over quantity.
