by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

Creative Status is a podcast about using creativity as a vehicle for improving your life by deconstructing ego, integrating the shadow self, and designing and manifesting a real life.

Every episode explores how the creative process can help you GROW REAL by moving towards wholeness in yourself by making the unconscious conscious.

Prepare for this episode of Creative Status as we debunk the myth of the elusive ‘talent fairy’ with the incredible Mandy Theis. Join us in a conversation that challenges preconceived notions and proves that artistic and creative skills are not bestowed by magic but cultivated through discipline, consistency, and focus.

Meet Mandy Theis: A seasoned atelier-trained artist and licensed art teacher, Mandy extends her expertise worldwide, helping individuals grasp and impart technical drawing and painting skills. In this episode, she invites you to dismantle the illusion of innate talent and embrace the journey of skill acquisition.

No Talent Fairy Required: Mandy dismantles the common misconception that artistic prowess is a gift from a mythical talent fairy. Instead, she unveils the truth—realism skills are attainable by anyone willing to put in the effort. Discover the empowering shift from seeking a fairy to embracing the power of disciplined learning.

Discipline, Consistency, Focus: Learn the keys to unlocking your artistic potential as Mandy shares insights that will help you forge your own creative path in life. Find out how these pillars lay the foundation for building the skills that transform your artistic vision into reality.

From Atelier to Worldwide Teaching: Explore Mandy’s journey from atelier training to becoming a global educator. Discover the impact of her teachings on individuals around the world and how her approach reshapes the narrative around artistic learning.

Creative Status: Where REALNESS Transcends Illusions

Join Mandy Theis and me for a conversation that challenges the status quo and empowers you to take control of your artistic journey.

Tune in and discover that there’s no need for a talent fairy—realness prevails when discipline, consistency, and focus become your guiding lights on the path to creative mastery.

Stay real out there,

Oli

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Show Transcript: Killing the Talent Fairy for REALNESS

Unleashing Your Inner Artist: Discipline and Creativity

This podcast is about two things: creativity and realness.

Intro

Oli Anderson: Oh, hi there. Oli Anderson here. You’re listening to Creative Status. This is a podcast about two things: creativity and realness.

They’re connected because your creativity is a vehicle for you uncovering all of the parts of yourself that you’ve been hiding from that cause you to block yourself, hesitate, and hold back from life. And so if you follow your creativity where it wants to take you, you’re going to have a better life. You’re going to feel good, and things are going to generally flow and be amazing.

Today’s episode is an interview with Mandy Theis. She’s an art teacher, and she does lots of other interesting things. But the conversation really is about how if we want to make the most of our creativity, we have to use discipline to become skilled so that we can express ourselves even more.

This is something that’s really important because a lot of the time these conversations about being creative tap into the idea that we are all creative, which I agree with, but they forget to mention that we can maximize our creativity by working with life, with the law of cause and effect, to ultimately level ourselves up and to step into our potential.

I think a big thing about being real is acknowledging that we have to accept not just who we are in the moment, but who we could be. And the skill thing is really important when it comes to that. So anyway, it’s a really good conversation.

Mandy, thank you so much for your time. Everybody else, thanks for listening. Hope you get some value from this. Here we go. Boom.

Let’s talk about the talent fairy.

Interview

Oli: Oh, hi there, Mandy. Thank you so much for joining me on today’s episode of Creative Status. We’re going to be talking about.

Mandy Theis: Thanks for having me

Oli: Well, thank you again.

Mandy: Already messing it up.

Oli: It’s okay. It’s all part of the process. We’re going to be talking about the magical talent fairy that a lot of people think, is going to swoop into their lives and magically solve their creative problems. Probably some other stuff as well.

But before we get into it, do you want to introduce yourself, tell people what you’re all about and what you want to get out of this conversation as well?

Mandy: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, for the second time, not interrupting you this time. And, my name is Mandy Theis. I am a licensed art teacher. I also have something called Atelier training, which is just a fancy word for saying realistic drawing and painting training.

But this crazy thing is that, this training almost went extinct during the last century. And today it’s, becoming more popular, and, more people have access to it. But there is no talent fairy that’s going to come and bop you on the head, and then you’re magically going to be able to draw and paint realistically.

However, if you connect with Atelier training, if you find these people and there’s more and more of them every day. They can teach you how to draw and paint realistically, even if you can’t even draw a stick figure.

Oli: Wow. So already this is getting very interesting. Why did this training, the atelier training, that’s what you call it why did that almost go extinct? That’s interesting.

Mandy: Yeah. Well, that’s a very complex answer. So it used to be, the default in art was that people would go to these Ateliers, get the training and realistic drawing and painting training, and then go on to their careers in architecture or easel painting or any of the arts, really. The basis was this drawing training but a few things happened.

One is that the centre of these, training, like these training centres, especially in Europe and Paris in particular, but Munich was another big centre. Things didn’t go so well in World War I and World War II. Like, the people running these schools literally died m, in some of these wars and then you had obviously a whole lot of upheaval.

Now, Americans did start, in the late 18 hundreds. There were, wealthy business owners in the United States that were like, we want Europe style portraits. And they started sending artists to Europe, to Paris, and to Munich. And then they would come back and open up schools in the, so, you know, some of these early schools were open, like the Cincinnati, art school. It had a different name when it opened, but what we generally think of as museums today often started as these ateliers.

Oli: Wow.

Mandy: But here’s where I start sounding a little bit like a conspiracy theorist. And I promise you I have receipts. I can back this up, but keep, in mind that during the Cold War, so we had World War I, World War II, that destroyed sometimes physically, sometimes the people running the ateliers. And then by the time the Cold World comes around, there is like this big emphasis between Russia and the United States.

And Russia was really into realism. And that realism training that they maintained. So they maintained their ateliers in Russia. But, there was a strong fear of communist realism in the United States. And so you’ve heard of McCarthyism going after Aaron Copeland, or big name Hollywood studio people. Well, the artists weren’t exempt from that.

 And so if you were an easel painter and you’re painting in a communist realism way, you had to change gear pretty quick in order to have a career. So a lot of these people went to M, California to work in the movie industry. Many of them went into illustration. Norman Rockwell is an example of this where it was know these little secret, safe places to be a realist without being accused of being a communist.

Oli: Wow.

Mandy: So, that was part of it, yeah. Now, there were a handful of places that managed to keep this training alive in the easel painting tradition, more or less. and the most common one that people can trace their lineage back to was in Boston with this guy named, R. H. Ives Gammell.

Another one survived in Italy. Some Americans were running a school in Italy who had trained with, like, Nerina Simi and Pietro Annigoni, who Nerina Simi’s father was one of the last people to train in the de Beaux Arts in Paris before that system collapsed in World War II.

So, it’s crazy because it used to be very standard in the visual arts and similar to other art fields. Like, if you listen to a musician, you expect them to play in tune and on beat. But in art, we’ve lost our connection to all technicality.

Oli: Wow. Yeah.

Mandy: So, ironically, the atelier movement, which used to be the standard in art, is now the countercultural movement in art.

Oli: That’s really interesting, honestly. We’re going to crack open the Talent Fairy in a few minutes, probably. But in general, I totally agree with what you have just suggested about the technical skills and the foundation of the craft being something that’s super, super important, to state the obvious, but that you need to be able to understand and to have mastered before you can start breaking the rules and playing with, like, expressionism or surrealism or all these different rule breaking things that people like to kind of focus on instead these days.

And sure, only if you understand the craft, whether it’s writing or art, or whatever it is, can you actually start to be creative. Because you can’t break the rules until you understand the rules. And if you do understand them in a very technical way, then you’re going to know why you’re breaking them and why you’re pushing the envelope and all that kind of stuff.

Do you think our cultural aversion to realism is linked to the talent fairy?

So, do you think our cultural aversion to realism in, art is linked to some of these beliefs around the Talent Fairy that people think are, what’s actually required for them to be creative these days? So, I suppose before you answer that, I’m throwing loads at you. Sorry. Let’s start with the definition of the Talent Fairy in relation to all this stuff that you just shared.

Mandy: So, there’s so much in what you said, and it’s hard for me not to respond to each piece of it, but let’s, start with the Talent Fairy. This is an ecosystem that’s all interrelated. They’re not separate things that you just mentioned. Because the reason people believe a Talent Fairy exists is largely because of this, exclusivity modern art market that’s been art shaming the populace for the last hundred years into, saying, this white canvas is really deep and important, and if you don’t think so, you’re a dumb-dumb.

Oli: Right.

Mandy: Which I don’t believe in art shaming, and I strongly encourage anybody to stick to their guns. Like, if you don’t like a piece of art, it’s okay to say that. We say that with movies. Like, if Brad Pitt doesn’t make a movie or have a good acting role, you can say that. We can say that in other art forms, but we aren’t allowed to criticize what a very small number of tastemakers decides is high end art. And then we don’t understand it. And then we think that, “Oh, we don’t have it, whatever it is. We weren’t hit on the head by the talent fairy”.

And it’s so asinine. I can’t stand that whole ecosystem that makes people, like, everyday people who do appreciate beauty and do appreciate skill believe that somehow they are ignorant or dumb.

Because this kind of silly art that is being pushed upon us by a very small group of people is, constantly it’s a closed circuit up there on the high end art world. The people running museums and selecting the artwork and picking which artists are the it artists. It’s a very closed circuit. And unlike other art forms, people don’t really care anymore.

Like, everyday people don’t really care. If you walk down the street and ask anybody, name three movie stars or name three bands that you like. Right. Almost anybody can easily name that right. Of living people. ask people the three famous living artists today. The average person can’t.

Some, of them can name dead people. I think that really speaks to the disconnect between what’s being imposed upon the public as high end art and what the public actually cares about. And if you look at the beloved art figures of the 20th century, say what you will about Thomas Kinkade, he’s the guy that painted all those cottages with the light inside that were in the malls everywhere in the 90s. so say what you want about how saccharine and teeth hurting his artwork was, but they brought people real joy and lots of people real joy. He was traded for billions of dollars. He was the first publicly traded artist. And he was saying something that connected with people in this time of disconnect and upheaval. And he was giving them a place of peace, a visual comfort, and, that resonated with more people than all the blank canvases in the high end museums.

Oli: Wow.

Mandy: Yeah.

Oli: I’m going to sound really cynical now.

Mandy: More cynical me just now?

Oli: Well, I don’t know. I think a lot of the modern art it really is just bullshit, isn’t it?

Mandy: Absolutely.

Oli: Yeah. Pardon my French.

Mandy: Yeah. No, I find that I have to give people permission to say that out loud.

Oli: Right.

Mandy: Like, people are so afraid to say what they really think about modern art out loud because we’ve been shamed.

Oli: Yeah.

Mandy: They don’t want to look by these communities and not only that. But sometimes, there’s, quote unquote high end artwork that’s been designed to shame people. So there’s like a common thing that happens where a high end artist will leave garbage as an exhibit, as an installation, and then inevitably, somebody throws the garbage away.

And then they’re like, “Ha, look at the ignorant proliferate class. They just don’t get, how significant and meaningful this artwork was.” They’re even setting it up to reinforce this nonsense.

Oli: Yeah, it’s like an us/them thing. And, ultimately, I think the reason we can say that it’s bullshit is that it’s ultimately pure ego. And I think it does go back to what you’re saying about the talent fairy. So ultimately, if most modern artists are not learning those real technical skills to be able to handle reality first and foremost, then basically all they’re doing is just pulling whatever concoction is ready to come out of their ass, putting it on a canvas or taking a photograph of it or whatever.

But because it has no actual substance, because they’re not grounded in something true and it’s just their ego basically going through the motions of creating something, then what ends up happening is they create all these abstract, ideological, conceptual interpretations around this bullshit, basically, that they’ve created.

And then they try and sell the conceptual ideas as being way more inflated and valuable than they actually are and, because people are insecure, because they getting art shamed and all this kind of stuff you’re talking about, then it’s kind of like the Emperor’s New Clothes. They buy into it.

Mandy: Oh, for sure.

Oli: It’s like, oh, yes, this blank canvas must mean this because this is what they said and blah, blah, blah. But ultimately, it’s all just a castle in the sky and it can crumble as soon as you bring the truth back into the equation. And I really think that for 90% of it, the only function of it is to shame people and to feel exclusive and to give people the buzz of buying into that. Or in a lot of cases, there’s probably money laundering going on and stuff like that, which, oh, for sure, that’s.

Mandy: The least regulated market in the world.

Oli: Yeah, that’s my conspiracy theory. And so, it’s all bullshit conspiracy.

Mandy: There’s no laws that govern, or very few laws. And the ones that they’ve tried to pass have been gutted. So, I can’t even go there because there’s so many other things that you just mentioned that need to be addressed.

“I hate modern art that is not communicating visually.”

Tom Wolfe wrote a book called The Painted word, and he’s a well-respected, new York City author. And, he said that he called it The Painted Word because it’s no longer even about the painting. It’s about what you write about the painting.

And so it might be interesting philosophy with a cute little illustration, but is it art, right? If it’s not communicating visually, if the message isn’t getting through. If someone can’t look at it and understand what it is, then is it actually art or is it philosophy. With a written thesis next to it.

Oli: Yeah.

Mandy: and then another thing, too, that I want to be very clear about is that I don’t hate all modern art. I hate modern, art that is not communicating visually. So there are certainly modern artists that I really enjoy and appreciate, like Kehinde Wiley – for those who don’t know, Kehinde Wiley  is an artist that, works in realism and puts, African American men and women into, kind of royal portraits. And it’s a very cool effect, and it speaks, and it has something to say that’s understood by looking at it.

Oli: Right.

Mandy: …and there are even some more abstract works that I find valuable that you can understand by looking at them. I don’t have a problem with all modern art, and I don’t have a problem with theory and art. What I have a problem with is art.

Oli: I think there is a place for theory and art, obviously, but it’s a matter of degree. Like, if it’s only theory, then the art becomes conceptual more than anything else. And a lot of the time, the concepts that people attached to the art are, concepts that they’re using to justify the way that their ego wants them to be able to feel. And I think that’s why you get the US them kind of mindset, like, within the system. You’re talking about the ecosystem.

Mandy: Well, just to recognize that a lot of the quote unquote, successful, high end artists, often started their careers in marketing or are marketing geniuses. So Andy Warhol came from a marketing background. Right. And he was mocking the entire high end art world his entire career. and he actually felt that he had helped destroy the technical skills in art and actually founded the New York Academy of Art in New York City to try to save figurative drawing.

After he thought that he killed like a lot of people don’t know that part about the history that a lot of these artists that go off the rails, like Damien Hurst was famous for putting a shark in a tank and calling it, the fear of death in the mind of someone living. Right. What a great marketing name that is.

Did, it take skill to stuff a shark? No, he didn’t even stuff it himself. He paid someone else to stuff it. but, do you know there was a period of time where he started working on what he called fact paintings, where he was, like, painting realistic butterflies, actually trying to teach himself how to paint. So even these high end artists get tired of the BS after a period of time and try to actually learn the techniques and skills of their craft.

Oli: There is another side of the coin, actually, as well, that we maybe need to explore. So, I agree with what you said. I think real art ultimately is about communicating something real or giving people an experience. It’s not just a conceptual thing. But the other side of the coin to what we’re saying about modern art being bullshit when it’s too conceptual and abstract and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But if it’s just an imitation of reality, like, if we’re just painting an apple or something, maybe that’s not really communicating anything either. And so there is an element where you need to be able to express something real, but it doesn’t necessarily have to reflect the way reality looks in order to do that. Do you know what I mean? And I think there’s a lot of skills around that. It’s like there’s a middle ground to be creating something really true.

Mandy: There’s certainly a lot of realistic artwork that isn’t good art. It’s not good just because it has technique to achieve it. I absolutely believe that, as you know, there’s lots of artists that have atelier training, Elizabeth Zanzinger comes to mind, who, has some abstract elements in her work that are done very skilfully – so, it’s not an all or nothing situation.

Ah, but I do think and this is a, ah, position as a licensed art teacher who’s worked in the public school systems, as somebody who trains other art teachers through the university program, at the Florence Academy of Art, as somebody that trains, people at large through my online class, with our Atelier painting bootcamp.

I have all these different experiences of teaching. And anybody can learn technique. It’s not unique to some people and not others and all those people go on to create different things with that technique. And I really believe that the most creative person there is, the most creative artists that exist today are the ones that can execute their vision without compromise because they didn’t have the techniques they needed.

Oli: So what are we saying here about creativity itself? Because basically what we said, if you’re just copying what’s in front of you, well, in a way, you’re just like a really intelligent monkey that’s learned some skills.

Mandy: I cannot let this point slide. I have got to address this. Okay? It’s a common belief with Atelier trained artists, like, why not just use a camera if you’re just copying realistically what’s in front of you? And I need to address this because it’s super important. And this is the level of visual literacy that we have in today’s society that even 100 years ago, most people understood, as like, a standard course of knowledge.

The distinguishing factor in artistic creation is the choices that we make.

All right, so here, I’m getting on my soapbox here, so buckle up.

Oli: I’m ready, I’m ready.

Mandy: Let me take a break first. Yeah, you have me hyperventilating here, because, here’s the deal. A camera when you’re taking a picture of something or a painter when they’re painting something, you are taking something from the three dimensional world and you are compressing massive amounts of 3D information to only 2D information. So think about how much more power your computer needs to run a video game that has three dimensional elements versus a 2D game. That was a big innovation in video games.

And it literally takes more processing power, like significantly more processing power to do that, because there’s more information there. Okay, so the physical world around us has more visual information than we can ever put on a two dimensional canvas or a picture that we print. All right, so what’s being edited out now? A camera is a machine that’s making editing choices the same way every time that you can manipulate a few key things on.

Like you can change the shutter speed and you can focus in different areas, but it’s somewhat limited on the choices that you can make. When you are painting something with a well trained eye and with atelier techniques, you have infinite choices about which information to weed out and which information to include. If you look at a Chardonnay painting of one of his pears, it is one of the most creative acts, in my opinion, in painting, because of what he edited out and how complete and beautiful. It’s more beautiful than you could ever get with a camera because it’s controlled and intentional with a vision that matches the whole.

Oli: So in a way, that’s answered my question, because ultimately, what you’re saying, the difference between just imitating something like one of these super intelligent monkeys or whatever, or been too conceptual for the sake of being clever and justifying your ego and all that kind of stuff, the distinguishing factor is the choices that we make.

And I guess what we’re saying then is a truly creative person, an actual artist instead of just someone painting pictures for the sake of it, or taking photos for the sake of it, or typing instead of writing is about the choices that we make.

Mandy: Absolutely.

Oli: Yeah. So how do we make sure that we’re making the right choices? I suppose that’s a question. And I think this is where the, talent fairy is going to come swooping back in. Because, in a way, the talent fairy, if she did exist, she would be waving her magical wand, and then we would magically be making creative choices from one moment to the next instead of just going through the motions.

Either with our left brain and being too skilled or with our right brain and, just pouring our guts out on the page or with some conceptual bullshit in the middle.

Mandy: So there’s a great story that I think illustrates this point really well, that I’d like to share with you. So, when I was teaching in the public school system, I took my students to a museum to see an Ansel Adams exhibit. And for those of you who might not be familiar, Ansel Adams was this photographer. He did a lot with, national Parks and he made absolutely stunning, beautiful photography images.

So we have Ansel Adams negatives and we have the prints that he made from those negatives. And sometimes museums, that own the negatives try to make a new print from the negative. And in theory, if there was no skill involved, it should just come out but the choices Angel Adams made in his own prints are what made his work so beautiful and so emotionally stunning.

And I, remember even my students being like, how come some of these are so much worse than the others? And I didn’t know at the time.

And so I asked the curator, and they’re like, oh, well, some of those are actually the prints made by Ansel Adams where he was controlling exactly the light and shadow and values and some were not. And Ansel Adams was running around in a circle in California with atelier trained artists. And he was applying that knowledge to photography. And the people in the museums trying to make these same prints today don’t have that knowledge. And what’s missing? The beauty of even with his own negatives, the beauty is missing.

Oli: Yeah. So where do you think he got that understanding? I know he had the training, but do you think there’s in a way, it’s more than just the training? Like, something has happened in his life experience where he’s gained an understanding of what actually makes something beautiful?

Mandy: He was a classical pianist. He was trained as a classical pianist. And to train at the highest levels in any art is about nuance and degree and precision within tiniest degrees that people without the training don’t understand even exist. So it’s not surprising to me that when he took up photography that he had that sensitivity that he had as a pianist to be able to see the small increments of change because he understands, as a highly trained artist what a small increment of change is.

Oli: Wow. So how do we get to that point? If you look around you at the world today, everybody seems to think that they’re some kind of creative genius.

Mandy: I think everybody is they just don’t have the skill set and practice to bring it out right to the fullest level and that’s what atelier training really does. It’s taking where you are and taking what you love most about the world and giving you the tools you need to enhance it and make it the most of that that it can be.

Oli: Right. So, for example, if you look at Instagram, right, there are so many people that have bought a camera and they think that because they own a camera and they know how to press the button to make it go click, that they’re like a photographer or an artist. Or people think that because they can paint their cat or something and then post it online, they’re like an artist. Or they think that because they can type some poetry, then they’re like an actual poet. But actually, that is not necessarily the case. And I think they’re the kind of people who the talent fairy is kind of deceived in some way.

Mandy: They believe that they’ve been hit by the talent fairy.

Oli: Yeah.

Mandy: They have to do the work to get the skills they need to take it. That’s an interesting theory. I definitely see what you’re saying, but to me, one, I’m so happy that people are actually taking their artist self seriously. As a licensed art teacher, I found that until about fourth grade, students love drawing, they love creating, they’re not afraid. And then by the time they hit fourth grade, because they don’t have access to the training and skills they need to make their artwork at the level that they want it to be, they start saying, “Okay, well, if I can’t draw my grandma the way I want to and have it look like my grandma, then I must not have it”. That’s where that idea happens.

But what’s actually missing are people that have the training that can teach that child how to achieve what they’re going after. Because this is hard for me to say, because I love art teachers. I’m a very avid and active member in the art education community but it’s not their fault. But we’ve all gone through college training people my age. I’m almost 40.

We, went through college art teacher training being like, if you teach skills, it’ll ruin student creativity, right? And so, if you have an entire profession whose job it is to teach art, who are afraid to teach art because they were told that it will ruin student creativity, they’re not going to be able to give the student the skills they need to create that artwork that’s in their head. And that’s where this problem is.

And that’s why I’m such an advocate of technical training. It does not ruin student creativity. It makes them more creative. It makes them be able to create the artwork that they want to, and it helps encourage them when they can grow towards what they have in their head that they’re trying to achieve.

Oli: That’s basically what I was getting at. So I believe everybody is creative. Like, ultimately, that is the human condition. It’s the theme of this podcast. We’re all creative. Creativity, ultimately, at that level, is about working with what’s going on within us.

A, psychological level, so we can make the unconscious conscious and move towards wholeness. And creativity is a vehicle for doing that. But at, that very real level of creativity, there are a lot of myths around the talent ferry, and it’s. Basically the myth that that’s all you need. All you need is your natural creativity. That’s true. But at the same time, it’s not true.

And the reason we can say that is it’s basically it’s like a muscle. And if you can choose absolutely the skills that are going to allow you to be able to be more effective with that natural drive that we all have towards wholeness and creativity and blah, blah, blah, then you’re going to be more free, and you’re going to be able to get better results. But I think because of the myth that you’ve been talking about, that all you need to do is just pick up a camera or whatever it is.

I always end up picking on photographers. I don’t know why. If you just think that’s all you need to do, pick up the camera, and then you just naturally got this creative genius, maybe some of us will naturally just be able to take amazing photos and to express something that’s so real that everyone who sees these photos is just going to be mindblown.

But probably for the average person, we need to upskill ourselves to get the results we want. And it’s not just traditional creativity. It might be like, for a certain person, your way of being creative is to have a business. And you need to develop certain skills that are going to allow you to think more creatively in a business context. It might be a parent or whatever. So actually, what you’re talking about has universal application. But a lot of us have fallen into the trap of thinking that we’re just naturally going to be gifted at something.

Mandy: That makes me so sad for people, because then they give up on their dreams. They don’t realize that there are people out there in the world that can help you achieve your dreams. Like, I had given up being a realistic painter, and when I was, like, 25, I discovered Atelier training existed.

There’s a huge societal advantage of pretending like you’re hit by the talent fairy.

It was like being told I could go to Hogwarts and be a witch or whatever – that this magical thing that I had always desired was suddenly within my grasp. And what kills me is that we keep perpetuating this myth that, oh, you either have it or you don’t, and that’s a lie. And even those Instagram people that you were talking about, I don’t hate photography.

Well done photography I adore. There’s an artist, called Cigna on Instagram that I’m totally obsessed with. She’s a photographer but when you go and talk to her, you find out that, “Oh, actually, she spent a lot of time honing her craft.”

She spent a lot of time taking classes and learning from people who knew more than her. So even the people that we think just popped out of nowhere, there’s a lot of behind the scenes work that’s being done, but there’s a huge societal advantage of pretending like you’re hit by talent. Picasso maximized that in an extreme way because his father was Atelier trained, trained Picasso. And then he spent his whole career telling people that he was a magical hit by the talent fairy.

And he had far more access to knowledge and training than almost anybody alive at the same time. He didn’t die until the 80s, but atelier training almost died out, like, pretty much died out with his father’s generation.

 So he was so lucky to have that knowledge and skill and training. And then he goes around and markets him, because guess what? You can sell a whole lot more art if you pretend that you were hit by than if you tell the world anybody can do it. If you just go to these schools or have access to this knowledge.

Oli: Yeah. That is such a vital and important point that you just made. Ultimately, people, they care about the results that we’re getting. So if you write a book or something or you paint something amazing or, whatever it is, people care about the results. And if you start talking about the process behind it I wrote a book, for example, right.

If I said, “Well, every day I sat down and I typed for 3 hours” people are going to fall asleep. And all of the romance around the book itself just kind of dissipates. And people think, “Okay, well, I suppose anyone could do that”. It’s not interesting anymore.

And so that’s one side of it. People don’t want to they only want to see the tip of the iceberg, not what’s going on under the water, but also they want to believe that we can just get the results without doing the work, because then it makes them feel that it’s more attainable in a strange way. But actually, that attitude is what distances them from getting the results.

Mandy: Absolutely. Because, when you believe that you have to be hit on the talent ferry to create the painting and the style that you see that you like or what you aspire to, and if you believe that you just weren’t it, then it frees you from the obligation of doing the work to achieve your dream and I hate that myth so much. And it starts at elementary school, unfortunately, with the current attitudes in art education that are still kind of stuck in the last century, of teaching skills will ruin creativity.

But teachers are starting to change that. And I have 20,000 people on my mailing list. Most of them are teachers asking me every day, how do you do this? Or how do you teach this? So we’re starting to shift the narrative here, and help teachers get the resources they need and the training they need. Because remember that their teachers didn’t have this knowledge either – how could they possibly teach something that they’ve never had access to before?

It’s not just our teachers. I have a lot of tattoo artists that are really interested in atelier training that I work with. Almost anybody working in realism architecture. People are starting to understand that drawing is key.

Like, if they can’t draw realistically, they can’t create any of the buildings that they see in Europe that they love and adore. They don’t have close to the sensitivity they need to achieve something like, from and actually, a lot of dentists I don’t know why dentists, but dentists are in my online atelier class more and more. and the thing is, you don’t have to have an art background. You don’t have to know anything. In fact, sometimes it’s better to not know anything about drawing and painting when you start atelier training because then you have to, unlearn a bunch of bad information.

Oli: Yeah, I think what you’re saying about basically, the universality of anybody being able to learn skills is something that is not very romantic, it’s not very attractive to a lot of people, but it’s ultimately, it’s just the truth. What we’re talking about is cause and effect. Like what I found in my coaching practice. Pretty much anybody can do anything they want as long as it’s within the bounds of reality.

Like, they’re not trying to, I don’t know, summon a magical unicorn or something and then float off into. But in general, if we’re just trying to improve our lives and move towards our goals, you just need to use the law of cause and effect, which is what we’re talking about, and be disciplined, consistent, and focused in just moving towards your goals every day. And a big part of that in relation to what you’re talking about is skills.

And actually, that makes, our goals and our visions for our lives within grasp, but for some reason them, I think, because having to face that law and cause and effect is going to cause us to face ourselves and realize that, okay, we’re not quite as good as we think we are now. We might have to face some underlying shame and guilt and trauma, and we have to grow through our comfort zones, and our identity is going to change and all this kind of stuff.

 Because of that we would rather believe in the talent fairy so that we can kind of just explain what we really want away and just kind of go through the motions of being stuck in the comfort zone. So what you’re talking about is super important. It has universal application to all human beings.

Mandy: Absolutely.

Oli: Because ultimately, you’re just raising awareness of how things actually work. And I think that’s amazing.

Mandy: Yes. Ah, it is work.

As you improve, you tend to want more.

And there’s something that I’d like to say here that a lot of people don’t realize, too, because when you start training, whether it’s in an atelier to learn how to draw and paint realistically, or any of these other examples that you just gave it’s, that, as you improve, you tend to want more

So when I first started my atelier training, I saw somebody that was a couple of years ahead of me in their training. And I told myself, if I could just paint that well, I’d never want for anything in my life ever again.

And then a few years later, you’re at that level and you’re like, oh, this actually isn’t very good. Now I’m trained so well that I can see what really good i. as you’re training, one, yes, anybody can get better at, ah, technical skills, including drawing and painting. There’s no talent fairy, if we haven’t got that emphasized enough throughout this podcast. And then, two, that your goals shift because you become more open to the world and more open to your own potential and possibilities.

So as you level up and invest in the skill set, whatever, that skill set is that you’re going after, it opens up more possibilities. It helps you see more. And I think there’s a balance to be had between understanding that it’s a never ending journey when you pursue an art. And I’m sure other things too. Leonardo DA Vinci, when he was 80 years old, said, “If only I had 80 years, then I could really learn how to paint”.

Oli: Yeah.

Mandy: So accepting the journey and accepting that it’s not an endpoint – it’s a lifelong pursuit, especially in the arts yeah.

Oli: That’s how I see it. We can always go deeper into awareness, basically, of who we are, what we’re trying to express in the world, and then an acceptance of how we can do that. And ultimately m, that’s why I think the realest art, is linked to the realist relationship with ourselves.

Because as we go through this journey of upskilling and understanding what we’re trying to communicate and all that kind of stuff, we get a stronger foundation of truth in our relationship with who we are, ultimately. And by doing that we can use the skills to the greatest extent possible. We can make those nuanced choices that you were talking about. We know the message that we need to put into our work. We’re not scared to use those skills to face parts of ourselves that we’ve been hiding from, actually, and to use the art to bring those parts to the surface.

And so, ultimately, it all starts, like you said, in a way, by killing the talent fairy and taking control of our own relationship with ourselves, so we can use our talents to be even more real or something like that.

Mandy: Well said. Well said. Absolutely.

Anybody can learn to draw and paint.

Oli: So, how would you sum up all of this that we’ve been talking about? Yeah, that is no mean feat to be able to do that, but I guess yeah.

What are the final words of wisdom how can we move forward with our lives now that we’ve uncovered this, addiction to the talent ferry that many people have? And can you let people know where they can find you as well and all that kind of thing?

Mandy: Yeah, absolutely. So I would love for your audience just to be able to take away that anybody can draw and paint or any other pursuit that you are interested in. But obviously, my area is in drawing and painting. It doesn’t matter if you can’t even draw a stick figure. If you train with an atelier trained person, they can teach you how to draw and paint at levels that you never thought possible. And there is no talent fairy, but there is work that goes into doing that.

If you’re interested in trying it out, I have a free online colour class on my website at, www.SchoolofatilierArts.com. Atelier is spelled A-T-E-L-I-E-R. It’s a French word and it’s on the front page there. And it’ll take you through how to see colours, probably in a way that you’ve never thought before. And my promise to everybody that takes this free class is that you will be able to see colours that you didn’t know existed by the time that you finish this 1 hour class. A

And if that doesn’t convince you that drawing and painting is a learned skill, I create that class because it’s the most impact with the shortest amount of time to really prove to people that, yes, absolutely, anybody can learn how to draw and paint better.

And here’s a little sample. And try it. Try it and find out, if you’re one of those people that’s like, “Oh, my God, I’ve wanted this my whole life. I didn’t know what it was called” –  it’s called Atelier training, and I run an online atelier two times a week, where you get live critiques, and I have video instruction, and you can find that at School of Atelier Arts. And it’s called the, atelier Painting Bootcamp.

And then, if you’re just art curious and you are interested in the types of conversation that we had, I encourage you to join our massive, very popular email list. We have thousands, thousands of people on our email list, and I send out little articles that I write, little, tidbits about the art world and what’s going on. So if you just have a general interest in art, I encourage you to join the newsletter.

Oli: Well, that all sounds amazing, so I’m going to sign up for that course. I do believe there’s a talent ferry, but there’s a colour fairy, and it’s you.

Mandy: There is a colour fairy.

Oli: So, yeah, that sounds awesome. I’ll share all of the links in the show notes. But, Mandy, thank you so much for this. It’s been a good one.

Mandy: And I just thank you so much for having me.

Oli: Thanks again.

Mandy: See I had to interrupt you at the end because I started with the beginning.

Oli: It’s okay. That’s gone full circle. It’s beautiful symmetry.

Mandy: And it’s yeah.

Oli: Thanks again.

Mandy: All right. Thank you.

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