Extraordinary Creatives

There’s something I hear all the time from artists, and it sounds very reasonable on the surface. “If I go to that event, it’s going to drain me", "I won’t have the energy.”  “I’ll feel awkward.” 

Sometimes you are genuinely exhausted, and the most intelligent thing you can do is not push through, but actually attend to your body, your mind, your nervous system.

That’s not avoidance. That’s care.

But what I’m noticing more and more is that many artists aren’t making decisions from current exhaustion. They’re making decisions from anticipated exhaustion - From memory.

Your brain looks at past experiences, and it says: “Last time this felt uncomfortable.” “Last time I felt out of place.” “I didn´t know what to say” - So, let’s not do that again.

Before you’ve even left the house, your body has already decided:  “This is going to be draining.” -  “This is not for me.”

That pattern doesn’t just shape whether you go - It shapes how you experience the room when you’re in it.

This  episode is about something deeper than networking.

It’s about who you are becoming every time you choose to stay, leave, speak, or stay silent.

The artist who leaves early…or the artist who stays for one more conversation. The one who performs…or the one who gets curious.

KEY TAKEAWAYS


You’re not bad at networking, you’re protecting yourself. Your brain remembers past discomfort and pre-loads you to expect the same discomfort at every event.


The room isn’t the problem, the story is. Two people can have completely different reads on the same moment: one sees “they’re just busy,” another sees “they don’t care about me.” Neither is objectively right - the story you choose either opens or closes possibility. Your interpretation is often what limits you.


Start small: go to one event, stay a bit longer than is comfortable, and have one non-performative conversation. Networking isn’t performance, it’s discovery. 

BEST MOMENTS

“Many artists aren't making decisions from current exhaustion. They're making decisions from anticipated exhaustion. From memory.”

“Instead of jumping to they don't like me, they're not interested. Try widening the lens. Maybe they're overwhelmed, maybe they're socially awkward... you don´t know.”

“This isn't really about networking. It's about becoming somebody who can walk into a space, notice discomfort, and not immediately obey it.”

HOST BIO

With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

****

Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

****

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

****

Book a Discovery Call Today

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at [email protected]

****

Discover Your Extraordinary Creativity

Visit www.cerihand.com to learn how we can help you become an extraordinary creative.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

What can an ink drawing and one line of text really do?

In the hands of Guy Richards Smit, it can hold horror and humour in the same breath. It can slice through politics while pretending to be an amuse-bouche between heavier courses. It can make you laugh, wince, and then realise you’ve been implicated.

Born and raised in New York City, Guy is a painter, performer, musician, video artist and, more recently, a New Yorker cartoonist. But that barely scratches the surface. As you’ll hear, he’s always been fascinated by the vehicles that carry culture, whether pop songs, sitcoms, or the single-panel gag cartoon.
From poring over old New Yorker anthologies in his grandparents’ dark apartment as a child, to submitting ten cartoons a week with no acknowledgement for over a year before finally getting one accepted, his journey has been about curiosity and commitment.

We talk about what he learned from making protest banners at the age of 16 with Keith Haring, about the discipline of making work at speed and trusting that ideas will catch up with action. We explore the economics of cartooning, and how Guy has built a living not from the commission alone but from understanding how to connect with and cultivate collectors.

We dive into what it means to stick your neck out politically at a time of deep division. And into his alter egos, those exquisitely awkward, ego-pricking characters that taught him what satire costs and what it can reveal.
Above all, this is a conversation about quality and fear. About not hiding behind perfectionism. About being willing to wade knee deep through the messy, human, slightly off-key parts of your practice, because that is often where the gold lives.

If you’ve ever wondered whether one small, strange idea is worth it, this episode is for you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
You don’t think your small, “too obvious” ideas count. Guy shows us they’re often the ones that travel furthest.

Guy sent ten cartoons a week into silence. The breakthrough wasn’t a lightning bolt; it was repetition.

Instead of clinging to one identity, Guy keeps asking, “What’s the right container for this idea, right now?”

BEST MOMENTS
“Sometimes your thoughts, while they bore you, are more surprising to other people.”

“Produce. Back your hunches. Don’t wait for the perfect idea to drop from the sky. Make ten things. Make a hundred. Let the work shape you as you shape it.”

EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.instagram.com/guy_richards_smit

HOST BIO
With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**
Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!
https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course
Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.
https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today
To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at [email protected]

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

It’s one thing when a stranger laughs at your art. It’s another when someone who knows you well does. Who laughs matters. A friend scrolling your website and snorting at an image. A partner chuckling at a line in your artist statement. A respected curator friend laughing during a performance, but not at the moment you expected. 

Those laughs land differently. They don’t feel like feedback. They feel like exposure. And in that split second, something primal happens. We think: I’ve done something wrong.

Artists tell me this all the time. “My partner laughed at the wrong bit.” “My friend said it sounded like nonsense.” “My mum thought it was hilarious.” And the sore feeling that follows is rarely about the joke itself. It’s about the rupture.

When it’s someone close, their reaction doesn’t land as interpretation. It lands as truth. And we want those people to understand us. We want our family, our nearest and dearest, to see us wholly. Art and all the weird things we make and love. 

We want them to nod and say, yes, I get you. So, when they laugh, or go quiet, or wince, the temptation is to retreat. To soften the edges. To clarify more. To become more reasonable, more legible, more likeable.

In this episode, I slow this down. Uncover the four things happening in that moment so you can keep everything in context.

KEY TAKEAWAYS


The hardest skill in a creative life is trusting yourself to take risks while still wanting love. That tension doesn't go away. You can want your partner to understand your work and still accept that they might not.


The people closest to us are not neutral audiences. They carry history, projection, worry. They may fear we're embarrassing ourselves, or them. They may simply not share our taste for strangeness. They can adore you and still not be your audience.


Who laughs and at what matters? A renowned curator laughing at the wrong moment might be data about where you place your emphasis in future.

BEST MOMENTS

“Wanting to engage an audience is healthy. Wanting to be liked is different. Engagement is about connection. Being liked is about approval.”

“Humour and awkwardness in art are not accidents. Often, they are the work. They are access points.”

“Small retreats accumulate, and slowly the special sauce disappears - When someone you love laughs at your work, pause before you retreat.”

“If everybody nods politely and no one is destabilised, you may have made something tidy, but tidy is not the same as alive.”

HOST BIO

With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**

Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at [email protected]

**

Discover Your Extraordinary Creativity

Visit www.cerihand.com to learn how we can help you become an extraordinary creative.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

Welcome to the 200th episode of Extraordinary Creatives: two hundred conversations with artists, thinkers, makers and cultural leaders about the strange, beautiful, often messy reality of building a creative life. And I couldn’t imagine a better guest to mark this moment than the brilliant John Lloyd CBE.

One of the great creative architects behind some of the most loved comedy formats of the past fifty years. He began at the BBC in the 1970s and helped create programmes that have become cultural landmarks: The News Quiz, Not the Nine O’Clock News, Blackadder, Spitting Image, and the long-running curiosity engine that is QI. 

Along the way he co-wrote the original Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio series with Douglas Adams, directed the iconic Genesis “Land of Confusion” video, and has won more BAFTAs than almost anyone alive.

But what struck me most, isn’t just the scale of his career, it’s the way he thinks about creativity itself. John talks openly about the difficult things that shaped him and the strange truth that some of the most uncomfortable moments in life later reveal themselves as gifts. 

He reminds us that every creative life includes adversity, and that the ability to transform those experiences into fuel - into insight, humour, empathy or invention – is what stops artists giving up.

John is a powerful reminder that great ideas take time. Some of his shows took years to get made.

Whether you’re a writer, artist, musician - or simply someone trying to make meaningful work  - there is wisdom in this conversation.

KEY TAKEAWAYS


When we stay with an idea long enough - clearing away the sand, listening more deeply than we speak - what looks ordinary begins to reveal its own quiet, astonishing shape.


There are two selves. There's the little yaky person in your head - then there's the true self, which only arrives when you're in the zone, when you're in the state of flow.


The heartbreaks, the projects that fall apart - those “disasters” become compost, feeding the work we were actually meant to make.

BEST MOMENTS

“Creativity is like archaeology. You shovel mountains of sand… and eventually you uncover the sphinx.”

“Ideas appear. The difference with creative people is they notice them.”

“Deep listening means you're paying attention with not just your ears, with your whole body.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.instagram.com/johnlloydqi

https://www.qi.com

HOST BIO

With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**

Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at [email protected]

**

Discover Your Extraordinary Creativity

Visit www.cerihand.com to learn how we can help you become an extraordinary creative.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

In the last episode, we talked about rhythm. 

About what happens when life knocks you sideways and you walk back into the studio feeling foggy, brittle, or slightly foreign to yourself. We spoke about regulation, about re-entry, about restarting the engine gently instead of demanding brilliance on command.

But there’s something else that often happens after the dust settles. Something quieter. More destabilising.

Sometimes it isn’t only your creative rhythm that’s been interrupted.

It’s you - You’ve changed.

And that’s where things get complicated.

You go through something significant. An illness that forces you to slow down. A divorce that reshapes how you understand intimacy. Redundancy after years in the same role. Children leaving home and the house suddenly carrying a different kind of silence.

You step back into your studio, and something feels slightly off. The work you were making before isn’t wrong, it isn’t bad, but it doesn’t quite sit the same way in your body. It feels like clothes that used to fit and now don’t.

We're taught that consistency matters, that we should maintain our voice, that we should build a recognisable trajectory, so people know what they're looking at. So, when something internal shifts, panic sets in.

That can be deeply unsettling. Yet, as you will see, it is actually something to be welcomed, embraced and used as fuel.

KEY TAKEAWAYS


After big life events (illness, divorce, kids leaving, etc.), your old work can feel like clothes that no longer fit, not because it’s bad, but because you are different now. Life changes you - it should.


If you are different, the work must reflect that difference, or you will begin to feel like an imposter inside your own practice. 


Instead of asking how to recover your old voice, a more honest question is, Who am I now? What occupies my thoughts when I wake up? What feels tender in me? Those recurring thoughts are not distractions. They're signals. They point towards the seam that wants to be mined next.

BEST MOMENTS

“You're not meant to return to who you were. You're meant to create from who you're becoming, life will change you. It should.”

“If your work never shifts, if your questions never deepen, if your textures never evolve, something is probably stuck.”

“So perhaps this week, instead of trying to replicate what once worked, you sit with a quieter question, what wants to be made now?”

HOST BIO

With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**

Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at [email protected]

**

Discover Your Extraordinary Creativity

Visit www.cerihand.com to learn how we can help you become an extraordinary creative.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/