240: FIVE MINUTES is better than NO MINUTES (w/ Jane Samuels)

Jane Samuels is an artist and psychogeographer from the United Kingdom. She has developed a love for the arts, politics, teaching, and animal and human rights campaigning.

Currently working as a professional artist from Hare Court Studio and an SpLD tutor in Manchester’s Universities, Samuels continues to develop work grounded in Psychogeography, which challenges the boundaries of legality, public vs. private space, and our relationship with the land. Her work is housed in several private collections, and she continues to exhibit across the UK.

In this episode, Jane discusses:

-The experience of teaching in prisons.

-The factors that led to her 10-year gap in art and what finally brought her back.

-Her Abandoned Buildings project and some of the exploits that she has gotten into.

-The inspiration behind her Anatomical Landscapes series.

-The difference between the immediacy of photography and the slow-burn of drawing and her need for both.

-Her practice of landscape writing and walking writing and what it allows her to do that visual art does not.

-Some of the Resistances that she deals with, such as fear, lack of self-confidence, and imposter syndrome.

-Dealing with the things that life throws at you and balancing it with your art.

-Her thoughts on the big social media sites: Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

-Some of her favorite resources for people who might be interested in pursuing similar creative outlets as her.

Jane’s Final Push will inspire you to put a little time into your creative passion every day and to realize why you want to pursue your creative passion in the first place!

Quotes:

“There’s a very unhealthy dose of fear involved in art practice for me. It scares the shit out of me.”

“There was all this unrealized stuff in my head and a real need to do something with it.”

“I think if you didn’t have fear, you wouldn’t produce the work in the first place. If you’re really ever happy and satisfied with what you did, you’d just stop.”

“The beauty of it is that it is always there. There might be jobs you can never go back to, there might be other things that just end, but your creativity and your process – it doesn’t go away.”

“The beauty of creativity is that it creates more creativity.”

“Five minutes is better than no minutes.”