One summer afternoon, during a graduate school break,
I ducked into a small gallery on the Cape,
and left with a new mandate.
I remember the drama of a trio of seascapes — before, during, and after
a storm — the emotional rush that hit me, Who is this artist that has moved
me so? and the taste of dry sawdust in my mouth when the gallery owner
handed me a resume. But, I protested,
I want to know ABOUT the artist!
Oh, you want an artist statement, he said.
And I held out my hand.
I don’t have one? he continued.
Why not? I asked.
Because they don’t like to write one, or if they do it’s terrible. Either generalities any artist could write, or incomprehensible art-speak.
A curiosity bordering on obsession overcame me. What would keep an artist away from calling a potential buyer into their world?
And so I began questioning every gallery I entered, every artist I came upon. Alongside writing my dissertation on creativity and teens, I began piecing together an art world puzzle no one else had bothered with.
Until I walked into that gallery, no one had considered artist statements anything besides an annoying grain of sand in an artist’s shoe.
That changed with Writing the Artist Statement:
Revealing the True Spirit of Your Work.
My Peruvian Shamans during a healing ceremony
us toward the ever-expanding edge of creation.
Not in a heroic-poster way, but in a down-to-earth way. As a visual artist, you organize our attention so the rest of us can experience infinite possibilities.
With your artwork as creative evidence, you show us that to be human is to be creative.
A skillful work of art wakes up everyone in the room.
As for me, supporting and encouraging whatever it takes to amplify your artistic wakefulness is what makes my heart sing.
I work with artists who want to turn any artistic uncertainty, doubt, or confusion into empowered creativity on a path they can trust.
If something is gumming up any part of your artistic practice, we’ll treat uncertainty, doubt, or confusion as the real, solvable clues they are.
My Core Promise: If you want to turn artistic uncertainty, doubt, or confusion into empowered creativity on a path you can trust, I’m here for you and your artistic practice.
My Peruvian Shamans during a healing ceremony
with artists, where the pain points stay steady, but their artist-specific visions ebb and flow.
It usually begins with an external ache:
- your artist statement feels like trying to frame fog
- pricing work without apologizing feels impossible
- you’re stuck on: Is it Yes or No to the day job?
- or you suspect that Instagram’s real job is to grind down your creative soul.
And then—if you want—we turn inward.
the echo of something deeper:
A place where personality builds invisible defenses around your creative freedom…
Where old conditioning is smothering your deepest knowing…
Where the inner critic speaks louder than your Creative Self waiting patiently
on the landing.
That’s where the real work lives.
And I’ve spent two and a half decades learning how to navigate this specific artistic terrain.
In 2002, I published: Writing the Artist Statement: Revealing the True Spirit of Your Work,
a book no one else had bothered to write. Then or now.
Because those two words, artist statement, were hiding a small, unexplored universe.
When I visited galleries, asking owners what they thought about artist statements, they all said the same thing:
Yes, I need them. No, artists don’t write them.
Or if they do… it’s gobbledygook.
My brain couldn’t let it go. I was baffled, curious, and couldn’t stop wondering… Why would artists fail to write something that could galvanize a sale? That would offer a compelling peek into the artist’s process where the magic happens?
In grad school, while taking Statistics — because Life loves irony in action — I kept two notebooks: one for statistical formulas, the other for Why won’t artists write statements?
The first clue arrived fast: no one had bothered to define
what an artist statement actually was. Without a definition,
no wonder artists froze. So, yes, I was the first one to do that.
The definition I uncovered placed your art-audience as the invisible center of any artist statement. Not you. Not your art. Them.
Absolutely radical.
Then I found something deeper: an emotional undercurrent masquerading as rational thought.
So, my book became an invitation:
Call out your creative truth,
even when the words feel slippery.
What I didn’t know was how my subtitle would become the mantra running through everything I’d do
for the next 20+ years: Revealing the true spirit of your work. . . is the work.
This book opened the door to my private one-to-one practice, where those conversations lit a revelation match.
Artists weren’t wrestling with techniques.
They were wrestling with identity.
Who am I to call myself an artist?
Why does perfectionism run my studio like it owns the place?
Why are my dreams buried under endless daily demands?
That’s when I began listening to the silences between sentences, where the real questions hang out.
For 25 years, I’ve practiced Authentic Movement:
a discipline where your eyes close, your body leads, and your mind moves to the back of the room.
It trains you to witness whatever arises …
To notice without explaining.
To let the experience of your body’s truth
appear in its own time.
This is exactly how I listen to artists.
Im not listening to fix you, because you’re not broken and you never were.
I’m listening for what’s swimming below the surface.
For the ancient patterns of artistic promise:
some dripping with vitality,
and some wrapped in expectations that never
belonged to you in the first place.
Sometimes I spontaneously offer a metaphor as if it tumbled straight from your subconscious.
Unprompted, I once mentioned bees in a session. After a long silence, the artist whispered,
“How did you know? I dreamed about bees last night.”
Other times, a metaphor doesn’t land, which I love.
Why?
Because then, your metaphor—the one that’s aligned with you—will come to you as a correction to mine.
This begins to build trust between the self-protection that’s holding you back and the self-permission waiting for you.
In 2007, I launched the smARTist Telesummit,
a professional development conference for visual artists.
Not another “how to charm a gallery owner” weekend.
Not a business seminar disguised as salvation.
The very first, visual-artist, professional conference.
Because I believed artists deserved the same career ecosystem
other professions took for granted.
Before smARTist, artists were treated as charming cultural side-dishes: lovely, decorative, slightly mysterious, and definitely not “career material.”
I was determined to burn that nonsense to the ground.
For six years, my torch was smARTist: a gathering of 2,500+ artists and 45 authorities across 73 topics that mattered.
Not just selling and showing your work… your whole ArtLife.
And in one of my opening remarks, I broke open a simple truth so covered in barnacles of ignorance and neglect it had become unrecognizable. I went full Star Wars against an old, cultural blind spot that dismissed artists as irrelevant professionals.
Of course art can be your CAREER. Why not?
But first . . . you have
to claim it.
Back then?
R. E. V. O. L. U. T. I. O. N. A. R. Y.
Artists were treated like creative houseplants:
lovely, low-maintenance, and expected to thrive in indirect light.
Now?
An art career is no longer just a possibility, it’s expected, supported, and—in some circles—celebrated.
About freakin’ time.
When I co-hosted the Bluestocking Art Salon,
for conversations that actually matter:
Why do we create?
How do we navigate commerce without losing integrity?
When’s the right time to ditch the day job that pays the bills?
What does it mean to be a cultural leader in a world confused
by the magic of artists?
I believe in conversations guided by what artists need,
not a transient, trendy roadmap.
as they build trust in themselves.
I believe in listening, in noticing when artists are fully present with their own truth, curiosity, and deepest knowing.
It thrills me when an artist’s identity can breathe, expand, and step into its true power.
I recognize that tension and uncertainty aren’t problems, but signals of growth.
And when an artist leans into this growth? That’s the best, ever.
I live for the rhythms of creation—the push, the pause, the unexpected spark—where the high and low tides of becoming an artist wash ashore with vulnerability and courage.
Kadira Jennings’ La Bella
Kadira Jennings’ La Bella
Who I am and what I do is grounded in my spiritual awareness of:
for even that which
Is Not… Is
And… I bow to every path: the mystic, the secularist, the skeptical, and the not-even-interested.
I believe in the sacred sanctuary of artists and art,
where creativity and Divinity are inextricable,
yet everyone’s personal beliefs are always honored.
Here’s what I know in my core:
Creativity isn’t something you “do.”
It’s who you are.
It’s your Artist Identity in action.
to believe they’re outsiders. . .
as well as impractical, unserious, and (tiresomely) on the brink of financial ruin,
artists might be unintentionally sapping the strength from their
relationship to their art… along with the creative authority that sustains it.
in a very different light:
You carry the visual Flag of Creativity high enough so the rest of us can remember this literal truth:
Creativity is, and always has been, our birthright.
Which is no small task for people who just want to follow the tug of beauty, make something true, and keep the lights on.
When you, my intrepid Artist, move from uncertainty to unshakeable trust, by clearing out the emotional debris between who you are and what you create, that’s where my heart lives.
where I discovered how and why the origins of your adult creativity start in your teen years, not childhood. And I named the ontological definition of creativity, which had been missing from the literature for decades.
I also wrote Writing the Artist Statement: Revealing the True Spirit of Your Work (now in its third edition), used by artists around the globe and referenced in graduate theses. For the first time, my book gave artists a working definition of an artist statement, and a system for writing that honored the artist, the art, and their audience.
I’ve published in fine art, ceramic, sculpture, and surface design magazines across North America. And I’ve been a keynote speaker at the Missouri Arts Fair, along with speaking at various arts panels and conferences.
I taught the Artist Statement and the Business of Art at the Loveland Academy of Arts before it closed.
For six years, I founded, produced, and presented at the first ever, professional artist conference — the smARTist Telesummit — and I’ve coached hundreds of artists privately.
I co-hosted The Blue Stocking Art Salon, free for any artist to join our conversations and ask the hard questions: What is art? What does it take to be an artist? How can you tell great art from good art?
I created the Six Zones of Artistic Practice, and Taming the Seven Dragons of Fear,
comprehensive maps for navigating every facet of your artistic practice.
I’m also reopening my original, immersive series of one-to-one conversations
for artists who want to meet doubt, confusion, and creative uncertainty
with a grounded confidence.
But what matters most?
I love artists.
I trust artists.
I believe in your vulnerable, raw,
and utterly magical work.
And I champion the ferocious courage it takes for you
to make art in a world that keeps forgetting
how much it needs you.
Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn where I turned one.
Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn where I turned one
I grew up in Big Sur, California without electricity or hot running water—but surrounded by artists, writers, and a mother who created the first American tie-dye dresses on raw silk over wood-fired vats. One ended up on the iconic actress,
Ava Gardner. Because…Big Sur.
Later on, I chose a college—Alaska Methodist University—based on intrigue , not prestige. A choice I never regreted. Sharing the path with moose on my trek between classes sparked the wild in my Big Sur blood!
I lived through the 1964 Alaskan earthquake where my college roommate and I, unable to squeeze under our beds, genuinely thought an atom bomb had dropped. Earthquakes, it turns out, trumpet their arrival.
And if you remember that iconic AP wire of the banner hanging over a collapsed Anchorage Street after that earthquake, Our Town, well… I painted that for the AMU theater department, on my knees, in a long hallway, only a few days before the earthquake. Decades later, my East Coast husband said he’d kept a cutout of that image on his bedroom wall for years.
After college, I spent several years—off and on—in Istanbul and nearly married a Turk. But Life intervened. Thank goodness.
Then, because doing life backwards seems to be my middle name:
I birthed my daughters first, found them a remarkable independent school, then bought a house, then started a business to support us all.
And I did it with no family money, thrift-store clothes, and decade-old cars that sputtered their way through New England winters.
But our walls?
They held art, the kind that reminded us, every day, that tangible creativity is an unstoppable force no matter what. Today, one daughter is a visual fine artist, the other an international, best selling writer of fiction.
Teenage entrepreneur? Yes, please. How about A Full-Service Birthday Party for Busy Moms? I was fifteen.
Later: Light Lunches, a healthy grab-and-eat food from Boston to New York before it was a thing. I was a Mom who wanted healthy food for everyone’s children. Fast food? No thank you! Pass the tofu and miso pâté, a three-star treat-on-the-go.
I’m also a Merlin wizard (Vortex Healing, Jewel level). Quietly. No sign on the door.
me at 9 mos.
When I was born, my mother did not have a camera. But her dear friend, Man Ray, did. So even though Man did not take photos of kids, he took all of my baby pics in Big Sur and LA from 9 months to 3 years.
I’ve often wondered how much this early artist presence shaped
the deep love and trust I have had for artists ever since.
in Big Sur, CA.
I’m Ariane Goodwin.
I’ve spent 24 years creating space for artists to explore
the depths of who they truly are, even as I explore mine.
Your vibrant creative authority is right over there… waiting…
If you want to stay close to what’s stirring,
you can join me through my Free Offer. . .
Where Is Your Creative Vitality Actually Going?
A 10-minute check-in so you see exactly where your
artistic practice is electric, flickering, or gone dim.
