Tell All Tuesday ~ Featured Artist: Michele Fawcett

Hi guys, I'm posting a Tell All Tuesday on Tuesday GO ME! Yay, please enjoy this weeks dose of creative comrade inspiration =)

Tell us a little bit about yourself & what kind of artist you are.
I like to call myself the Dreaming Dilettante! This came to me when I was taking a workshop and discovering my archetypes. I felt drawn to the artist, drawn to the writer, the poet and yet deep down knew none of these were mine. Through the journey I realized I was the dilettante, which I imagine by definition is not one most would want! It is a bit like being a “jack of all trades master of none.” Something I also identify with! I find life far too interesting to just focus on one particular task or talent and immerse myself in it until the end of my days. I want to try it all! My art is a lot like that. I am a writer, blogger, poet and candlestick maker. Well, not really but I do hand make 100% soy candles. It is a fun hobby that came to me years ago and has been very well received. I also recently published a collection of my personal poetry called, “The Real Princess Story,” (available on Amazon.com) which is my own personal life journey. It was through the act of creating, putting myself out there and this journey that I finally felt I could call myself an artist. I am also a wife, mother to a 3 year-old little girl and a baby boy due this spring as well as 3 cats and a very old German Shepherd Lab mix name Munson. I have my own business and try to focus my days on my family, my art and my home. In that order.

What is the biggest challenge you personally face as an artist and how do you overcome it?
The biggest challenge for me was calling myself an artist. It is so interesting to me that the creative fields are the only ones that seem to demand your credentials if you should declare it as your own. If someone says they are an accountant people don’t start grilling them with questions like, “have you prepared the returns of anyone I know?” or “have you done returns for anyone famous?” Yet is seems with the creative world we almost feel we need an impressive resume before we can identify ourselves as an artist. Perhaps that is why I generated so much to The Dilettante. I felt like I was owning the fact that I dabble, explore, stumble and make lots of mistakes but love it all! I do still struggle with sharing this part of myself with people in my “real life,” as if they are going to judge it, smirk and think, “that’s not her.” It is something I work to overcome one blog post and status update at a time!

What is your heart’s greatest desire for your life as an artist?
It is my desire that through my artistic life I can maybe inspire others to live their truest life. To realize that we are able to design a life of our choosing even if it seems far-reaching to others. Our life is meant to be of our own creating; a full, living, breathing expression of who we are and that unique light and spark that is just us. I realize that to express that to the world requires an immense honesty on my part. In order to do this I need to share the struggles, the mistakes and the downward spirals. I still have difficulty with this but releasing my poetry book out into the world, using my real name *gasp!* was a first step. Through my healing art and my blog I hope to do more of this.

Have you ever found anything that originally daunted you as an artist that you can now overcame easily?
When I was training last year to become a Certified Creatively Fit Coach I was having so much fun! One of the struggles a lot of people have with the idea of painting is that they have the voices in their heads; former art teachers or what have you, that tell us what art should look like. In the course we learned that just filling the canvas with paint can stop some people. However I had a blast! I was able to connect so easily with the little girl in my who loved to just play! Then, we had to paint a picture over the color. I chose an owl and froze. I couldn’t even touch my brush to the canvas. Now it had to look like something that others would recognize?! I learned so much about myself through that process. In the end, I finished my piece and was able to love it-even though it wasn’t, in my mind perfect. One day my daughter looked at it and said, “look Mommy that’s your dinosaur!” I laughed hysterically. Here I had spent so much energy trying to make this thing and she didn’t care she saw a dinosaur. And really isn’t that how all art is? The creation of it is the artist’s journey, but how it touches someone, what they see, is all about their own personal journey. We can’t control that. There really is something beautiful and freeing in that.

Tell us where can we find out more about you & your art?
I have a blog that is basically my home page for all the work I do and it is at DreamingDilettante.com I have an Etsy shop as well that sells my candles, Reiki-infused art and other miscellaneous bits of my creation.

Thank you so much for sharing Michele, I enjoyed reading about your journey. You are so right about the difficulty we have identifying ourselves as artists (and the contrast you highlighted - I shall remember to ask those questions of an accountant next time I meet one! lol). Congratulations on, and good luck with your book of poetry, it is a lesson to us all that it is always scary to put ourselves out there so vulnerably (honestly; I don't think there is anyone alive that it doesn't scare to some degree) but in order to be who we are and play our part in the world it is also necessary. Scariness is sometimes there to prove to ourselves that it is the right path for us to venture down! 

Do you want to join the TAT ranks??

To be featured email me or find all the details here =)