Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren Whitley.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I started doing different arts and crafts when I was little. My parents always supported my creativity, and I was fortunate to grow up in a family with lots of creative people and other artists. I was really performative as a kid, my imagination was my best tool. I could go into different worlds while playing out in the yard or the woods. School was difficult for me, I didn’t understand the point of sitting in class or doing certain tasks, I got in trouble a lot for talking or not paying attention in elementary school, but enjoyed the time out because I could daydream. In high school I taught myself how to focus and learn, ran cross country, which helped me develop a sense of internal motivation. Towards the end of those years, I started taking art classes as an elective. In art class, I found something I’d been looking for though it was still hidden behind learning the technical parts of drawing or three- dimensional construction. Those classes gave me a new way to communicate that included my intuition, though I couldn’t express it well at that point. In college I kept taking art classes on the side until one day I decided to claim it as my major, because there wasn’t much point to anything else to me. I wasn’t doing that well in beginning drawing classes, and teachers would usually point out my work as what not to do, until gradually it shifted, and all the technical stuff clicked. I wanted it outside of the grades or approval. I’d gotten good at talking to myself when I knew I was going to get a bad grade, and once it started to change, I was already feeling like I was hunting a whole other reward. I remember working on some projects early in college and seeing something in them, maybe in just one section, and that was enough to make me want to get better at the language, at delving in. I could tell it wasn’t necessarily about doing a perfect drawing, it was getting into and coming back out of mark making in a particular was that was more a sensual type of intelligence.
A big influence in school was outside of school, I’d been working and meeting people around Asheville. I met other artists who were in the community, musicians, potters, and so I had these awesome examples of people who were actually working as artists and not on the path to teaching or becoming art historians etc. There were people who would be going to the scrap metal yard in town to find materials, folks who picked up whatever they found on the street and made sculpture out of it, noise musicians who could clear out an unsuspecting bar, and people who did their own theater by hand building costumes and sets as well as writing the script. It was extremely motivating, inspiring, and ideal for me to see and be part of. The town itself was in a kind of in between period where a lot of the business owners would let us use their spaces for shows or experimental music venues, plus there were huge empty warehouses down by the French Broad River where people lived and performed their art also. In the community at the time, phones were still rudimentary, some people didn’t even choose to carry one, which meant I got to really focus on one area, a culture that was distinct and felt when folks for other cities came to visit or played through.
And the mountains were part of the scene as well, with secret swimming holes, raves that went on out at certain farms outside of town, places that we drove to meditate watching the sun go down behind the trees of the mountains. To me I can hear the mountains, and those roads, in some of the music my friends made at the time. It’s become my perspective that the place where a work of art it made is part of the art, and I can feel it even in non-representational work. I see a friend’s face and hear his music, while feeling the ice-cold middle of the night on a road going to Johnson City towards Chattanooga for a show.
That time taught me to be self-motivated as an artist, I developed the habit just doing the work of making, of making without judging or having an outcome in mind right away. It helped me to see it all as cumulative, that one tangent of a piece may not fit for what I think it will, to know though, it will probably circle back in a few months or years in a new form.
A lot of the materials and core philosophies I have as an artist come from that time, though I’ve expanded into other things. I still am really attracted to the peripheral, to recycled materials which come with their own stories, and to transformation through declaration in word or action.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I think some of the main things I’ve learned that I want to remember is to return to valuing myself and listening to my instincts without negotiating. To me that doesn’t mean not doing one thing or another, it means moving while listening, staying as radically present as possible. I want to enjoy all of this, to remember it and to experience each moment in its own grace. As an artist I had to learn to accept rejection from galleries, grants, calls, then I had to learn from the rejections rather than just getting good at being rejected. I also had to learn to accept getting what I wanted, to be there and take it in, to be conscious of how I was speaking to myself, and to ask myself where I wanted to go from that point.
In terms of valuing myself, I try to be aware now of how I’m approaching an opportunity and ask what my intentions are. Am I taking or approaching an opportunity because it will lead to growth? How do I want to grow? What is it facilitating within my practice, and how can what I’m doing be challenged by this? Or on the other hand, am I taking this opportunity because I feel like I have to? Am I approaching this with the right attitude, am I open while having baseline boundaries or understanding of what works and what doesn’t?
And outside of art all of that should apply as well. I’ve gotten more conscious of needing to do things with my whole self as I’ve gotten older after a years of driving on the rims of my body and soul down the highway.
I got sober after one of my best friends died of an overdose and that has completely changed my life. He was an extremely special person, truly gifted at being alive and bringing magic into the lives of others. Like me, he’d been trying to get sober on and off for years, especially after losing one someone he was really close to a few months before to the same thing. I’d been using alcohol for years to numb myself to situations I didn’t want to address, to keep working, to have fun, to take the edge off, to take the edge off from taking the edge off, until it was really out of control though it stayed that way a long time until I realized it was out of control. I was able to make art and drink, I had a job, and I had plans of toning it down so I convinced myself it was ok when really that was just the addiction speaking to me.
I was miserable, and couldn’t see it being another way, I was afraid to change. When he died it was like the lights turned out at once, because I could never have imagined it being possible. Driving back through the mountains after his memorial service, down by the French Broad in Asheville, a life review started in my head with more clarity than I’d had in awhile. I had a jumping off point and I jumped. A lot of people, especially a lot of artists struggle with addiction in some form, we lose people as time goes by. I can’t say why anyone starts or what it’s all made of inside each person. I was lucky to get support, and to learn a new way of living. I think once an addiction really gets full blown, our true spirit gets quieter and quieter every time we go back to substance when we say we won’t, so over time we think there isn’t any hope and we’re too wrecked to come back. Fortunately, that’s not true.
When I first got sober I wasn’t sure I’d still be able to make art, I’d merged drinking with art so much over the years. Gradually though, I started painting again, and then it took on a whole new life.
Part of the struggle on the other side of that has been learning to value myself again, in a clearer way. To ask myself those questions, and to move with an idea of development. Relearning and learning totally new things at the same time, to stay learning.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
For the past few years I’ve been painting a series of animals and plants over abstract backgrounds emphasizing the essence or storied qualities of the animals and the ritual/medicinal uses of those plants to create a composite piece of a spell essentially. Spells usually are thought of as spoken word over an action or ritual, for me though, I’m asking the images of the animals and plants to be present as the ritual. Each animal and plant on their own, has so many different meanings and connections, connection to place, to a story, to a dream, to healing, so on. I see them as planets with those meanings as orbits, places they touch as they travel. As we witness them in life transferring into our subconscious to become part of our own history, life story, what has meaning. I’m focusing on animals and plants that are found around where I’m from in the southern United States, because these are the characters that appear in dreams and stories here. In this project I’ve learned a lot about the native plants of this bioregion, their traditional uses in medicine, current uses, and uses in folk magic. Right now, that is probably what I’m known for the most because over the past year I shared a lot of work on instagram as I went. I take breaks from this series now and again to let new information build up, and switch to other projects that are going on.
My Aunt, who is also an artist, and I have built two small folk art houses out of mainly found or salvaged materials. Over the years she has meticulously recovered tile, windows, wood, antique doors, bricks, and unique items we call treasure, from homes that were about to fall in, or remodeling projects. We created one named after the moon and another for the sun, with a deck joining the two that I guess is cosmic comfort. It’s been a really special experience because of the time spent with her, collaborating. We’ve done almost all the labor ourselves with a few exceptions when hoisting up a really heavy wall we pre-built and getting the roof frame up. Building on a big scale, then zooming out from there to consider the land around the houses, has fed the other things I do because it helps me look at things in new ways.
I’m proud of and what sets me apart from most others is being able to move between different mediums and materials to fuel my practice as an artist. There were times as a young artist when whatever materials I saw or could find would be what I had to work with, so I learned how to create the same tones through whatever I might be using. I think that whether or not they like the work, people can identify that it’s from me because I have a tendency to dwell on certain aspects of visual language. I’m grateful to be adaptable because it allows me to go into different areas of being through various media and rest there when I’m feeling myself burning out in one space. I see it as a component of reading myself as an artist, like training, where I can look inwards and feel when it’s time to back up or push further. Also grateful for having a holistic perspective on the creative life, now I know it’s important to actually train, mentally and physically, because I want to keep working and not have what is available to me limited.
How do you think about happiness?
So many things now- I saw a squirrel stretching and yawning upside down in a tree a few years ago and I’m still thinking of it. The sunrise and sunsets make me happy and settle me because they are different every day. Seeing that reminds me of what is moving around and through us all the time, that I am here in this life, on this planet, and I am seeing something for sure that I’ve never seen before.
I love going down to South Georgia and getting into the woods there, finding places that are really quiet and still when I get then hearing the birds start up again around me. I like it at night because it gets pitch dark compared to where I live which allows me to see more stars. Living where I am I forget how striking it is, here it’s like someone tossed up a handful of them whereas down there it’s breathtaking.
Life makes me happy when I’m engaged with it, when I stay grounded and cut down on phone time, it’s a palpable, dynamic experience, the strangest adventure is already happening it feels like.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://laurenjwhitleyart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurenjwhitleyart/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LaurenJWhitleyEsme
