I’m Hitting My Stride – Not Running Out Of Puff

I heard something the other day that challenged my idea of ageing. It was one brief sentence on a podcast.

“Many artists only hit their stride in their 70s, 80s and 90s.”

It reminded me of something my friend Lorraine said, some 15 years ago, that women’s “time” only begins in their fifties. She put it better than that, of course. It made a big impression: for the first time since having children I felt that my own life, my own ambition, wasn’t a lost cause. Maybe, just maybe, there was still a chance for me.

Time passed. My children grew up and left home. I had never worked outside the home during their upbringing because there weren’t any jobs on offer for the likes of me, and I was getting the message loud and clear, from every quarter, that I was unemployable.

I tried to ply my trade as an artist, having been perfectly confident since childhood that a glittering career as an artist was my destiny. I applied to galleries to see if they’d host an exhibition. They would not. I wrote to publishers to see if they’d publish my work. No ma’am. I submitted illustrations to agents to see if they’d take me on as a client. Nope. I applied for grants to see if I could get funding to develop creative ideas I had. No, not for you. I asked if I could take part in my city’s art festivals and projects. No, you may not. I sent written pieces to magazines to see if I could write for art magazines and the like. No. I even applied to rent studio space in an industrial estate on my town’s periphery, to pay money for a space in which I could paint away from the demands of children. No, you’re too commercial (that one made me cry).

As the years passed and the light of my hopes and dreams started to grow a little dimmer, the blinding beacon that is the internet started to grow in strength. I started to post my sketches and the stories that went with them to social media in 2012. The people who saw them liked what I did and wanted to see more. Wait…was that a Yes? It was. One Yes from the beautiful public became two, and a dozen, and hundreds, and thousands…and within a couple of years my own voice started to gain in confidence. Things were going well and I was making a living teaching across Europe. I still wrote to gatekeepers to see if they would give me a chance to get my work out to the wider world, because I still believed they held the keys to the wider world. After all, hadn’t they indeed held those keys for decades? Hundreds of years, perhaps?

Then the world shut down and I went online, not through some inspiration I had, but because the pre-teen kids I had been teaching missed each other and were desperate to talk to each other, even through a screen. And then I started to teach the good people who’d been following me, again not through some genius master plan, but because my husband Marcel persuaded me to give it a shot. And from that very first class in May 2020 I was hooked. I still believed it was a sideline while I waited for favour to shine upon me from some all-knowing, all-powerful keyholder. With a few exceptions that resulted in three traditionally-published books, I still received mostly Nos, and I still wondered what was wrong with all these people who couldn’t see what I could see.

(I do now: when something is different or new, you need a very confident person in a comfortable place within the market you’re seeking to be part of to take a chance on you, and the traditional market has shrunk so dramatically that you’re far less likely to meet that person nowadays.)

During the pandemic, the local city council had lots of supports available to the general public that you could avail of, and for once I wasn’t turned away. Well, I was, but due to a clerical error I was allowed to join a Galway-based online business course – the 13th person in a 12-member class – and through that course I discovered a government grant, 90% government funded, to get people trading online. That’s how I got my website, and met the incredible Ronan Cahill who now runs it. Through that business course I discovered how to use Canva, which is how I do many of my graphics and all my YouTube thumbnails. Through that course I discovered how to make and broadcast a podcast, although I stopped after two years because I rediscovered my desire to make videos through YouTube, and I didn’t have creative bandwidth for both. (It’s called Sketch Therapist and it’s still on Spotify or my website.) The business course leader, Declan Droney, is charismatic and dynamic and is the principle reason I am now doing what I do. He is a true Svengali, and although he never suggested what I should do, he has such an air of “of course you can do that, why wouldn’t you?” that you feel anything is possible.

So far, so good. All those Nos I was still not getting any Yeses, but it no longer mattered. I no longer needed anyone’s permission to do anything. The social media gatekeepers expect you to stay polite, but that’s about it. Instagram and Facebook want you to pay them to reach your audience. YouTube pays you to reach your audience. I never pay Instagram or Facebook as I find it preposterous to be asked to pay THEM for the privilege of entertaining and educating the public through my art.

Did you notice something there? That was a pretty cocky thing to say, right?

Which brings me onto the whole point of this article.

The constant back-and-forth with my audience has resulted in a beautiful thing. Love. Pure and simple. I open up my soul and share beauty through the art I create, inspired by our beautiful world. In return, my audience expresses love and admiration for me. That has given me all the confidence I could ever have hoped for: a confidence that has allowed my own voice to take a deep, firm root. In short, I have hit my stride as an artist, in my fifties.

I can now publish exactly what I want to say through my blog, and if I want to make cute little books I can do it through self-publishing. Companies like Mixam allow me to put together what I want to say and show, beautifully, professionally and economically, and I no longer need to beg my traditional publishers to accept my proposals, publishers who STILL expect me to prove my artistic worth after selling many thousands of books for them, simply because they (like every other gatekeeper I have met along the way) can’t see what I can see. But it would be unreasonable of me to expect them to read my mind, so it’s not their fault. Besides, social media tells me very quickly what will be popular and what will not.

In short, this is a wonderful time for a woman artist in her fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties, because we have learned how to be in this world through the million little sacrifices we’ve made along the way, the million losses, disappointments and sorrows we have felt simply because we’ve been around longer, and we have developed beautiful souls as a result. We have never been represented in the culture before now because no one gave us a chance, and that’s not about to change – no one will ever give us a chance. But now we can simply help ourselves.

My friend Lorraine is very wise. It was she who first told me to seek forgiveness rather than permission. So do whatever you like, don’t think about the consequences.

As Oscar Wilde said: be yourself, everyone else is taken.

And as far as hitting your stride is concerned? Get to bed early and don’t eat too late, you’ll need all the puff you can get!