Transferable Skills

I have spent a lot of time sitting with imposter syndrome. I’ve allowed myself to believe that I wasn’t a “real artist” because I did not get an art degree from a traditional university.

Lately, it has become clear to me that this is far from the truth. The more artists that I get to know, the more I hear stories about them resenting their formal art education. Many of them report that art school didn’t serve them in the ways that they had hoped for. They felt like they went deeply into debt and spent a lot of money creating something that their heart was not in. Sure, they developed some technical skill but weren’t sure that it was actually a necessary step to get them toward the end goal of being a working artist.

That’s when I realized that during my entire career, I had been accumulating a reserve of transferable skills. I have a deep well of knowledge around form, texture & color. It seems very obvious to me now but it took me a while to realize that the years I had spent as a successful make-up artist was transferable toward painterly things.
Just recently, I did a large painting of a rabbit. The entire time I vacillated between panic, self-doubt and a reassurance that this was just another make-up application. The results were beautiful and confirmed my belief that my hard earned, transferable skills serve me as well as a formal art education might have.

Photographed by Nathan Baerreis