Hi and welcome to art juices is honest, generous and humorous conversations to feed your creative soul and get you thinking.

And this week is just me, Louise Fletcher.

As you know, Alice and I are experimenting

with different formats on the podcast,

and we agreed that we would make some solo ones and just see how they go.

So this is very different but rather than have an empty week, I thought I have something I'd like to talk

about so I thought I would pop in and talk about it.

So without further ado, let's crack on.

I want to ask you a question and the question is in the title of this podcast. What do you think is wrong with you?

And more importantly what do you think is wrong with your art?

Because the thing is most of us have an internal dialogue telling us what we should change

about ourselves and what we should change about our work. That internal voice

says things like you're too loud or you're too shy you're too colourful or you're not

colourful enough your work is too careful or you're too loose you like fluorescent colours when you should like things that are muted.

You like painting flowers when you should like abstracts. You like drawing but real artist paint.

You're too sensitive. You watch too much reality TV. You don't read enough books. You're too fat. You're too thin. You're too old. You're too young. You cry too much, you laugh too loud. Good God people, can we just give ourselves a break?

For some of us, this is just voices in our own head.

Nobody else is echoing them, nobody else is saying these things.

We're just saying it to ourselves.

For other people, it's made worse when somebody outside

you says the same thing. So perhaps you feel like you might be a little bit to something and then someone that you know or

some or even worse someone that you care about agrees with you and tells you

...