You're listening to The Savvy Painter Podcast, episode 359.

Hello, my friends.

Welcome to another episode of The Savvy Painter Podcast.

I am your host, Antreuse Wood.

And if you've been listening for a while, welcome back.

If you're new here, I'm so glad you found the podcast.

The Savvy Painter Podcast is the podcast for artists who want practical tactical tips to build a practice that is both fulfilling and supportive.

So hi.

Today I want to talk about something that I think is going to resonate deeply if you are an artist who maybe had stepped away from your work for a little bit.

Sometimes that's a few weeks. Sometimes that's a few weeks,

sometimes it's a few months, sometimes it's years. Maybe it was decades. Maybe you took time to raise a family or to build a career or deal with life circumstances that just required

your full attention for a while. I mean, it happens.

It happens to all of us.

I remember there were various periods of my life right after I graduated for college, for

example, when I was just really focused on paying off all my student loans, where I

focused on work, and I hardly painted at all.

So there's these kind of ebbs and flows to our work sometimes that is a part of life.

And I think it's really important to talk about this because I get messages and DMs from people who mention this. And they talk about it with what sounds like a bit of shame and a bit of, I don't know, shame might be too strong of a word, but there's some sort of embarrassment about it because I think that a lot of times people have these experiences where there's sections of time where they are not

painting and they're afraid of what that means or afraid of what they're going to make it

mean. So let's talk about this because what I noticed is if this is something that you have

experienced, you don't regret the choices. You're proud of what you built.

You're grateful for the life that you created. But at the same time, there's this sort of, I don't

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