Extraordinary CreativesSustain the Thing That Sustains You: Finding Your People, Backing Your Work and Building an Art Career with Robin F. Williams
What happens when you expect your art to become your entire “existential dread receptacle”?
That brilliant phrase comes from my guest today, Robin F. Williams, and it opens up a conversation I think a lot of artists need to hear about how you protect the creative practice that gives your life meaning without asking it to do absolutely everything for you.
Robin is a Brooklyn-based painter whose extraordinary work moves between art history, horror, gender, technology, and our strange relationship with AI. Their work is held in The Brooklyn Museum, ICA Miami and at the Colombus Museum of Art.
We spoke just before Act Natural, Robin´s first UK solo exhibition, opened at No.9 Cork Street in London, where the new paintings move from Siri and language models to mermaids, Terminator 2, and Renaissance painting. and the increasingly slippery question of what we even mean by “natural.”
We also get underneath their career: getting stuck, the group of women artists who helped Robin keep going, what nearly twenty years with P·P·O·W has taught them about gallery relationships, and why success comes down to sustaining the thing that sustains you.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Don't ask your art to carry everything. Painting can't be your only outlet for anxiety, so build other practices around it: sleep, exercise, writing, even playing a guitar badly. These release valves keep your main practice vital and light.
Let ideas tell you their size. Make studies, like Robin's gouaches, and live with them. If an idea keeps asking questions, it may deserve a big painting; if not, it's finished at that scale. Bigger isn't always more meaningful.
Find your people. A trusted crit group offers honest feedback, moral support, and permission to follow your instinct. Don't wait for an invitation: gather a few friends and one willing organiser and start your own.
Believe in your work first. A gallery can give you runway, but it can't supply your confidence. Learn the business side, but don't let it consume the work.
BEST MOMENTS
“There's nothing sadder than losing this connection to this extremely meaningful thing.”
“Make something mysterious, ephemeral, mystical, mythological, and kind of encode it, figure out its algorithm, make it into like a sleek, sexy, robotic version of itself.”
“It’s not as if the paintings perfectly reconcile or organise [frightening or abstract ideas]; it’s about building my tolerance and having a physical, embodied experience of being with uncertainty or contradictions”
"I think artists sometimes make the mistake of thinking that their gallery is going to give them confidence. It’s not actually their job."
"I don't have to solve the contradiction, I can just be with the tangible object, you know, the artwork can live in the world and move in and out of other people's consciousness."
"It’s unfair to ask my painting practice to do all of that work. The creative practice is another kind of system that has to be fed and nurtured and rested and maintained, so I can’t just ask it to be my entire existential dread receptacle."
GUEST RESOURCES
https://www.instagram.com/robinfrancescawilliams
https://www.tiktok.com/@wobinrilliamswastaken
https://ottessathisottessathat.substack.com/p/language-model-with-robin-f-williams
PODCAST HOST BIO
With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.
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This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/
