I Like Your Work: Conversations with Artists

16h ago

In this mini episode of I Like Your Work , I talk about why waiting to feel "ready" or confident keeps so many artists stuck and how planning your artistic year while feeling afraid can actually be the most honest place to start. This episode is for artists who: Feel overwhelmed when thinking about the year ahead Struggle with creative fear, doubt, or perfectionism Want to plan their art practice without burning out Are ready to make work even when clarity hasn't arrived yet You don't need to eliminate fear to move forward. You can do it afraid. I share simple, grounded ways to think about creative planning, goal setting, and staying connected to your work—without pressure, hustle, or unrealistic expectations. Whether you're planning a new year, a new body of work, or just trying to show up consistently, this episode offers a steady place to begin. I Like Your Work Links: Thank you to our Sponsor, the 2026 Canopy Program: Apply by January 14th at thecanopyprogram.com Pre-order our catalog: https://www.ilikeyourworkpodcast.com/resources Have a question you want Erika to discuss in a mini episode? Email it to ilikeyourworkpodcast@gmail.com with the subject "mini eps" Apply to the Chautauqua School of Art Residency Program: art.chq.org Join Erika in Italy at Umbria Contemporary Arts this Summer: https://www.umbriacontemporaryarts.com/product-page/the-symbolic-landscape-instructor Join the Works Membership! https://theworksmembership.com/ Watch our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ilikeyourworkpodcast Submit Your Work Check out our Catalogs! Exhibitions Studio Visit Artist Interviews I Like Your Work Podcast Say "hi" on Instagram

Dec 12

Lydia Jenkins Musco's work has been exhibited in galleries and public spaces throughout the United States. With an MFA from Boston University and a BA from Bennington College, her artistic practice has been shaped by international experiences, including stone carving studies in Italy and participation in art symposia in Norway, South Korea, and China. Musco's work has earned recognition through awards including two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants, a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant, and an Edward F. Albee Residency Fellowship, among others. Her work has been featured in exhibitions including the 43rd Annual Peace Exhibition in Nagasaki, Japan, the International Print Center in New York, and numerous outdoor sculpture exhibitions nationwide. Musco has contributed to the art community through academic roles, serving as a lecturer in sculpture at Boston University and a visiting assistant professor at Davidson College. Musco lives and works in Royalston, Massachusetts. "I interpret the world into a vocabulary of objects with weight and mass that can be viewed from all sides, that help me explore the connections and intersections of elements. Basic construction materials like concrete and wood — ubiquitous and often used in humble ways we take for granted — offer me a path to honesty through their fundamental simplicity. Two groups of work are currently in progress, Logarithmus and Unconformity. The Unconformity series began as an investigation into perception and place, a reflection of the landscape of the woodlands of Massachusetts. In geology, an unconformity refers to a break in time, a boundary between rocks caused by erosion or a pause in sediment accumulation. Investigating the environmental changes accumulating in the landscape over the course of a year, each sculpture is an unconformity, a break in time, capturing a moment, holding it still, and documenting the changing color, light, and forms of a single place. The Logarithmus series explores navigation, inspired by the Chip Log, an early nautical instrument for gauging speed. The form of these sculptures is derived from the geometry of a circle's quadrant. The resulting shape, somewhat vulnerable due to its accessible interior, becomes an exploration of pathfinding, with all its inherent hope and uncertainties. With the guarantee of detours and missteps, my goal is to keep moving forward with curiosity. These objects are built from the ground up, echoing the process of memory or landscape formation. Like geological strata, each layer both influences and is influenced by those adjacent to it, above and below, side by side. Bound by gravity only, they are built in movable sections that can be dismantled and reconstructed. Each reassembly tells a new story, revealing how intention and environment reshape our understanding, making the familiar strange and the static dynamic." LINKS: lydiamusco.com @lydia_j_musco I Like Your Work Links: Thank you to our sponsor, Sunlight Tax. Right now, listeners of I Like Your Work can get this free artists' tax deduction guide by going to sunlighttax.com/ilikeyourworkguide Thank you to our Sponsor, the 2026 Canopy Program: Apply by January 14th at thecanopyprogram.com Pre-order our catalog: https://www.ilikeyourworkpodcast.com/resources Have a question you want Erika to discuss in a mini episode? Email it to ilikeyourworkpodcast@gmail.com with the subject "mini eps" Apply to the Chautauqua School of Art Residency Program: art.chq.org Join Erika in Italy at Umbria Contemporary Arts this Summer: https://www.umbriacontemporaryarts.com/product-page/the-symbolic-landscape-instructor Join the Works Membership! https://theworksmembership.com/ Watch our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ilikeyourworkpodcast Submit Your Work Check out our Catalogs! Exhibitions Studio Visit Artist Interviews I Like Your Work Podcast Say "hi" on Instagram

Dec 5

If you've been watching the Miami energy from afar and wondering what it all means for your studio practice, this episode gives you the trends, themes, and takeaways that actually matter for artists.In this episode, Erika covers: • The big-picture trends shaping Miami Art Week 2025: – Institutional validation and residencies becoming more influential – The shift toward sustainable careers and long-term practice – Experiential installations dominating many fairs – Latin American and Caribbean artists in the spotlight – The ongoing market correction and what collectors are looking for • A breakdown of the key fairs: – Art Basel Miami Beach: What's new, what curators are paying attention to, and how residencies fit into this year's programming – NADA: Emerging artists, experimental work, and themes like climate fiction + myth/memory – Untitled Art Fair: Thoughtful curation and a special focus on reflection-based work – SCOPE Miami Beach: Where Erika is speaking this year on sustainable artist careers and the power of residencies – Additional satellite fairs: Design Miami, Aqua, Art Miami + Context, Satellite, Prizm Erika also shares: • How the fairs are highlighting conversations around artist support, sustainability, and community • A grounded takeaway for artists who aren't in Miami: how to move your career forward from your own studio Whether you're at the fairs, following along online, or simply curious about the current art-world landscape, this episode gives you the quick, real insights behind the images. I Like Your Work Links: Thank you to our sponsor, Sunlight Tax. Make Taxes Easier and Stash an Extra $152k in Your Savings Free Class: sunlighttax.com/ilikeyourwork Right now, listeners of I Like Your Work can get this free artists' tax deduction guide by going to sunlighttax.com/ilikeyourworkguide Pre-order our catalog: https://www.ilikeyourworkpodcast.com/resources Have a question you want Erika to discuss in a mini episode? Email it to ilikeyourworkpodcast@gmail.com with the subject "mini eps" Apply to the Chautauqua School of Art Residency Program: art.chq.org Join Erika in Italy at Umbria Contemporary Arts this Summer: https://www.umbriacontemporaryarts.com/product-page/the-symbolic-landscape-instructor Join the Works Membership! https://theworksmembership.com/ Watch our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ilikeyourworkpodcast Submit Your Work Check out our Catalogs! Exhibitions Studio Visit Artist Interviews I Like Your Work Podcast Say "hi" on Instagram

Nov 28

In this episode, Erika explores how observation, travel, and memory shape artistic practice, inspired by her upcoming class in Italy, The Symbolic Landscape . Drawing from Corot's plein air studies and Goethe's Italian Journey , she reflects on how artists discover themselves through what they see—whether in a distant landscape or a simple daily moment. The episode invites listeners to make space for beauty and reflection, wherever they are, and to see art as both a return to the world and a way to transcend it. The Symbolic Landscape- Class in Italy Dates: May 10 - May 24 Early Registration Discount: A 20% discount applies if Payment In Full is made before December 2nd, 2025. I Like Your Work Links: Thank you to our sponsor, Sunlight Tax. Make Taxes Easier and Stash an Extra $152k in Your Savings Free Class: sunlighttax.com/ilikeyourwork Right now, listeners of I Like Your Work can get this free artists' tax deduction guide by going to sunlighttax.com/ilikeyourworkguide Thank you to our Sponsor, the 2026 Canopy Program: Join an info session with Founder and Executive Director Catherine Haggarty and apply by January 14th at thecanopyprogram.com Pre-order our catalog: https://www.ilikeyourworkpodcast.com/resources Have a question you want Erika to discuss in a mini episode? Email it to ilikeyourworkpodcast@gmail.com with the subject "mini eps" Apply to the Chautauqua School of Art Residency Program: art.chq.org Join Erika in Italy at Umbria Contemporary Arts this Summer: https://www.umbriacontemporaryarts.com/product-page/the-symbolic-landscape-instructor Join the Works Membership! https://theworksmembership.com/ Watch our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ilikeyourworkpodcast Submit Your Work Check out our Catalogs! Exhibitions Studio Visit Artist Interviews I Like Your Work Podcast Say "hi" on Instagram

Nov 21

Gail Spaien (b. 1958, Hartford, Connecticut) is an American artist and educator based in Maine. Her studio practice centers around the idea that a painting is a site of connection; an object that transmits emotion from one person to another. She is of a lineage of artists who think craft and beauty shape and build a more relational world. Spaien has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, including the Ucross Foundation (2024), Varda Artist Residency Program, Djerassi Foundation Resident Artists Program, Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has received grant funding from the Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Foundation, the Maine Arts Commission, and the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions, including Taymour Grahne Projects, Dubai, UAE(2025); Mrs. Gallery, NY (2025); Nancy Margolis Gallery, NY; Taymour Grahne Projects, London, UK; Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME; Ellen Miller Gallery, Boston, MA; and Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME. Group exhibitions include Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Taymour Grahne Projects, London, UK; Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME; 1969 Gallery, NY; studio e, Seattle, WA; Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA; University of New Hampshire Museum, Durham, NH; Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, ME; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; and the DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA. Spaien received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and BFA from the University of Southern Maine. After thirty years as faculty at the Maine College of Art and Design, she is full-time in the studio. "Inspired by my geographic location and the landscape that surrounds me, the images in my paintings are of observed and imagined places where one can be in relationship with others, the world, and the self. They celebrate the beauty of everyday acts and the quiet rhythms of daily life. They are compact reductions of lived experiences and permeable arenas of contemplation. The way I make my work is a performance of slowness. Created through repetitive handcraft, marked by decorative patterning, flattened space, and subtly skewed perspectives, my paintings reflect the intimacy of their making. Blending still life with landscape, often depicting a unification between the interior and exterior, spectators of my paintings become inhabitants of a world in slower motion. Composing an idealized counterpoint, I suggest that slowness and attention to the rhythms of an ordinary day is a form of quiet resistance and renewal. My source material ranges from the animated movies of Hayao Miyazaki and Walt Disney to the symbolism of Dutch Still Life paintings. I reference quilts, samplers, mourning paintings, Japanese embroidery, early American wooden furniture, wooden boats, and the architecture of simple cottages. The meditative and precise quality of paint-by-numbers, which I did as a child, also informs my work, as well as my admiration of early American folk artists, the Pattern and Decoration movement, Intimism and the ancient artists of Ukiyo-e. My paintings are places, and I approach them as such. As a painter, I turn my back on the external world and enter the world of the painting. I hope a viewer might do that too. When people say, "I want to go there," I feel I have hit the mark in some way." LINKS: gailspaien.com @gailspaien Artist Shout out: A shout out to my colleagues who are showing with Taymour Grahne Projects: Amy Lincoln https://www.amylincoln.com/ @amyplincoln Matthew F. Fisher https://www.matthewffisher.com/ @matthewffisher Sarah Mceneaney https://taymourgrahne.com/artists/sarah-mceneaney @sarahmcinerney Samira Abbassy https://www.samiraabbassy.com/ @samira_abasy Katia Kamali https://taymourgrahne.com/artists/katia-kameli @kamelikatia Faycal Baghriche https://taymourgrahne.com/artists/faycal-baghriche And a VERY small few of my Maine colleagues: Philip Brou https://philipbrou.com/home.html Honour Mack https://honourmack.com/home.html @honourmack Tessa Greene O'Brien https://www.tessagreenobrien.com/ @tessagreeneobrien Grace Hager https://gracehager.com/ @gracemakes Hilary Irons https://hilaryirons.com/home.html @h.irons.h Brett Bigby https://www.alexandregallery.com/artists-work/brett-bigbee#tab:thumbnails @brettbigby Rose Marasco https://rosemarasco.com/ @rosemarasco I Like Your Work Links: Thank you to our sponsor, Sunlight Tax. Right now, listeners of I Like Your Work can get this free artists' tax deduction guide by going to sunlighttax.com/ilikeyourworkguide Thank you to our Sponsor, the 2026 Canopy Program: Join an info session with Founder and Executive Director Catherine Haggarty and apply by January 14th at thecanopyprogram.com Pre-order our catalog: https://www.ilikeyourworkpodcast.com/resources Have a question you want Erika to discuss in a mini episode? Email it to ilikeyourworkpodcast@gmail.com with the subject "mini eps" Apply to the Chautauqua School of Art Residency Program: art.chq.org Join Erika in Italy at Umbria Contemporary Arts this Summer: https://www.umbriacontemporaryarts.com/product-page/the-symbolic-landscape-instructor Join the Works Membership! https://theworksmembership.com/ Watch our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ilikeyourworkpodcast Submit Your Work Check out our Catalogs! Exhibitions Studio Visit Artist Interviews I Like Your Work Podcast Say "hi" on Instagram

Nov 14

In this episode, I'm diving into open calls including what jurors look for when reviewing applications, and why the description box is crucial for providing context about your artwork. I'm also sharing practical tips on how artists can use detailed descriptions to make their submissions stand out and highlighting resources for artists to improve their application process. I Like Your Work Links: Thank you to our sponsor, Sunlight Tax. https://www.sunlighttax.com Apply for our Winter Exhibition: Deadline is November 15: https://www.ilikeyourworkpodcast.com/submitwork Pre-order our catalog: https://www.ilikeyourworkpodcast.com/resources Have a question you want Erika to discuss in a mini episode? Email it to ilikeyourworkpodcast@gmail.com with the subject "mini eps" Apply to the Chautauqua School of Art Residency Program: art.chq.org Join Erika in Italy at Umbria Contemporary Arts this Summer: https://www.umbriacontemporaryarts.com/product-page/the-symbolic-landscape-instructor Join the Works Membership! https://theworksmembership.com/ Watch our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ilikeyourworkpodcast Submit Your Work Check out our Catalogs! Exhibitions Studio Visit Artist Interviews I Like Your Work Podcast Say "hi" on Instagram

Nov 7

Gwen Strahle is a painter living and working in northeast CT. She teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design. She shows her work at Nancy Devine Gallery in RI. Strahle has received several awards including the Connecticut Artist Fellowship, the Purchase Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Honorarium from the Drawing Center. Strahle earned her MFA from Yale University in 1983. "I have been making paintings of objects arranged on my studio table for over forty years. Many of the objects in my work have been with me for the entirety of that time. The objects are painted both from life and from memory: bud vases, shells, pitchers, and glasses. Each of these objects is a kind of vessel, and I often think about what is inside of an object- the fullness of something empty in appearance. The objects are personified in the paintings, and I have become emotionally invested in them; they are part of my family. Over the years, they have changed and aged with me as I paint them into each image. I have created a hierarchy of icons using these familiar objects that can grow and change depending on their arrangement from one painting to the next. That dynamic relationship between objects is important to me. The covered table under the set-up serves as the canvas, or as the painting itself. Its flat surface is raised up for the viewer, with the malleability of a blank slate that allows objects to emerge from and be pushed back into the surface of the table—like a garden bed. It represents the painted world in which my objects can exist. Twenty years ago, I began to add my own silhouette to the paintings, which has recently turned into a shadow, and it presides over the still-life, and is in turn embraced by it. It made sense for that figure to be my own body, or my own shadow, as I am the one experiencing my relationship to the still-life, with these objects. This transparent form can dissolve across the objects and the table. My process involves moving the objects around the image, eliminating and adding as I work through each painting. My paintings come together slowly, sometimes over the course of months or years before I find resolution in the composition. In the practice of painting, I seek the feeling of being present in the world. The slowness allows for this." LINKS: gwenstrahle.com @gwenpaints I Like Your Work Links: Thank you to our sponsor, Sunlight Tax. Taxes for Humans is the clearest, kindest, funniest tax book you've ever read. It's as generous as you are. Pre-Order by Nov 11 to get a discount AND instant access to Hannah's course. Go to sunlighttax.com/bonus If you have questions about: Estimated quarterly taxes Deductions Business setup steps (making it "official") LLCs Bookkeeping Getting and staying organized Getting out of a jam (payment plans, tax-cheating spouses, etc) Getting a lot more money from tax savings This book is your answer key. Uplifting, practical, and tax-deductible. A companion to the book, the WORKBOOK covers mindset exercises, clears mental blocks, and applies the knowledge you learned in the book.It has the best tax organizer you've ever seen (for actually organizing your tax info at tax time). https://www.sunlighttax.com Apply for our Winter Exhibition: Deadline is November 15: https://www.ilikeyourworkpodcast.com/submitwork Pre-order our catalog: https://www.ilikeyourworkpodcast.com/resources Have a question you want Erika to discuss in a mini episode? Email it to ilikeyourworkpodcast@gmail.com with the subject "mini eps" Apply to the Chautauqua School of Art Residency Program: art.chq.org Join Erika in Italy at Umbria Contemporary Arts this Summer: https://www.umbriacontemporaryarts.com/product-page/the-symbolic-landscape-instructor Join the Works Membership! https://theworksmembership.com/ Watch our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ilikeyourworkpodcast Submit Your Work Check out our Catalogs! Exhibitions Studio Visit Artist Interviews I Like Your Work Podcast Say "hi" on Instagram

Oct 31

In this episode, I touch on mystery in art—the space between knowing and not knowing that drives us to create and share Philip Guston's essay "Faith, Hope, and Impossibility". Faith, Hope, and Impossibility- Philip Guston "There are so many things in the world—in the cities—so much to see. Does art need to represent this variety and contribute to its proliferation? Can art be that free? The difficulties begin when you understand what it is that the soul will not permit the hand to make. To paint is always to start at the beginning again, yet being unable to avoid the familiar arguments about what you see yourself painting. The canvas you are working on modifies the previous ones in an unending, baffling chain which never seems to finish. (What a sympathy is demanded of the viewer! He is asked to "see" the future links.) For me the most relevant question and perhaps the only one is, "When are you finished?" When do you stop? Or rather, why stop at all? But you have to rest somewhere. Of course you can stay on one surface all your life, like Balzac's Frenhofer. And all your life's work can be seen as one picture—but that is merely "true." There are places where you pause.Thus it might be argued that when a painting is "finished," it is a compromise. But the conditions under which the compromise is made are what matters. Decisions to settle anywhere are intolerable. But you feel as you go on working that unless painting proves its right to exist by being critical and self-judging, it has no reason to exist at all—or is not even possible. The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury, and judge. Art without a trial disappears at a glance: it is too primitive or hopeful, or mere notions, or simply startling, or just another means to make life bearable. You cannot settle out of court. You are faced with what seems like an impossibility—fixing an image which you can tolerate. What can be Where? Erasures and destructions, criticisms and judgments of one's acts, even as they force change in oneself, are still preparations merely reflecting the mind's will and movement. There is a burden here, and it is the weight of the familiar. Yet this is the material of a working which from time to time needs to see itself; even though it is reluctant to appear. To will a new form is inacceptable, because will builds distortion. Desire, too, is incomplete and arbitrary. These strategies, however intimate they might become, must especially be removed to clear the way for something else—a condition somewhat unclear, but which in retrospect becomes a very precise act. This "thing" is recognized only as it comes into existence. It resists analysis—and probably this is as it should be. Possibly the moral is that art cannot and should not be made. All these troubles revolve around the irritable mutual dependence of life and art—with their need and contempt for one another. Of necessity, to create is a temporary state and cannot be possessed, because you learn and relearn that it is the lie and mask of Art and, too, its mortification, which promise a continuity. There are twenty crucial minutes in the evolution of each of my paintings. The closer I get to that time—those twenty minutes—the more intensely subjective I become—but the more objective, too. Your eye gets sharper; you become continuously more and more critical.There is no measure I can hold on to except this scant half-hour of making. One of the great mysteries about the past is that such masters as Mantegna were able to sustain this emotion for a year. The problem, of course, is far more complex that mere duration of "inspiration." There were pre-images in the fifteenth century, foreknowledge of what was going to be brought into existence. Maybe my pre-image is unknown to me, but today it is impossible to act as if pre-imaging is possible. Many works of the past (and of the present) complete what they announce they are going to do, to our increasing boredom. Certain others plague me because I cannot follow their intentions. I can tell at a glance what Fabritius is doing, but I am spending my life trying to find out what Rembrandt was up to. I have a studio in the country—in the woods—but my paintings look more real to me than what is outdoors. You walk outside; the rocks are inert; even the clouds are inert. It makes me feel a little better. But I do have faith that it is possible to make a living thing, not a diagram of what I have been thinking: to posit with paint something living, something that changes each day. Everyone destroys marvelous paintings. Five years ago you wiped out what you are about to start tomorrow. Where do you put a form? It will move all around, bellow out and shrink, and sometimes it winds up where it was in the first place. But at the end it feels different, and it had to make the voyage. I am a moralist and cannot accept what has not been paid for, or a form that has not been lived through. Frustration is one of the great things in art; satisfaction is nothing.Two artists always fascinate me—Piero della Francesca and Rembrandt. I am fixed on those two and their insoluble opposition. Piero is the ideal painter: he pursued abstraction, some kind of fantastic, metaphysical , perfect organism. In Rembrandt, the plane of art is removed. It is not a painting, but a real person—a substitute, a golem. He is really the only painter in the world! Certain artists do something and new emotion is brought into the world; its real meaning lies outside of history and the chains of causality. Human consciousness moves, but it is not a leap: it is one inch. One inch is a small jump, but that jump is everything. You go way out and then you have to come back—to see if you can move that inch. I do not think of modern art as Modern Art. The problem started long ago, and the question is: Can there be any art at all? Maybe this is the content of modern art." Philip Guston Originally published in Art News Annual XXXI, 1966.å Adapted from notes for a lecture at the New York Studio School in May 1965. I Like Your Work Links: Thank you to our sponsor, Sunlight Tax. Taxes for Humans is the clearest, kindest, funniest tax book you've ever read. It's as generous as you are. Pre-Order by Nov 11 to get a discount AND instant access to Hannah's course. Go to sunlighttax.com/bonus If you have questions about: Estimated quarterly taxes Deductions Business setup steps (making it "official") LLCs Bookkeeping Getting and staying organized Getting out of a jam (payment plans, tax-cheating spouses, etc) Getting a lot more money from tax savings This book is your answer key. Uplifting, practical, and tax-deductible. A companion to the book, the WORKBOOK covers mindset exercises, clears mental blocks, and applies the knowledge you learned in the book.It has the best tax organizer you've ever seen (for actually organizing your tax info at tax time). https://www.sunlighttax.com Apply for our Winter Exhibition: Deadline is November 15 https://www.ilikeyourworkpodcast.com/submitwork Pre-order our catalog: https://www.ilikeyourworkpodcast.com/resources Have a question you want Erika to discuss in a mini episode? Email it to ilikeyourworkpodcast@gmail.com with the subject "mini eps" Apply to the Chautauqua School of Art Residency Program: art.chq.org Join the Works Membership! https://theworksmembership.com/ Watch our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ilikeyourworkpodcast Submit Your Work Check out our Catalogs! Exhibitions Studio Visit Artist Interviews I Like Your Work Podcast Say "hi" on Instagram