An Executive Coach's Guide to Getting Back Into Art

I built an art practice to survive my career. And it worked.

I spent over a decade as an executive. Climbing, or trying to climb, the proverbial ladder. There was travel, lots of it. Managing and being managed. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I started making art. Not because I was an artist, although I'd always wanted to be one, but because I needed somewhere for my brain to go that wasn't work.

That experience became the heart of Welcome Wander. I created it to help adults return to making art after a long break, build a creative art habit that fits into real life. Somewhere to go that belongs entirely to them.

Why I started making art

I'd always been creative. In high school, I had an art teacher who believed in my talent before I did. She told me to apply, as a senior, for the town's art association scholarship. I didn't. Imagine my surprise when I won it anyway. She had faith in me before I'd earned it in my own eyes. I'll never forget you, 'Ms. Us'.

Making art at night started as an escape. A distraction. A way to put my hands on something that wasn't a spreadsheet or a problem to solve. I taught myself to quilt, and when I couldn't make the corners meet, to modern quilt. Then I kept going. I started painting small, ACEOs, those tiny 2.5-by-3.5-inch art cards, and selling them on the side just to see if I could. I could. Over five hundred of them, as it turned out. They weren't masterpieces, but they were mine. A collector once told me I 'make creating art look easy. It isn't.' Maybe I was onto something.

What building a creative practice taught me

Here's what surprised me most, coming back to art: I got good. Not because I had talent to spare or time to burn. I had neither. I got good the way I got good at everything else in my career: a plan, protected time, and showing up. It turns out the same skills that built my career could build a creative practice. Nobody tells you that.

Today I'm an executive coach, and I make art in bursts. Some weeks a lot, some weeks nothing. And the nothing-weeks are okay. Sometimes getting back into it is harder than others.

Why Welcome Wander exists

I kept meeting people like me: accomplished, busy professionals, competent at nearly everything, with a creative thing they secretly wanted and couldn't get back to. They didn't want the woo-woo of some creative communities. They just wanted to make art and feel good before, during, and after. And then make more.

So that's what I build here. Welcome Wander isn't all art instruction, there's plenty of that out there, and it isn't art therapy, I'm a coach, not a therapist. It's a coach's system for coming back to a creative practice: a plan, protected time, and zero guilt. The same way I did it, one small piece at a time.

Who Welcome Wander is for

If that's you, great at your job and rusty or guilty or stuck with the creative thing, you're in the right place.

A teacher once believed I could create, and do it well, before I believed it myself. Now I get to be that for people ready to begin, or begin again.

Start here → Creative Comeback Challenge

So that's what I build here. Welcome Wander isn't mainly art instruction, there's plenty of that out there, and it isn't art therapy, I'm a coach, not a therapist. It's a coach's system for coming back to a creative practice: a plan, protected time, and zero guilt. The same way I did it, one small piece at a time.