I mentor other women artists and I teach on creating trust through tension.
I’ve had people say to me, “Why in the world would you want to create tension with your clients? Isn’t tension a bad thing?”
I find it to be the exact opposite.
Trust isn’t something that happens over night. If you think about your most meaningful, and healthiest, relationships they are something that was built over time. You learned to give little by little, set boundaries, and you also learned how to ask for what you needed (hopefully). Building a relationship is about giving of yourself, but also getting that back in return.
Tension, by definition, is about being stretched to a point of being uncomfortable. What you have to ask yourself is, is uncomfortable always a bad thing? I believe it can be a truly beautiful experience.
I ask the women that I create with to sit in the uncomfortable; to sit in the silence of their tough thoughts.
When women come to me for a session they are usually going through something big in their lives. This could be a celebration or even a way to mourn past versions of themselves (think motherhood or divorce). There is a reason they have a yearning for this experience. So, what is it? Why now? Why is this the way they want to journey through this life event?
Taking this step in sitting with the uncomfortable is not for the weak. This is why I say that boudoir is not for everyone, at least not the way that I approach it.
My goal is always telling my client’s story. In doing that, we have no idea how it will turn out. That takes a ton of trust on their part, as well as mine.
I’m going to quote one of my favorite humans to get inspiration from. Sean Low works with creatives to push themselves into giving their clients a world where they have the space to dream.
Sean says, “That's what your art does. It's transformational. It's taking the elements of story given to you by the grist for the mill, right? And translating that as you, the artist would see it. That's what you do as an artist.
But what you do as a business is equally as creative. And I've spoken many, many times about the need for outrageous promises and the best in the world at what I do, even if that world is only for four people. And then I'm also going to ask for outrageous demands because I need to get permission to do that work and how I get permission to do that work isn't just say, hey, trust me, I'll get it done for you.
The next thing is, of course, I have to hold tension, right? I'd have to know, will this work out? Because if I always know that's going to work out, the story doesn't have any resolution to it. Because I already know the end before it ever starts. It's not really a story. That's what a product is. A product is, you know, the end because it's lying on your wall or it's sitting in your refrigerator or it's, you know, or it's on your record player if you have a record player.
So that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about that tension. I don't know if this is gonna work out. I don't know how it's gonna work out and I hope it's gonna work out, but I'm not really confident it might not work and then it gets resolved. And then it's rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat until the whole thing is done.
So as you said about the work that you're going to do for this year, how you're going to approach your clients and how they are going to demand of you and you of them is the idea of investing in what is the story that I'm telling and how I might not be doing any of the one thing that I need to do. Which is, am I creating trust? Am I holding tension? Am I resolving that tension appropriately? Do I have, do I have the forethought to see how those things will be? And am I willing to basically be uncomfortable?
Let me lay it out plain as day. Any of you out there who have on your website or your Instagram, Or any place else that your job is to make your clients life stress free and easy needs to question whether or not you believe you're in a creative business. Because the entire point of creative business is that there will be stress there will be tension because what you're doing matters to you and it will be uncertain and that that investment in you in the uncertainty of whether it would work is itself stressful.
It's just the question of whether you can resolve stress. So if you want a stress free environment, that means that you're unwilling to be a storyteller. Because story requires tension, and story requires resolution. And so, what you will say, rather than stress free, is that you are an effective communicator.
And the promise is, is that you will, you will work diligently to get to the next place. That's what your promise is. Not that it's going to be easy, right? Not that they can just flip you the keys and walk away because then you turn yourself into a product person. And that has entirely different components of how it's supposed to go. It is, and if you want to be a product person, have at it. Do what you need to do, but do not confuse that with the idea that you are truly an artist and that artist requires a journey.”
I want outrageous promises and to ask for outrageous demands. I want to create magic not for, but with my clients. I don’t want limitations based on past experiences or beliefs. I want to live in a world where we create our own, unique experiences. I’m not just offering an end product of art on their walls, I’m demanding we go on a journey together where there is no option other than growth and being uncomfortable at times. I want vulnerability that leads to courage. I want richness that we feel in our bones when we create together.
“A creative business is when you get paid to get lost.” - Sean Low
