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She Called Herself an Artist for the First Time ft. Sue White

There is a specific kind of quiet most self taught painters carry. It sounds like: you are not a real artist until someone else says so. Sue White carried that quiet for years, through art appreciation classes, a drawing course, and a full career designing furniture that sold by the truckload to Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and Harrods, before she ever let herself paint for herself. Six years ago she finally picked up a paintbrush. This week on the Honest Art Podcast, Sue joins Jodie King to talk about the exact moment that quiet broke, and what happened after.

From Furniture Design to the Blank Canvas

Before Sue White was a painter, she designed furniture that had to sell by the eighteen wheeler truckload to major retailers. It was a career built on other people’s approval, which meant a career built on perfectionism and people pleasing. When she retired, she took a few community art classes, but she did not actually start painting for herself until Covid gave her the time and, finally, the permission. Six years later, her large scale gestural abstract work fills her home studio, a converted garage complete with rollers so the paintings can roll in and out with the cars.

The Airport Moment She Finally Said It Out Loud

Sue had been painting for years before she could say the word artist about herself without flinching. The moment it clicked was almost accidental. Standing in an airport, a stranger asked what she did for a living, and for the first time, she said, I’m an artist. She says she nearly fell out of her chair. That one sentence marks the difference between someone who paints and someone who has claimed the identity, and Jodie unpacks why that claim has to come first, before the email goes out, before the exhibition application, before the sale.

Sold Out in a Week: Inside Sue’s First Big Sale

Not long after joining Studio Elite, Sue got the call. A woman furnishing a new home, connected through Sue’s daughter, wanted to see her work. Thanks to the pricing and portfolio work she had done inside Studio Elite, Sue was ready. She brought her tape measure, her pricing, and her portfolio to a dinner, and a week later the client’s whole family and interior designer were reviewing her pieces in person. She sold two large paintings that week. Not small studies. Five foot by five foot statement pieces, the kind of work that only happens when an artist stops shrinking her output to match her doubt.

Rewiring the Self Talk

Sue and Jodie get honest about the mental work behind the sale. Sue’s biggest blocks were perfectionism and people pleasing, holdovers from a career spent designing to please department store buyers. A mentor once told her to stop thinking, stop trying, accept your mediocrity, and paint. Another told her she could not think a painting into existence that was as good as her body could paint. Both lines cracked something open. Jodie ties this back to a truth she lives with daily: after twenty three years in this business, the mindset work never actually finishes, it just gets easier to catch.

The Two Non Negotiables Studio Elite Taught Her

 Post consistently on social media, even when no one claps for you doing it

 Build an email list, the thing almost every artist dismisses until they see what it actually does for sales

Sue admits she and her cohort nearly fell out of their chairs when Jodie first laid out these two rules. Social media felt obvious. The email list did not, until the numbers did the convincing.

What’s Next for Sue

Sue’s plan for the next six months includes putting her work in interior design showrooms, approaching real estate agents who stage homes for sale, and listing pieces on Saatchi Art and First Dibs. She is also developing a line of smaller, more affordable pieces aimed at younger collectors who are renting rather than owning, because as she puts it, art is one of the few things you can carry with you from one home to the next.

Resources Mentioned

• The Artist Who Gets Paid, Jodie’s 3-part workshop (August 20, 25, and 27): https://www.jodiekingart.com/artistseries
• Studio Elite Mastermind applications: https://www.jodiekingart.com/studioelite
• Sue White on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suewhitestudio 
• Sue White on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Sue-White-Studio-61589565904703/ 
• Sue’s Artwork Archive portfolio: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/suewhitestudio 

Related episodes:

• Episode 02: How to Know if You’re a Real Artist
• Episode 14: How to Price Your Art (So It Sells!)
• Episode 32: Artwork Archive: The Business Tool I Can’t Live Without
• Episode 145: How Your Mindset Impacts Art Pricing
• Episode 152: How to Get Your Art Seen (Online, Offline, and Without an Art Degree)

🎬 Watch on YouTube

• 🎬 New to Honest Art®? Start Here: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRbtjrfQyOs
• 🎨 Painting Techniques: Best Of: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW9oZj4G3KkA

Want More from Jodie?

Learn from Jodie:

• 🎨 Studio Elite Mastermind: jodiekingart.com/studioelite
• 🎨 Color Course for Rebels: jodiekingart.com/ccfr
• 🎨 Honest Art® Workshops: jodieking.com/workshop

Jodie’s favorite resources:

• ✍🏻Check out my free guide on how to hang and wire a painting: https://www.jodiekingart.com/how-to-hang-a-painting 
• ✍🏻Get my top 10 studio tools here: https://www.jodiekingart.com/10-studio-tools-opt-in 
• ✍🏻Learn 5 things they don’t teach you in art school: https://jodieking.com/work-with-me#free-rescources.0  
• ✍🏻See Jodie’s favorite things: https://www.amazon.com/shop/jodie_king_ 
• 🧘🏼‍♀️Guided Meditation for Creative Clarity: https://www.jodiekingart.com/guided-meditation

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