In this episode of Creative Guts, co-hosts Becky Barsi and Joe Acone sit down with fine artist and painter Cindy Rizza. Cindy is celebrated for her intimate still lifes that transform everyday textiles, heirlooms, and domestic objects into meditations on memory, comfort, and vulnerability. Her work often blurs the line between sanctuary and tension, inviting viewers to consider the deeper emotional and cultural weight carried by familiar materials. In this conversation, Cindy opens up about where her inspiration comes from, the process of translating personal memories into her visual language, and how she’s learned to be guided by her own taste and intuition. Dive into Cindy’s work at www.cindyrizza.com as well as on her instagram www.instagram.com/cindy_rizza. Listen to this episode wherever you listen to podcasts or on our website www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Discord. Creative Guts recently moved our newsletter to Substack, and you can find us at creativegutspod.substack.com. If you love listening, consider making a donation to Creative Guts! Our budget is tiny, so donations of any size make a big difference. Learn more about us and make a tax deductible donation at www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Thank you to our friends at Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery in Exeter, NH and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts in Rochester, NH for their support of the show!
In this episode of Creative Guts, co-hosts Becky Barsi and Joe Acone sit down with fine artist and painter Cindy Rizza.
Cindy is celebrated for her intimate still lifes that transform everyday textiles, heirlooms, and domestic objects into meditations on memory, comfort, and vulnerability. Her work often blurs the line between sanctuary and tension, inviting viewers to consider the deeper emotional and cultural weight carried by familiar materials. In this conversation, Cindy opens up about where her inspiration comes from, the process of translating personal memories into her visual language, and how she’s learned to be guided by her own taste and intuition.
Dive into Cindy’s work at www.cindyrizza.com as well as on her instagram www.instagram.com/cindy_rizza.
Listen to this episode wherever you listen to podcasts or on our website www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Discord. Creative Guts recently moved our newsletter to Substack, and you can find us at creativegutspod.substack.com.
If you love listening, consider making a donation to Creative Guts! Our budget is tiny, so donations of any size make a big difference. Learn more about us and make a tax deductible donation at www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com.
Thank you to our friends at Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery in Exeter, NH and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts in Rochester, NH for their support of the show!
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:00] BB: I'm Becki Barcy.
[0:00:01] JA: And I'm Joe Acone.
[0:00:02] BB & JA: And you're listening to Creative Guts.
[0:00:17] JA: Hey friends, thanks for tuning in to Creative Guts.
[0:00:19] BB: Before we jump into today's episode, just a quick reminder, Creative Guts is fueled by the support of folks like you. If you love what we do, please consider making a donation, leaving us a review, sharing our show with your friends, interacting on the socials, or even picking up some merch. However you show your support, we really appreciate you.
[0:00:38] JA: In this episode, we're sitting down with New Hampshire-based painter, Cindy Rizza. Cindy's work often explores memory, comfort, and the emotional pull of everyday objects. But in our conversation, she opens up about her inspiration, her creative process, and what it means to seek validation while being guided by intuition.
[0:00:55] BB: Her work has earned national recognition, including artist grants and major exhibition prizes, and she continues to inspire audiences both in New Hampshire and beyond.
[0:01:04] JA: So, let's jump right into this episode of Creative Guts with Cindy Rizza.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:11] JA: Hi, everyone. Today we have with us Cindy Rizza, fine artist, painter extraordinaire, and we are really excited to have you by the way. I'm glad we're able to make this work.
[0:01:21] CR: I am so glad we figured out scheduling. I'm just excited to be here. And this is really exciting.
[0:01:26] JA: Yeah, it's a magic trick that anything gets scheduled at all, you know.
[0:01:30] CR: Yes. I would say it's just right now my schedule's like often – especially in the summer, when my kids are home most of the time, it's just a scheduling Tetris. But this is the perfect day. I'm so excited to see you. It's been so long since we caught up.
[0:01:44] JA: It's been ages, yeah.
[0:01:46] CR: And Becki, it's been a while since I spoke to you.
[0:01:47] BB: Yeah. Yeah.
[0:01:49] JA: So, let's just start things off right away. For folks who maybe don't know your work very well or your origin story, could you give some folks just a little insight into who you are as a person and an artist?
[0:02:01] CR: Okay. I mean, artists are put in different boxes, but I would say I'm a figurative artist, which means that I'm a painter. I paint things that are recognizable. So, sometimes someone may say that I'm a representational oil painter. I've been oil painting for 20 years. I show at two galleries. I sell my work. That's kind of the sphere of art that I'm kind of operating in for my art career.
But, yeah, I've been painting for a while. But ever since I was a kid, I've been playing with art materials. So, watercolor, colored pencil, black and white drawing materials. Just my idea of fun was being alone in my bedroom and exploring different creative media. And then just having the power in my hand of being like, "Wow, I can express myself visually in this way. And I don't have to talk to anybody." Make a visual statement and have that be that. I think I was always attracted to that as a child. Man, I took every art class that I could when I was a kid. And there was really no doubt in my brain that I wanted to be an artist.
[0:03:10] BB: That's great. And where did you grow up?
[0:03:12] CR: I split my time between Massachusetts for the first half of my childhood, and then I moved to Maine. And it was pretty rural up there. It was outside of Bangor, Maine. But what Maine did have in Mid-Coast down east Maine was the Farnsworth Art Museum. And I visited there a lot as a child on field trips. And I would say if I had an influence on my work, somebody looking at my work might say, "Oh, that sense of light looks – yeah, it's very regional, but it looks kind of Andrew Wyethy." He certainly had an influence on me early on. I would say certainly the mood of his paintings, but also potentially the palette, the fact that a lot of his subjects are set outdoors. Absolutely, there's that formative influence that he had on my work. And also just the main landscape. It's so raw and rugged, and it's affected by the seasons so harshly. I think that had a pretty powerful impact on me growing up.
[0:04:13] BB: Nice. Nice. Being surrounded by art materials, and you said a whole bunch of different options, were your family supportive? I mean, somebody's buying these for you. You're in your room. So, what was that like?
[0:04:24] CR: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. They supported me. I think certainly when it came to the time of me figuring out what I wanted to do for college, my father's creative, he's an architect. So, he really encouraged me to try to find a career path that really was more within a design field. They always supported me in studio art, encouraged me to sign up for as many classes as I could. But I think when it came to a career, they came from a time where having things be black and white. And I understand it. I'm a parent, too. I totally get it. But he was like, "You should really try graphic design. Why don't you go and shadow a graphic designer?" And I hated every second of it. And I was like, "This is – okay. Yeah, maybe I could see myself doing this."
But most of the work is on a screen. I just didn't feel creatively lit up. I have always known inside that I was a studio artist. I did go to school for graphic design. And after 3 weeks, I changed my major, and I didn't tell my parents. I mean, they did eventually figure it out. I think they just they're like, "Okay, I think we just need to accept this." They've been supportive ever since, and I have found my way.
[0:05:38] BB: That's great. And that's a common thing, I think. Especially, Joe and I, being teachers, we have a lot of students who love art, who are really engaged and want to be artists, but there's also this fear that it's hard to be a successful full-time artist and to take that leap. So, it's wonderful that your parents eventually jumped on board, and they were like, "Okay, she's got it."
[0:05:58] CR: Yeah. And it's not that I started out being a successful full-time artist. I was just an artist. And we can go into this more. But I would say most artists balance their income with multiple different ways. And so I think there is this sort of like, I don't know, fantasy – and I don't want to say lie, but a bit of a misconception that artists aren't multifaceted individuals with other skills. But yes, I'm working in the studio full-time. I also have other sources of income, too. But it's just a smart thing to do.
And it provides – there's a lot of creative pressure if you are making work solely for your income. Because let's say you're in the studio, you're doing commissions, and oftentimes it may be work that you aren't super excited by. And then it creates a really toxic studio environment, and then it's hard to get to work, and you start to procrastinate, and it's work that you don't feel like doing. Is that what you want for your studio life?
In some ways, we'll get a side hustle, you know. And then your studio space can be a positive place where you can get ready to work in something that excites you. Yeah, I certainly did the commission path, and it took me a long time to get to galleries. But I would just say one step at a time. It's not a race. And you'll find your way.
[0:07:23] BB: Yeah.
[0:07:23] JA: I think you're touching on something that is super important and kind of hides in plain sight, which is like the influence of economics on a creative practice and how it can influence you as a creative. And I think there's often this pressure put on creatives to squeegee that out of your brain and just be in the studio and be mindful and do all this stuff. It's like kind of a herculean task just to force all that out and just focus in the studio. And so I don't know, this isn't necessarily a question per se, but I'm curious of your thoughts around like – well, maybe you spoke to it already. How the economics sort of live in your work, how they are embodied in your studio, or how you navigate that.
[0:08:06] CR: Yeah, it's been a long journey. I've worked with galleries, I would say, probably since 2008. It's been a long time. And I started off in art school making a certain type of work. When I graduated from art school, when I was in art college, I painted people. I painted a lot of figures. And for various reasons that I'll get into, I'm not painting a lot of that anymore. But you spend a lot of time after you go through an art program, just figuring yourself out. And most of your learning as an artist actually occurs after you graduate. I mean, it will take at least a decade of you just trying to figure shit out.
But I would say really what matters is I realized that I don't want to work if I am encouraged to paint certain subjects that I don't want to do. And so I realized, I was like, "Why am I procrastinating on this? I don't want to do this." And so I realized, "Okay, this may mean that there are certain galleries or paths. It's just not going to work for me." And so it is a matter of finding out what lights you up creatively, how to follow that, and finding that maybe financial path that will work for you or that gallery that likes what you're doing and say, "Hey, we love that. Let's try some small works and see how it goes." Because gallery is a business relationship. So, it has to work for you. It has to work for them. They have to sell work. It is an aspect of the commerce of art that I participate in. It's been a long journey of really claiming what I guess my voice, I would say. And then fully owning that and accepting, "Well, this is what I'm doing. And this is what excites me."
[0:09:57] JA: Yeah.
[0:09:57] BB: Yeah.
[0:09:58] CR: Yeah. Hopefully, that answered your question.
[0:10:01] JA: It does. Yeah, of course. Because that's a part of it, right? Navigating that world, but also you know – yeah. I love what you said there about focusing, finding your voice, focusing on the thing that you are driven to make, and then finding a market basically for that, essentially.
[0:10:16] CR: Right. Let's say showing at galleries, if you're interested in selling your work, every gallery is not the same. They are going to show different types of media or art that is maybe all abstract or all color field paintings. You will find, you're like, "Oh, I don't think my work is going to fit in this." It is this aspect of just finding a space where you can be. Yeah.
[0:10:45] BB: Yeah. Can you describe a little bit about what your current body of work really embodies and what it is you've been creating and why?
[0:10:51] CR: Yeah, I should have mentioned that in the beginning, but I paint mainly – I would say still lives. I will put myself in that box. And a lot of my subjects are domestic items used for caretaking. Textiles, chairs, a lot of things found in interiors meant for comfort and security. Some of my recent paintings, a lot of the still lives actually are sort of taken out of their interior habitats, places where you would find these objects, you would find them inside domestically. And they're taken outside and they're put in a field.
And so you may have seen my work. I would say my iconic works are like stacks of textiles, stacks of blankets, maybe of different eras, from different families, from different people. There's pattern, there's color, there's texture. All things that visually excite me, but also that perhaps speak to lives that were lived or hopefully summoning nostalgic feelings.
[0:11:53] BB: And why the juxtaposition and having them in an exterior location?
[0:11:58] CR: Yeah. Well, for one, I think visually it creates an interesting contrast. Especially if, let's say, everything around these man-made objects are kind of dead and brown, where you have this bright neon green blanket next to these dying leaves. Besides that, I would say the landscapes that I tend to paint – and it's so wild to say that I'm maybe a lands – kind of weirdly going into like landscape painting. I love that. But a lot of the landscapes that I'm painting, they're wild and they're untamed. And a lot of the objects that I paint are man-made orderly objects. There's pattern. There's repetition.
There's almost this – if you've seen anybody knit or crochet, there's this like neurotic sort of repetitive motion. There are objects meant for decoration. They're meant for utilitarian warmth, comfort. And then they're like sometimes put in a closet and discarded. Or the person that made it died. Or the person that needed it is grown up now. And putting them outside, it's sort of almost like a postmortem, or it's like an honoring of the objects, but also a questioning of the objects of "Do these things keep us safe? Are they more palliative, comfortive things that we have in our lives that we keep in our homes? But inevitably, are we all safe? Do they provide security?" Having a wild landscape around it, I just think –
[0:13:30] BB: They're vulnerable in that sense. Right.
[0:13:31] CR: Yes, they're very vulnerable, and they're out in the open. To me, it lit me up creatively, putting them outside in the elements.
[0:13:40] JA: So you put yourself in the still life box for now. And then you're also interested in landscape.
[0:13:44] CR: Oh, gosh. Yeah.
[0:13:45] JA: But then you're also kind of doing portraiture, too, at the same time.
[0:13:48] CR: I'm not really doing portraiture anymore. I did that for a little while. I'm trying to think the last time I painted a portrait.
[0:13:54] JA: Sorry. I mean as like an extended portraiture of like portraiture of these very specific objects.
[0:13:59] BB: Of an object, yeah.
[0:13:59] CR: Yes. Correct. Exactly. And it's like that's how I always viewed my work is like I'm doing portraits, but they're not of people, they're of things. I think recently I've been embracing myself as a still life painter because I've been questioning, "If I'm not looking at contemporary still life painters, am I potentially boxing myself in compositionally if I'm treating everything maybe formally like a portrait?"
I've been looking at different objects that I can paint that maybe are along the same theme, or pushing myself compositionally where as a maybe Dutch still life painter would. I'm looking at other artists and the way that they compose their still lives, and I'm trying to bring some of that into my work, I would say. And by accepting myself as somebody that is painting objects that perhaps it's been like a creative barrier for me.
[0:14:49] BB: Can you talk a little bit about what your studio practice is like? When you're approaching a brand-new painting or a brand new series, what is that process?
[0:14:57] CR: Usually, it starts in my brain. And I'm not painting at all, or I'm not doing references, or no drawing. I'm just like living life. And I would say that is such an important part of my practice. It's just not doing anything and really just kind of letting things simmer in your brain. Before I make any sort of creative shift, I think you really have to allow yourself a lot of space and not force yourself into the work that you were making, because things will feel stale.
I find that I can't believe it, but I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I procrastinate. Why am I procrastinating? I don't feel like working right now. This is not the type of creative practice that I need to do for my creativity right now." It usually comes after a period of I will say it's a break, even though there's no break that's happening in my head, but I'm not physically in the studio.
And then I'm thinking about my ideas, and usually it comes in the form of quick thumbnail sketches. And then I'm kind of on-site, taking references. And I'm actually in that phase right now. And it would have been great to do this interview in my studio, but it's a mess – canvases. And it all worked out. But that reference material has become really important for my studio practice.
I would say, what it looks like is I gather my objects that I'm painting. I usually own them, borrow them. My studio is full of plastic bins of blankets. I didn't have the bins for a while, and it was just a total mess. My husband's like, "You got to figure something out. You need a storage solution." But I will put the bins on a truck, the chairs, anything that I'm painting, and I will go out on site in a field at 3:00. And I did that the other day, and I spent like three hours just –
[0:16:44] BB: The lighting has been amazing.
[0:16:46] CR: Yeah. And light is important to my work because it is about the passage of time. And yes, you can cite Andrew Wyeth as an influence for that reason. But being out in the field and sort of creating that mood and that feeling that I want to get. And then I'll set everything up and try a bunch of different things. Sometimes I really will. I will spend an entire afternoon taking like 300 references, and I'm like, "I don't know if I got what I was looking for."
And it took me so long to figure out not to settle and just to accept that that is just an important part of my creative process. And then from there, I will go through things. I will be like, "Oh, well, this is kind of a cool path that I'm going down. What if I did this instead? Let me go back and let me figure this out." And then I will start thinking about scale. I will start processing images in Photoshop. I will make a collage. I will do a drawing. And then it gets to stretching the canvas, doing the drawing on the canvas. And then there's the painting part.
And some people might think the painting part is the hard part, but I think it's really flipped. I think it's everything that comes before that. And valuing that process almost more than the painting. And maybe that's just because I've been painting for so long. A lot of people might look at my work and be like, "How do you do that?" To me, I don't even know. It's kind of the easy part. It's almost like driving. So you've been doing it for so long.
[0:18:17] JA: Yeah. You set your habitat up. And then once it's set up, it's like you can dig in more and get back into those patterns of painting.
[0:18:25] CR: Yes. Exactly. Yes. And then that is a totally different creative mood. And I've realized that there are times in your creative process where you're generating, you got energy, you're out there, your mind is buzzing. And then you have times that are quieter when you've figured it out. It's just you got to finish it and see it through. And that's when I put on a book, I put on a podcast. I'm kind of zoning out. And it's great.
[0:18:49] JA: I literally just came off of a conversation with a student that I feel like would really value having that advice given. Yeah, definitely. Can I talk to you a little bit about just like materials? What you like to paint with?
[0:18:59] CR: Yeah. Let's geek out.
[0:19:02] JA: Yeah. I came up through the same school as you, NHIA, but the illustration program specifically, right? And I remember being exposed to painting on panels. And I was like, "I love this experience of being able –" just the rigidity of it, being able to draw on it and move things around. And I just enjoyed that substrate a lot. I don't think other than like the obvious practical concerns of being able to transport paintings or hang them, I just love to hear you sort of ruminate on the concept of canvases.
[0:19:40] CR: Wow, you're such a nerd.
[0:19:42] JA: I am such a dork. Yes.
[0:19:42] CR: Okay. I would say it really depends on what I'm painting. I think I generally have a rule of thumb, where if I'm painting things that require some softness, that a panel is not really going to help me. I find that I personally have switched from cotton canvas to linen. I paint on – I purchase a linen that is like a fine portrait linen, unprimed. And it's in a blanket. So I iron it out. It would probably be easier if it was in a roll, but I'm cheap. I iron it out. And then I use acrylic gesso to seal the surface. And that has been my material, like my substrate of choice when I'm doing like a quilt or a fuzzy afghan. It's really hard to create that texture when you are painting on a rigid smooth surface. It just doesn't help you. I can do it, but it's just not fun. I'm like I'm just like, "Oh god, this is such a slog." It would be so much easier if there was a little bit of tooth, right? I think it depends on what you're painting.
But I find that when I'm working on a smaller scale, I do really love panel. There's a slickness to the surface that just kind of like helps the paint glide along and dependent on what I'm painting. But sometimes if I'm painting something smaller, I don't feel the need to like paint every thread in a blanket. Usually the forms are a little bit more, I don't know, suggested. That they're more simplified than if I'm working on a larger scale, something like life size where I would definitely use linen.
[0:21:19] JA: Are you letting like the weave kind of shine a little bit or are you – I know a lot of people will like gesso it to death and like make it very, very shallow.
[0:21:28] CR: I mean, it's pretty shallow because it's portrait linen. The weave itself is very fine, but the threads themselves are very fine. But it is incredibly strong. Stronger than cotton. It's harder to stretch. There's really not a lot of give. I've been experimenting with different stretcher bars and ways to do it.
And I love primes. Oil primed portrait linen is amazing. And it's so easy to paint on. However, I think it's also pretty easy to paint on unprimed portrait linen as well, and it's just more cost-effective. It's still super expensive than painting on cotton. And cotton's great. But I think it's just elevated the look of my work in a way that has helped me paint. It's made the painting process more pleasant for me, too. And I'm 40 years old, Joe. I can't mess around anymore.
[0:22:25] JA: What are you talking about? You never stop experimenting. Never stop playing.
[0:22:28] CR: Yeah. No, I know. But if I have a set goal in mind and something scheduled, that will get it done for me.
[0:22:35] JA: Makes sense. Yeah.
[0:22:37] BB: What have been some of the biggest creative challenges you've had to face in your career.
[0:22:42] CR: This touches upon a little bit about impostor syndrome. But I would definitely say not seeking external validation for what you're doing. I thought about this question for a while, and I think I had like a decade, especially post-graduation. You graduate art school, and you just want to be a good artist, and you want to make it, and you want to hold up that check and be like, "Look, mom. I made it." But at the end of the day, I have realized that like likes, sales, mentors being like, "Good job," it's all just a dopamine hit that is just very short-lived. And it should not be the reason that you go back to the studio.
I mean, it's not that those things don't feel good. They do. When I make a body of work and a lot of it sells, yeah, it feels great and it helps me be able to continue doing what I'm doing. But it cannot be the sole reason. It cannot be the reason. And social media has made this so much more complicated. Sometimes we'll post something to like get, "Oh, will somebody see this or will it get all these likes?" That should not be the reason why you go back to the studio. And it took me, I think, like a full decade to get there to really what should be driving you is the creative spark and wanting to follow that. And that has to come from within. That cannot come from a like, a sale, somebody patting you on the back. Those things are wonderful. Yeah.
[0:24:19] JA: Are you consciously thinking at all about feedback? Do you seek feedback? How does that plug in?
[0:24:25] CR: Yes, I do seek feedback in an intentional way when I'm ready for feedback. But feedback all the time isn't always helpful. Sometimes it's like I really just need to shut the voices out and I really just need to dig in. And a lot of that work is like self-work that you do within yourself.
To me, making art is about establishing what you want, what your values are. And sometimes when you have all these voices coming at you, it's just too much. You can't you cannot figure out, "Who am I? What are my values? What do I want to communicate with my art?" Because I think good art is – art is about visual communication, right? And so if you don't know what you're trying to communicate – for a lot of folks, it's just too much the more feedback that they get. Yeah. And it's sifting through those voices. That's another challenge as well.
[0:25:12] JA: And I'm obviously thinking too about young artists and how they are so inundated with feedback via social media. I think we're benefited by coming up in the infancy of the internet, and we're dealing with all that.
[0:25:26] CR: I would say it can be great because you can get ideas and you can get inspired very quickly, "Wow, look at this artist. Wow, look at this artist. I'm going to print that picture off. I'm going to put that on my wall." I've even had people, art dealers find me on Instagram. And I've had professional opportunities just through social media. And that did not exist when I was a student, when I was a senior in art college. We didn't have Instagram back then. It was just like, "Let's send off our slides to a gallery." And I was like, "Are we still talking about slides, guys? It's all about CDs, right?" And now it's like not even not anymore.
Growing up in the internet, it's almost too much. It really is hard to figure out where you fit into all the noise. But it's just going to take time, too. It's something that sometimes you need to make a bunch of paintings that aren't really true to yourself in order for you to figure out, "Oh, I think this creative door has closed. I need to move on and figure it out." It's not a straight path.
[0:26:29] BB: You've shown your work all around the world, Amsterdam, New York, variety of different locations, and you've picked up some pretty impressive awards along the way. Can you unpack a little bit about what that experience has been like and really growing as an artist over time?
[0:26:43] CR: Yeah. I've been fortunate enough where I haven't sought out every opportunity that has come my way. And for instance, if you told me at, let's say, age 15 that I would one day have a solo exhibition overseas, I'd be like, "What?" And I don't know. I don't even know. But it's not something that I sought out. It was because of all of these other steps that I took or that fell in my lap.
I would say, especially if you're a young artist and you're like, "I don't know how to get myself out there," for me, it started as a small works exhibition. When I graduated college, I worked full-time for an art school in admissions recruiting students for the program, for the Bachelor of Fine Arts program. And I was working full-time. But I was very serious that I was going to be a painter and I was going to commit myself to my studio practice, which meant I had to say no a lot. I had to dedicate myself to painting time. And I was like, "Oh, okay. I'm going to look for a call for entries," or just something to see what I can do.
And a local gallery in New Hampshire had a call for small works. Actually, now that I think of it, I don't even know if there was a call. But I made work for the show. And I remember seeing the opportunity Friday, and I spent all weekend making six small pieces because I really am very stubborn. And so I made these works. I emailed them to the gallery director and I say, "Hi, I have this work. Would you like to have it for your small work show? Each piece is like 200 bucks or something." And she was like, "Yeah, sure." And I was like, "She just said yes. Oh Oh my gosh." And so every little thing came from that.
I mean, I was thinking I started showing on Cape Cod. They saw me when I was showing my work at this gallery. Had a solo show at this gallery because I sold all those little tiny pieces that I made that weekend. And so it's kind of one thing after another. And that's why sometimes it can feel very overwhelming when you're looking at these massive successful careers and you're just like, "Oh my god, how do I even get – I don't know anyone that lives in the Netherlands. How would I show there?" Well, I didn't either. They just found me. But it was because of all these other things that happened.
[0:29:05] BB: You had the guts to just take that risk, submit something, send the email, and be like, "Hey, are you interested?" That's awesome.
[0:29:13] CR: Yeah, you had to be brave. And there's an element of like cringe because you're putting yourself out there and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm really vulnerable. And what if they say no?" They're going to say no at some – you will definitely have nos. You just need to accept that too. But you will get a yes. A yes will come.
[0:29:31] BB: That's awesome. You just got to keep plugging away.
[0:29:34] CR: Yeah.
[0:29:35] JA: What's one book, mentor, or piece of advice you wish you received sooner?
[0:29:39] CR: I would say that there is not one art world.
[0:29:45] BB: Oh, I'm so excited you said that. I'm so glad you said that.
[0:29:48] CR: Because I really had to think about this. And I was like, "Oh, I don't know if I could pick a book or an artist." But I would say there is this weird romanticized art world that is sold to students. Or it's just this like place that is very abstract. And especially in student's brains, it'd be like, "How do I get into this? There's a door and I need to pass through it." There's not one room where you are accepted or not accepted. There's just like multiple spheres and places to be.
And it's absolutely about finding that one door that will open for you. And that does take creative guts. You just got to get to that place. And it doesn't mean you have to stay in that room. You will move about. Yes. There's like an art world where there's these crazy galleries and it's like you sell your life and your time and your creative voice, your brand belongs to that gallery. And that exists. I don't want that for my life. And I don't even think the work that I'm making really would appeal to those types of galleries. And that's fine. But there are some that really do like my work. And so I have found a place.
But it's really important figuring out like, "Okay, what do I want? Do I actually want that for myself? Okay, what's my voice? Maybe it's not going to be down this path here." And of course, we're talking about painting, but this isn't true for visual art. This is true for performing arts. There will be communities. There will be opportunities for commerce and for business within the arts. And it's not just one space. And I wish somebody told me that. No one told me that.
[0:31:30] BB: Yeah. Yeah. I'm really glad to hear that because I think when I was growing up in art school, it's like you have to be showing in New York. You have to have a studio in New York. Everything, the art world is in New York. And it's not. It's not.
[0:31:44] CR: Yeah. And I would say I think that's changing a little bit. I've seen even galleries kind of shift their location from Chelsea over to the Lower East Side only to go around.
[0:31:52] BB: Oh, how could they? Oh my god.
[0:31:56] CR: There's just so many different arts communities. I mean, we could talk about success. But it's really about what you want and what's going to work for you. And I have other things in my life too that I care about. So I'm a multifaceted individual. I don't want to sell my soul, and my time, and my, I would say, brand to somebody that's going to be managing that for me.
[0:32:26] JA: There's sort of this running theme coming up where it's just like it's a lot of soul-searching and figuring out what you want and what you like, and that it takes time.
[0:32:36] CR: Yeah. And I would say when you are making visual art, the content that you are creating, the subjects that you are painting is a reflection of your values. And for me, I mean, honestly, I kind of moved away from figure painting a little bit. Because when I went to art school, the program that you and I went to, Joe, was a bit formal and it taught traditional drawing and painting, drawing from life, drawing from the figure, which is great. It's wonderful. And I still wish there were more programs out there like that. However, I thought that I needed – the upper echelon of representational art I thought was like figure narrative painting. And it took me a long time to figure out that that wasn't what I really wanted to do. Or it didn't light me up creatively. I realized that I was like, "Okay, I don't think by painting the human body, this is how I want to express ideas visually." It took me a long time to realize, "Okay, that's not for me."
There's so much art out there right now that I feel, especially in the figurative art world, that kind of upholds the male gaze still. There's a lot of it, and it's celebrated, and it sells, and it's on magazine covers. And I'm just like, "This is a reflection of these artists' values, their soul. What are you trying to say?" It's like a matter of, "Okay. What creative –" if you are going to use the figure. And to me, this wasn't the creative path I wanted to go down because I realized it wasn't feeding me creatively. But if that's something you want to do, what's your creative solution? Can you use different types of bodies, right? Questions like that that come up.
Everything that you make is a reflection of you, and your values, and your wants, and your desires. And yeah, that can change. But certainly, you reach a point where, yeah, you got to figure out what you care about.
[0:34:34] BB: Yeah.
[0:34:34] JA: Right.
[0:34:36] BB: Is there anything that you're really itching to try or experiment with in your work moving forward?
[0:34:41] CR: Yeah. I would say I took a bit of a break after this last exhibition I had in June. I had made 24 paintings. It was a lot of intensive work over a 4-month period. I was really kind of like caved up. And that's what I do. And my family still loves me, I think. I needed a break. But I've been thinking more about empty space that is kind of weighing down on me. I just feel right now, culturally, we have a lot of bearing on us.
A lot of the forms that I paint are very complex and wild and textural. But then would that be interesting next to an emptiness. I've been thinking about that. And I've been thinking about playing with scale. Like, "Oh, what if I did a bunch of paintings all in the same size, like scale-wise?" They were all, let's say, 16 by 20. And then would that be kind of a fun creative exercise for me? As somebody that's always sort of painted the objects I'm painting, life-size, how would I solve this creative problem? Yeah, I've been thinking about those things. I don't have solutions to them. But there are potential doors that are opening.
[0:35:56] BB: That's great. Yeah. And we know what's happened for when you open those doors. Just continue to –
[0:36:01] CR: But hey, I fail a lot. I mean, if you're doing this, you just need to accept that you're going to make some bad art. I mean, when I say bad art, you're going to not think that as bad art. You are going to look at things that you do sometimes and you're like, "I don't think that worked out. I don't think I like this." But that's what you're signing up for.
[0:36:22] BB: Yeah. Yeah.
[0:36:22] CR: And you need guts to keep going.
[0:36:25] BB: Yeah. We have this section of Creative Guts called rapid-fire questions where we ask you a quick question, very gentle, and then we try and get a quick response. And you want to give this a go?
[0:36:38] CR: I'm ready.
[0:36:39] BB: All right.
[0:36:40] JA: So, what other artist has influenced you the most?
[0:36:44] CR: Andy Warhol.
[0:36:45] BB: Awesome. What is your favorite color?
[0:36:49] CR: Green. Greens.
[0:36:53] JA: Favorite scent?
[0:36:55] CR: Woody scents, like pine or like cedar. Or like if you're in a woodworking, the smell of cut pine. Oh, I love it. It's great.
[0:37:05] BB: Your favorite sound?
[0:37:07] CR: Waves.
[0:37:08] BB: Nice.
[0:37:09] JA: Texture/touch.
[0:37:13] CR: My cat Mario.
[0:37:15] BB: Mario. Most inspiring location you've traveled to?
[0:37:20] CR: I would say Iceland.
[0:37:22] JA: This is brought up so many times. I got to go to Iceland.
[0:37:24] CR: I would say you got to go.
[0:37:26] BB: You got to go.
[0:37:26] CR: And really, it's easy to get there. But it's just like so raw and so empty and so – there's nothing obstructing the light. There's no trees. There's some trees in Iceland. But the people that live there like, "Oh, no. We have some trees." There's no trees there. But I think I'm so influenced by how light moves. Going there and seeing nothing obstructing –
[0:37:51] BB: What time of year did you go?
[0:37:52] CR: I suggest going in – I went last September. And I've also been in April.
[0:37:57] BB: Nice.
[0:37:58] CR: So I would do like a shoulder season when it's not completely light or completely dark.
[0:38:03] BB: Yeah. Did you see the northern lights?
[0:38:05] CR: I did.
[0:38:06] BB: Nice. What is the last new thing that you've learned?
[0:38:11] CR: Okay. I would say when you're 40 years old, you can't pull all-nighters in the studio without weeks of feeling the consequences of –
[0:38:23] JA: Recovery period.
[0:38:24] CR: I remember I had a professor that told me that once and I was like, "You're so weak. I could honestly do it all the time." No. I got to go to PT. And it's just like don't do this anymore.
[0:38:35] BB: No. Our bodies don't work the same way after 40.
[0:38:37] CR: I want to say, that is the last thing that I learned.
[0:38:39] BB: Very good. Listening to your body is a very important –
[0:38:43] CR: Yes.
[0:38:43] JA: Tough lesson.
[0:38:44] CR: It's really hard.
[0:38:45] JA: And you mentioned earlier about advice and whatnot, but is there another piece of advice that you wish you could give to your former self?
[0:38:56] CR: I would just say trust your intuition. And I think I'm a very intuitive person. Just following your gut and you'll kind of know if something's feeling right to you. And you may know by either saying to yourself, "This doesn't feel right." Or you will suddenly have a hard time working. You're like, "Why am I not working right now? Oh, I have to go to the studio." Attitudes like that mean, "Okay, well, wait, what's going on here? Why don't you want to go to the studio? Don't you want to be an artist?" Is there something about your studio space? Is it what you're working on? Really listening to yourself is really pretty critical.
[0:39:35] BB: Yeah.
[0:39:36] JA: Right on.
[0:39:36] BB: That's great.
[0:39:37] JA: Yeah.
[0:39:37] CR: Yeah.
[0:39:37] BB: Cindy, thank you so much for joining us today.
[0:39:39] JA: Yeah, thank you.
[0:39:40] CR: It's over already?
[0:39:42] BB: I know. Flies by.
[0:39:44] BB, JA & CR: Show us your Creative Guts.
[0:39:50] JA: Wow. Okay. There's a lot to unpack there.
[0:39:52] BB: Yeah. First of all, huge thanks to Cindy for being on the show today. Really, really glad to finally have the opportunity to sit down with her. We've been trying to get her on the podcast for ages, but she's been super busy with many commitments and an awesome exhibit that she had this past spring. So, finally.
[0:40:10] JA: I know. I know. And I've known her for a long time and it's just such a pleasure to have an excuse to sort of sit down, break things down with her and sort of reintroduce ourselves to her work and her to us. And I just loved hearing how she processes her creative practice and how she seeks to be guided by her intuition. And I thought that was a really important thing and really stuck with me.
[0:40:30] BB: It was also really refreshing to hear how she wrestles with being kind of put in a box. She also talked about kind of exploring her practice and in moving from figurative, to still life, to almost landscape. This evolution over time is really important to her practice. And I think it's also important for any artist to realize that you're not always stuck in a silo. You don't always have to maintain that one thing that maybe you started with. And that it will and it really should evolve over time.
[0:40:58] JA: Definitely. She's just always struck me as somebody who's just very engaged in her work, fully committed to her work and her practice. And she thinks very deeply about not her process, but also just how she designs her compositions. And she chooses her subjects. And yeah, it was just great to get a chance to have her on.
[0:41:20] BB: Yeah. And seeing her work over time. And I loved – I really do love the juxtaposition of the subject matter and the placement. And so having those items of comfort and nostalgia in a landscape setting especially is just – it really allows the viewer to pause and consider the space and the object and your relationship to those things as well. I love that.
[0:41:47] JA: Yeah. And then the comment about many art worlds was like a breath of fresh air.
[0:41:51] BB: Yes. Yeah. I think being a New Hampshire-based podcast, we talk a lot of people in the New England region. And it just goes to prove that there are many art worlds. It's not just New York. It's not just Paris. There's many different places to be able to connect and really engage with your art and to grow. And of course, there's amazing things to be seen and to do in those major hubs, but art is everywhere. The art world is everywhere. And you can thrive with your career.
[0:42:21] JA: And to find a place that suits your work specifically, right? Yeah, as you said, there's so many markets, but you want to find the right match.
[0:42:29] BB: Yeah.
[0:42:31] JA: You can learn more about Cindy Rizza and check out her tremendous artwork on her website and socials.
[0:42:35] BB: As always, you can find those links and more in the episode description and on our website, creativegutspodcast.com.
[0:42:41] JA: You can also find us, Creative Guts Podcast, on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Discord. If you're not on social media, but you want to stay in the know about what we're doing, join our newsletter list. We're on Substack, and you can find the link to sign up on our website.
[0:42:53] BB: This episode is sponsored in part by the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts. Thank you to our friends in Rochester for their support of the show.
[0:43:00] JA: As a reminder, your engagement with Creative Guts makes a huge difference. Whether it is through donation, review, interaction with our content on social media, or when you purchase some merch, we just really appreciate you.
[0:43:11] BB: So, thanks for tuning in. We'll be back next week with another episode of Creative Guts.
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