We're diving deep into the world of creativity and transformation, reflecting on a year filled with unexpected changes rather than just a highlight reel of accomplishments. This episode isn’t just about the art I created; it’s about how I evolved while creating it. Spoiler alert: I wasn’t chasing mastery; I was all about following my curiosity, and boy, did I get my hands dirty with acrylics, music, and poetry along the way. I’m here to remind you that showing up is what really counts, way more than how polished your work is. So, grab your favorite beverage, kick back, and let’s chat about embracing the messy process of creation and finding joy in every little step!

Reflections: A Year of Creating is a closing chapter for The New Artist’s Compass — a solo episode about growth, curiosity, and what happens when you commit to showing up creatively over time.

In this episode of the Create Art Podcast, Timothy Kimo Brien reflects on a year spent exploring multiple creative disciplines, including acrylic painting (Special thanks to The Art Sherpa), poetry, music production, and sound design. From painting with acrylics with instruction for the first time, to writing tankas, to learning a new DAW (Reaper) and experimenting with an MPE synthesizer (ROLI), this episode explores how creative growth happens when curiosity leads and ego steps aside.

This conversation is for artists who are:

1. Measuring progress beyond likes and output
2. Learning new creative tools later in life
3. Exploring multiple art forms
4. Reconnecting with joy through beginner energy

1. Showing Up Counts More Than Mastery

1. You didn’t wait until you were “ready”
2. Acrylic painting for 2 months = permission to be new
3. Progress came from consistency, not confidence

2. Letting Curiosity Lead

1. Writing tankas: short form, intentional, imperfect
2. Switching mediums kept creativity alive
3. Curiosity replaced pressure

3. Learning New Tools Without Ego

1. Teaching yourself Reaper as a beginner again
2. Exploring sound through an MPE ROLI
3. Being bad at something reopened creative joy

4. Measuring Growth Differently

1. Not output, not numbers
2. Growth = comfort with discomfort
3. Growth = staying engaged when novelty fades

5. What This Year Taught You About Identity

1. You didn’t “become” an artist — you practiced being one
2. Artist as a verb, not a title
3. The compass worked because you kept walking

Takeaways:

1. Reflecting on a year of creativity reveals unexpected growth and changes we often overlook.
2. Showing up for your art is more important than striving for perfection or mastery.
3. Letting curiosity guide your creative journey can lead to surprising and fulfilling discoveries.
4. Learning new tools without ego allows for growth and exploration in your artistic practice.
5. Measuring artistic growth should focus on personal exploration, not external validation or numbers.
6. Being an artist is a practice of doing and being, not just a title or label.

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You know, there's something strange about looking back at a year of creating, not in a highlight reel kind of way, but in that quiet, honest way where you realize how much has happened without you noticing.

This episode isn't necessarily about what I made, it's about what changed while I was making it.

Hey, friend.

This is Timothy Keem o', Brien, your head instigator for Create Art podcast where I use my over 30 years of experience in the arts and education world to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume.

So this is going to be the final episode in this series of the new artist Compass.

And I want to thank you for joining me on this journey.

It's been really, really fun, really fun.

Now, over this last year, I wasn't chasing mastery, I was chasing curiosity.

And for the past couple of months, I've been painting with acrylics.

Now, you know me, I paint like a four year old on crack.

And I'm not great at it, but I'm learning how to see again, you know, with color and texture and being patient for the paint to dry and, you know, pretty much letting a piece be unfinished longer than I'm usually comfortable with.

You know, in the past, it's like, get it, you know, on the canvas as quick as possible.

Now, at the same time, I've also been writing takas.

They are short, intentional poems.

They're 5, 5 lines, 17 syllables.

And that gives me enough structure to focus, and yet it gives me enough freedom to feel.

And then there's music.

Music is, you know, with poetry and music, those two kind of are my first loves.

So what I decided to do is I'd been using a digital audio workstation called Magix for decades almost, I would say multi.

But I thought it was time for a change.

So I played around with a few different, we call them Dawes.

And I settled on one called Reaper.

And I'll tell you what, it's humbling in a number of ways because I'm learning how to use a new system.

So, you know, I'm beginning again.

And I had been playing around with this thing called Rollie, which is a MPE synthesizer.

And with that synthesizer, I am creating my own music.

With Magix, I was using loops, and it was fine.

It was great.

But.

But with this, there's no loops in it.

You create the loops.

So I'm finding myself starting off again.

And you know what?

That's been the through line for this year.

And, you know, with the podcast, I'm using new tools that I haven't used before.

So it's all an experiment, and I'm enjoying the journey.

And here's the thing.

I keep putting myself back in the beginner seat because I like that feeling of being in the beginning stages when everything is new and there is no limits.

And I really enjoy getting started there.

So let's get on with this episode and see what I have in store for you.

All right, so let's talk about my first point, which is showing up counts more than mastery.

If I didn't show up for my art, I wouldn't have any art to create.

I wouldn't have any art to master.

So it's all about showing up, just going, you know what?

I'm gonna give it a shot.

And I did that multiple times throughout the year.

I was like, let's experiment with this.

Let's do it.

This whole, whole series is a new thing for me.

I've done series in the past where I take somebody's work that they've already done and, you know, kind of comment on it and tie it into my artistic practice.

Well, this time around, I was like, well, let's just, you know, not take from anybody else.

Let's just really think about what I'm doing and go ahead and try some new things.

The thing of it is, I didn't wait till I was ready.

I just went ahead and did it.

I could have taken, you know, hundreds of hours of acrylic painting classes.

We, you know, here in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where I'm at, we have a lot of artists there that teach a lot of classes on painting.

And I could have taken any one of them and been just fine, but I decided to, you know, go ahead and do it myself.

With the acrylic paintings that I've done, I.

And I don't know how I found this.

It was just.

I'm letting the universe take credit for it.

But I found this at this site, the Art Sherpa.

But what she does is she takes you step by step and gives you tracings of the piece that she's Working on.

And I have done, oh gosh, probably 10, 10 paintings.

And they don't look like a 4 year old on crack painted them.

They look like a beginner painter painted them.

And I didn't sit there and copy everything that she did.

I added my own touches to it.

But it was nice to have that kind of training there.

And it was virtual, so I didn't have to go anywhere.

I could, you know, sit my man cave here and watch it on a YouTube video and stop and pause and keep on doing what I was doing.

I'm really proud of these paintings and, you know, I've given them out to friends and family and I've actually, you know, have some accountability partners that I've employed to say, hey, listen, I need to be shooting you something out, you know, about once a week, once every two weeks.

And I've been, you know, sticking to it.

It's not a resolution.

I don't do resolutions.

But I do think about the year ahead.

And I guess my resolution, if you want to say it, is, you know, I want to be able to say yes to myself, to do positive things for me, and I want to be able to say no to myself, to get rid of the negative things.

And because of that, I was able to crank out these paintings.

Very pleased with them, very pleased with them indeed.

I wouldn't have done that if I didn't show up, if I didn't feel the need in me to do it.

And that's what I challenge you to do.

Find that need within yourself to show up.

Don't wait till you're ready.

Just show up and do it.

So this next part is letting your curiosity lead.

Not really worry about rhyming or anything like that.

It's five lines, five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables, seven and seven syllables.

The first three lines describes an image.

The last two lines is a reflection on that image.

And that may seem, you know, really constraining, but it's constraining in a good way because it makes me think harder about what I'm writing.

And for me, yeah, that's a way to do it.

And it's kind of interesting to see if I can make that happen.

Now, am I successful every time?

No, but it's fun to do it that way.

So maybe there's something in your life where you're like, hey, let me get something that has a lot of or has some sort of structure that I got to work within and go ahead and see what kind of crazy things I can get involved with.

All right, well, next section here is learning new tools without having an ego about them.

Now, I'd been using a digital audio workstation, otherwise known as a daw, and it was called Magix.

It's still out there.

I still have a subscription to it.

I need to end it.

But I wasn't really happy with it.

It was giving me loops that I could make music with.

And I was like, let me, let me try something new.

So I found a doll, it's called Reaper.

And I like the name, you know, it makes me think of, you know, the Grim Reaper.

But I had to learn how to use that.

And I'm teaching myself how to use it.

So I'm kind of, you know, still in the baby seat for it.

And I was like, well, since I'm doing that, I need to have a new tool.

So I also got what's called a MPE synthesizer, which is made by Rolli R O.

And what that allows you to do is, you know, synthesizers can have all kinds of weird noises and this one does.

But what you can do with the keys is there's five dimensions of touch with it or five dimensions of sound.

So you can have just a regular, you know, beep.

But then when you.

How hard you hit the key, if you move up and down the key, will it do like some tremolo stuff and bend the note?

There's just five different ways that you can do something with one note and then you can add, you know, different choruses to it and different chords to it.

And you can play around with it a lot.

A lot more than with my old system, which, you know, you get a certain amount of loops that you can utilize and you can play with a little bit, but this allows you to create those loops.

Now, I'm not very good with it.

I sound like a four year old on crack making music, which is fine, you know, hey, I'm a four year old on crack painting.

And I feel better with my paintings since I Started working with a online person with the Art Sherpa.

But now the crazy stuff that I'm making with it is just.

I'm really letting my freak flag fly with it, and I'm horrible at it.

That's okay.

I'm having fun with it.

I'm having fun with my creativity.

So that leads back into my first point where it helps me show up for it.

Now life is, you know, it is what it is, and it's very busy.

But, you know, I enjoy spending time with my synthesizer and my New dawn learning different things about it.

So it's kind of like going back to school and where everything is brand new and you're like, wow, I can do this with that.

I discovered that with that.

I don't know if anyone's doing this, but I'm going to give it a shot and see what happens.

So, you know, sometimes we just need to use new tools and, you know, dump the ego and realize, hey, listen, I'm going to be bad at this for a while, but I want to have fun with it.

Maybe there's something in your life that, you know, you're bad with, but, hey, let's have fun with it.

That's the important thing.

All right, now I'm going to talk about measuring your growth differently.

And the big thing I need you to take away from this is it's not your output.

It's not your numbers.

It's not how many pieces that you sell.

It's about that growth that you have when you create.

You know, at first, it's very, you know, uncomfortable.

There's a lot of discomfort with it.

I'm not doing it right.

I'm not getting it.

But then the more that you do it, the more comfortable you get and the more things that you can explore.

So don't worry about the deadlines.

Don't worry about what everyone else is doing and how many paintings or songs they're putting out.

Focus on what you're doing.

One of my favorite artists, the Prince, he didn't worry about what everybody else was playing.

He did his own thing.

And I think you can tell from his catalog and from his body of work that he did some amazing things.

Your growth is going to help you stay engaged, and the novelty of it is going to fade away.

You know, it's like, oh, it's something new.

Which something new is good, but you're going to want to show up.

Like I was saying in the first section here, showing up is the major, the biggest thing in your creativity.

So when you See growth happen in your creativity.

You're going to want to do more and more of it.

It's a great addiction to have, I think.

So this last section here, I'm going to talk to you about what this year taught me about my identity, all right?

I just didn't turn on the switch 30 years ago and say, oh, I'm going to be an artist.

It's the practice.

It's the showing up.

It's the, you know, learning new things.

It's learning how to correctly measure my growth.

It's learning that, hey, I'm going to have new tools.

The ego needs to go away because I'm going to be bad at it to begin with, but I might find some work.

Wonderful discoveries.

Being an artist is not a title.

It's not Tim Bryant, artist.

Timothy Kebo Bryant ARTIST no, it's what I do.

So when people ask me, what do you do?

I do art.

You know, what brings you joy in your life?

Art?

My kids, my wife, you know, so being an artist is something that you do, something that you are, but it's something that you do.

And I'm hoping that, you know, this whole series has helped you with that.

This whole new Artist Compass series has helped you with that and help you keep walking that path of artistry and giving you a wonderful journey that you can listen to time and time again.

You can come back to this anytime you want to.

It's out there.

It's out there in the world with all of its warts and pimples and everything like that, but it's something that you can come back to and go on that journey again whenever you need it.

As a matter of fact, I'm going to be, you know, re listening to these as well.

You know, those days where I'm not feeling that creative and whatnot.

Listen back to myself and go, hey, hey, Tim, you need a little bit of a kick in the butt here, all right?

It's going to teach you about your identity.

It's going to teach you about who you are as a person and what you do.

And if you're like me, you do art.

And I can't wait to see your art.

You know, if there's one thing this, a year of creating has taught me, it's this.

You don't find your direction, your creative direction by standing still and thinking about it.

You find it by moving imperfectly and paying attention.

That's why, you know, this compass, this series, has always been pointing forward and toward not success, not validation, but motion.

And I want to thank you for walking through this path with me and I want you to keep on creating and I'm going to be developing a new series.

After this one is done, I'm going to take a little time off, maybe about a month or two and then I'm going to be right back in the driver's seat.

And if you got anything from this, I want you to go ahead and share it with a friend.

You can do that on your, on, you know, your YouTube.

If you're watching this on YouTube or your podcast app of choice can share it with a friend.

I'm not going to cry.

You know, you can go ahead and do that.

You can go right to my website, create art podcast.com and see all the things that I'm doing there.

And I'm going to be putting my music and my paintings and that I'm working on up there for you.

So check that out for yourself.

If you'd like to be on the show or if you have ideas for the show work or takes for the show, you can email me.

Timothy createartpodcast.com I'd love to hear what you're working on and I'd love to know your thoughts.

So if you want more of something, less of something, whatever it is, let me know.

I'm not going to know if you don't tell me.

And I'm really invested in you.

So toss that investment a little bit back my way as well.

So that way I know what's going to work for you.

Speaking about sharing the show, I run another show called Find a Podcast about.

You can find it at findapodcast about xyz.

And that's where I help my listeners there find their next binge worthy podcast and outsmart the algorithm.

Check it out for yourself if you need to listen to a new podcast.

It's called TKB Podcast Studio.

You can find it at tkb podcast studio.com Pretty easy, isn't it?

And that's where I help my clients lead to the noise with quiet professionalism to make their podcasts the very best they can be.

So if you're thinking about thinking, thinking about starting up a podcast, reach out to me there and you can see all the other stuff that I'm working on, all the other projects that I have there.

And hey, maybe that's something you know that you want to start off with in this, in this new year that we're in.

And whenever you're listening to this, go to the website and let's work together.

All right?

That's all I got for you today.

I want to thank you for spending some time with me and, you know, for listening to this and for going along with me on this journey for the new artist Compass.

So now go out there, tame that inner critic, create more than you consume, and go out there and make some art for somebody you love, yourself.

I'll talk with you next time real soon.