Stories + Insight : Meet Lisa Thrower

Written By Lisa Thrower

CanvasRebel Magazine | November 16, 2023

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lisa Thrower a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lisa, thanks for joining us today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

I am thrilled to be a “creative person.” I say being because it is just who I am. I never aspired to become creative; it’s just how I am wired and how I understand the world.

When I was a child, I was drawn to the fine arts and spent a lot of time looking at art with the reverence of someone who knew its inherent value. Visual art speaks to me, and I’m permanently moved by abstract painting. Standing next to someone who might be thinking, “My child could do that,” I would probably be peering closely at the surface and marveling at the evidence of the artist’s hand. I’m just naturally that into it. While I didn’t study studio art, my education has centered on art-making and culture. My career as a museum administrator was like a dream – I got to talk to working artists daily and help present their work to the public. I loved participating in the viewers’ experience and witnessing that unspoken dialogue unfold between the artist and the audience. In my freelance roles since 2009, I have used my passion for art and curiosity to find and assist many outstanding, unique artists.

Ultimately, being creative is generative. Creatives take ideas and make them realities, which can take many forms. I don’t create artwork, but am an artist on many levels.

All this said, dozens of professions sound lovely, but I know, after a few months, I wouldn’t last in many of them. I’m allergic to monotony and like to move every few weeks from project to project. When I think about who I want to inspire, it’s the people stuck in cubicles. Everyone is a creative being, but many people consider creativity to be more of a leisure activity. With this mindset, some people won’t ever investigate what lights them up or how they could use their gifts to inform their professional endeavors.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers. 

At the beginning of 2020, I was looking to change what I was working on, and the world provided that shift for me. I worked in hospitality art consulting, and the pandemic significantly affected project timelines. The uncertainty allowed me to step back and away from this role. During the “great pause,” I leaned heavily into personal inquiry and yogic practices to determine what was next for me as a creative. It was clear that I wanted to work on something – I like to shepherd things out into the world and help. But I just wasn’t sure which direction to take. Art museums were suffering, and public art projects were on hold. Again, the uncertainty was a lot. I just kept feeling called to something higher.

In 2021, I completed 200+ hours of yoga and yin yoga teacher training and completed certificate study in Yoga Nidra and other forms of guided meditation. I began compulsively reading poems to people on social media. It was an intense time where hope and connection were the only solutions. Later that year, when the world opened up again, my best friend Connie Worthy and I went on a fantastic trip to Asheville, NC. It was a chance to reconnect with each other, ourselves, and nature. We left so inspired. After the trip, what started as an offer to build a website for Connie’s Mental Health Counseling business turned into a divine call to launch a broad creative project together – as an art consultant and a therapist. Subtle-Arts is a virtual initiative – always available and available to everyone. It functions like a repository of inspiration for those on a path to personal well-being. Connie and I culled together our favorite poems, practices, and words of wisdom and launched a website and social media platform to give people a space to breathe and feel connected. We pair beautiful visuals with ancient texts or our perspectives to help people access their inner calm and highest consciousness. It’s been so freeing to curate content for Subtle-Arts, and there really is no end to it. The possibilities for awe and wonder are unlimited.

Connie and I have been so gratified by the response we have gotten.

People really love our Subtle-Arts “Mixtape,” our curated Bookshop “Reading Lists” and our “Printables,” which are like adult worksheets people can utilize when they need to quickly shift their perspective or work something out. We are also enjoying the immediacy of our social media. We hope it inspires people and slows down their scroll.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

It has been a big challenge for me to step away from a complete focus on my career in art because I had become grounded in that identity. Becoming a yoga and meditation guide somehow lacked that feeling of legitimacy, even after all my hours of training. There is a lot of imposter syndrome work one has to get over to become a messenger. I worried that I wasn’t “using my [art history] degree,” but the last two or three years have proven that I am a student of the world…a student of energy. I’m here now, able to look at my work with Subtle Arts as a culmination of everything I have learned (and had to unlearn) both as a follower of art and myself.

I’ve had to unlearn that things must be validated by an authority before they go into the world. Being a people-pleaser never got me where I wanted to go. I’ve learned that the messages I communicate now must run through my body. That is my only filter. Questions I ask myself now: Does the content I create represent what feels true to me? Did this idea come from my inner knowing, or am I being influenced (good or bad) by someone else? Taking things seriously is fine if it doesn’t cross over into perfectionism. Am I too attached to what this looks like? What is beautiful on a universal level (not measured by value or an image’s ability to “match the couch.”)?

Most importantly, Can this message I am called to share really help someone else? If so, I share it.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

We can’t judge other people and their individual ways of working. To a more analytical, methodical mind, the fits and spurts of a creatives’ productivity may seem frenetic or inconsistent. To some, it may appear that creatives have “a lot of time on their hands” or don’t work “full-time.” Everyone has a different way of taking in information, and there are many different ways of processing it. As a creative, I need a lot of silence and space to work – a leisurely schedule compared to a busy, full calendar of back-to-back meetings. I can’t sit at a desk all day. I need to move around. I need to digest, and I need to reset. I think we all do, but as a creative, I expect and allow those transitions and ride the waves of productivity when they come. You can’t force it. Instead of “Always Be Closing,” it’s “Always Be Curious” for me.

In the last few years, I have learned much about myself working on Subtle-Arts and leading people in yoga and meditation practices. Planning sequences and preparing readings is my new creative outlet, and I am so grateful for my freedom in getting here.

“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun. What is creative living? It is any life driven more strongly by curiosity, than by fear.”

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Full Article Here: https://canvasrebel.com/meet-lisa-thrower/


Lisa Thrower
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