starting over

Claire Sower: Rocking Her Art in the Middle of Life

/ Lynne Melcombe / 2 Comments
Claire Sower in her Granville Island studio.

Claire Sower in her Granville Island studio.

I’ve never seen my friend Claire Sower happier. Not that I see her often; we’re colleagues who bump into each other once every few years. But when I saw her displaying her work Art! Vancouver 2015 last spring, and she told me she’d been invited to participate in a show at the Agora Gallery in New York in October, there was a joy in her face I’ve never seen before.

“In my heart, I know this is what I was born to do,” she says of her mid-life switch from computer to canvas. “When I’m not painting, it’s what I want to be doing.”

Like me, Sower started out as a freelance journalist. And like me, as the years went by and well-paying freelance journalism gigs became fewer and further between, she filled in the gaps with contract work. Eventually, she landed a great gig as a medical journalist, writing reports about clinical research that had been presented at conferences prior to peer-reviewed publication. It was a stressful job, with ever-tight deadlines and a need for pinpoint accuracy, but it included world travel and good money—enough to buy a piece of property, not a common thing for a freelance journalist these days.

Her career switch had its seeds in 2007, when the FDA changed regulations regarding third-party reporting of medical conferences so it could only be done by those with university accreditation for providing continuing medical education. The bottom fell out of the industry; many communications companies went out of business. Out of work, other than the usual jobs most freelancers eke out a living on before finding something more life-sustaining, she set out to create a website providing medical information. But the internet was changing too quickly, social media had not yet evolved into the marketing tool it’s since become, and she was competing against dozens of other health websites, like WebMD, and tens of thousands of out-of-work medical reporters.

“I couldn’t keep up. I didn’t have deep pockets.” She was just making ends meet, and getting to the point where she realized, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to do what I want to do, goddammit!” She’d always wanted to paint, but “it never seemed like an option. I never had the time or money.”

Then in 2009, a friend mentioned she’d signed up for an art class and invited Sower to join her. Within weeks, she was hooked. After perhaps a dozen classes, “my friend and I went out and looked for a studio,” she says. “We had one within 10 days down on Granville Island. I just knew at the soul of my being this was what I should be doing.”

After a while, the paintings started to pile up and she figured she might as well try to sell them; if you don’t, she deadpans, “eventually, you’ll just be found dead under a pile of canvases.” Her first show was just a display of her work in West Vancouver City Hall, but it generated enough interest to keep her looking for opportunities.

I’ve been admiring and sharing her work on Facebook for a few years now; there’s something about the flowers she paints that draws my eye. She does landscapes, too—there were a few on exhibit when I saw her last May—but it’s the florals that are written about so glowingly in her artist’s bio for the New York show:

Claire Sower’s florals are tactile and interpretive, conveying a strong sense of tension and joy. . . . Eschewing detail in favor of essence, Sower works quickly, using palette knives to build depth by layering paint, allowing colors to mix on the canvas. This brings a sense of immediacy to her work, which conveys a flower’s “living energy.”

The New York show happened through social media. Claire has a website, of course, and a Facebook presence, but finds Instagram a great platform for emerging artists because it’s where a lot of galleries look for new talent. The Agora Gallery in Chelsea, New York, found her there and invited her to participate in a group show, which opened yesterday (October 9) and continues through most of the month (to October 29).

There’s a whole business component to any art, she says, as any artist knows all too well. You can’t just sit back and relax; you have to be constantly self-promoting. You also have to make some hard choices financially; you have to love what you do or it won’t feel worthwhile. You have to be willing to embrace a somewhat precarious existence, have some faith, and let go.

In some ways, that can be easier for a young person at the beginning of their lives, but Sower feels it’s an advantage to be making this kind of life change at an older age.

“I think being older serves me better because having had 20 years as a self-employed writer and running my own business, I have a lot of experience to draw on in terms of how I want to set up my business as an artist. I understand there’s a lot of pitfalls. I mean, yes, there’s debt, but there’s always debt. I think that’s just a way of life these days. . . . I’ve learned to trust my gut, trust my instincts, and they’ve never steered me wrong.”

At the moment, Sower spends her mornings on freelance writing opportunities to help pay the bills; rent from her property helps, too, another way being older is helping her fulfill her dream. But throughout those mornings at the computer, she’s always looking forward to afternoons and evenings at her studio.

Her long-term goal is to paint full time. “I’m going to have a big studio with a studio assistant and I’m just going to rock and roll!”

I believe she’ll do it. Her work is beautiful and original, and she has the drive and passion to get where she wants to go. And why not? People are living longer and healthier lives these days. Why shouldn’t mid-life be a time when we switch tracks and gear up for something completely new?

If you happen to be in New York City this month, visit the Agora Gallery in Chelsea between October 9 and 29 (opening reception October 15). If not, check out her website or Facebook page and see for yourself. Claire Sower’s art rocks—and, by the way, so does she.

“If You Don’t Like Starting Over, Stop Giving Up”

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

I recently read somewhere, “If you don’t like starting over, stop giving up.” At first, I was taken aback. After all, I’d only just started a blog on the subject of starting over in mid-life. But then I thought, “Wait—there can be all sorts of reasons one might start over that have nothing to do with giving up.”

I’ve started over several times in my life. I don’t care how many people say it’s exhilarating; putting oneself out in the world in a new way is always hard, and I find harder as I get older. I’m not sure if that’s because I don’t have any personal role models for starting over late in life; among my family and friends, everyone did what they did until they died or retired.

Maybe it’s because I’m an introvert—a person who recharges their batteries by being alone, as compared with extroverts, who get their energy from being with people—and starting over typically requires energy to put oneself out there. It’s not unusual for people to have less energy as they get older, whether from a naturally slowing metabolism or because they’re dealing with personal, professional, or health issues.

More likely, I think anyone who starts over in mid-life finds it hard, in at least some respects, but doesn’t necessarily talk about the hard parts. I’ve never been a member of the say-only-positive-things-all-the-time school of thought. Almost inevitably, when people subvert so-called “negative” feelings and experiences because everyone else would rather only hear about the “positive” ones, they enlist unhealthy coping mechanisms.

The problem, of course, is that difficulties only become more difficult when they’re not talked about, but it’s all the more difficult to talk about them when no one else is taking a risk and talking about them lest others target them for not being positive enough. North American culture, I find, is as obsessed with non-stop positivity as it is with relentless self-sufficiency, effortless perfection, and endless youth and beauty. But that’s a whole other rant.

Getting back to the many reasons one might start over, I started over as a youth worker after university because I realized that, although I loved studying anthropology and archaeology, I wasn’t as drawn to the career options as I’d thought I’d be (and wasn’t aware of some of the other options that might have been open to me).

I stumbled from there into youth work almost accidentally. It influenced the course of my life in countless ways, but after seven years I was burning out. Besides, I’d always wanted to be a writer; it had been in the back of my mind for years, but I’d always felt like I needed more life experience. After university, archaeology, travel, youth work, and marriage, I felt ready. It was time to start over again.

I set about to be a freelance journalist around the same time I started my family and stuck with it for 12 years, until our third child came along. At that point, I still wasn’t making a living—freelance gigs were already becoming scarcer and more poorly paid, and I finally had to admit it wasn’t just a personal failing and put my family first. So I started my fourth career, as the sole proprietor of a communications business, working with small nonprofits, with a long-term goal of getting back to creative nonfiction writing after the kids were older.

That’s what I’m doing now, though it feels more like “starting over” than “getting back to it” at least partly because the publishing world has changed much more than I anticipated 20 years ago—and, frankly, so have I. And all those changes make it more difficult than I thought it would be, to the point that I have many moments of regretting that I ever left writing behind.

When I look back with hindsight, I can see there was a third road. On my bad days, I feel bitter because the choice not to take that road wasn’t entirely mine. On my better days, I remember doing what I felt was best for everyone and I remind myself that harbouring anger over old choices doesn’t change anything, past or present.

I imagine a lot of people have those sorts of feelings, which is why I think talking about them is a good thing. The point is, though the statement “If you don’t like starting over, stop giving up” took me aback when I first read it, I soon realized it only sounds true until you think about it.

Anyway, I’d forgotten all about it until I read an article in the Globe and Mail last weekend about an accomplished writer who started over as an Anglican priest in her fifties. It was something she’d always wanted to do, something related in many ways to what she’d been doing all along, something that continues to carry on aspects of life she’d started much earlier. I found it a good read.

It sounds like a completely joyous journey for her, and maybe it has been. Some people really are relentlessly positive, while others battle depression and “negative feelings.” But maybe more of the latter would find the courage to start over in mid-life if they knew more about others who are doing it, and that having/sharing fears and negative feelings about it is not a bad thing. It’s not a sign that the only reason you’re struggling with starting over again is that you’ve spent a lifetime giving up.

I’ve started over many times, for many reasons. None of them had anything to do with giving up. It’s difficult starting over now, but I want it, so I’ll stick with it. I hope it will be my last start-over, but if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that you never know what’s coming up. You never know when life is going to throw a start-over at you, you never know how you’re going to feel about it until you get there, and it’s probably better not to judge people who are in the process of finding out.