Melissa Dinwiddie
Artists hear voices. Often. Voices like, “You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t have what it takes. Everyone will laugh. You suck.” Voices like that.
Melissa Dinwiddie is an amazing talent. At 12 she was placed in adult-drawing classes. At 19 she was a dancer at Juliard. When she was 27 she was in galleries for her paper-cut art and by 29 she had her own business making commissioned calligraphy and papercut art for clients all over the country.
But she burned out. No more making, or selling, art for clients.
It was the voices: “Be the best. Be better than the best. It’s never enough.”
And then she found play and everything changed.
Because play shuts down the voices and makes the hard, easier.
Now Melissa runs The Creative Sandbox. It’s a consulting agency, retreats, and playdays. But most of all it’s a way of life where art is just art and creativity is (almost) always fun.
Some things we talk about…
- abandoning drawing in 7th grade because she wasn’t “good enough”
- getting into Juilliard at 19 and dropping out at 20
- starting her own business at 29 making, and selling, art
- getting divorced, shutting her business down, and starting over
- her new life, her new business, and the number one thing every artist must hold on to
“I had programmed myself so much that I wasn’t an artist. Not only was I not an artist but I bought into this story that I was not a creative person. I just believed it.”
“There is no wrong in this space. This space is all about process, not product. This space is about quantity not quality. This space is all about self-compassion and imperfectionism. This is where we just start and do the thing.”
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