What if the hardest days in the studio are not detours, but the path itself? We open up about the real fight behind the work—those sessions where flow vanishes, doubt gets loud, and the canvas refuses to cooperate—and why that tension can become your most reliable teacher. Drawing from Rashid Johnson’s candid reflection with Carrie Scott on battling the work, we unpack the difference between inspiration and perspiration and why chasing “perfect” kills momentum.

Along the way, we trade tools and stories: turning fight-or-flight into practical choices, switching pieces to redirect energy, and using rituals like Morning Pages, breath work, and device-free sessions to clear mental noise. Sun Tzu helps us name the real enemy—resistance expressed through fear and comparison—while Julia Cameron and Nick Cave remind us to cooperate with process, loosen our grip on control, and operate under the “cloud of artistic unknowing.” We talk about repainting, scrapping, and starting over, not as failure but as fidelity to the work’s evolving voice.

The thread tying it all together is permission. You don’t need a bigger studio, pricier materials, or the perfect plan to make authentic art. You need consent to be where you are, to use what you have, and to let mystery lead when the plan breaks. If you’ve asked yourself, “Have I lost it?” you’re in good company—and you’re exactly where growth happens. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a nudge, and leave a review telling us how you keep the conversation with your work alive.

The Episode from Carrie Scott with Rashid Johnson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c41I_sre-Uk

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What if paint could hold fear, wonder, and the cosmos all at once? That question runs through this conversation with guest host Jamele Wright Sr., where we explore Jack Whitten’s radical break from gesture and the relentless search to make painting enough on its own terms. From turning acrylic into “glass” to trapping forms on a truly flat plane, we trace how Whitten rebuilt painting through mechanics, experiment, and time in the studio.

We get candid about gimmicks—when devices clarify and when they distract—and why one stunning passage can sabotage an entire canvas. A spontaneous pilgrimage to see a 10-by-10 Clifford Still became a turning point: white walls, no tricks, just a square that redefined what the work needed. That experience sets up a bigger argument for seeing art in person, where edges, drape, and surface detail can’t hide behind the glow of a screen. Along the way, we connect Rothko’s vertical bars, Twombly’s relentless repetitions, and the sheer grind that makes a monumental gesture land with authority.

Whitten’s language of the spiritual, magical, and cosmic opens the door to the era’s space-age curiosity and Black futurist soundtracks—Sun Ra, Funkadelic, and Earth, Wind & Fire—and to the ambition of putting “the fear of God” in paintings. We talk practice as training: ten-painting cycles, breaking boredom at eight, honest tests of scale, and letting assistants’ “mistakes” become creative constraints. Color mixing from scratch, documenting stages, and cooling down after a studio crescendo all feed a process that values interiority and invites slow looking.

Abstraction here isn’t an absence; it’s the artist’s inner weather made visible. One hundred people can read the same canvas a hundred different ways, and that plurality is the point. If you’re hungry to make work that holds up off-screen and in real space, this one will nudge you back to the studio and into the museum with fresh eyes. If it resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who loves painting, and leave a review to tell us what artwork last made you stop and stay.

Follow Jamele at https://www.instagram.com/artthenewreligion/

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@justmakeartpodcast @tynathanclark @nathanterborg

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What if paint is the vehicle and you are the medium? We dive deep into Jack Whitten’s Notes from the Woodshed with guest host Jamel Wright Sr., tracing how a life shaped by the Jim Crow South, pre-med rigor, and carpentry precision produced a studio practice built on invention. From the famed developer tool to a crow’s nest for high vantage points, Whitten redesigned the act of making—choosing systems over spontaneity and treating process like a living experiment.

Jamel brings a rich perspective as an Atlanta-based artist and professor whose work spans Georgia red clay, Dutch wax cloth, and large-scale textiles. Together we map the long road to abstraction—Turner’s atmospheres, Monet’s shadows, Cézanne’s form, and the New York School’s debates—while centering the Black artists too often written out of the frame. We talk Norman Lewis, Joe Overstreet, Sam Gilliam, and the way community quietly powers discovery, even as art remains a solitary grind. The result is a candid look at research, journaling, and “recipes” that transform failed trials into the first real painting, then the next ten that lock in the language.

Along the way, we wrestle with Whitten’s audacity—“May the history of Western painting die within me”—and why abstraction can be activism: engineering new tools, removing gesture, and insisting on thought as freedom. If you’ve ever wondered how to balance materials, memory, and ambition without losing your voice, this conversation offers a field guide. Press play, then tell us what rule you’re ready to break. If the episode resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review—your support helps more artists find their way.

Follow Jamele Wright, Sr. at https://www.instagram.com/artthenewreligion

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@justmakeartpodcast @tynathanclark @nathanterborg

Watch the Video Episode on Youtube or Spotify,

https://www.youtube.com/@JustMakeArtPodcast