Extraordinary Creatives

As a child, Jeremy Liebman hated having his photograph taken by his dad. He and his twin brother were forever being asked to sit still while their father tested his camera and lighting.

Today, Jeremy photographs some of the world's most recognisable faces, including Walton Goggins and Stellan Skarsgård. But it's his deeply personal book Coincidence that brings us to the heart of this conversation.

Through photographs of his young children and his father, who was living with Alzheimer's, Jeremy explores memory, love and what happens when language can't quite capture our experience of the world.

We talk about finding your own creative voice, why being an introvert can be a strength, the importance of genuinely seeing another person, and why building a creative career takes far longer than most of us imagine.

I'm Ceri Hand, this is Extraordinary Creatives, and my guest today is photographer Jeremy Liebman.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

You don’t have to adopt somebody else’s way of working. If you’re introverted, you can build a practice around observation and quiet attention.

Treat failed attempts as useful information. Look honestly at what isn’t working, ask why, and experiment with angle, material, light, or timing; intuition grows through repetition.

Leave room for the person or subject to surprise you. A plan is useful but stay responsive rather than forging ahead with a fixed idea of what the image should be.

Trusted outside eyes can reveal connections you couldn’t see while making the work.

A creative career rarely unfolds to schedule. Keep following your curiosity through quieter periods and changing circumstances; meaningful work can take years to find its form.

BEST MOMENTS

“I'm getting a sense that you developed the experience and the skill set ….like a toolkit or a toolbox that you could dip in and out of according to what the context and the people and the location was requiring.”

“My hope is that I can take a picture of them performing a role rather than taking a picture of the role itself.”

“We don't have to know exactly where our work is leading, or even fully understand what we're making at the time. But we do have to keep paying attention, keep making things and give ourselves enough time to recognise what's emerging.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://jeremyliebman.com

https://www.instagram.com/jeremy_liebman

Jeremey´s book - https://www.apartamentomagazine.com/product/coincidence-jeremy-liebman-book/

HOST BIO
With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events.

She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**
Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!
https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course
Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.
https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today
To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at hello@cerihand.com

****
Discover Your Extraordinary Creativity
Visit www.cerihand.com to learn how we can help you become an extraordinary creative.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

If you're making work that comes from somewhere deeply personal, how much do you actually have to tell people about where it came from?

I've been thinking about this because it's something that comes up quite often when I'm working with artists. Perhaps you've been through a bereavement, an illness, a relationship ending, a difficult childhood, or something else that has affected you profoundly. Inevitably, that experience has found its way into the studio.

Then you get to the point where the work has to leave the studio.
You need to write about it. Somebody asks you about it in a studio visit. You're writing your About page or preparing for an artist talk and suddenly there's this question: how much do I say?

I think that's a really interesting question because there's a difference between something being important to the work and thinking you have to explain it publicly.

Some artists are extraordinarily open about their lives.
For those artists, that degree of revelation became part of their language. You may want to do that too, or you may want to say a lot less about your experiences. This episode will help you to get the balance right, for you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Think about boundaries and what you want to share before you publish. Once something is part of your public story, people will ask about it. What feels right to share mid-processing may not feel right in five or ten years.

Give people enough context to open the door, then stop. Think less about how brave you ought to be. Think more about what information genuinely helps somebody meet the work.

Sometimes explaining everything can actually make the work smaller. The story can also follow you for years.

BEST MOMENTS

"The person looking at the work doesn't necessarily need the details of what happened, who it happened to, when it happened or what you went through. You get to decide where that boundary sits."

"We sometimes confuse honesty with disclosure.

“Making vulnerable work doesn't mean you have to make yourself vulnerable in every situation in which that work is discussed… You can be deeply courageous in the studio and have very clear boundaries outside it.”

"Sometimes explaining everything can actually make the work smaller."

PODCAST HOST BIO
With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

****
Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!
https://cerihand.com/membership/

****

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course
Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.
https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

****

Book a Discovery Call Today
To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at hello@cerihand.com

****
Discover Your Extraordinary Creativity
Visit www.cerihand.com to learn how we can help you become an extraordinary creative.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

What happens when you expect your art to become your entire “existential dread receptacle”?

That brilliant phrase comes from my guest today, Robin F. Williams, and it opens up a conversation I think a lot of artists need to hear about how you protect the creative practice that gives your life meaning without asking it to do absolutely everything for you.

Robin is a Brooklyn-based painter whose extraordinary work moves between art history, horror, gender, technology, and our strange relationship with AI. Their work is held in The Brooklyn Museum, ICA Miami and at the Colombus Museum of Art.

We spoke just before Act Natural, Robin´s first UK solo exhibition, opened at No.9 Cork Street in London, where the new paintings move from Siri and language models to mermaids, Terminator 2, and Renaissance painting. and the increasingly slippery question of what we even mean by “natural.”

We also get underneath their career: getting stuck, the group of women artists who helped Robin keep going, what nearly twenty years with P·P·O·W has taught them about gallery relationships, and why success comes down to sustaining the thing that sustains you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Don't ask your art to carry everything. Painting can't be your only outlet for anxiety, so build other practices around it: sleep, exercise, writing, even playing a guitar badly. These release valves keep your main practice vital and light.

Let ideas tell you their size. Make studies, like Robin's gouaches, and live with them. If an idea keeps asking questions, it may deserve a big painting; if not, it's finished at that scale. Bigger isn't always more meaningful.

Find your people. A trusted crit group offers honest feedback, moral support, and permission to follow your instinct. Don't wait for an invitation: gather a few friends and one willing organiser and start your own.

Believe in your work first. A gallery can give you runway, but it can't supply your confidence. Learn the business side, but don't let it consume the work.

BEST MOMENTS

“There's nothing sadder than losing this connection to this extremely meaningful thing.”

“Make something mysterious, ephemeral, mystical, mythological, and kind of encode it, figure out its algorithm, make it into like a sleek, sexy, robotic version of itself.”

“It’s not as if the paintings perfectly reconcile or organise [frightening or abstract ideas]; it’s about building my tolerance and having a physical, embodied experience of being with uncertainty or contradictions”

"I think artists sometimes make the mistake of thinking that their gallery is going to give them confidence. It’s not actually their job."

"I don't have to solve the contradiction, I can just be with the tangible object, you know, the artwork can live in the world and move in and out of other people's consciousness."

"It’s unfair to ask my painting practice to do all of that work. The creative practice is another kind of system that has to be fed and nurtured and rested and maintained, so I can’t just ask it to be my entire existential dread receptacle."

GUEST RESOURCES

https://www.instagram.com/robinfrancescawilliams

https://www.tiktok.com/@wobinrilliamswastaken

https://ottessathisottessathat.substack.com/p/language-model-with-robin-f-williams

PODCAST HOST BIO

With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

****

Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

****

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at hello@cerihand.com

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

I want you to think about somebody whose opinion of your work really matters to you.

Perhaps it's a curator you've admired for years, an artist whose practice you find fascinating, a gallery director you'd love to work with or somebody who has introduced you to extraordinary art.

Now imagine you have the opportunity to spend an hour with them.

What would you actually want to talk about?

I ask because I think artists can spend an enormous amount of time pursuing opportunities without always considering whether they're connecting with the right people.

And having spent much of my working life selecting exhibitions, working with artists, and making decisions about which projects to support, I know how much our individual interests shape those decisions.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been exploring how we develop our own artistic point of view: first looking at when research becomes art, and last week inviting you to choose ten artworks that make you feel glad to be alive and consider what those encounters might reveal about the kind of work you want to make.

Today, I want to explore how that understanding can help you find people who genuinely connect with your work, and how you might build relationships that are creatively rewarding for both of you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Spend a little time thinking about the person who's going to be looking at your application. What are they interested in? What kinds of questions seem to preoccupy them? And what makes you think your work might lead to an interesting conversation with them?

Instead of trying to perform or network awkwardly at exhibition openings, start with the work by visiting things you are genuinely curious about and asking questions you actually want answered.

Build a constellation of people around your practice, over time. People who understand different aspects of your work, challenge you, and share your genuine curiosity.

BEST MOMENTS

“Selectors aren't neutral. We bring our histories, interests, experiences, relationships, and personal associations into every encounter with an artwork.”

“Some of the most rewarding creative relationships I've had have been with artists whose work has challenged my assumptions or introduced me to something completely unexpected.”

“If you do decide to approach somebody about your own work, you'll be able to explain why you're interested in connecting with them. You'll have a reason that's grounded in something you genuinely share, rather than a generic message that could have been sent to absolutely anybody.”

HOST BIO

With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**

Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at hello@cerihand.com

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

Some of the decisions that shape art history never make it into the official record. They happen in conversations, through relationships, and because somebody is prepared to champion an artist before the market or the wider art world has decided they matter.

My guest today is Alona Pardo, Director of the Arts Council Collection and a Turner Prize jury member. Before taking responsibility for this extraordinary national collection of more than 8,500 works, she spent thirteen years at the Barbican, curating major exhibitions including Masculinities, RE/SISTERS, and Dorothea Lange’s The Politics of Seeing.

We talk about how artworks actually enter public collections, why archives can be unreliable witnesses, what happens to a work after it’s acquired, and Alona’s ambitious plans to bring the Arts Council Collection together in Coventry.

At the end Alona also reveals the secret hope she has for what she might achieve during her tenure. I for one would like to see it happen.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Public collections are living archives. They bring historical works back into cultural discourse through the lens of today, helping us think and feel our way through the complexities of our time.

Official archives can be unreliable witnesses. They depend on what was deemed important enough to record at the time, so part of the narrative always gets left out.
Informal conversations, negotiations, and backstage advocacy are all critical to shaping art history.

True curatorial practice avoids a singular authorial voice, actively inviting challenge and collaboration from artists, writers, and scholars to expand and deepen how stories are told.
Encountering structuralists and French feminism at university empowered and galvanised Alona. It shaped a lot of what she studied, her purpose and the direction of her career.

BEST MOMENTS

“The best works that I've ever encountered are works that kind of hit you in the stomach and really, really live with you and stay with you.”

“What I was most interested in is when you put two artworks together, how they begin to feed off each other… how they begin to expand the conversation.”

“For artists, that’s a useful reminder to keep thinking about the stories and ideas surrounding your work, and to keep giving people ways into it.”
“An artwork is made in a particular moment, but it lives in many times.”

ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.instagram.com/alona_pardo/

HOST BIO
With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**
Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!
https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course
Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.
https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today
To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at hello@cerihand.com

**
Discover Your Extraordinary Creativity
Visit www.cerihand.com to learn how we can help you become an extraordinary creative.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/