Martin
How did you get into abstract art in the beginning?
Julie Schumer
Well, you know, I have to say that I was sort of an abstract painter from kindergarten onward. You know, I was doing these de Kooning-esque types of paintings, like in the first grade, when everybody else was doing realism. And I kind of kept on with that, through high school, I would say. I mean, my mom had me in painting classes all the time. I did a lot of art when I was a kid, and it never looked like anybody else’s. It was always kind of abstracted.
and then, you know, I took a long hiatus from art and went to college and my parents had said, you know, you have to be able to earn a living. You can’t go to art school, blah, blah, blah. So I got a bachelor’s degree in English at UCLA. Then I went to Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and became a criminal defense lawyer at the appellate level for many years. And I didn’t get back to my art until I was like 46.
I had been feeling the urge for a long time but was kind of too scared to start at that. I’m too old. I don’t have any talent. It’s going to be too difficult. Who do I think I am to think that I could do this? But I just kind of started in and it sort of morphed from there. But I was never that good of a drawer. So it didn’t make sense for me to try and like render these perfectly done portraits or, you know,
landscape scenes or whatever, I kind of stuck to the abstract thing and kind of started with a series of abstract figures that I did for several years. And I finally stopped that when the gallery that showed them here in Santa Fe, the people retired like in 2019. And I kind of just came to the end of that road with that series. But then I was doing abstract, you know, paintings all along then.
Martin
So interesting and just in that like college period and when you started to work as a lawyer, were you doing any art on the side or did it just nothing? Okay.
Julie Schumer
Nothing. Nada. Okay. The only art I did when I was in my thirties, say, was when my kids were toddlers and I was, we were painting in the garage together and, now, doing projects like that then. And, know, whenever they would have a school thing they had to do that involved art, of course, we were doing it, but that was it, you
Martin
Yeah, so interesting. So what was it inside you or like, how did you get to the point where you said, okay, I’m ready to make that leap? Did you sort of start doing it on the side of your career, like your criminal defense lawyer career? Or was it you just said, okay, I’m finished with this and I’m going full time with art? Yeah, okay. Yeah.
Julie Schumer
No, it was on the side. What happened was I wound up buying several large abstract paintings for my home. And they resonated with me. They spoke to me. And then I would look at them every day and I would think, I want to do that. I want to do that kind of thing. But it took me a period of a few years to do it. And then
My spouse came over one day. I had known him because he had remodeled my house years earlier. And we kind of met up by happenstance like 15 years after that. So he could tell by my home furnishings that I was interested in art and loved it. And he was sort of a fledgling painter then. And he brought over paints and a piece of wood and said, why don’t you try something? And that kind of started it from there.
He brought over acrylic paint. I’d been an oil painter when I was a child, so I didn’t know anything about acrylics. But that kind of got the ball rolling. Then I went to, let me think, a couple of courses at the local Civic Park in the area that I lived in and that kind of thing. I started taking little workshops and maybe courses that lasted for a month. Yeah.
Martin
Okay. Okay, interesting. Did you start to do it, I don’t know what period this was, but were you doing any online workshops at that time as well, or was it all in person? Yeah. Okay, okay. So online art courses weren’t around at that period. In 2000, yeah. Yeah.
Julie Schumer
No, I wasn’t doing any workshops. This goes back to like the year 2000 when I started again.
No, they weren’t around and I wasn’t qualified to do them anyway. So we moved to Santa Fe in 2002 and I started painting in earnest, although I was still a full-time lawyer. And I could do my work remotely because of the kind of work I did. I didn’t have to show up in a courtroom, very rarely. I would just fly out to California and do that. I did appeals, which is all reading and writing. So I had a home office. So I was doing that.
The way I got into teaching workshops at all was in 2012, when the West Texas Watercolor Society, which is based in Lubbock, Texas, called me up and said, we want you to teach a loosening up workshop to our painters. And most of those people there did very tight, realistic, tiny paintings. That was the genre.
So I said, okay, I’ll do that. They gave me a two-year lead time. So it gave me plenty of time to figure out how I was going to do that. What was going to be the mode of me doing that? I guess Facebook was pretty big then. So I went on Facebook and I invited six people that I did not know in Santa Fe to come for a free weekend workshop at the studio so I could try my stuff out on them and see what they thought.
You see if they thought it was good. And everybody loved it. So that became the first workshop curriculum for that initial live program. I think there were 11 women. I think there were no men in that class. 11 women. And they just loved it. I think it was a three or four-day workshop. I can’t remember. But that got the ball rolling. And then I thought, well, maybe I should think about this as sort of a retirement plan when I quit the law and beef up.
Martin
That’s cool.
Julie Schumer
my art thing. And I had been in galleries all along too, you but I couldn’t devote the time to the whole business side that I needed to because of having to earn a living, you know. So yeah, that’s how that whole thing got started. And then when COVID hit, I realized I was going to have to take the show online. There was no way that I couldn’t have anybody come to the studio. I’d had a whole year’s worth of workshops where I had to give everybody their money back.
Martin
Yeah.
Julie Schumer
And the year previous to COVID, I had done an in-person workshop at my Santa Fe studio with a woman that I had met at a workshop in Florida that I attended. And she and I decided to do this live workshop. We had six people, everybody loved it. And we were going to do it again in the summer of 2020. But I said to her, know, we’re going to have to recreate this course online. So we each took a class on how to do an online class.
Which was when they were first coming out. And we each did our online class first, and then we did the joint one. So I was doing my first online class while I was taking the class. I finished my class at the time I finished watching the program that I was trying to learn from. Because I felt that time was of the essence. Because everybody was starting to get on that bandwagon, and we were going to be the playing field.
got increasingly crowded in 2020 and 2021 for online courses. So that’s how that is the main reason that I did it. But at the same time, it May be 2017 to 2018, I had a friend, an artist friend who was creating a huge online program. And I could see how much time it was taking her to do this. And it was a huge undertaking, which is why I originally hesitated to do it.
Martin
Hmm.
Julie Schumer
I mean, we didn’t know the tech very well. We didn’t know how to do this. And we wound up filming it. My husband filmed me with my cell phone. And a photographer friend of mine set up the lights, you know, how to do that. So it was kind of, I don’t want to say, low class. Let’s say it was low tech, but you know, it looks, I looked at, I watched it recently, the first one, and it still looks okay. You know, the fact that we didn’t have some fancy video camera didn’t make the difference.
Martin
Yeah. I think that holds a lot of people back in that early phase of thinking about running an online course. I think where a lot of people are used to seeing the master classes, you know, sort of really high-end production, high production costs. But ultimately people want to see you and they want to see, you know, in this case, your artwork and your process, and an iPhone camera in a lot of situations does that, you know, very, very well. I mean, yeah.
Julie Schumer
Right. Huh? Right. I think at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter unless you have a completely horrible production. I mean, I had a professional edit all the cell phone videos, and he did a great job. I’ve seen other courses that have much higher production value, for lack of a better term.
Martin
Yeah.
Julie Schumer
Instructors are dressed in white. They’re in a white room and it looks like a forensic lab. It just doesn’t have the same feeling, you know, as being in somebody’s studio, somebody’s real studio.
Martin
Yeah, agree. I think people can feel that if they feel that iPhone footage gives a bit of a, I don’t know, more personal, closer feel. So that’s cool to hear. I’m glad that didn’t hold you back in the early phases. I’d love to ask about your workshops. What were, you like before getting to COVID and realizing, okay, we need to create an online course, what were the…
Julie Schumer
Right. Now!
Martin
The workshop was that? The consistent thing is we do them weekly and monthly. Are we just doing them in Santa Fe Okay?
Julie Schumer
Doing them a couple of times a year, okay, because I was still, you know, like by that point I was doing the law maybe 70 % of the time. I had cut back a little bit because I was getting tired of it. I did that work for 40 years. I mean, it was a long time. And I like the online course that was a beefed-up version of the in-person course that I did. That’s what I started with.
Martin
Yeah.
Julie Schumer
But I would do like six people maybe three or four times a year during different seasons to allow everybody to come at the time of year they wanted to come.
Martin
Okay, got you. And were they quite intensive for you to be able to deliver? Were they, I guess, at the end of the few days when you were sort of quite exhausted? I think some of those workshops can be, I guess, quite intense from an instructor’s perspective. Yeah. What were the biggest challenges?
Julie Schumer
they are intense for sure. Yeah. would kind of gauge me. You know, the intensity varied with who attended. I mean, some people can handle a more intense experience than others can. You know, for example, my partner and I recently had two back-to-back six-person workshops at my Santa Fe studio. And some of the people, it was nine to five every day for five days, which is a lot. And a lot of the people.
They don’t paint that long every day. You and I do, my partner does, we’re used to it, but they were tired and we had to sort of work in more breaks, you know, and that kind of thing to make them last five days.
Martin
Paint, paint more.
Julie Schumer
Right? Exactly.
Martin
Fair enough. That’s cool. That’s cool. So now shifting gears a little bit back to you as an artist. How do you balance these days between, because I know you’re still actively teaching, like how do you balance between producing your artwork yourself as an artist and on the teaching side? How does that all fit in together? What does a typical day look like for you these days with the business?
Julie Schumer
Okay, well, the typical day is in the morning hours, I’ll do like business-related matters, you know, I’ll look online and see if there’s anything I need to know about that other people are doing that I want to think about, you know, I’ll plan in social media posts, whatever it is I have to do, I do, I usually get to the studio about 11, I would say, stop at a local, there’s a coffee shop right nearby, stop there for a few minutes, then go to the studio. and kind of wander around for like maybe 10 minutes to kind of make friends with the space again for the day. And then I’ll just start. And I can usually stay till about five.
Martin
Wow. So how much art are you producing in any given month?
Julie Schumer
It’s hard to say that because this year I’ve been derailed for a couple of reasons. So my production is way low. Usually, I can do a hundred paintings a year. You know, between, I would say between 80 and a hundred a year. I love to work large and that by that, means, 72 by 60 inches.
Martin
Wow, and that’s 100 medium to large cells? my God. What size are we talking about here, those pieces?
Julie Schumer
or another favorite size of mine is like 65 by 55 inches. I don’t do that many small paintings. Now, maybe midway through the year, I went to a college workshop as a student in California, and I got very intrigued by that whole process. And I spent like maybe a month and a half doing nothing but collages that were like 24 by 18, 20 by 16. So that’s small, I haven’t worked that small in a long time.
Martin
Gotcha. How did you find that? Was that quite challenging for you?
Julie Schumer
I found it very fascinating, very meditative, like putting a puzzle together. It sort of tapped into more of the lawyer side of my brain, I think, in a way. It wasn’t as expressive, I would say, as my abstract painting practice is. So it’s different. I’m enjoying it. I think I’m going to probably start with that in my new studio this weekend.
Martin
Hmm. Interesting. Okay. Interesting. Okay, cool. And as an artist, do you seek out other artists’ online courses as well? Do you like to go often to other workshops like this? Yeah. Interesting.
Julie Schumer
Occasionally, I will do that. I will do it occasionally. I don’t really feel like I will do some of the mini-courses. I don’t have the time to undertake a 12-module class online. I don’t want to make that kind of time commitment at this point. So if there’s something that interests me that’s short and sweet, I will do it.
Martin
Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay, sort of extract a couple of the big ideas from it and get on your way. Yeah, interesting.
Julie Schumer
Yeah, right. Yeah. And I think a lot of people are sort of burned out on the long programs that are super expensive. There are too many offerings now that are under $100 that you can get way more for your money that way than a class that’s like 1997 that’s six weeks long or two months long, that kind of thing. I think there’s less of an appetite for that now.
Martin
Mm. Yeah. Yeah, so how do you balance your online courses and stuff now, that challenge that you just mentioned of less appetite for longer content, longer modules, courses that a lot of hours of video content is set through? How have you sort of balanced that?
Julie Schumer
Well, none of my courses were as long as many other ones in the first place. Like the first one I did in 2020, it’s probably, it’s like maybe a total of three to four hours of video plus handouts and that kind of thing. The course I’m just launching today is about 45 minutes of video, you know, with two handouts and it’s like $27.
Martin
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Julie Schumer
to start with. So I’m mindful of people’s attention span. That’s another issue. Because I think over this whole COVID thing and all these million workshops that have been put online, people’s attention span is not huge at this point.
Martin
Yep. Yep. Yeah. And what do you think for people that are, I’m not sure what your customer base is if it’s mostly like really beginner people that have not done abstract art before, but what do you think are some of the big things that hold people back from starting with abstract art?
Julie Schumer
I think that a lot of them think they can’t do it. They think it’s maybe too hard, which is harder than people think it is than the average person who’s not an artist. They always say, my child could have done that. Well, they probably couldn’t have done that. I think that’s the main thing. People think they can’t do it. They think they have no talent. They’re maybe too old. A lot of the people that are my students had big careers in something.
Martin
Yeah.
Julie Schumer
They were doctors, lawyers, they were in finance, whatever. They had their businesses, they were designers, and they’re coming to this later in their life. And in a way, they want to attack it the same way they attacked their higher power career, you know? So in a way, that’s good because I have a lot of diligent people, let’s say that, that they want to do it right, and they throw themselves into it, which is good.
Martin
Yeah, how do you balance that in the abstract art of wanting to do it right and also letting loose and letting yourself go?
Julie Schumer
Well, I mean, in my courses, I encourage people to experiment and just throw themselves into it and not worry about the result. It’s the process. And they can worry about the result later once they’ve had the feel of it for a while. I mean, I think the main thing is that people when people finally really embrace the idea of taking a risk, exploring and not worrying about the outcome, and not worrying about wasting paint, which is expensive for sure. If they just
Martin
Yeah.
Julie Schumer
By Doing that, they make way more progress.
Martin
Yeah, good advice. What do you find most challenging about teaching people art?
Julie Schumer
The most challenging thing I find is that people not being willing to follow advice and instruction, that they want to do it their way, even if that’s not the most efficacious way to do it. You know, even if they just, you know, would take a leap of faith and try what a teacher is explaining, they might make more progress. So that’s to me, that’s the biggest challenge I have faced is people abjectly not following directions.
Martin
Hmm. So is it mostly beginners, like really beginners that are making that mistake? Or is it also some people that are more advanced? Yeah.
Julie Schumer
No, not necessarily. I mean, I’ve had people who say they’ve been painting for a couple of years, there are older women who are retired from whatever it is they used to do. They’re just doing it their way or the highway. I mean, that’s it.
Martin
Even though they’re at your workshop. Then what do you think their motivation is to join? Are they interested in just being in a creative space with other people, sharing the process? Is that also a big reason?
Julie Schumer
Exactly. That’s a lot of it. I think that’s a lot of it. And they say they want to learn something. And I don’t think anybody walks away from one of my workshops not having learned anything. They absorb something, whatever that might be. And oftentimes, whatever that something is propels them to another level ultimately if they work with it for a while when they get home.
Martin
Yeah, that’s cool. And so to the complete beginner out there that has never done abstract art, maybe they’re in a full-time career, maybe they’re a lawyer. And they’re like, yeah, I bet you have, I bet you have. And they’re like, well, I want to, I’m seeking some creative outlet, which I can imagine is maybe a big motivation for a lot of people. Where should they get started? Like, when it comes to abstract art, what’s the…
Julie Schumer
I’ve had many of them.
Martin
Do they just go get some supplies, get an online course, get started, or what would you suggest to them?
Julie Schumer
Well, I would say, I mean, when I started, there were no online courses. I just went and bought a bunch of paint and canvas and paper and just started trying to do something, you know, not very well, but I tried. And then I went to a couple of in-person workshops. I think somebody should like to play around for a little bit on their own and then start taking some workshops. Like, for example, I have an online one on abstract fundamentals, which is a good place to start. You learn a lot about some of the basics and then you can maybe go from there.
I think a mistake that some people make is that they try to take too many workshops too soon. You know, like I had somebody come to a workshop in person this summer, that was in July. That was her sixth workshop of the year. And, you know, I could see that she was getting burned out on the whole thing because it’s too much. Everybody has a different way of approaching it. So she had too much confusing information in her head.
Martin
Hmm. my God.
Julie Schumer
that was impeding her rather than propelling her forward. So I would say if I was a beginner, I would maybe take two workshops a year, three at the most, depending on how long they were, if they were in person, or whatever. Because it gets kind of expensive to take a lot of in-person ones if you’re not local to that area. There’s all the travel expenses.
Martin
Yeah. Yeah, no. That’s good. Yeah, no, I think that’s good advice. I think a lot of people do get…
Julie Schumer
And that’s one of the beauties of the online program. I mean, because people that are way more cost-effective and there’s a lot of people who maybe have a health issue or they’re older and they don’t want to travel so much. So they still can participate, you know, in an online way.
Martin
How do you feel about online live workshops?
Julie Schumer
Well, you, I’ve thought about it, of doing it. I’ve never really, I say I watched one and I thought that the problem with it was the tech aspect, that it was not well set up. So, you know, if I were gonna do it, I would have to make sure that it was set up properly. And I just haven’t had the time to even think about that. But it would be the next frontier for me to try that, I think.
Martin
Mm. Yeah, do you think there’s an appetite in general for that?
Julie Schumer
You know, I don’t know because I’ve seen way less of it offered recently, but I think it would be worth a shot to see how it would play out.
Martin
Hmm. Yeah, I feel like over the last few years, and I’ve mentioned this on other podcasts where I feel like there was, you know, in the early stages of online education.
most of it was in some ways an online live format. So a lot of people were doing live webinars, live workshops, because they thought, okay, I’ve got to take that workshop that I’m doing in person and now do it live online. And people started doing that. And then I think that was sort of the initial boom. And then people started saying, well, what if I just gave people the recording, you know, and then, and then obviously that’s very appealing from the scalability and profitability standpoint, it’s just quite passive if you can sell that, you know, evergreen course over and over again.
Julie Schumer
Right. Huh?
Martin
And now I think, you know, we’ve sort of gone back and I get the sense there’s a bit more because the market is a bit more saturated with, you know, for example, art courses or any online education courses, every field is more competitive. That there is a bit more of an appetite for, hey, I want to see Julie in action live, you know, and maybe there’s a chance that I can.
Julie Schumer
I agree.
Martin
put my hand up and ask a question on a call. And I think that’s, I think there’s a bit more, yeah, people sort of interested in that now because they’ve probably got a lot of experience with doing the recorded online course. And maybe they’re like, I’d love to ask a question or get some feedback on this or, now. So yeah, curious to see if you ever go down that path and go live, yeah.
Julie Schumer
Hmm? Right.
Well, you know, I have a friend who’s moving back to Santa Fe next month, who would be the person who could help me make this happen, technically. You know, so once he gets settled in, maybe we’ll talk about how we might make that work.
Martin
Yeah. Test the waters with that, yeah, interesting. And last question, how do you feel about the biggest differences would you say that you find in teaching in an online course versus in person? What are the pros and cons of each? What’s your personal experience with both of them? What do you find the biggest differences between the two?
Julie Schumer
Yeah. Well, I think with the online program, a person who’s taking whatever the class is has to be disciplined and motivated. Now, my courses all have a Facebook community, a private community that people can join and they can interact with each other there and ask questions. People can email me with questions. I used to have a Zoom component to my online classes that people could, it was like once a month.
Martin
Yeah.
Julie Schumer
Sometimes we paint it together. Other times it was a question-answer. But I discontinued it this year due to a lack of interest. I mean, nobody was showing up anymore. People, I think, were over it. I think the online thing is good to get started with and maybe take some specialty courses. Like I have a mark-making class that people seem to like. I have a class focusing on the contrast in your painting that people like.
Martin
Yeah.
Julie Schumer
And then they can interact with me in the Facebook group. In the in-person experience, people in the last maybe two years or a year and a half, want to come live now. That’s a big thing. That’s why I can fill my classes up in five minutes. Everybody wants to do it. And I only have three people at a time, which also is a big selling point because it distinguishes me from everybody who’s doing six to
Martin
Yeah. Really?
Julie Schumer
14 people at a time. So if somebody comes to one of my workshops, they’re getting an intensive experience with a huge amount of personal attention. And when I ask people, when I ask them to give me an evaluation at the end, that’s the first thing they say. I love that it was only three people. I felt like we bonded. It was a close-knit group, that kind of thing, which is good. I think in the,
Martin
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s amazing. How often are you doing those? Yeah. And is that how many days?
Julie Schumer
In-person thing, you can push people forward faster. I don’t mean by making them do something, but by encouraging them to do whatever it is they need to do to move, to propel themselves forward. Whereas you don’t, it’s hard to do that when it’s an online situation.
Martin
Yeah. Yep. yeah, there’s a lot more self-responsibility. And I guess where people get stuck is, as you said, they get to that point where they’re like, I’m stuck, I’m gonna take a break. Whereas if they were in the workshop with you, you’d be like, come on, keep going, maybe, you know, help them on the spot. So I can imagine that progress is, yeah, is a lot of fun.
Julie Schumer
Right! Right. Exactly. And you know, I debate between how long to make these in-person experiences. My partner and I spent five days with people. And that’s actually, I think it’s a little bit long. The ones I’m going to do in 2025 are going to be three and a half days because a lot of my students told me that they were tired after three days.
Martin
Wow. Yep.
Julie Schumer
and they wanted to go home and rest and then employ what they learned and continue on that way. Some people want a weekend thing because they still work. it’s, kind of keep, that’s a moving target for me.
Martin
Yeah.Yeah.Yeah. Are you doing all the workshops in Santa Fe in your hometown? Yeah.
Julie Schumer
Yeah, I am doing all my workshops in Santa Fe. I’m doing one in November in New Orleans at a school called Paint Space NOLA. That’ll be the first time I’ve gone, you know, anywhere else in a long time. Now, my Florida partner and I have done workshops at her house, and of course, we do them in my studio, and we’ll be doing one in April. That’s going to be a five-day one.
Martin
Have you had your audience ask you, say, hey, come to LA, come to New York, have you had people asking you?
Julie Schumer
have. They asked me and I said, you have to put together a group and then I can do it. I said I’m not going to try and market something that I don’t know if people will show up.
Martin
Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever thought about just an idea like putting out on Instagram your email and saying, hey, are there people here that would be interested in a three-day workshop in New York? If so, let me know. Like have you ever done something like that? Let’s see.
Julie Schumer
Yeah. I mean, one of the problems is finding a suitable space to have it.
You know, you can only charge X amount of money for these workshops. And if you have to rent an expensive place to do it, then like, what’s the point? You know? Yeah. The economics of it become more difficult when you go out on location, so to speak. You know, but it’s possible. If there are people who have big enough studios, private studios, they would say, sure, I want to be in your class. I’ll make my space available, you know, but.
Martin
Yeah, and fly there and stuff. Yeah, it’s a lot. It adds up pretty quickly.
Julie Schumer
I haven’t really tried that yet, but it’s another option on the table, for sure. Yeah.
Martin
Yeah, cool. Well, Julie, so good to have you on here. Thanks for sharing all of that with us. And yeah, good luck with the rest of your workshops and courses for the rest of the year. And if people want to learn more about you, your art, or your workshops, where should they go?
Julie Schumer
Thank you for having me. Thank you. They can go to my website, which is julieschumer.com. They can go to my Instagram account, which is @julieschumerartist or@ abstractworkshops. Those are the main places.
Martin
Awesome. We’ll put them in their show notes. But yeah, Julie, thanks again and have a lovely afternoon.
Julie Schumer
Thank you.