- Marcella Nordbeck Richardson is multi-faceted.
- She's an author, artist, life coach.
- A seeker and a dreamer
and she drives her dreams into action.
- Janine Trudell of Tailwind Media brings us
to the intersection of oil and canvas.
(upbeat happy music)
- [Marcella] Hmm, why do I paint?
My earliest memory, I was three years old,
and my mom had been an art student.
I remember her drawing the outline of a bear
on a piece of construction paper
and giving me a paintbrush loaded up with paint.
And told me, "Paint the bear."
(laughs)
And then my mom went off and did her thing.
And so we were painting together.
I think from that moment on,
I always needed a creative outlet.
Kids might have other toys,
I needed to have art supplies.
Regret is my biggest fear,
and I didn't want to regret not trying to pursue
my creative endeavors full time.
I had been exhibiting and selling for a few years
and had moderate success while holding down a full time job.
And I thought, you know,
"If I'm having moderate success doing this on the side,
"what could I do if I did it full time?"
And so I took a nine-month sabbatical
and gave creativity full time everything.
Had a great solo show, I'd done a couple of commissions,
but every month, bank account's getting smaller.
And mentally, it changed how I approached creativity.
Although I'd learned a lot
during that nine-month sabbatical,
there was a part of me that was feeling
a little bit like a failure.
My husband, unfortunately, lost his job.
And he went into trucking (laughs).
And I remember, one day, he says,
"You know, they told me that husband and wife teams
"can do really well out here.
"Do you think you want to get
"your Class A commercial driver's license?"
And I remember I looked at him,
and I said, "Like, literally, just yesterday,
"I got offered a job being a gallery manager.
"And I accepted that job.
"So no, I'm not going to go
"to truck driving school with you.
"I'm not going to go drive a truck, that's crazy."
I would never do that (laughs).
And a year later, I went to truck driving school,
finally graduated.
It was challenging, but I did it.
I learned what I needed to learn
so that we could then come together
and get a truck assignment and teamed for a year.
We paid our dues, we were over the road long-haul
for a little more than a year.
I got the minimum experience I needed
to then circle back around and find a local job.
I remember in truck driving school,
being in the classroom for a week,
and then the first day it's like
"Okay, you've completed all the classroom work,
"you've completed your final written exam.
"Now we're going out into the yard."
Standing in front of these behemoth of a vehicle.
The heart's racing, palms are sweating.
A level of sheer terror I had never known.
What can I see now is, most of my fears,
they were imagined.
But what I've experienced is that
the more intense the fear is,
when I actually get through that experience,
the more intense this natural high is.
Of like, "Oh my gosh, I did that."
I did that.
I was terrified, but I did it.
And I did it well.
And I rocked it.
Before trucking, I used to let those fears hold me back.
It can be scary driving a big rig,
going somewhere you've never been.
You don't know if you're gonna fit.
You don't know how you're going to maneuver the vehicle
and get it out back onto the highway.
Just like in trucking, facing those emotional fears
that come up in the creative process,
it's cathartic, it's a release and it's healing.
And on the other side, is peace and joy
that I wasn't allowing myself to experience.
What I realized during that nine months sabbatical was,
I like the security of having steady money coming in
or having multiple income streams.
So that when I'm creating, I can just create from my heart.
And it's not from a place of,
"Is this going to be marketable?"
I don't think about that now at all (laughs).
And now I sell more work.
Which is ironic.
(upbeat acoustic music)
When I step in front of the canvas,
to go bigger, to paint with bigger brushes,
to paint with broader, bolder brushstrokes,
to show up with a willingness to face those feelings.
And put them on the canvas.
Give them somewhere else to reside, other than within me.
That's what I've taken from trucking.
I want to inspire other people
that no matter who you are, or where you are,
what you're doing,
it's in those small pockets of time,
those little white spaces in our day,
where we can put in a little bit of creativity.
You don't have to be this full time working artist
to be an artist.
We are all the artist of our lives.
(upbeat acoustic music)
(truck driving away)
- So cool.
A trucker-artist?
Now that's a ride that not many artists make.