Bard of the Month: Chantel the Muted Line

Welcome to Bard of the Month! In Druidic tradition, some of the deepest truths are found through the art of the arts. To celebrate this ancient means of enlightenment and it's continued importance to the human spirit in the modern world, we will be meeting one esoteric artist each month on the 19th.

This month's artist is Chantel, who is an artistically talented introvert who makes really beautiful digital work and more. A pet parent and compassionate person, she suffers from a combination of chronic conditions that cause unusual difficulties, but has found freedom, healing, and an escape from the day to day struggles that chronic illness can present through the wonder of art. She's a really inspiring and special person, and I'm very glad to be able to bring us all together here in this space celebrating her talent.

If you enjoy the Muted Line's energy and interview, don't forget to check her out on social media or consider purchasing some new artwork from a living artist! All the links to do so are included in the interview here.

If you are interested in becoming a part of this project, and are an artist attempting to make a name for yourself with your artistic creations and discoveries, please email me: rabbitandwolfdivination@gmail.com with the subject "Bard of the Month Submission." Include a brief synopsis of your art, and how you use it to deepen your connect to and understanding of spirit, as well as any relevant links you may have in relation to your work, such as social media accounts or articles.

An interview with...

Name: Chantel (or the Muted Line)

@themutedline on Instagram or shop for art directly at: https://www.redbubble.com/people/themutedlineart/shop

Age: 25

Location: Adelaide, Australia

Profession: Artist, Art Psychotherapist (in training!)

Spiritual Practice: Creating art as a means of personal healing, and the healing of others.

Type of Art Made: Digital Illustration, Traditional Art, Pen and Ink

Years of Bardic Experience: 20+ years (From the moment I could hold a pencil!)

1. First off, tell us all a little bit about yourself, where you're from and who you are, and your day to day life!

I was born in Adelaide and have always lived just outside the city in a semi-rural area. It was just me, my mum and my younger brother growing up, so our family was quite small and close knit. Art has always been a huge part of my life, whether I was creating it, viewing it, or being inspired by it. Nobody in my family was particularly creative, but something within me just drove me to create art constantly.

I guess to sum up who I am and what daily life looks like: I draw almost everyday and engage in creative activities as much as possible (my current obsession is macrame, last month it was acrylic paint pours...), and when i’m not creating, I'm studying, spending time with my partner, or hanging out with my animals. I have a family of 3 axolotls, as well as a rescued Galah, two dogs, and two cats! I love discovering new artistic things to try and experiment with, and you’ll rarely find me sitting still. As da Vinci would say: “Inaction saps the vigours of the mind”.

2. What sort of art do you make, how long have you done it, and why or how did you get into it?

Well, I've always been an artist at heart; I would spend hours on end drawing absolutely anything as a kid (not much has changed...), as well as doing all sorts of little crafty activities. I had a lot of mental health issues from traumas growing up, and art was always something I engaged in to make me feel more at peace and distract me from reality.

I completed a certificate in Airbrush portraiture when I was 14, in which a phase of airbrushing celebrity portraits and making tattoo stencils ensued. This led to an interest in drawing realistic portraits of people's faces and pets, followed by the discovery of my passion for character design.

[During] all this I went to University and completed a Bachelor’s and Honours degree in Visual Arts, which led to my first real job in the arts industry as a Glass Blower. I combined my passion for drawing with engraving onto glass, and this became my sort of ‘niche’ in the community. Unfortunately, I found this incredibly difficult (glass blowing is a very physically demanding profession), and after having to leave that job, I discovered I had an auto-immune disorder that caused a lot of underlying issues with my mobility, vision, and energy. Despite trying to persist, my body just couldn’t handle the demands of following this path.

My art did a full rotation at this point, as I got back into drawing and illustration. Since I experience chronic pain on a near-daily basis, drawing once again became my escape into another dimension where my physical ailments were less intense.

I studied a year of Psychology at University, as I found that helping others brought me immense joy. I thought this was a pathway I could take that would be just as rewarding as creating art, but I felt a lack of interest in the content, and a disconnect from my true passions. I set out looking into using art as a means to help other people, and commenced a degree in Art Therapy instead.

While studying, I got really into the arts community on Instagram, and ended up spending a lot of time and effort into further developing my own drawing practice, and found a passion for creating digital art: original character designs, fantasy-themed personas, and exploring different styles through the use of Photoshop.

Now, I'm working on slowly building up my own social media audience and artistic practice whilst completing my studies, with the goal to one day be able to sell some of my artwork. And if in the end being an Arts Therapist doesn’t work out, a tattoo apprenticeship may be on the horizon! My ultimate aspiration would be able to live off the art I create, and find a career that I can sustain while balancing my health needs.

3. Have art and spirituality always been interconnected to you? If not, when and why did they become a mutual process?

I guess I’ve always used art as a means to take a break from our physical world, as well as a process to explore what's happening for me internally and externally. In a way, I feel like creating art has this inherent healing quality, whether it be as a distraction from physical pain, sorting through suppressed emotions, or repairing my connection to self when feeling disassociated. Through my training as an arts therapist, I get to see these same healing qualities evoked in others while sharing their creative experiences.

4. How has your art added depth to your spiritual practice?

Without art, I doubt I would have much of a spiritual practice at all! Art has helped me find my true, authentic self, and continues to help me strengthen and reinforce that connection when it wavers or gets lost.

5. How would you describe your personal connection to spirit, and how do you translate that connection into your art? Does it always translate the way you want?

My personal connection to spirit lies in my ability to express my thoughts, feelings, and ideas into visible forms. While my drawings may just look like characters or creatures, each of them are a culmination of stylistic preferences formed over time and shaped by experience. They are reflections of a personal aesthetic, of ideas, inspirational resources and responses to experiences that have influenced my work. Unfortunately, art doesn’t always turn out the way you want it to, but there is always an intention and a process of expression.

6. What has been your most spiritual experience while creating art?

Particularly in my art therapy studies, my most spiritual and memorable experiences have come from finding insight, or being able to explore and discover new knowledge. As someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder, it is through my art that all the different facets of myself can come together and communicate in collaborative works while being able to learn about each other. In my illustration work, the moments that hold the most energy are when the piece in front of me conveys what I initially set out to create!

7. Do you like working digitally or with physical mediums more?

I can’t say which I prefer, because I love working with both! I love the tactile nature of working with physical mediums, the room for error and happy accidents to occur, and the rawness of the outcomes. But I also love the possibilities of being able to edit, change and manipulate art digitally with more ease! At the moment I’m really liking using digital software to create my art, but it fluctuates between the two. I’ve recently tried to combine some traditional pen and ink work with post-digital editing afterwards, and I liked being able to add things like highlights, shadows and re-shaping line work, but I'm not sure if I will develop this further in the future.

8. What are some of your favorite things to draw, and why?

I seem to gravitate towards drawing women; you won’t see any illustrations of men in my sketchbooks! I like creating interesting female characters: different outfits, playing with colour schemes, expressions, poses, proportions and personalities. I really enjoy making work in response to themes or word prompts, like the Zodiacs, Elements or Seasons, as well as doing little “draw this in your style” challenges over on Instagram, where you redraw someone’s character in your own aesthetic. Other challenges I like to participate in when I have the time are month-long themes; for example, “Inktober” where you draw everyday for the month of October in response to a list of prompts using Ink. I used to prefer working mono-chromatically using only black, white, and shades of grey, but now my work has become quite bright and colourful!

9. What would you recommend to your younger self, in regards to your art, now?

If I could give my younger self any advice, it would be to just keep drawing; draw what you want despite thinking about what other people might say about it. Draw the images in your head, and don’t be disheartened when they don’t look right on the page. If it's not right the first time, or you dislike how it looks, that's okay! We all start somewhere. Don’t compare yourself to others, because everyone’s art is different; there's no right or wrong, better or worse. Keep practicing, keep persisting, and one day people will like your art. Don’t be afraid of the future, and not being able to make a career out of your creativity. It will come, and things will be as they are meant to be!

10. Are there any art styles or spiritual studies that you hope to be able to work with in the future?

My style is constantly changing everyday. My future goals are to just keep exploring what I like, and what I think best conveys the images I want to create - whether that's rendering my work more realistically, leaning into a more cartoony style, getting better at line work, or doing more research into colour theory. I’d love to get a drawing tablet to play with different styles with line work, because I love the different line qualities achievable with pen and ink, but for now I have to work with what I’ve got - my trusty gaming computer mouse!

In terms of spiritual studies, I would love to get more into Tarot, and combine some of those ideologies into the characters I create.