In my 9th interview in this series, I had a delightful and wide-ranging conversation with Marie-Noëlle Wurm.  She’s an artist, illustrator, and Top Teacher on Skillshare, based in Montpellier, France.

Shelley Skail: Thank you for talking with me today. I was wondering if you could talk about where you get your ideas from?

Marie-Noëlle Wurm: So I think for me there’s two different things that happen. For a very long time my ideas were not necessarily pre-decided. They would emerge from the dialogue between me and the materials that I was using, how that would resonate internally, and how the shapes of the lines resonated with what’s inside, what I was feeling. But then also what would appear on the page and what it would evoke for me. And then allowing myself to kind of push and build that idea into that direction. 

And then the second thing is that, even as a kid, I’ve always been very fascinated by nature and I’ve always felt very whole and connected whenever I was in nature. I often experience a lot of awe or moments of awe and beauty in nature. And so sometimes I would decide, “oh, I want to explore this subject in my art.” 

And sometimes it’s both of those things.
And then, every once in a while, it’s dreams that will inspire me.
In general, I try to pay attention to what it is that feels exciting to me, in terms of colours or textures, and to take note of that so that when I’m in front of my sketchbook, that’ll come out. 

And I’m going to say a third thing. This is more recent, and it’s about allowing myself to build a more complex internal visual world that I want to represent.

Do you mean literally, as in you can see things in your imagination that you want to get on the page or is it more metaphorical? 

It’s more metaphorical. So, as an example, the Cozy Little Art Café. That’s an idea that I came up with a year or two ago when I was having an art crisis and I really just wanted to have an internal visual representation of what my creativity was like for me and what these spaces that I’ve created online mean for me.

And by allowing myself to think ‘okay, well what would that space look like? What would it be, what flavour would it have?’ I found that has been really wonderful for my creativity.

I think it’s very similar to when you create a story. 

It’s like I’ve created a sort of story. Yeah! 

Because there are quite strong narrative elements. 

Yeah, exactly. And so I find that that has been a new way of allowing ideas to emerge.

That’s really interesting, thank you! The next question I wanted to ask is around the artists that you enjoy – who are your top three artists? 

I actually find your question very challenging, not because I can’t think of anyone, but the opposite – I think of too many. And also it’s shifted over the years.

But one of the things that popped up in my mind is Les Nabis, which is an art movement from the 1920s, which had artists like Edouard Vuillard. The movement’s got decorative elements, like flat patterns. There’s still a lot of 3D shapes, but they’re all flattened and part of patterns. They’re Japanese inspired and sometimes the impression that you get when you look at these paintings is an infusion of different textures and colours and patterns and varying thicknesses of those patterns.

It’s a movement that I find very, very fascinating and I really love the visual effects and overall atmosphere and mood of these works.

Let me think of another one. Her name is Andrea. Her work is incredible – it’s incredibly poetic and obviously very skilled. She has this sensitivity to light and to poetry and to form that really, really resonates and that I find incredibly inspiring. 

Shaun Tan and Robert Kondo – they are both incredible illustrators who also carry such sensitivity. Their work carries so much poetry and a lot of creativity – Shaun Tan draws all these creatures and these really beautiful visual metaphors, which is something that I really love. I also think it’s a great strength of his that he’s not afraid of adopting different styles in different books.

So in his book, “The Arrival”, it’s all black and white, almost as though it’s little photographs. And then his other book, “Lost and Found”, has a lot more movement in the strokes and the images that he builds. And I really like that too, when illustrators or artists show us that we don’t need to do just one specific thing in order for art to be good or to be recognized.

I love it when artists and illustrators really show us that we can evolve with our art and that art evolves with us and that we’re never stuck in a little box and in a specific style just because we think we need to be recognizable. That’s very inspiring to me. 

Yes! I recently took an illustration course and made six pieces for it – none of them look alike. There’s not a shared medium between them, there’s not a shared style. I showed them to my dad and my dad told me “Even if I hadn’t been told, when I saw these I would know they were yours”. Even though they’re all so different. And I kind of love that because I hate the notion of a straight jacket called ‘style’.

Oh my god, yes! It’s not necessary. And especially as creatives, it just makes sense to keep evolving, you know?

And I guess—I just wanted to add this because I would say that this is a very important part of my practice —I would actually say that I take more inspiration outside of art than I do within art.

I studied biology, film and English literature. I’ve always been a massive bookworm, and music is something that is often very, very important to me. My own experiences are also a big source of inspiration, and so is Nature. But also other art forms than visual art. I think that there’s so much that can be inspirational. On top of that taking inspiration from things that are very different from the medium that you’re working in can help prevent you from either copying people’s work or emulating them too closely. I think that’s something that I’ve often found. 

Because when you’re feeding your own creative fire, it doesn’t come from the same realm. What I mean is that  I think it needs to come from somewhere else. And that’s not to say that there aren’t artists that you see, where you’re like, “Wow, that’s so cool. I wish I could do that.” Or maybe it’ll spark an idea of some other thing, but I just find it a little dangerous sometimes to get too close to other visual art when I’m looking to create my own. And I think that’s a particular concern for living artists today, with social media.

So I’ve asked you about artists that you like. But what’s your current favourite piece of art that you yourself have made? 

Oh, that’s a hard one for me too. And I’m going to tell you why. So for a long time, I would say that ~70% of my work was finished pieces. It’s not necessarily like I started out with the idea of creating a finished piece. It’s more like, okay, I’m going to draw, this is the medium that I want to use, this is the thing that I want to draw; or I’m just going to explore and kind of see where that brings me. And I would keep transforming it until I made something I liked. Usually by the end of the piece, I’m able to kind of determine whether it’s a finished piece a.k.a. if I like it, or if it feels personal and true and important, or whether it’s more just an experimentation, or it’s just not a finished piece. 

More recently, I had a bit of an art crisis over the span of a couple of years. In part, it was linked to people copying my work. But not only that: I also had a breakdown in 2019 and was subsequently diagnosed with complex PTSD (C-PTSD), which took over most of my life for several years. So my creative practice has changed a lot from within that. 

So now, where I’m at currently at is, I would say 90% of my work is not finished work. 90% of my work is me learning skills, exploring creativity, trying new approaches, and the number of pieces that I would consider finished is probably around 10%.

So that makes it really hard to answer your question because I don’t have as many recent finished pieces. 

Here are a few things that come to mind though. I would say my Cozy Little Art Café is one of them. I would say that it’s definitely one of my more recent favourites even though it’s quite different from what I usually do.  I would say that that’s probably among my current favourites. 

I’ve made other more recent pieces since then, that are somehow related to this world I’m creating.

I would also say there’s this one “Breath”, which I really love, even though I made it back in 2021.

My Dark Forests series, black and white drawings that I created during the first and worst years following my breakdown, also have a special place in my heart. In these ones, and like in a lot of my more personal work, the text is just as much part of the work as the drawings are. They really speak to deep truths I was contending with and though I didn’t make them with any ‘goal’ of creating finished pieces in mind – rather they were simply helping me cope with the flashbacks & dissociation I was experiencing – putting the darkness on paper offered a bit of relief – I love a lot of them, both visually and, most of all, for the deep personal truths they carry. 

There are other, more recent drawings that I like but I see them more as ‘beginnings’ of things. Here’s another one I love dearly:

Oh yeah, that one gives me proper Ophelia vibes. 

That was made in an ‘Ophelia’ session, actually!

Do you have a passion project or a big thing you’re working on just now that you want to talk about at this stage?

I actually do have a big project I’m working on, but I don’t think I want to talk about it quite yet, if that’s okay.

This big project, it’s really just the beginnings of it. I’m in the research phase, but also because of my art crisis and the real issues that I had around people copying my work, I’m wary about sharing. I need to grow out of that, and I’m learning to let it go. But I get scared of sharing what I’m doing at the moment. Do you know what I mean? 

I do. I also have this idea about creativity that when you’re growing something, whether it’s an idea or anything else, there’s a stage where it has to be protected. It can’t actually be exposed because it kills it. I feel like there’s a thing with like stages of producing something where if you share too early, then it destroys it. 

That’s a very interesting point. I think you’re right. I guess you’ve found that with your stories, for example?

Well, it’s not a recent thing. It was a long time ago. I had this idea for a full-length novel for adults. This was back when I was writing that kind of stuff. I had a really detailed idea, I wrote it out, I talked about it with a few people and it killed it. I learned from that experience that there are periods when I just have to keep it to myself like a delicate little egg. 

Yeah! I had something similar way back, we’re talking right when I opened my Patreon eight years ago, and I had maybe four people on it but it was such a special thing. I started talking about this longer project that I had wanted to do called ‘Atlas of Hidden Memories’. And then I talked about it too much and then I never did it, so I know exactly what you’re talking about. I hope to get back to it one day.

It sucks. 

That said, I would say the project that most excites me currently is the Cozy Art Café, aka my Patreon page, because it is exciting to me. I’ve conceptualized it as this sort of space that exists inside me but that I want to better communicate what it looks like on the outside, through art and illustration.

And so I don’t know if this answers your question in the right way, but basically I’m just realizing everything is chaos in the world, and we’re the ones who give it structure. And one of the things that I really want to do better on my own Patreon is to give people a very clear idea of what it is that happens there. What kind of classes I offer and what kind of content I make for it. There’s a reason that we have books with chapters and maybe a table of contents and I think in the past I used to look at that kind of as just annoying structure. But the more I move forward in my artistic journey, I’m realizing that no, these are important because they anchor us and they give us a clear path to things that can be inherently chaotic. And so that’s what I’m excited to work on is this Cozy Little Art Café, to build that and integrate it into my art world. To use my artistic and creative skills to not only better explain what I offer in this space, but also to show others what it looks and feels like to me.  

For example, I’m excited to create images or illustrations to better announce what’s happening on my Patreon every month. To me it feels like part of the creative process of the Cozy Little Art Café.

My next question is a little bit more general. Tell me about a day in your life.

My days are always different. And they also can be very similar to each other. Usually I wake up and then I do 20 minutes of yoga in the morning. I find it very grounding. It helps me transition and it helps my body feel good because when you do the kind of work that I do, you don’t move a lot. You’re at your desk a lot, often sitting. And so I find that it’s a good way of stretching out the stuckness. And then I usually pack my bag depending on what it is that I’m going to be working on that day.

Every morning I go to a local café because I work from home. I’m freelance and I’ve had my home studio for maybe six years now, it can become very stifling to be surrounded by the exact same walls all the time on your work time and your off time. So for me it’s been really important to go to a local café to change the mood. And I love really good coffee. So that’s always a pleasure for me. 

And then at the café I will usually do more computer things or Instagram things or stuff on my computer like organizing what I’m going to be doing for Patreon, responding to feedback on Skillshare, editing videos for either of those two things, emails – basically all the computer workload.

And then there are some days where I don’t do that, where I don’t bring my computer and where I will bring a sketchbook and maybe a book that I’m reading and I’ll sketch in the café. But most of my art is usually at my desk at home.

And then at some point in the afternoon, usually one or two, I head home and then I’m at my desk. And there it really depends on what it is that I’m working on, I’ll either be creating artwork, or continuing the computer side of things like editing videos for Skillshare, Patreon or YouTube. I’m not very diligent about a strict schedule, but I do also try to have at least one day where I basically do whatever I want and what I mean by that is doing all the things that feed me creatively.

So there’s a park that I love to go to, and I’ll go there and I’ll sketch or I’ll read or both. And then in the evenings, from about 8 o’clock I spend time with friends or my husband. On the weekends I take time off— I’m pretty strict about having a weekend because I used to not be, but if I want to draw (which often happens), then I will! 

I’m someone who can be working all the time and it’s something I’ve done many, many, many times in my life. But it’s not very healthy. And so I try really hard to be a little stricter with myself and give myself the time off because that’s really, really important and such an essential part of the creative work as well.

I’ve definitely had many times over the years that I’ve been freelance where I was working from the morning until very late at night or into the weekend, but I burnt out a few times. And so I’ve learned my lesson that it’s important to set boundaries. But there still  will be moments where I’ll have “crunch times”. Let’s say I’m working on a new Skillshare class, then I’m usually just working from morning to evenings and weekends because video editing is very all-consuming and I kind of have to go all in or it’s not good. It’s got a momentum. So there will be periods where I will do that again. But I try to stay strict with myself, and carve out those moments of rest and recuperation. I think that’s also why I do yoga and go to a cafe in the mornings, it’s a way for me to slow down first and foremost, before delving into the more ‘intense’ work spurts. 

It sounds like even when there are periods where you do that, it’s more deliberate rather than sliding into it. 

Yeah! Definitely. I would say that.

This next question is the start of a sentence for you to finish. “If you really knew me, you’d know…” 

If you really knew me, you’d know that I have complex PTSD, and survived huge amounts of trauma. And the reality of that is that a lot of my life, at least in the past four years, has been managing symptoms. I’m doing much better now, but it’s definitely a challenge when you have something like complex PTSD or mental illness or chronic illness, where you don’t really have the choice for it to be in your life and you have to contend with it and build your life while having it sometimes disrupt it more often than you’d like. 

As you were speaking just there, it was making me think about managing your concept of self when you have such a big thing like that.

Yes, and of course not just C-PTSD, but many other big things that come into your life and you don’t have much control over that you have to find a way to be. It’s very tricky business, because since it’s something that you don’t necessarily have control over, there can be a lot of frustration, a lot of anger about it disrupting your life so much. And at the same time when that’s the case, it makes it worse. It makes it even more destructive. So it’s really a catch-22. 

I’ve had to learn to cultivate huge amounts of self-compassion and just contend with the reality that there are moments where I am having more flashbacks and where I’m having more dissociation. And so even if I’m wanting to get work done, I sometimes can’t because I’m dealing with this other thing, and building habits of compassion and self-compassion is really the only way that it gets easier. 

Recently I worked with an art coach called Elaine at Studio 1850. She’s incredible and amazing and has helped me a lot— and was recommended by Emma Carlisle — she helped me set up this new productivity management system. We were talking about this issue where there are times where I have more symptoms and I’m not able to work as much as I’d want.

She suggested adding something onto my board that would visually represent this thing that I deal with, that I live with on a daily basis. And so I created this little note that says “little me” because that’s the reality of it, at least with what I am dealing with, with complex PTSD where symptoms are a manifestation of past trauma, so – “little me”.

So when I have more symptoms, this has to take a bigger place on my board whether I like it or not. And so then my focus needs to be on what can I do to help alleviate the pain that that part is dealing with, and the rest of the stuff is going to have to wait. Because if I try to push through it, that doesn’t work and my symptoms will get worse.

Basically, you need to find ways to contend with the realities of whatever you live with and it could be anything. I mean for me it’s complex PTSD, but for some people it’s chronic pain or they’re caring for an elderly parent; there’s some things that just aren’t in your control.  And what can you do to navigate that with a bit more ease and grace?

And to answer your question more fully, if you really knew me, you’d also know that I am so much more than the complex PTSD I deal with. You’d know that I laugh a lot, and cultivate huge amounts of joy and playfulness in my life. I love rock climbing and swing dancing, and, weirdly, badminton, but also playing board games, and making stupid voices just for fun.

Thank you for that. I have one more question, and it’s my fun question. What’s your favourite joke? 

What did the cheese say when it looked at itself in the mirror? 

I don’t know. 

Hallou-mi!

[Laughing] Oh, that was so cute. 

Also, what’s a pirate’s favourite letter? 

Is it… R?

You think it’s the ‘R’, but actually, it’s the ‘C’… 

[Both laughing]

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You can see more of Marie-Noëlle’s work on Instagram.

She has a flourishing Patreon http://patreon.com/marienoellewurm/ and her classes are hosted on Skillshare https://www.skillshare.com/en/user/marienoellewurm

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If you enjoyed this interview with Marie-Noëlle Wurm, you might enjoy my other artist interviews.