Meet the Collective: Mindful mosaic making with Becky Paton

Explore the transformative power of mosaic art as a mindful and enjoyable way to express yourself.
Becky Paton teaches mosaic classes for adults of all abilities, and in this episode she is keen to emphasize that anyone, regardless of their perceived creativity, can create beautiful pieces with the right materials and guidance.
Becky tells me about her experiences of creating mosaics with children and families in hospital settings, illustrating how art can provide comfort and a sense of normalcy during challenging times.
The conversation also delves into the importance of community among creatives, highlighting how sharing experiences and techniques can inspire and elevate one’s work. 
As she embarks on writing a new mosaic book, Becky’s passion for her craft and dedication to helping others discover their creativity shines through.

Becky Paton Mosaics at creativityfound.co.uk
Join the Creativity Found Collective at creativityfound.co.uk/joinus

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Researched, edited and produced by Claire Waite Brown
Music: Day Trips by Ketsa Undercover / Ketsa Creative Commons License Free Music Archive - Ketsa - Day Trips
Artworks: Emily Portnoi emilyportnoi.co.uk
Photo: Ella Pallet

Click here to book a 1-to-1 online chat with me to understand more about the Creativity Found Collective, the promotional and networking membership for creative small businesses.

Chapters

• 2:51 Exploring creativity through mosaic
• 7:32 The challenges of artistic expression
• 11:56 The importance of community
• 17:13 Future opportunities
• 17:13 More about Creativity Found

Transcript

0:44

There's so many options which are non scary, great fun, incredibly mindful. That's a huge factor about mosaic. It's an incredibly mindful pastime. The reality is it's frustrating, but also the reality is keep going, keep going, keep going and then it will happen. It's incredibly important to be connected to other creatives, whether they're a painter, a sculptor, a ceramicist. We're all in the same boat. Hi, Claire here. Creating this show inspired me to take the Creativity Found mission further. As well as sharing inspirational stories of people who have embraced their creativity in adulthood, I wanted to actually help people do this for themselves and to support artists and crafters who share their creative knowledge with adults through their classes, kits and supplies. Creativityfound.co.uk and the Creativity Found Collective were born. You can visit creativityfound.co.uk to find ways to learn printmaking, try embroidery, get touchy feely with clay, make your own kilt, start weaving, learn to paint, and so much more. And the wonderful teachers and makers featured on the website are members of the Creativity Found Collective. We also have business support enterprises as members who help others grow their businesses. In this episode of the Creativity Found podcast, adapted from a live video posted on the Creativity Found YouTube channel, and in the Creativity Found Facebook group, I chat with one of our members about what they do and how they can help you. And if you would like to join our merry band, simply visit creativityfound.co.uk join us and I'll see you soon. Hi, Becky, how are you? I'm very good. How are you? I'm very good, thank you. Thank you so much for joining me. How do you help adults to get creative? Well, there's several different ways that I do it. The biggest one, I suppose, is I teach a monthly class at the Makerspace, which is it's an old pub that was taken over and now has a beautiful cafe. And they have lots and lots of different creative classes. And I teach a mosaic class there once a month or twice a month if my class gets filled up, which it does quite often, actually, and that is all abilities. So you could come to the class as a complete beginner with no idea of what you want to do, or you could be advanced and you could bring a project, but you just might need somebody else's point of view or so technical support. So those classes are very much based around the individual rather than a whole load of people following, you know, all doing, say, a mosaic mirror or all doing the same thing. So it goes at your pace. A Lot of people say that, oh, they'd love to have a go, but they're not creative. And I think the thing with mosaic, and quite possibly lots of different art forms, is you don't have to be creative creative to make something beautiful in mosaic. I like to liken it to cooking. And with cooking you just need a few good ingredients and you really can't go wrong with your supper. And it's the same with mosaic. I buy in for the class and recommend people sort of if they were buying their own tiles. I buy beautiful tiles, not the entry level ones you. I buy beautiful tiles cost a little bit more, but you're going to go away with something amazing. You can't go wrong and you don't have to be able to draw. It could be a study in color, it could be a study in the sizes of your tiles. It could be, you know, a contrast in glass and ceramic. There's so many options which are non scary. Great farm, incredibly mindful. That's a huge factor about mosaic. It's an incredibly mindful pastime hobby. So I've been teaching this particular class for over a year now and it's gone from strength to strength. So I'd like to say that that's a very fun place to get people, you know, being creative. Another thing I do is on my own Instagram page and it's mainly Instagram. I do do it a bit on TikTok, little bit on Facebook, but it's mainly Instagram where I will show my own progress with work. And so I'll put step by step pictures of what I'm working on and I'll share the highs and the lows, mainly the highs. But you know, things go wrong with all of us. So, you know, I'm not scared to put that in, you know, that if it goes wrong, you just take the tiles up and you start again or what have you. So I hope that inspires people as well, that they don't just see the end piece, they see everything that's gone in to making a piece. So yes, I'd say those are the main places and just by talking about what I do as well, which I hope inspires. Yeah, yeah. I like that you say you can actually change it if you go wrong. I think it that that feels like that wouldn't be the case and like you would like ruin a whole thing by putting one tile in that you don't like. Absolutely. Yeah. You really can. I mean, I say to people, you know, stick as you go. So sometimes they'll be too scared to stick things down, so they'll have. At the end of a glass. Well, this rarely happens because I tell them to stick down as they go. But it could be that you've got a whole load of loose tiles because you're too scared to stick them down, and then they might get jogged about as you move your piece of work, because the class is finished. Stick it all down. And, you know, we can lever it up. If it doesn't work, we can change it. Also, if the grout color is wrong, we can do things to change that at the end. There's. There's so many tips and tricks you can do to make a piece of work spectacular. I think you must be the perfect person to learn from, from that point of view, because I've always been amazed with you. And color and skin tone, for example, because the actual artwork that you do are often people, especially the big ones, aren't they? And how you get skin tone across. Oh, it's hard. It's hard work. It's hard work. And I really hope that. That I share enough of that to let people know that it's not easy if you're working with just sort of fleshy colors of ceramic tiles. I use ceramic rather than glass, so we get the lovely sort of powderiness of skin. You've got about four different colors to do your whole face with, which is a really small palette. And I'll put them down, the tiles down. I'll think, oh, it's all going great, Garns. It's looking amazing. I'll then stand up the mosaic on its, you know, upright, because you have to work flat. And then it'll be, oh, that's wrong. Oh, that's wrong, that's wrong. And then I'll take them up, and this can go on for about a week. Just. Just doing a small bit. It. The reality is, it's frustrating, but also the reality is keep going, keep going, keep going, and then it will happen. It will happen. But you have to just not give up and not be scared to tackle something like skin tone. I mean, it's constantly thrilling, if not very frustrating. Through teaching and the experiences you get teaching other grownups. Why do you feel it's important that grown ups have these chances to try new creative activities? I think in our busy lives, we don't have many moments to take for ourselves. You know, many people, you know, part of, say, families. And you've got children or you've got dogs. You've got children and dogs and partners and demanding Jobs and food shops that need to be done and washing that needs to go on. And it can just get so intense and repetitive. And I think it's just really important to take time out for yourself and not be on a phone, not be in front of a screen, just to sort of look inwards actually rather than on a screen or just day to day, just moment to just breathe, look in and just do something that is going to be incredibly pleasing. The end result, you're going to be amazed by and just taking a few moments to just quiet contemplation. I only do mosaic, so I am a one trick pony. I can't talk about other disciplines in the art world, but mosaic is, it's so calming, apart from when you're doing skin, but when you're doing other things. It's like at the moment I'm doing a portrait of Jane Burdon, who is Jane Morris, who married William Morris, and I'm working on the hair and that's just lots of little cuts, just very repetitive. And even just doing something like that, it's just time to breathe, it's time to take for yourself to own. And you may have really pressing things happening around you, but the moment you start and the moment you allow yourself an hour, two hours, stick to it, do it and you will, you'll benefit from it. I mean, I've seen how the art of mosaic can benefit people with mental health issues. I've worked, you know, with many people with mental health issues and I've just seen what it does and not even mental health, physical health. I've worked at the John Radcliffe, many of the children's wards, I mean, lots of them are covered in mosaic that the children and their families have made. And you know, when I worked on the children's cancer ward, it was a time for the children and their friends and siblings and family to, to, to work on something that was just so color orientated and calming and it just took away the conversation of the illness just, just for, just for an hour. And it was a joint activity and something beautiful was created. I got them all making gorgeous fish. I just think it just takes away the big, big stresses in life sometimes. So I think, you know, if we, if we can do that and take that for ourselves or allow somebody to come into your environment and teach you something new, I think it's hugely, hugely beneficial. Yeah, I completely agree. And you're a member of the Creativity Found Collective. Why do you think it's important as well for you as a creative business owner to have Those kind of communities that you can join. So I've spent 20 years as a professional creative in my studio, working by myself, enjoying it, because I'm really good at working by myself or, you know, doing community arts with people. But my business has been sort of me, myself and I. And so I'm just learning, you know, as well as I do. I've got a long way to go with this, that I'm just learning the benefits of being with other people, other creatives, which I hadn't actually appreciated before. And so just. I'm just at the tip of the iceberg, sort of just letting other people into my world because I thought, you know, mosaic artists, you know, I just poodle along doing my thing and didn't really appreciate that it's incredibly important to be connected to other creatives, whether they're a painter, a sculptor, a ceramicist. We're all in the same boat. We're all trying to make a living, which is tough in this climate. And any tips and tricks that we can pick up from each other is huge. And just talking to other people, I'm getting inspired in areas that I didn't realize were inspiring or could inspire me. So the penny is dropping with me that it's. It's quite vital, actually, to be. To be in a community. Yeah. What else is in cahoots for the future? I've got. I've got several really exciting things. The big thing which is taking up a lot of my time is I'm partway through writing a new mosaic book for Bloomsbury Press, which is. Yeah, so it's, it's. It's all consuming at the moment because the deadline is really, really looming. It's going to be around, so 25, 30,000 words, probably about 250 images in the book projects, all abilities. But I want to put into the book bits that perhaps other books don't have. Like, I want to do like a big chapter on portraiture. Not so much a step by step, because that would be a very difficult thing to teach. But I want to go through how you could do hair in glass. You know, short hair, long hair, could be animal portraiture. How do you do horse's fur? How do you do shaggy dog's fur? So I want to do a big chapter on that. Also, I want to do a chapter on community arts and public arts. And my degree was in public art and design, and I've done a few public art pieces. Lots and lots and lots of community arts. I get emails from teachers quite often saying, we want to put a mosaic up in our school. We've got a very small budget, so we can't employ anybody. Can you point us in the right direction? So I'm sort of thinking I'll just do a chapter on it so I can point people in the right direction There. That's really exciting. Just one thing about the book. Don't forget, Becky, that when it's published, you need to sign up for the public lending, right? Oh, yes, yes. Extra pocket money there. Absolutely. Every penny helps in the creative world. Last year I earned 50 quid for books that I've worked on years and years and years, years ago that had my name on the front cover. Just because people are taking them out of the library, it's like money for nothing. It's lovely. So, yes, sign yourself up for that. Yes, yeah, definitely. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Becky. That's been really, really lovely to talk. I just want to wind up by saying that this lovely live stream which has worked really well today, almost first time, it worked one and a half hours. I had my tech support son sorted out for me beforehand. Yeah, well done, Felix. Thanks for that. So this has been live streamed using Riverside, which is what I use to record all of my podcast episodes. If you're interested in doing any kind of live streaming video audio recording, have a look. Use the link in the show notes here. That's a little affiliate link. So if you do sign up for a paid account, then I might get a little bit of money. I've also got links down here to Buzzsprout, which is the people that host my podcast because they're super duper as well. And you can find a link to Becky's page@creativityfound.co.uk in those notes as well. So you'll be able to find out everything you need to know for the future and start mosaicing. Thank you so much, Becky. Pleasure. Thank you so much much, Claire. It's been brilliant. Thanks so much for listening to Creativity Found. I hope you enjoyed this episode and gained some value from it. If you did, perhaps you'd like to contribute a small monetary sign of appreciation either by becoming a regular supporter from as little as $3 per month using the link in the show notes. Or if you are listening on a value for value enabled app such as Fountain, TrueFans or Podverse, feel free to send a few sats my way. I also occasionally promote products that I personally use, so please use the affiliate link where relevant if you are buying from those fine companies. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.