Summer Toler 10/17/23 Summer Toler 10/17/23

Reconnecting with Nature through Plein Air Painting

There is nothing more healing than a deep connection with our natural world, especially in this modern society that requires so much energy to maintain. I’ve struggled with a multitude of different health issues throughout my life, both physical and mental, as I’m sure so many of you can relate. Throughout these struggles I’ve experimented with a lot of different healing modalities, but nothing has had as profound or as immediate of an effect as time spent in connection with mother nature. Mother nature has taught me that health is earth embodied, and the more time I spend in healthy outdoor environments, the better I feel.

Summer Toler 12/7/22 Summer Toler 12/7/22

How to Build Trust with Yourself

In February of 2022 I decided to embark on a challenge - 365 days of art-making. The goal was to spend at least 15 intentional minutes per day in the creative process. I’m proud to say that I’ve made it to day 309. One of my main motivators for taking on this challenge: building self-trust.

Summer Toler 11/15/22 Summer Toler 11/15/22

Four Life Lessons I’ve Learned as an Artist

At times in my life when it seemed that everything around me was draining my energy, making art was something that gave energy back. Putting a paintbrush on the canvas, a pen on paper, or stepping onto stage helped me tap into the creator within me. Knowing that I had a tool that could help me move from anxiety-ridden, chronically-stressed, and incredibly sad to feeling alive and inspired has pulled me through so many difficult times and has given me a reason to want to live.

Summer Toler 10/14/22 Summer Toler 10/14/22

What if You Embraced Your Anxiety & What Happened When I Did

What if you could embrace your anxiety instead of meeting it with resistance? What if instead of adding dread to the anxiety, you could add compassion? How would that change your mental state?

With rising anxiety and a strong desire to move into a more balanced mental state, I started asking myself these questions. I wasn’t sure if embracing my anxiety was the best choice, but I decided that I would experiment with this idea of embrace for a few weeks, and in this video I’ll share the ups and downs of what that looked like. I’ll also be turning an ugly, abandoned, and abused canvas into something beautiful, in the spirit of embracing the uncomfortable.

Summer Toler 9/21/22 Summer Toler 9/21/22

6 Tips for Moving Through Creative Blocks

Being an artist is an extremely vulnerable thing.

Your insecurities, your fears, your traumas, whatever it is, they're going to show up if you're exercising your creative energy because you're going to need to access your life force, otherwise known as your creative energy. The more that you access this, the more that you're going to start to feel all the little ways that you hold yourself back from that vital energy. This manifests as what we know as “Creative Block.”