5 Questions for Marloes de Vries
who is currently trying to charter a new creative path for herself
At the age of four, Marloes de Vries (39) decided she was going to be a painter. Five years on, she added being a comic artist to the list of her future achievements. By now, Marloes has achieved both and plenty more, but her journey to creative success was not without its challenges and detours.
Having gotten into art school at the age of 18, her teachers told her that she couldn’t draw. As a result, she buried her dreams and focused on graphic design for several years, until she found herself growing more and more unhappy in her career as an art director. She decided to leave the advertising agency she was working for and began freelancing - as a graphic designer at first, then gradually transitioning to illustration.
For the past fourteen years, Marloes has been working as a full-time illustrator or visual storyteller – as she calls herself. She has worked on 30 + books as well as countless other illustration projects. Her comic Lotta appears weekly in the children’s magazine Tina and has also been bundled into six comic books.
During the pandemic, Marloes finally found some time to start painting again and she has since become well known for her love of #pinkskies which often feature in her paintings. She recently published her new book Kinderen Krijgen Is Optioneel (Having children is optional).
1. You are living your dream. You are doing precisely what little Marloes wanted to do when she grew up and yet, you had a burnout recently that you talked about quite openly. What do you think of this idea of Do what you are passionate about, and you will never work a day in your life?
Having a burnout taught me it’s really important to check in with yourself and not hold too sternly to things you think you want to do, just because it was your dream once. It’s okay to change course because you change as a person.
What I didn’t know as a child, or even when I was 25 and starting out as an illustrator, was that it’s not just drawing and painting whatever I want all day. I’ve been mostly running a business with a bit of drawing for the past decade or so. I learned that I love running a business, so I’m lucky in that regard, but in order to pay my bills I had to work too many hours than was healthy for my body and mind. Eventually, working too many hours combined with not having any time to create things I wanted to create, burned me out. What the burnout taught me is that it’s not about the job description per se (because being an ‘illustrator' might sound fantastic to others) but if what you do actually aligns with what you want to be doing. I thought being an illustrator was the be-all and end-all, but I wasn’t mindful enough about the kind of work I was doing.
The quote you mentioned makes me cringe a bit. I don’t think it’s a bad thing per se to not love your job, but the key is to have a life next to it that you enjoy. A job can be a means to an end, it can pay for your passion.
I don’t think it’s healthy to always make a job out of your passion, as it can create a situation where there’s so much pressure on making money from your passion, that you lose the passion you once had.
I’ve had that with illustration: There was a period when I genuinely hated drawing because it reminded me of work and the stress it involved. Elizabeth Gilbert has a great way of distinguishing between hobbies, jobs, careers and vocation.
It’s also a privilege to be doing something you’re passionate about. Imagine everyone doing what they’re passionate about. I wonder if people would still be picking up garbage for a living; if we’d have cleaners and other essential workers. Listening to people in those professions you’ll hear that it’s not about what they do, but what they can do because of their job. It pays their bills so they can be with their loved ones, make trips, or treat themselves to a nice meal.
You can make your life about your job, or you can make a life because of your job. Big difference. I’ve done the first since I was young, and I’m now ready to do the latter.
2. Looking back, can you point to the things that caused your burnout and do you now know how to avoid it happening again in the future?
I’ve had a burnout before and for me, it’s still difficult to truly know how to prevent it. I realised during the pandemic of 2020 that that pace of life suited me much better. Less social pressure, quieter surroundings, less work. Going back to our ‘normal’ pace again, I couldn’t keep up anymore. I think it was inevitable for me to burn out. The long working hours meant I had very little time to do things I wanted to work on, while I actually need to create things I want to create.
At the moment I’m re-evaluating how I can make my work more sustainable for the years to come. I’d like to spend more time on my own work, combined with more commercial illustration work. I’ve been doing that for the past few years and that niche suits me better because the people are nice and I can pay my bills with it. If I can pay my bills with the kind of work I love doing, that would be perfect of course, but I also like to be realistic.
3. Instagram has created this illusion that artists can (and should) create a perfect, finished piece of art on a daily basis. For many, this has led to a fear of experimentation and an absence of playfulness. Could you share your thought on giving yourself permission to create ‘shitty art’?
It’s essential to create shitty art because you learn ten times as much from failures than from perfect outcomes. If every piece you create has to be perfect, you won’t allow mistakes, which means you won’t make progress. If everything you do has to be perfect, your expectations might stand in the way of starting in the first place. Keep your expectations low.
Dedicate a sketchbook to messing up and don’t show it to others. It’s just for you, a place where you can experiment and develop. These days, sketchbooks are seen as final products for many artists, and I love the work people are creating in there, but I also feel that the pressure has gone up.
If you want to develop and find your voice, it’s key to have a place where you can experiment. My sketchbooks are mainly for playing and figuring out what and how I want to be drawing.
4. You started building websites at the age of 14 and have been on Instagram since its very beginnings in 2010. That is to say, you’ve been at the forefront of technological changes and have also embraced a lot of the developments early on. Now, of course, there is quite a significant new development looming on the horizon. How do you feel about the emergence of AI, particularly regarding art and creativity?
I think technology is very useful when it’s a tool that makes us better as humans. The internet has made a lot of things easier but I’m not certain it has made us better as humans. At first, the Internet was great, you could connect easily to others, look up information, send emails. But with the growth of the internet, the dark sides got bigger too. It’s the course of any technological advancement: at first it’s good until it gets bad. And it’s hard to go back once something is unleashed.
When AI is used in an ethical way and used to detect cancer, diseases, or to make us connect as humans, I think it’s a useful tool. But that’s not what it’s used for in a lot of cases. Zooming in and looking at AI used in the creative business, I think it will do more harm than it will good in the long run.
AI is not meant to create art but to avoid making art. We are so used to seeing final products, like books with words and pictures, paintings, and other art, that we might forget that there’s a long process before that. When some people realise it takes time and effort to create something, they rather avoid that because as humans we mostly get a kick out of showing the end result and being praised for that. That’s why AI is taking a flight in the creative business: it’s getting your dopamine fix without doing the work (or paying for the work for that matter). But learning is in the process, not in the end result.
Art has always been a way for people to deal with difficult feelings or matters, or to solve complex issues. It was always meant to connect people to each other. The end result is not what fixed them, but the process. By going through the process of making art, you learn a great deal about yourself, about others and the world. AI is exactly doing the opposite. Imagine taking the process of making art away: people will learn absolutely nothing. Relying on AI to do your thinking will stagnate your development and minimise your autonomy. Because you don’t have to think, it will also mean you don’t have to consider others or an audience, which will make us less emphatic as humans.
I don’t think it can be stopped though. As long as AI makes our lives easier and gives us dopamine kicks in the short run, we will take for granted that it’s bad for our humanity in the long. Humans in general are not wired to look much further than what they need right now in this moment.
I get it at some level: if there’s a tool that is allowing you to appear a lot smarter and go beyond what you can think of yourself, it’s tempting to use it. But I’m not interested in the remix that AI makes based on a digital database of several human experiences. I’m interested in the personal experience that makes a person who they are and the way they translate that into art. I appreciate heart and soul in art, and that’s not something AI is able to do.
There are people saying that you shouldn’t fear AI because it will never be able to replace humans. But it’s not a matter of ‘can AI replace humans?’ but: ‘will we let AI replace humans?’.
5. Imagine yourself five years into the future. What advice would Marloes from 2029 give today’s Marloes?
I always have trouble imagining myself several years into the future because I never know what’s going to happen. But I can say now I do intend to start living a life that aligns with my own values instead of trying to please others. I hope future-me would reassure me that it will all be okay, as long as I put ‘living life’ first for a change. What works for me is to think about what I would say on my deathbed. I don’t think it will be ‘at least I’ve made all my deadlines’, ‘I’ve made so much money’ or ‘I’m glad I worked so hard it nearly killed me’. I think that in the end, it’s just about living your life, spending time with people you love, having experiences that make you happy and doing things that bring you joy.
Connect with Marloes
Website - marloesdevries.com
Instagram - instagram.com/marloesdevee/ and instagram.com/marloes.studio/
Substack - marloesdevries.substack.com
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I loved this interview, the recognition that stepping back allowing what makes you tick in a singular sense was really inspiring. Also enjoyed Marlowes belief that AI is not about creativity but rather it’s a way to avoid the messiness of the humanness of making art.