Nicole Landreth, Sunshine, is an artist and a creative entrepreneur.

Curiosity and creativity are inextricably intertwined in my life, it’s basically how I navigate and process the world and my experiences in it. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been an artist. I’ve always sought expression by getting my hands dirty, getting lost in the flow of the process, and creating something that expresses some sense of movement and balance.

Growing up, my favorite and probably most influential person in my life was our family babysitter, Martha West. She introduced me to literally my two favorite things in the world: art and cats! As much as I connected with her as a child, I don’t think I could have comprehended the influence that this early introduction to the art world has had on my life. When I was in third grade, I learned about the Creative And Performing Arts program in my local school district from my best friend, and I knew I had to audition. These two influences set the foundational stones in the cobblestone path of my journey towards accepting and honoring myself as an artist.

When you grow up a creative person in our society, you’re always taught and told that you better have a backup or “actual” skills. It’s the most demoralizing and repetitive message that every creative soul gets beaten over the head with in our hyper-capitalistic, consumeristic, and materialistic society. Whether it was dancing, or painting, or singing, or fashion design, or literally making fabric with string, I was constantly being haunted by the idea that anything I create MUST be marketable or my art is not worthy, and thus must be relegated to the realms of hobby and not something I could ever “realistically” develop into a career. This narrative misguided me for a long time, as much as I internally fought against it. Once graduating high school, I accepted that making would never become a career, so I sought an academic career.

I earned a BA in Psychology from University of IL Springfield, with a double minor in Visual Arts and Women & Gender Studies. In Springfield, I spent half my time studying and the rest creating art and music with a diverse and talented community of fellow creative and curious people. This time period was transformative for me. It taught me to listen to and believe in myself, and to trust my creative energy.

This unofficial creative collective combined with my intersectional and interdisciplinary education, crystalized a deep appreciation for complexity, perspective, and nuance- in art, in social problems, in personal growth and development. My artwork, handicrafts, and written work reflect a balance between deep reflection and an eternally optimistic search for joy.

Even still, I spent years trying to find what my “acceptable” and “realistic” career path would be, keeping my creative expressions as something I knew I needed for sanity, but couldn’t do anything else with. I spent a year in Chicago working in a community psychology research center, actually even finding a group of creatives to house-mate with, but I still felt like I wasn’t allowed to pursue my art in a serious and committed way. I fell into a pretty destructive pattern of neglecting myself in so many ways. This year started a several year stretch of me giving myself to everyone but myself, while I was merely going through the motions.

In 2017, I was about to turn 30, and I felt that pressure. WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE NICOLE?! I kept screaming at myself. I beat myself up a lot about not having tangible success in anything I’d every done. “What have I been doing with my life and my time?” “Do I have passions worth anything?” I got really down on myself for the first few months of that year.

This is when I finally picked up my sketchbook again, after 5 years of not even looking at one, because I felt like a fraud and a failure. I started building on the miscellaneous, meandering doodles that I made on scrap paper while on the phone, getting really into zentangles as a way to just get my fidgets out. Patterns became a space where I could play creatively, without the pressure of a blank canvas in front of me, and also a reminder of how much I missed mixing paint and blending colors on a canvas. When my friend asked me to babysit her middle school-aged daughter, and include some kind of art time together, it was like something finally unlocked. I touched brush to paint and to canvas again and I felt what I had been missing since my college days. Mandalas started taking over my sketchbook and I decided it was time to take them to a canvas.

I created a series of 27 mandalas on canvas panels in varying sizes, plus one large one on a stretched canvas that took me months to create. It all just flowed out of me. So I started a website to try to sell them, but I had NO plan. Trial and error, and lots of feelings of being an imposter and not good enough became my cycle for the next few years. I mostly created more of these mandalas here and there, but also started branching out into playing with watercolors, learning about alcohol ink, improving my hand lettering skills, and started getting back into macrame.

Eventually, Be Sunshine became Art + Life by Sunshine, and finally Art Life Sunshine as you know me now today. I am not a brand, I’m an artist. I do not produce, I make. I build. I create. I learn. I improve. I reflect. I evolve. That’s the core of Art Life Sunshine.

In February 2020, I participated in the Female Energy Art Show in my hometown. I connected with other artists and makers, and reconnected with a few wonderful makers and artists I had lost touch with over the years. I left this event feeling energized, inspired, and ready to commit to myself and my art. In April 2020 I joined the 317 Art Collective as a resident artist. The was right in the beginning of the madness that 2020 has wrought, and although I moved a lot of my materials into the studio relatively quickly, it honestly took me another couple of months to start working and making there. I basically went through the whole mental and emotional rollercoaster that I had gone through from 2012 to 2020 again, but on hyperspeed, eventually lighting my own fire under my ass again and started working more in the studio. In September I moved out of the main studio and into my own private studio at the collective. And I’m never looking back.

Joining the 317 Art Collective has not only given me a space to work, but I also gotten a chance to connect with other artists and creatives again. I missed my people while I was disconnected from myself. I am endlessly grateful for the opportunity to work and create and connect with the collective and the community. Many events are still mostly virtual, but we’re present and committed to making and sharing and inspiring art in our community. It’s beautiful to be a part of art and to express the art in me again.