Soul-Creative Coaching
For artists and creative people finding their way back to their own art life.
You already know how to be creative. You've made things. You've learned your craft. You've had ideas, followed inspiration, taken risks, perhaps even built a career around your creativity.
But somewhere along the way, your relationship with your own art may have changed.
Maybe you haven't made anything just for yourself in a long time
Maybe you're making work, but the joy or sense of discovery has gone missing.
Maybe you're stuck in perfectionism, self-judgment, comparison, or the pressure to make something worthwhile.
Maybe you've been so busy being a therapist, healer, designer, business owner, parent, partner, or professional that your own creative life keeps getting pushed to the edges.
Or maybe you're entering a new chapter and wondering:
What does my creative life want to be now?
You don't need another class. You may need a thoughtful companion who understands both the creative process and the inner work of returning.
How we work together
Our work begins with where you actually are.
We might:
- Look deeply at the paintings, poems, clay work writing, designs, or other creative work you've made--and notice what's emerging.
- Uncover the meaning, questions, and possibilities that reveal themselves through your work.
- Explore the fears, inner critics, and old patterns that interrupt your practice.
- Create boundaries that protect your creative time and energy.
- Find the next artistic step when you feel stuck or uncertain.
- Shape a creative rhythm that fits the life you're living now.
Sometimes the work is about making art.
Sometimes it's about making space for art.
Sometimes it's about letting go of an old identity, trusting a new direction, or learning to see your work--and yourself--with new eyes.
I won't tell you what your work means or what you should make.
I'll help you look more closely, listen more deeply, and discover what you already know.
The inner work of returning
Creative blocks aren't always about time management or technique. Sometimes what interrupts us is fear. Sometimes it's an old story about being good enough. Sometimes it's the habit of putting everyone else first. Sometimes we've simply lost the ability to hear our own creative voice beneath all the noise.
This is where coaching and creativity meet.
We can pay attention to what happens in your body, your emotions, your imagination, your relationships, and your creative work--and use all of it as information. Not to fix you. To help you come home to yourself.
A creative life for this season
I don't believe you have to recreate the creative life you had at 25, 35 or 45.
The question is not: "How do I get back to who I was?"
It's: "What wants to come alive through me now?"
Together, we can discover what that might look like--and how to give it a real place in the life you have.
Who I work with
I especially love working with:
- Artists who have lost touch with their own practice.
- Therapists and healers who spend their days holding space for others and long for a creative space of their own.
- Designers and creative professionals whose professional creativity has left little room for personal expression.
- People in transition who sense that an old creative identity no longer fits and something new is asking to emerge.
You don't have to know exactly what's wrong.
You don't have to have a clear goal.
You just need to sense that it's time to begin listening again.
Working together
I offer individual soul-creative coaching for people who want a deeper, more sustained relationship with their creativity.
This is not just about becoming more productive.
It's about becoming more available—to your imagination, your intuition, your own way of seeing, and the part of you that still wants to make something.
I would be honored to be your companion in that return.
Julie offers coaching packages and breakthrough individual sessions.
Contact Julie for a complementary coaching session or for more information.
“Six months ago, my relationship to art was something that only lived in the past. And now it’s alive and the thing that is shaping my life — a calling that’s being answered. It’s so much more than I thought it could be or would be. I have a confidence and trust in myself that has a depth and reach that goes far beyond art making.
THANK YOU, JULIE! It’s been so amazing. More than I could have known to ask for!"
Anne Levine, Taos NM
Working with Julie
“Julie cracked the door open for me when it was locked. She has a unique way of drilling down to one’s direction with their art. What I wanted to grasp was a way to express my emotions through painting. I am not an artist, but painting had helped me express something inside that needed to come out. I relied on Julie to help me reveal and find a way to express my inner self through abstract intuitive painting. She never told me what the next step should be. She has a beautiful method of prompting self revelation.”
Donna, Port Townsend, WA
“When I started working with Julie I was busy and quite happy with my life. The part that was missing that I was longing to make more art. The creative part of me was barely alive, which was weird, because I had gone to art school and had been running a gallery. I wanted to work with Julie because I couldn’t understand why I was never getting to my art projects. There was just a glimmer of me as an artist, lurking in the shadows of my perceptions of myself. The artist in me was just a small part of my person.
What has changed due to our partnership is that I have fully owned who I am and what I am meant to do with myself. With Julie’s help I changed the belief system I had in place for myself. I learned how to access that internal (creative) drive and listen to and be guided by that internal voice. Now, I feel like I’m living fully as an artist. Me as a person and me as an artist feels very integrated.
Julie is awesome to work with! She is honest and funny and is able to pull forward what most needs to be addressed. Her encouraging voice lingers with me in between coaching sessions.”
George Hodges, San Francisco CA
“I had always defined myself as a professional artist since graduating college 40 years ago, but in 2012 I took a sharp career turn and laid my paint brushes aside.Last year, I made the decision to return to my art and carved out a schedule to once again enter my studio. But try as I might I could not get my creative engines going.I was riddled with voices that sabotaged my enjoyment in art making to the degree that I began to dread my studio time and subsequently became frozen. It was crystal clear I needed help. I found Julie Claire’s website on a random google search and I now know it was divine intervention.
Initially I was wary to open up to someone I barely knew with my artistic log jam and that fragile vulnerability sat heavily on my chest as we began our journey.But what I discovered is that with Julie’s skills we were able to sail through the murky waters with a level of ease that surprised me.Julie taught me how to parse and listen to all of the various voices in my head, both supportive and critical – and to really hear what each aspect was wanting.Instead of a paralyzing cacophony of muddled distraction I was able to distinguish the voice of the critic, the scheduler, the inner artist, the muse, the doubter, etc.And in honoring these various aspects of myself I came into awareness of the innate wisdom in every voice. And even more important, with Julie’s help, I cultivated the ability to negotiate my way back into a liberated relationship with my creative life.
One of Julie’s superpowers is her ability to ask questions that pierce through the fog and inspire new insight. Because her intuition is so on point, the process moved with a light speed I could not have imagined.She also helped me create a gentle structure that served my reintroduction, and hold a more playful focus so that in time I began to delight in entering my creative space. Julie is a brilliant coach! “
Lindsay, Taos NM
“For me finding the type of “work” you do was like finding someone in a foreign country who speaks the same language you do. There is an immediate deep breath and relaxation when that happens.
Specifically, I love the way you keep the mood informal but have a deep focus and ask such interesting probing, thought-provoking, motivating questions. For my temperament you allow me to speak and give healthy pauses in our conversations.
Over the years I have created my own definition of a professional or expert. Someone who can relatively effortlessly come along side another and meet them “wherever” they ARE. beginner; intermediate; advanced. You do that.”
Eric Cornwell