How do you want to grow this year?
Leading with Curiosity // The GUT is growing!
Hello, my friends around the world.
Just a quick note of appreciation for you, GUT members and readers. Being part of a group of creative, caring humans feels like essential right now. Like an anchor in a storm. Some people have a ton of close ties, some have a lot less. If you are reading this, you have us. We may be far from one another, but jump in the chat and you’ll see how close we feel. If you’ve been wanting to subscribe to the GUT but feel timid, just jump. We’ll catch you (and
will greet you!) As always, if you’re experiencing financial hardship, reach out. We offer scholarships. No artists left behind. ❤️Quick look back at looking back
Last week was our 5 year anniversary! (Woot woot!!) I asked subscribers to share your all-time favorite lesson or assignment. And friends! Whew! The chat is overflowing with drawings and stories, each one is a heart-sweller.
I want to highlight one particularly moving contribution from long-time GUT member: Nancy Spiller.
Nancy lost her home in the Palisades fire. In the chat, she shared, “My collection of decorated boxes was consumed in the flames, but because of the GUT prompt to draw your collections and tell a bit of the story… I have these drawings. I am grateful my beloved boxes continue to live on these pages.”
Gorgeous drawing, boxes, memories and…. artist. You. Thank you for sharing, Nancy. We’re so sorry for your loss. Art supplies from the whole GUT community are on their way. ❤️
New GUT Growth 🌱
A few weeks ago we meditated on growth and change by drawing branching patterns. This week we are excited to share a little GUT manifestation of that drawn meditation. Big things are happening.
The GUT Grows!
I teased this in an earlier dispatch, but the GUT is expanding into a new physical studio space in Emeryville, CA. In addition to being my art studio and the GUT HQ, it’s also a community creative space where artists will be able to teach workshops, host creative gatherings, come for life drawing classes, and much more. Photos and deets on events coming soon.
We’re also adding an awesome new editor to our GUT team: Candace Chen. Candace is a historian and educator as well as a longtime subscriber to the GUT. She’ll be helping me with research, outreach to artists, all that fun stuff — and contributing her expertise to our kids non-profit, DrawTogether Classrooms.
Welcome Candace!!
30 Days of Drawing 2025 Wrap Up
A reminder for members that 30 Days of Drawing lessons and assignments will come down at the end of this month. We will continue to keep the rest of the GUT lessons open and available in the GUT archive. Members can always go back and access hundreds of art lessons and assignments anytime. ❤️
On on the topic of growth, let’s get onto this week’s lesson and assignment:
Growth as Transformation: Drawing Nature with Maria Sibylla Merian
Maria Sibylla Merian (1647 - 1717), a German naturalist, botanical artists, and scientific illustrator was one of the first people to ever document insects with drawing. She used drawing to carefully observe transformations in nature and to transform her own life.
Born into a creative family (her stepfather, an artist, taught her to draw), she began by drawing flowers; a more common subject for women in her time. But her most famous illustrations involved metamorphosis, specifically caterpillars becoming butterflies and moths.
At age 13, she was already observing this transformation among silkworms she raised at home. Other artists and scientists mainly studied dead, preserved specimens, but Maria dedicated herself to studying living creatures, observing how they grew and changed. (This was super unusual for the time. Back then, people believed insects were born out of “spontaneous generation.” They thought flies just emerged suddenly out of dirt or dead animals!)
By following her curiosity and using drawing to look closely at the world around her, Maria uncovered relationships between insects and plants that others overlooked. She wrote, "They make one alive through the other."1 She published her first volume of natural illustrations at just 28 years old, and changed the way people understood and experienced the world around them.
From Curiosity to Adventure
Many wealthy Europeans of the time collected “curiosities” to decorate their homes, including natural specimens brought back from the colonies. Maria was eager to see these insects in their original environment. But the price to travel to her dream destination, Suriname, was out of her grasp. And no woman had ever taken a voyage like this before. But that didn’t stop Maria.
To afford the trip, she worked hard to sell hundreds of her paintings to fund a trip for her and her younger daughter. This was 1699, a full century before Charles Darwin. At the time, a woman taking a journey for scientific curiosity was unheard of, let alone financing it herself. But at the age of 52, she made it happen.
When she arrived in Suriname, she made a beeline to find Indigenous and enslaved women (aka the real experts) to learn from, asking them all about local flora and fauna. She also learned about how they were treated by the colonists. She rebutted their treatment by crediting the women with their knowledge and documenting their oppression. This drawing and documentation was Maria’s own form of protest.
in 1705, Maria published her findings as a spectacular collection of drawings, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium. (It was released by Taschen in 2009, and you can get a copy through your local library.) In her publication The Marginalian, the inimitable Maria Popova called the book, “a time-capsule of groundbreaking, gender-norm-defying achievement.”
Maria’s story reminds us of the value of slowing down and paying attention - and all the immense possibilities before us: how we can grow and change, what we can do and be… if we just follow our curiosity.
And draw it.
And with that, I offer you this week’s drawing prompt. It’s inspired by Maria’s adventures: