Jo Davis: Artist, Writer, Speaker,
Coach and Entrepreneur
Jo Davis is based in Texas and you can find out all about her at https://www.skysoulart.com.
TSM: Thank you so much for interviewing for Talent Spotlight Magazine. It’s great to have you in it.
JD: I’m excited to be part of it.
TSM: What inspired you to get into art/photography? Tell us a bit about your artistic background.
JD: Interestingly, we all have these hidden talents that we were passionate about maybe when we were a kid, or in middle school, high school, college and then life happens. We become moms, have a car payment, have a mortgage, become a partner in a relationship, and we end up exerting our energy in all these earth responsibilities. So, we forget the parts of ourselves that are creative. I’m a firm believer that creativity is linked to the Divine. If you want to problem-solve something going on in your life, in your business, professionally, personally or in a relationship; if you can plug into something that you can get lost in then you can immerse in some degree of creativity. People all the time say, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body. I’m not an artist. I’m not a singer.” I don’t believe that. It can be gardening, being in a space where you’re singing in the shower, it can be anything that you’re exerting creatively. So, what ends up happening is if you can plug into that creative thread, I think that creative thread is God stuff. It’s where you can effortlessly problem-solve, and then what ends up happening is you lose yourself in it, and then you get done. Then all of a sudden you have these great ideas and revelations.
So, I have put photography on the shelf for years because we were really poor growing up. I would never in a million years dream of asking my mom for a camera, I have these cheap disposable cameras. One of my earliest childhood memories is when I dug into that playful, meditative space where you go, what have I forgotten about myself? What have I left by the waive sides that I need to reconnect with, which wasn’t part of my spiritual journey. Photography was one of those things, and one of my earliest childhood memories is the very first picture I ever took. It was with a disposable camera, and the sun was bursting through the back of a basketball board, and the sun was bursting through it and I was just fascinated with that. That was one of my earliest, creative childhood memories.
When I teach this course, Big Mess to Big Magic, what I’m teaching people in your intuitions and your gut; if you’re blocked up, if your red phone to God is real staticky and fuzzy, and you’re walking through life imagining that there’s something behind this veil that you’re missing. You know something is going on around you, but you can’t quite put your finger on it, that’s outside of yourself, or connected to your higher power or whatever. One of the quickest ways to reconnect and plugin, get a clear signal and intuition, and nudges and whispers are to reconnect with our creativity. It’s healing, it regenerates ourselves, it helps us put all of our worries to the waive side. You know it puts us in a space that’s surrender and openness.
TSM: What is your process for creating a piece of work?
JD: In the past, what I’ve done is commission projects where I go into cities and shoot the flavour of that city, the flare of the city. Say a company has like three or four offices in that city and they want those offices all filled with original art, and they want it to expressively be about their city, the pride of their city, and the flare of their city. Then I would go in and shoot all the main lively places, and then after basically sit in front of a computer and edit it to look like art.
TSM: What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?
JD: Just the details, being organized, labelling pieces, dumping them in the computer, all the details that aren’t fun.
TSM: When did you get into writing? And can you recall your very first piece of writing?
JD: One of my earliest memories of writing was actually in seventh grade. I had a very strict English teacher, and she had given out an assignment on creative writing. I wrote the assignment, and I was really proud of it, and she gave me an F because she said that my mom must have written it. She didn’t believe I wrote it. So, we ended up with a parent-teacher meeting because she didn’t believe I did it. My mom was like, no, that’s what she does. She is a writer. So, I knew at that moment it was very uncomfortable and I was so embarrassed, and I felt attacked. She was really tough, and I remember thinking, what a beautiful thing that I have a teacher who thinks I’m lying because it’s that good. That was a wake-up call for me to go, wow, I should really honour this gift. I should keep writing cause if an adult doesn’t believe I wrote this, that’s interesting.
TSM: If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
JD: Write every day.
TSM: What inspired you to get into coaching/speaking?
JD: About five or six years ago, I had always been on this spiritual journey. I always understood something else was going on around me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, it was important. I always felt like I didn’t see the world as other people did. I always felt these intense, intuitive nudges, and I would know things and there was no way I could know them. I would sense things, and I had no clue that certain topics existed. I had no puzzle pieces, and no access to that and stuff that would just get dropped in my lap, whether it would be dinner with friends and I would just feel this urge to bring some topic that made no sense. I would bring it up and then the other person would say, oh my gosh, I’ve been really wanting someone to talk to about that. For years I locked down that part of myself, that intuitive part of myself because I didn’t know how to manage it. It was just overwhelming.
About five or six years ago, I lost this great, corporate job. Just went to work and gone. All the friends that I worked with, who I thought were really my friends and my soul sisters. I felt like I showed up for them, and I was a good friend to them in a lot of different ways. When I lost my job, they all disappeared. I realized that they weren’t really my friends, to begin with, so why was I so emotionally invested in these relationships? And why was I so hurt when they didn’t fulfill my expectations? My lesson from that was that I wasn’t being the best human I can be by showing up for them, you know not expecting anything in return. I wasn’t being the best soul sister or girlfriend to them because I was putting out energy to show up for them, and help them, and be generous with them. After all, I really wanted this girl tribe in return. Well, You don’t show up on the planet giving for the sole purpose of getting. It made complete sense to me looking back at that very unfortunate situation that I wasn’t getting what I needed in those relationships in return because I wasn’t giving from the right place in my heart. I was giving with expectations. So, when I lost this great job and all these girlfriends, I said, “Okay, how do you get the thing you want in your life? How do you manifest the relationships and the friendships you want in your life?” First of all, you have to be that. You have to be that rock star, awesome, feminine, Divine Goddess, girl power, lift a sister up girlfriend. You show up in that space, then you just keep showing up, and you just keep putting it out in the world, and eventually, the people that are meant to connect with you are going to find you because you’re doing it for the right reasons. So, that was a really eye-opening experience for me, and that’s when I created Lift A Sister Up because I didn’t have a safe space. So, I wanted to create a safe space for others and for me to be that person that I want to attract and then becoming that person, all these amazing rockstar women have been showing up in my path, and these amazing friendships and these high-quality, incredible world thought leaders, best-selling authors, etc started showing up.
TSM: Tell us a bit about your Big Mess to Big Magic course.
JD: The Big Mess to Big Magic course came about in this way. I had been to conferences, studied and taken courses in person and online, and probably read a hundred books or more. I probably studied with at least ten to fifteen people, the world thought leaders of spirituality, people that have been on Oprah, and taking classes/ courses from them. And trying to really understand and connect with my soul, my gifts, and my spirituality, and recognize all the things going on around that we don’t see, but we can feel. Through experience, I learned to tap into an inner peace that maybe I didn’t need to spend so much money travelling worldwide following all these people. I found that if I could condense how I got from chaos to this space of Divinity, intuition, nudges and whispers, then I would have the ability to recognize, feel, sense, hear and pay attention to them because they’re happening to all of us frequently. Then I could help people tap into them more quickly, which can shorten their learning curve and help them tap into their gifts. So, that’s where Big Mess to Big Magic came from, and the biggest thing is that we all have this intuitive gift, and we don’t pay attention, and it causes us a lot of pain and heartache in our lives. I think we make our lives a lot harder than they need to be because we’re not paying attention. If we can clear that red phone and static out, and be intuitively connected, then we’re floating in this whole other space of existence that should be effortless and not this hard.
TSM: What artists/writers have had the biggest impact on your art and writing?
JD: I love Jen Sincero because she talks and writes how I write in my head. Just raw, real, direct, it’s got this fluidity to it. She’s not uptight, it just shows up.
TSM: If you had the power to do something in the world today, what would it be and why?
JD: I think it would be great to have a place where people can publish articles, anyone that enjoys writing can publish something, and it would come up on a platform that’s relatively effortless and not complex. A real simplified publishing space.
TSM: What is one of your favourite quotes (or lines) that inspires you?
JD: “Fear is a liar” is a big one.
TSM: Anything else you’d like to share?
JD: I see a lot of people struggling unnecessarily, and it’s hard to watch. I think there’s a handful of courses out there that are really, really powerful, and the people get to the ending and go, “that course changed my life.” I would say the Big Mess to Big Magic course is a life-changing one, even if it wasn’t my course, and I can say that because I don’t believe that course was me. I believe that course ran through me, it showed up for me and it was something that was divinely gifted to me. Every single person that has gone through the course has come out the other side changed. I hope that people out there find something, if not this course, something similar to it because there’s no reason to make our lives harder. We’re meant for prosperity, joy, health, wellness, amazing friendships and relationships. We get in our way and we make it so much harder than it has to be. We’re not meant for struggle.
TSM: Thank you so much again for doing an interview, and all the best to you in the future.
JD: Thank you for having me.
