18. “Color is My Happy Color”, with Maggie Mitchell

Maggie talks to us about how becoming a mother has changed her creative process, her love for color, and why all things visual make her happy.

Show Notes

Maggie Mitchell is a stay at home mom who was an elementary school music teacher in a past life. Following the birth of her daughter, Maggie stopped teaching. This choice opened her up to many different possibilities, including professionally and creatively. To Maggie life is interesting. Every day is different.

So, what makes Maggie happy? Color. Looking at what she describes as beautiful things. Asymmetry. Small details. Maggie tells us she is an observant person and often sees things that others don’t. She feels happy when these details jump out at her. Almost like they’re telling her she’s exactly where she needs to be.

Although she uses her other senses—she loves to listen to music and feel textures—Maggie says all things visual are what move her. She likes seeing the smoothness of the ocean and the grittiness of the sand and later imagines how it feels.

Maggie has always been interested in making, decorating and arranging things. In her home, nothing can be permanent. She has a penchant for change, looking at things in a different way both literally and figuratively. (She’s always evaluating visual change.)

Does Maggie enjoy creating for herself or for other people? It’s not that she is over creating for others, but she’s allowing herself to make things at this point because it makes her happy. When she decorates during the holidays, for example, she makes sure to decorate the way she wants things to look. Interestingly enough, she says people enter her home and immediately sense that her decorations are an expression of herself—warm and inviting but still fun and full of color. She equally enjoys experiencing other people’s creations and seeing how their personalities are expressed in their work.

“Things don’t have to be enormous to count.”
Maggie Mitchell on @thehappypodcast
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Becoming a mother has definitely affected the creative process for Maggie. She feels as though she has absorbed her children into it and it has become something she can use to teach them. Especially when it concerns her daughter, Maggie uses creating things as a way to show her there is no limit to expressing herself creatively. She can use all the materials she wants, however she wants. In the end, it just matters that she is expressing herself.

Maggie goes on to express how difficult it can be to finish a project when you are a mother. She compares it to running over hurdles and not touching the ground afterwards. Therefore, the little things she can accomplish make her happy. They have taught her to appreciate the small things even more.

Let’s revisit why colors make Maggie happy. She likes using color to express herself, especially in her outfits (Her favorite is chartreuse). Before her daughter was born, not knowing she would be a girl, Maggie and her husband painted her nursery with lime green and navy, adding pops of red throughout the room. This was their amazing way of using neutral colors. Maggie simply hopes to use color as an echo of her mood and what she sees around her in nature.

Maggie is the happiest when she is with people and her happy place is the beach. Her happy food is something very bad, like brownies and doughnuts. For more on Maggie, you can follow her on Instagram!