Welcome to my podcast Creative Momentum with Meg Dunley where I interview creatives about their process, routines and inspiration.
Season 1: The Chateau Season
This first season of the podcast, The Chateau Season features creatives I interviewed during my writing residency the Chateau d’Orquevaux Artist and Writers Residency in France. The episodes feature writers, filmmakers, visual artists, verbatim storytellers and more. Each episode gives you insight into the creative mind, taking you behind the studio doors to hear about process, routine, inspiration and wisdom. These pocket-sized episodes are to encourage you on your creative pathway.
Episode 6: Diane Rakocy, Intuitive Artist and Painter
In this episode, I speak with Diane Rakocy. She’s an intuitive artist and painter from Chicago. I met Diane at Chateau d’Orquevaux in July 2025. She has great philosophy about art mirroring life. I think you’ll enjoy this episode.
Diane works from her home studio and she’s developed a fascinating technique where she paints the negative space around subjects, like flowers, rather than painting the subject itself. And she just lets the light emerge by painting the darks around it. I love how intentional she is in her approach with her energy.
She starts each painting by writing words on the canvas that represent the energy that she wants to bring through in the painting, whether it’s for herself or for a client commissioning it. Her process is so organic and beautiful and intuitive and it creates beautiful messy under layers that are just what makes her work so beautiful. I hope you enjoy this interview.
Interview transcript
MD: Hey, hi Diane. I want you to start just by introducing yourself with your name and where you’re from.
DR: I’m Diane Rakocy from Chicago in the USA.
MD: Tell me about what your creative discipline is or disciplines. What are the kind of things that you do creatively?
DR: You mean besides painting or just painting? I love to cook but I have a studio in my home and I’m pretty disciplined about painting I’d say three or four times a week. But I also love anything creative. I love cooking. That’s a big big part of my life, food. I don’t know, just give me any creative project. I feel like that’s true for most artists.
MD: Talk to me about your creative process. What does it start with? How do you grow it?
DR: Well, this is probably a good example because I’m at different stages in all these paintings but I generally start with words on the canvas and that’s like represents what kind of energy I want to bring through either in a painting or in space. If someone asks me to do a painting, I ask them what kind of energy they want to bring in their space and I just so believe it. I usually meditate on that word or words and actually literally write them on the canvas and then I just start by making marks like that one over there that I just throw paint on, make different marks using different colours, different styles and then I step back and kind of see what’s there and for me I’m really inspired by nature so I a lot of times start with flowers or something.
I also, you know, I mean I’ve been known to find elephants and birds and everything else but I guess my process is more about painting the negative space around to bring the flower to the surface as opposed to painting the flower. Which I can see. Yeah, so what you do is paint the darks, right, and then the light comes out.
Yeah, I see and I really like it because I like seeing all the underpainting underneath it and I think that’s what gives it depth and I really love the idea of art and life and how they correspond and so I see that all the time in my work and it’s like you start with a blank canvas, you don’t know where you’re going, you just try different things. Some things work, some things don’t, some things are a mess, some things are beautiful but it’s like that process of bringing it all together and finding something beautiful in it and which is also why I like the negative space because you’re not, you know, it’s like you have to really look and bring all that out and it’s all that messy under layers that I think is what makes it beautiful, you know, I think that’s the best part. I leave it, I use transparent paint so you can still see the underpaintings just like I think in life if we cover everything up we’re not so interesting for what we want.
MD: Great analogy.
DR: So yeah, that’s kind of my process.
MD: Yeah, tell me, you touched on this just a moment ago about your routine, so tell me about what your creative routine is.
DR: You mean like my daily routine?
MD: Like how do you do it?
DR: So I don’t do it every day but I try to, I’m trying to be more disciplined about it. I’ve been known to, you know, clean my kitchen when I have something that important to do. I have historically been a procrastinator but I’m really trying to be disciplined and sort of block time now and I’m best in the mornings so I get up, if I, it’s a good day for me if I get up, have my tea, do my meditation and paint like till midday and then do something, go for a swim or whatever but I just, I don’t really have a set schedule I have to say because sometimes I like to get up and go swimming in the morning and then I come back and do my work but I’m in a group right now that’s it’s the art of business and part of that group is painting every day or really getting this and it’s really been great for me because I feel like when you paint every day or the more you do it, the better you get just like anything and, you know, I think I’m, you know, there and then suddenly I learn something new and just informs your paintings. So, I guess in answer to your question, I don’t really have a set schedule, I mean, that I could advertise that I stick with very closely or it changes every week.
Usually what happens is I start at Sunday night, I look at my week and I’m going to paint on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and get these other things done here and there but week by week it changes, yeah.
MD: Excellent and if you were to have a conversation with someone who is early on in their creative journey, what piece of wisdom would you want to give to them?
DR: Well, I said the best piece of wisdom I got was take as many teachers as you can and you eventually find your own style because I think often what happens is you take a class, you paint like the teacher and then, you know, but then you take another class and somebody paints really differently. I think that’s a really important part and I also think what I’ve learned is that feeling of painting within. I started out by painting photographs and was very, staying within the lines and I was really good at it, rendering a photograph exactly the way it was but when I, my painting switched when I learned to within, like from within, like without looking at something else, just you, like I think oftentimes I get stuck on a painting but there’s always one next step, okay, I’ll just do, I’ll just make purple dots on this until I can figure out what’s next. It’s just like that following that, listening to your gut, following the one next step to end up with something but I, yeah, I think a lot of times people stop too early and I think, yeah, that listening to my intuition is huge.
MD: Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much, and yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Is there anything else that you want to share with creatives in the world?
DR: No, I’d just say, I mean, I like, I believe everyone is creative and I think it is just, it just moves your life forward in such a beautiful way no matter what kind of creativity you do, no matter what it is, but yeah, I think it accesses that part of your brain that we just all need to do, so. And I love that you’ve touched on, you know, even cooking.
MD: I know, yeah. You know, creativity comes in so many different forms.
DR: Yeah.
MD: Not just the most beautiful paintings.
DR: Yeah, I guess I’m a, I journal too, I guess that’s a form of creativity.
MD: Absolutely.
DR: Yeah.
MD: Thank you.
DR: You’re welcome.
I really hope you enjoyed that interview. I love Diane’s energy and her wisdom, and you know, there was something that she said about how, you know, learn from many teachers and by doing so you learn your own style rather than just getting stuck on copying one teacher’s style or method, and her insight about how there’s always one next step when you’re painting or writing, even if it’s just some purple dots, or, you know, for writing it might be, you know, just creating a richer layer. Her analogy between art and life is beautiful and powerful, and, you know, from not knowing where we’re going, trying different things, some working, some not, and just finding beauty in bringing it all together, and, you know, covering up everything to make it all the same just makes it less interesting, and so that’s partly why she uses that transparent paint, just to let those under layers shine through.
I think there’s a great metaphor in there about creative courage with just trying not to stay within the lines, but to see what else can happen and to trust your intuition and listen to your inner voice rather than just copying what you see outside yourself. I wonder what you could take from that this week about your intuition for your own creativity.
Could you listen to your intuition a little bit more and see what that is trying to tell you?
Please do like, subscribe, follow, and share this so that more people can see Diane’s beautiful work and more creatives can learn from the other creatives that I’m interviewing in this podcast.
Connect with the artist
Diane Rakocy, Painter
* Home town: Chicago, US
* Website: https://dianerakocy.com/
* Socials: Instagram, Facebook
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