Tala Schlossberg

A quiet Brooklyn street. A studio tucked inside it. Light coming in sideways.

Tala stands in the middle of her space, surrounded by pieces in progress. Paint. Paper. Screens. Little fragments of time frozen mid-thought. Nothing here feels precious. Everything feels alive.

Creating, for Tala, is not a career move or a finished product. It is how she moves through the world.

Most people know her work through animation. But animation is only one language she speaks. Her practice spills across mixed media, collage, painting, writing. Whatever tool helps her say the thing she is trying to understand.

She talks about making the same way someone might talk about breathing.

Creating has always been her way forward. A way back, too. The same feeling she had when she was five years old, sitting on the floor making things without a plan. No outcome. No pressure. Just curiosity and motion.

Everything that happens to her while she is working ends up inside the work.

Conversations she overhears. Things she passes on the street. The way a day feels in her body. Each piece becomes a record, not of what she planned to say, but of what it felt like to be alive while making it.

There is no separation between life and work here. They bleed into each other by design.

When Tala talks about pushing her style, she does not talk about references or trends. She talks about surprise.

She knows that the moment she overthinks a big project, anxiety creeps in. The future gets loud. Expectations start to crowd the room. So she doesn’t start with answers. She starts with conditions.

A blank canvas. Two colors. No judgment.

She lets herself make something purely based on feel. How one layer sits on top of another. How the materials respond. She removes the idea of failure before it ever enters the room.

“I really try to remove the lens of failure from the actual artwork that I make.”

For her, a victory is simple. There was nothing. Now there is something.

That shift alone is enough.

Still, even with all that clarity, doubt finds its way in. It always does.

There are moments when she feels untethered. Unsure of where she is going or why she is doing what she is doing at all. In those moments, she does not look outward for direction. She turns inward.

She writes.

Writing becomes a way to guide herself back. A way to hear her own voice without interruption. On the page, she remembers the agency she has over her point of view. Over her story.

“You get to write however you want about it. It’s actually your story to tell.”

For Tala, writing is not separate from her visual work. It is part of the same practice. A way of taking ownership. Of being the reporter of her own life.

That idea carries through everything she makes.

She wants people to look at her work and recognize something in themselves. Not imitation, but permission.

To see her filter and realize they have one too. To understand that making things is not about mastering a medium. It is about showing the world how you see it.

She practices that every day. Quietly. Consistently. Without spectacle.

And when she invites us into her studio, into her process, into her field trip, it does not feel like a performance.

It feels like an open door.

A reminder that creation does not have to be loud to be powerful. It just has to be honest.