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Nell Merlino

@nell.merlino

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Everybody has been watching Dolly lately. I have too.

What stopped me was not the rhinestones or the songs, although both are perfect. It was the clarity. She knew early. She knew what she looked like, what she sounded like, what she stood for, and she never once let anyone talk her out of it.

Most women spend decades waiting for permission to be that clear about themselves. Waiting to feel worthy enough to say: this is who I am, this is how I want to look, this is what I am here to do.

Dolly just decided. And she kept deciding, every single day, for over 60 years.

That is the work. Not the hair and the nails, although those matter too. The work is deciding that you are the most important audience in your own life. That how you see yourself is the standard. That your own clarity is the goal.

She showed us what that looks like when a woman actually commits to it.

Learn the step-by-step process of making a self-portrait, no art experience needed. Join my community to learn the process. Link in bio. by @nell.merlino

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3 days ago

We all know that feeling. Looking for a nod, a word, a sign from someone else that we are doing the right thing. That we are enough.

I do it too. I am not above it.

But here is what I keep coming back to. The approval we are searching for outside ourselves is something we already have inside. We already know what we are good at. We already know what we are capable of. We have just been taught to doubt it and to look elsewhere for confirmation that was always ours to give.

The work is not finding approval. The work is remembering that you never needed to ask for it in the first place.

Learn the step-by-step process of making a self-portrait, no art experience needed. Join my community to learn the process. Link in bio. by @nell.merlino

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5 days ago

This is still more true than most people acknowledge.

In exhibition catalogues published between 1936 and 2016, the female self-portrait represents less than 5% of the works discussed. Five centuries of women looking at themselves and deciding what they saw. Mostly ignored.

That is why this work matters. Not just the portraits I paint. But every woman who picks up a brush or a camera or a piece of paper and says: this is how I see myself. This is who I am.

For generations, women have been defined by how others see them. I invite you to see yourself differently.

Learn the step-by-step process of making a self-portrait, no art experience needed. Join my community to learn the process. Link in bio. by @nell.merlino

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7 days ago

Dolly Parton has never once apologized for knowing exactly who she is.

That kind of certainty does not arrive on its own. It is built. Slowly, honestly, often painfully. Through the hard work of deciding that your own voice matters as much as the voices telling you to be smaller.

Some of the most powerful women alive are still waiting for permission they will never need.

You do not need fixing. You need witnessing. Someone who has spent 30 years helping women find language for what they already knew.

Learn the step-by-step process of making a self-portrait, no art experience needed. Join my community to learn the process. Link in bio. by @nell.merlino

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10 days ago

That voice in your head that says you are too old, too late, not good enough, who do you think you are.

I know that voice. I call it the critical voice. And it has been talking to women their entire lives.

Here is what I have learned after 30 years of working with women. The goal is not to silence it. The goal is to stop obeying it.

When you learn to hear it for what it is, not the truth but just a voice, something shifts. You start to see yourself more clearly. You start to take up the space you were always meant to take up.

That is what the work is. That is what the portraits are. That is what the coaching is.

The critical voice has had enough airtime. It is your turn.

Learn the step-by-step process of making a self-portrait, no art experience needed. Join my community to learn the process. Link in bio. by @nell.merlino

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12 days ago

I sat down with Traceable earlier this year for a conversation about art, women, and what it means to be seen.

We talked about why I started making portraits. About the fact that men who won battles were immortalized on enormous canvases, and women who built movements, raised families, and survived everything were mostly not. I needed that kind of honoring in my own life. That is how the portraits started.

We talked about AI and who is in the room when it is being built. About the fact that most images of women still come from perspectives that are not ours. Artists need to be in those rooms.

And we talked about what gives me hope. People want to express themselves. They want to understand themselves. They want to be known. No technology changes that.

Full interview at Traceable. by @nell.merlino

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14 days ago

For much of history, women were the subjects of great works of art but rarely the artists behind them. They appeared as muses, saints, wives, and symbols. Their stories interpreted through someone else's eyes.

When a woman decides to paint herself, she is making a claim. I am here. I look like this. This is how I see myself. That claim has always been political. It has always been brave.

She did not recognize herself at first. Then she did. That is the moment I paint for.

Learn the step-by-step process of making a self-portrait, no art experience needed. Join my community to learn the process. Link in bio. by @nell.merlino

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17 days ago

I was sitting alone in an empty apartment. No furniture. No decorations. Just ended my 25-year marriage. And I was asking myself whether I needed plastic surgery.

What came to me instead was this.

Creating an image of myself that was full of beauty, power, and a historic context that reminded me of how much I matter in the world. That moment changed everything.

Four years later I have made hundreds of portraits of women. And I have helped dozens more learn to make their own. Not because I wanted to teach photography. Because I discovered something that no retreat, no conference, no motivational moment can replicate. The portrait stays with you. You remember what you saw when you made it. And that memory holds you to what you know about yourself when life gets loud again.

I hope you will join me in making yours very soon. by @nell.merlino

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19 days ago

Amanda Gorman said this on one of the most watched stages in the world. And it was not a platitude. It was a direction.

The next chapter does not begin with certainty. It begins with one honest conversation. With someone who will sit with you in the uncertainty and help you find your way through it without pretending the path is clearer than it is.

The woman on the other side of this crossroads is not a stranger. She is you. Slightly less afraid.

Learn the step-by-step process of making a self-portrait, no art experience needed. Join my community to learn the process. Link in bio. by @nell.merlino

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21 days ago

Every self-help book tells you to love yourself. Very few tell you how.

And meanwhile everything else is telling you the opposite. Fix this. Improve that. You are not quite enough yet. The noise is relentless and it has been since we were girls.

I spent years thinking about this. About why women know intellectually that they are worthy and still cannot feel it. About what it would actually take to shift that.

What I came up with is a methodology. A way of making a self-portrait with your own hands that shows you something you have never quite been able to see. Not just how you look. But the full weight of who you are. What you have survived. What you have built. What you have given. All of it, on a canvas, looking back at you.

Women who have done this tell me it is the first time they have truly seen themselves.

That is what I am here to teach. Learn the step-by-step process of making a self-portrait, no art experience needed. Join my community to learn the process. Link in bio. by @nell.merlino

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24 days ago

Cindy Sherman built one of the most celebrated bodies of work in contemporary art by making herself the subject, the artist, and the muse. All at once.

There is something that happens when a woman stops being looked at and starts looking at herself. The camera captures the surface. The portrait goes underneath.

You have never looked at yourself the way someone who loves you looks at you. That is what a portrait can do. It shows you what everyone else already sees and what you have not yet allowed yourself to believe.

Learn the step-by-step process of making a self-portrait, no art experience needed. Join my community to learn the process. Link in bio. by @nell.merlino

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a month ago

Dr. Amanda Hanson wrote an entire book about this. About the version of a woman that exists before the performing, before the shrinking, before the accommodating.

She calls her the Muse. I have been calling her the true self. Different language, same woman.

You do not need fixing. You need witnessing. Someone to sit with you while you stop performing long enough to remember who you actually are.

Some women come to me not knowing what they need. They leave with language for what they already knew.

Learn the step-by-step process of making a self-portrait, no art experience needed. Join my community to learn the process. Link in bio. by @nell.merlino

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a month ago