Jivan Lee, Pt 2 - Why, Landing in Taos, Following the Inner Compass, Working with Galleries and more

Hello out there.

You're listening to Horizons, a series of talks with the people who make, collect, and present artworks representing the American West.

I'm George Irwin.

Before we get started today, I'd like to ask you for a favor. If you could, please leave a review for the show on iTunes. It makes a big difference in getting the word out about the show. Also, if you can think of anyone who might like the show and you can send them a link, that would be great too. Thanks so much. Hey everyone, I'm George Irwin with Western Gallery, and thank you for tuning in. Today we're going to have the second half of my interview with Javon Lee, who is currently showing at Lew Allen Galleries in Santa Fe. It's got an incredible show with several of the pieces that we discussed up in that show right now. Definitely worth checking out if you're in the area. If you're not, check out his website or find him on Instagram, and I'll put some of those links here in the show notes. Also, this fall at Western Gallery, we have two shows coming up, and they're going to be amazing. This first one in October is all Texas women that are just fantastic, and you're going to love their work. That opens on October 2nd. And, um, I just— I got the idea for this because I noticed when we did New Western Talent a few months ago that a disproportionate number of the artists in that show were Texas women.

It was something like 20%.

So I thought it would be a perfect match for me to do a show featuring Texas women because I am from Texas and I am a woman. Actually, no, I'm not a woman. But, you know, they don't get enough love in the art world, so I thought that it'd be a great opportunity. So we're gonna do a show called Texas Women, October 2nd. Through close to the end of the month. Then in November, we've got a show called Taos Today. I'm working with the Taos Arts Council on this show, and it's an open call for all Taos residents and galleries to submit work. Right now, it's a tough time for galleries across the nation with COVID happening and people not going out and buying art, and so this is put together as a way to get some of that exposure from across the internet and across the world. Fort House, a historic art city, their galleries are suffering right now just like everyone else, but they're a little less accessible than a lot of places that are located in big cities. So Taos Today opens on November 6th. The call is open right now, so if you know a Taos artist who should be represented or a gallery there that you'd love to see some of their work in the show, please let them know they can apply to be in the show online. It will be a curated exhibit. It's not just going to be anything goes. I'm going to take a look at all the entries and the pieces will be in line with the aesthetic that I like to show here in Western Gallery. Please check us out in November for that, and I'll try and do some artist interviews.

We'll have some artist talks.

We'll do some events around it, and I hope you enjoy it. You said you were going to hang out with me. I am, buddy.

I am.

You wanna come say hello?

Hi!

Do you have anything you wanna say to everybody in the world?

Hi everybody! Hi everybody in the world!

Good job.

Alright, so anyway, I don't know what I was saying. Something about Taos today. You're gonna love it. Have Taos at your fingertips. That's it for now. I hope you enjoy this episode with Jiwon Lee. We start to go off the rails a little bit and talk a little more about life and what it means to be an artist. And you get the full story, I think, on how Jeevon ended up in Taos. So I hope you enjoy it. I'm George Irwin, Western Gallery.

Peace out. Deuces.

WG. I don't know how to do it.

We're going to try it. I'm going to learn one.

Okay.

I'm like, I'm in a very sort of philosophical, reflective sort of mode. So I can just—

I love that though. I mean, I think that's—

whatever.

Aside from seeing things, that's what art is, right? It's like looking at things and talking about what they mean. Yeah.

Yeah.

What's your daily life like as far as like— I love this question. Well, and also this kind of ties into, I mean, to a different thought I had, which is maybe tell me like what it's like now, and then let's talk about how that has changed since you became a father.

Yeah. Um, It's highly variable really. And that's again, this thing about uncertainty and the unpredictability of painting. You know, for me, why, you know, I paint paintings and then people look at them and I oftentimes never know who looks at 'em or what happens and I never even hear, you know, it's this mystery box of something I hope good happens, right? I usually can pay my bills and, you know, feed my family and that's really a blessing in its own right. And you know, the rest is a personal process for me as an artist that I spend my time doing this mostly. And then I get public shows and I get to talk to people. But so much of being an artist is a personal endeavor, you know? It's a particular path that's very distinct from, say, my other careers of consulting and meeting with people and doing a lot of socially mediated work. The art process, its social dimension is pretty discreet. I mean, not discreet as in hidden, but specifically defined. Right, right, yes, yeah.

Separated.

Yeah, and so my days are mostly just me trying to figure out what is the clearest voice I'm feeling. It's weird to put it that way, but the strongest pull, where am I hearing and feeling the biggest inspiration, what spontaneously is rising is a question that dominates a lot of my time before I go to a location to paint. So if I wake up in the morning spontaneously at 4 in the morning and I'm just searing thinking about this river scene and the and I just wanna feel the sunlight on my skin, that's a visceral thing that drives my decision for the day. With a baby, that doesn't happen as much.

Yeah.

Talk about how it's changed. You know, I had freedom to wake up at 3:00 AM and be exhausted at 2:00 in the afternoon and just show up at home and take a nap and no big deal. And Clara came from grad school and, you know, it's no big deal. I was tired and whatever, but that's not so bad. So now, you know, there's a little bit different cadence because if Briar's been up, whatever, if my daughter's been up all night or for a little bit of the night and I'm real tired in the morning, I'm not getting up in that way, you know, different things and what's come up. But the fundamental question still remains that question, that sort of goal of trying to find what is most potent, you know, whether that's in the studio, like right now, all these photos that are up on the wall, I'm not in a mode where I'm going on location and feeling like I have to be painting this right now. And I better not try to force that. If I try to, if I think because there's an amazing thunderhead that usually I would be so wanting to paint, but today I'm just kind of like, wow, that's really cool. And that's it. Nothing else. I better just let it be nothing else is something I've been working hard for. So that's why there's a bunch of photos on the wall right now that I've taken where there were these moments that got my attention, but I couldn't stop. Sit and paint them. And so I'm trying to work through what they're about because they're disparate. You know, there's the main ocean with some boats in a harbor. There's a tree trunk. There's a blurred out picture of a ponderosa tree at a famous ranch in New Mexico that I was doing a commission of. You know, when I took the photo, there's a dilapidated old New Mexican building of some sort. I don't know. You know, pink and white, blue sky, yellow bottom. Yeah, I think that could be a 4-color painting. You know, it's like a abstracted down painting. And so whatever's going on, this is the sort of, um, riddle. Interesting, you know, right now. And so my process these days is just sort of looking at this riddle and going and getting other practical stuff accomplished while I have space. When it's a big work push, you know, it's working around my daughter's child care schedule, and in that condensed time finding what the— you know, I used to feel like I had a certain formula of what I needed. I'll say this before I go down any further of I need time and space to figure it out, and I need a certain amount of studio time, and I need it to be 9 to 5 because I have to work like I'm supposed to work. And yes, there's a lot, you know, this rule book that really was kind of like hitting me in the head from behind and hurting and not helping me actually discover what worked actually for me. You know, it's kind of like thinking that because there are a certain kind of art material or a certain easel that every person is using, that, right, that you should be using that easel. You know, I use some studio easel on location. I don't know any other plein air that does. But man, is it absolutely the best solution for me. I love it. It's— I can beat the hell out of it. I have a reason. It fits in my truck perfectly. Like, it's adapted to my life. And so trying to, to continue that, ridding myself of a certain type of inner dialogue that wasn't suiting itself to the moment well, and instead was this kind of preconceived idea of what the moment should do to suit to this preconceived idea, is like a reversal of what's I feel to be the most functional way for me, right? So a lot of, a lot of my time now is, is adapting in light of having a family life and that being one of the most essential ingredients to my well-being as a right person, but also I think honestly is my artistic well-being. It's, you know, it exists within a continuum. And so being an artist isn't like I'm, you know, I don't, I don't like the notion of being an artist and then being a jerk somewhere else and not having art I'm making be coming out of my life and my life coming out of the art I'm making, you know? So there's some continuum there. And so I try to make space to do the farmstead part of life because if I'm out there working the acequia system in northern New Mexico, you know, this water distribution system that's like thousands of years old, I get to relate to the land quietly and I'm not sitting there worrying about, you know, some issue with a, you know, contract or some show that's coming up. I just imagine just watering grass and watching grass grow and hearing my chickens, you know, do their thing. Or these types of palate cleansers and gear shifts, I think, are what, uh, for me, my opinion is empower, you know, empower and fuel better artwork in the long run, even though I don't necessarily get as much done as quickly as I would like in those times.

Well, I'm sure like that creates space for you to think and for ideas to occur.

Yeah, I mean, maybe this is obvious to people listening. I don't know, man.

No, no, no, I'm just—

I mean, you're putting it so simple.

I'm understanding it out loud.

Yeah, yeah, well, exactly. And I realize, like, everybody says all the stuff that I, like, learn in my process quietly half the time has been said a bajillion times. Not new, you know. I'm not in the thing.

It's what you're— what you're saying though is is true in that everybody has to learn it through their process, right? And sometimes, uh, when you hear it from somebody else, that helps you to understand something you've been doing, even, even if it's been said a thousand times before.

Doesn't mean you heard it, I guess. Yeah, like, you know, people told me all sorts of stuff, but it's like, until it's in your bones— that's the blessing of it, I think. Once, once you feel it in your bones, then probably it's, it's, it's yours. It's a part of you in a special way that stays more solidly.

Yeah.

But it also is sort of a bummer when like you read some book and they were talking about something like 20 years ago. Yeah. Oh God, could I just please have heard it then? I would have saved me so much time. Yeah, totally. So I realize it's like all this stuff just becomes kind of, you know, like take care of yourself, don't get too stressed out just because something seems bad, you know, something better is going to come around the corner, you know.

It's like it just—

but it's so true. And within the personal path, you know, it's like I got, you know, I'm painting paintings, I'm not doing something— I think about this in the art critical realm. And like, in terms of commercial success and critical success and personal success and my own measure of what is valuable, you know, I'm painting oil paintings and that's not exactly revolutionary. It's been done for a very long time. And really a lot of our critical practice, as far as, you know, what I follow and am interested in, has moved on to all sorts of other media. Yeah, it is interesting in my opinion to be doing something so analog in such a digital age. I make— it's a very deliberate choice. It's part of my philosophy as an individual and my philosophy of of art making and what it is to share art in the world, that, you know, the deliberate turning and slowing down. And even though my process can be frenetic, you know, the analog quality of a physical material. And, you know, I've been using— oh yeah, my iPad lately, experimenting with that as a way to get really quick notes when I'm traveling, because I can't do oil painting with the family in the same way as I could at one other— and other points. And so my iPad has been something about like, well, I just want, you know, like, I need study, I need visual notes, I need stuff in my— and to bring back to my studio to be able to do something that has breath and life that, that approaches what I feel and achieve on location. And so the way I collect that information, I've, you know, there can be these ideas again that get in the way of what is really functionally the best. And so I realized that I was getting in the way because my iPad was digital. I didn't want to try it. And, and I'm realizing, yeah, you know, it's another way that I'm just getting my own way because What I need is, is something that is really facilitated by this digital thing. And my painting practice exists in this digital time. It exists in the social media realm. It exists in this world and grows out of it and is it in some way, despite being so old-fashioned in other ways. And that contrast to me is an integration that, you know, I'm interested in seeing happening beyond art. I mean, you know, in the social realm, this integration between what is what is valuable in our current world and what is not is a lesson that I've been thinking about because I've been having to wrestle with this question in the framework of making a painting. You know, it's this, you know, specific thing that arises in painting that has sort of a general application I find that I'm interested in exploring beyond painting too.

To move away from the philosophical and jump in there, are you like—

are you all right? We were asking—

are you doing like a practical question? Oh no, yeah, that's okay.

What about my look like?

Well, no, yeah, so finish answering that. I'm, I'm, I've moved on from there now, but, um, the digital sketches that you're talking about, are you using like Procreate or—

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I saw a bunch of artists on Instagram using Procreate. I was like, what? Okay, I have an iPad and I, I'm, you know, from doing digital photography and I've been using Photoshop a lot and, and pretty proficient for 15 years, you know, in Illustrator and other stuff and graphic design stuff. So I'm capable. It's just I, I paint paintings because I don't want to be feeling the electric hum of this device, you know, and I go out on nature nature because I don't really want to be tied to my phone. And, and, you know, I, I, you know, there's an act, there's an act, there's a rebellious quality to it that I feel like I want to rebel against the something that I'm a part of and I don't fully want to be.

Well, there's some, like, there's something about being out in nature away from the digital world that, uh, creates like space to breathe, I think. Sure. You know, because the digital thing is ever-present, and I think creates a little bit of anxiety for everybody. Yeah, a little bit. I mean, and then so you, when you bring— yeah, so when you bring the, uh, the digital into the natural experience, maybe that, you know, makes sense to me. There would be some, a little bit of reservation about that.

Yeah, well, sure, you know. And, and, and I really want to do more watercoloring again, and there's reasons, like, it's just also accepting life logistics. To just briefly circle back to that question of what my life looks like This adaptation and looking at life logistics between my family and me and how to be a whole human as part of my effort as an artist means that there are things I have to adjust that I wasn't expecting to and wasn't wanting to. Procreate, I saw on Instagram a couple artists I follow that were doing really interesting stuff. I was like, I can tell it's from an iPad, but I love what they're up to. So I gave it a shot and such a trip, man, to have like a predefined, you know, old brush be one of the personality brushes.

Interesting. Yeah, I've never, I haven't tried it out. Ah, it's a trip.

You know, I mean, it's an amazing thing that the programming intelligence that went into it is marvelous. I mean, it's just a marvel. Um, and still I absolutely found myself sitting there, you know, because I've been practicing so that by the time I take my next trip to the ocean, I'm on point and I can get really well-done work no matter what my medium is, right? Just good work that's deeply looking at the moment and relaying that is my main goal. So I don't care how I get to it, let me get to to that is the— what I— the endpoint now of this whole process. But yeah, Procreate, man, the, the, the, the brush packs that are in there and all the textures and stuff is just such a trip. You can put down this thing and it looks like an oil pastel, and it really looks like an oil pastel, you know. Like, you have to go real close, and you get real close, and it still looks like an oil pastel, you know.

Incredible, huh?

Um, and also artifice in a way. That's interesting, you know. It's another layer of filter and artifice on top of something physical. And I don't know if artifice is actually the correct word, but it's not an oil pastel, right?

I think I understand, like, the play that, like, you're using something so contemporary mimicking—

and it's this weird meta mind trick.

Yeah, an old style of an old medium. You're using a cutting-edge medium to mimic an old style.

Yeah, I'm using my pen stylus to put down an oil pastel mark that I can vary the size of anytime I want. And again, just snap and undo anything that was messed up.

It's crazy.

And also so helpful for it, for learning so quickly, because all of a sudden I'm looking at— and I did multiple layers on a recent piece, and I saw how I think artistically broken out into stages in a way I've never once ever been able to break out. I would have had to do 5 different paintings and compile them, which I've done in certain ways, but you can't— not with simultaneity, simultaneity, you know. I'd have to be painting on glass and constantly flipping back and forth. In the case of the iPad, I I don't have to do that. And I can see— I, I was blown away at some of how I structured things visually, and I had never comprehended that that's what I was doing. And it was so exciting because what I want to do is now go back in the studio and do a giant painting that's just one layer, because it was such an interesting moment of the creation, creative process that I didn't get to pause and see. And, you know, I'd be sad if I missed out on that opportunity. You know, I thought about how David Hockney's exhibit at the I don't even know whichever one. He's had, you know, these recent large solo shows and retrospectives, but one of them had a big, a large number of iPad-based paintings and artworks that were in this show in addition to, you know, a variety of other media. And I, I take guidance just from what his attitude over the last, you know, chunk of decades that he's been working at such a high level of incorporating giant TV screens and doing a, you know, 20 flat screen presentation of a painting that's in a flat screen TV world next to a, you know, 25-foot oil painting that he did, you know, and then adding this component of the iPad. And I've been thinking about, I don't know the answer yet, I'm just wondering how can I take some, like the sketch I did yesterday of a thunderstorm out of my, at my house, how can I take that and translate that into a tangible artwork that has the feeling I'm looking for as a tangible artwork, you know, but might be able to be an archival print? Or would I have to do some other printing process and alter it by hand? You know, there's all these questions creatively that are interesting to introduce into, you know, the evolving studio practice that I've— yeah, so yeah, that's another component of the day as an artist, sort of surprising oneself and seeing what happens with a new, new tool that you can't figure out. And, you know, I didn't want to not try something just because I was uncomfortable with what it is. I'd rather very much understand it deeply than just categorically.

That's cool.

An idea.

I think that's an interesting insight, to be able to learn, like, from seeing your layers happen, and to be able to learn that fast, like we were talking about with the photography experience too. That's— that seems—

it's so unique.

Yeah.

And I don't know what, what it— what translates to for me yet as an oil painter right now. And I, you know, but it's such a unique element of the process that allows something new to happen. I don't know what yet.

I was asking about like daily routine or whatever. So when you go out into the field, like, um, do you take like a a bag of hard-boiled eggs that your chickens laid.

Yeah, sometimes.

I don't know.

Just, you know, to fuel sort of for the day. Yeah. So, so yeah, I mean, um, hard-boiled eggs are a part of our life. The chickens lay great eggs. So yeah, it's delicious. Uh, a lot of times I don't find my, you know, I'm not fueling up a ton of food throughout the day. I have some friends who own an organic, delicious food bar company that's local to Taos. And so their, their bars are a big part of my life. That's just because they're great sort of simple food that I can eat and, and not have, you know, the meal be the central focus of my day, because breakfast and dinner are pretty important in our household. Wake up, have breakfast, come to the studio if I need to pick up stuff. Usually I try to have my setup prepped ahead of time so I don't have any excuses to change direction, because it's not easy to want go on location and have to set everything up and go through it.

Makes sense.

An effort that's uncertain in its—

yeah, I mean, that's a serious undertaking, I think, just probably having all your gear and getting it, yeah, getting it ready to go and getting it set up ready to paint.

Yeah, I mean, it took— you know, I've upgraded my setup along the way from the 1989 Toyota Camry to a '94 Nissan Pathfinder, and I would sling paintings in there and I had a little more space that way. And then eventually I got, you know, my pickup truck, and this is sort been the most effective setup for me so far, where the back of my pickup truck is a mobile studio and I have custom shelves that I can slide in and out that allow me to bring, you know, 15 panels on location if I want.

Or it's like a Jolly Green Giant's pushcart box on wheels.

Yeah, right, right. Yeah, yeah, you know, and it's— and it's so— I mean, it's such an interesting combo. Clara had the— my wife had the idea to put an Australian outback, you know, canopy that people put on their outbacking vehicles in Australia on the back of my truck. And you see them around, you know, in the US with these more sporty sort of outdoorsy Jeeps and pickups and stuff. So I have that on the back of the truck that gives me about 8 feet of shade and protection from the weather. And I have to roll that out, set that up, weigh it down, because I've had it blow off and break. I've had even weighed it down, you know. So there's things like that that need to be set up. All in all, these days I can get set up in about 15 minutes if I really have to. And I've actually kept things clean. Wow. Which isn't usually what happens.

So how do you deal with that when you— I mean, being out there, these giant pieces, weather happening, how do you deal with all the environment getting into your painting?

Yeah, well, sometimes paintings get blown over and broken, other times they don't. I weigh them down, I have bungee cords and clamps and stuff to sort of deal with the circumstances of a day. I have umbrellas for shade if it's not too windy, if If it's too windy and I can't put an umbrella up 'cause it breaks, which I've done way more times than I like, then I have to park my truck in a certain direction. There's a lot of, again, constant adaptation depending on the day, the weather, what I think's going to happen, and as well as what is happening at that moment.

A lot of like prevention?

Sure, yeah. I mean, yeah, I've learned through trial and error. For better or worse, but losing a lot of paintings and realizing kind of again what works for me was to use my truck as a windbreak rather than trying to buy a van and be in a van out in the wind. I'd rather be out in the wind but have my truck be the windbreak so that I get more of the feeling of being on location because that's what, what I get most energized by, um, you know. And then the back of my truck, the tailgate and stuff like that, has a, you know, I pull out these storage boxes, these, you know, under-bed kind of plastic bins that I can slide out as if I were pulling it out from underneath the mattress, except it's underneath my painting storage. And that allows me kind of to quickly— if it's, you know, because a lot of times I'm painting a thunderstorm that is pouring down somewhere and it's going to be fast or it's going to be on top of me fast. So not only do I, you know, need protection from the elements, I also have to have something that works quickly. And it took a while to figure out what's the fastest way, which is why I have multiple multiple storage bins around. I have one in my studio, or two in my studio, and one in my truck, or two in my truck, so that if I used one and I, and I'm on my way home and something else is happening that I really am inspired by, I want to be able to not have some excuse like, oh, I have dirty stuff, I can't do anything else. I want to have the opportunity to make the most of what I'm doing and, you know, be able to get out of my own way in some ways.

So are the, uh Are the baby wipes part of your personal—

absolutely, totally key. And they existed far before the baby.

I was gonna ask, is that something you just figured out?

Baby, because I go and buy boxes of baby wipes. Um, yeah, another key for quick cleaning, you know, and also, um, yeah, primarily quick cleaning. They just, they do a really good job of cleaning up brushes quickly, and they do a good job of wiping off silicone spatulas. So I generally try to buy a biodegradable plant-based baby wipe doesn't work as well for cleaning stuff off my hands. So then I have some other, you know, one that cleans paint off my hands. But my tools, you know, I try to segment because I try to do whatever I can with compostable plastics or whatever else that are not so bad, maybe.

Yeah.

Um, and baby wipes are key, really. You know, I don't use turpentine. I'm a solventless kind of practice. So pure paint, the alkyd medium is about as gnarly a substance as I use.

I was wondering about that. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's not— then theoretically it's not so bad, but any paint company, anybody will tell you that there's not a lot of testing on this stuff, so you never quite know. You're just better to take precautions. So I have gloves and, you know, the whatever, the liquid stuff that you rub on your hands that, you know, artists use to protect their film. And to normal just gardening gloves, honestly, is what I use. So my hands, I have dexterity in my hands and can really move my fingers. Huh. Um, yeah, so little, little things along the way. The main thing I found is really is just trying to do my best to not let myself get in my way, you know, not be able to, you know, like say, oh, it's just, I just, my palate's not clean, so I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go out today, right? I'll go to the studio and just do something that's easier because, you know, there's that get up and go that, that can sometimes be tough, and it's kind of counterintuitive because it's not like the inspiration by itself is what carries the day. Then there's some sort of disciplined follow-through that is essential.

That's what one of my questions actually, uh, made a note of before coming in today was like, was where, where did you develop that discipline? Like, because that's one of the things I think, one of the things that I think is, is obvious about your work is like you're really consistent about going out and doing it and not letting a snowstorm, you know, stop you from going out that day. Yeah, and that's definitely some kind of commitment, right?

Yeah, I don't— I mean, I, I, I don't feel tremendously disciplined. I don't know how I look to the outside world, you know, like, but, but in my own self, I feel like I— it's a regular struggle of, of, you know, I'd rather just go to the cafe and do something on the computer when it's cold out and, you know, like do some social media posts, you know. And sometimes that's essential. It's part of that sort of uncertain part where I don't always know what is a good choice for the day, you know. The larger continuity of multiple weeks— if I push one day and I'm actually on the verge of getting sick, but I push because I should, because I need to get that piece done, and that screw up 3 weeks, you know, it sucks, you know. And, and so there are those days where, where it's not smart to like push through And other times it is. And I wish for my own sake as well as anybody else's, I wish I knew what the answer was there because it's confusing. It's always a dilemma. I have experienced that sometimes it's good to go out and sometimes it's not. And then it's like you shrug your shoulders and be like, "What's today though? Could you help me figure that one out?" So I don't feel so disciplined. I don't get my stuff clean as much as I would like because I don't have time. And I guess maybe part of it is like one thing having a kid definitely did change is my value of the time I do have is super high. So if I have the chance to go paint, you know, there's more incentive to not piddle around and pretend.

Become so much more productive.

Yep, you know, so that's real, that's been real for me. And you know, I think mostly it's that I wanna, the only thing I could say is the, you know, there's a wonderful desire to be on location a lot. Like, I just, I want to be out in nature. With Blessing, like, that's an easy one to want to do. To get up and then go do the painting and spend my time in nature that way is a choice that means more freneticism, really, because painting on location is not a quiet, peaceful process, you know, with the elements we're talking about.

Yeah.

Most plein air painters I know, they're like blurs of sort of screams and shouts and you know, hollers and yips of shouts of joy and pain and suffering and absolute glee and wonder and, you know, whirlwinds of activity really if they're out in the elements. I mean, there's quiet days when it's calmer, but I deliberately paint large so I don't rest on my laurels usually. You know, if I'm going to do that, I'll do that in the studio when I've already sort of had that introduced intensity develop into something surprising, because I just, I really love and believe it's important, at least to my process and maybe other people's too, as art, to continue pushing right on that edge and, and find ways in one's practice to do so. I mean, some artists turn their paintings upside down and do something different. Some people do abstract and then hyper-realistic. Some people, you know, push into sculpture so that when they come back to their painting, they're thinking differently. You know, whatever else, they change their subject matter. The jillion ways people vary for themselves, I really believe is essential. Just to, you know, this is my theory or my thinking lately about just art, you know, that there's a part of it that's just— there's the unknown. You don't know what you're going to get out of something, you know. It's not like you can go to a store and buy an iPad, you know exactly what you're going to get.

You're conjuring.

Yeah, you know, there's something that happens, you know, and that is fundamentally entertaining. Something that is uncertain, is unknown, has to be, and must be, is good to be. And it means that you can't— the comfort of— because it's not like artists don't have little formulas to make successful paintings that will sell. You can see it all the time if you go into a tour of Starr Market. Bless the hearts of everybody doing it. For me, I really tried not to go there. If I catch any desire to find that comfortable route, I find that's kind of just a death sentence for whatever leg of painting or whatever I was up to in that day. That's a bad call, and I just would rather stop painting altogether than really follow that.

Yeah.

For me. But if you go into an art market, there's a way to paint stuff that people want. There's all sorts of things. If you do shiny water and that's all you ever do, people love that. Yeah. There's these things that seem like they're difficult to do, and they can be, and you can have varying degrees of success, but they're also kind of, you know, they're cool to look at no matter what, you know, and people like that. So that can, I think, maybe sometimes be appealing for people and why it's so good to introduce uncertainty or new developments, variables that you have to adapt to keep it fresh and keep things varying around, oddly, a core that is stable. You know, I want my palette to be familiar. I don't, you know, I don't want to vary the things that enable me to engage the unknown and, and the mystery, but I want the engagement with that mystery to be fresh each day. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that last— your last sentence there, that made a lot of sense, I think.

Yeah, especially—

that was a good summary.

Good.

So you mentioned David Hockney. Who are some artists that you can identify as leading you to kind of your style voice of the moment?

Well, I mean, starting at my school, Joe Santori, one of my main teachers, and Laura Battle. She's a— at least the time she was teaching, you know, when I was in her classes, was a geometric sort of mathematical abstractionist sort of— I mean, really trippy, you know, stuff. Not unlike, I guess, Agnes Martin, but totally different, you know, but just in terms of grids and, you know, hyper-accuracy, but a painted hand still involved where you might think it was sort of hard-edged, no personality in the art type of theory, but actually it's the very opposite. You just have to be very present to see that, present with the piece to relate or whatever. I mean, I don't know how she would describe her work, or at the time I just remember some of it was this. She was very much surprising to me because she was teaching Painting 1 or whatever, and we were sitting there doing model painting, and she was such a good teacher for just learning how to look at the world through direct observation. I think that was a really good lesson. And then also Joe Santori, who at the time, and still is, well known for his direct observation sort of paintings, whether of piles of detritus in a studio that he works on for 6 months, or portraits, or people sitting in large spaces. I mean, his work's all over the place in some good museums. And he was a very inspiring teacher also. Probably that's where some of the discipline you're asking about— actually, if there is a place where I'm disciplined, I think it is in the desire and belief and direct observation. Even when now I give myself license to edit, it took probably a decade to free myself of the notion that I had to include every single last thing, and I instead rest in the essence of the intent, which is to be as present as possible with a moment. In order to relate deeply and therefore bring something with potency out to the world outside of the process. And working there with him especially really helped install that deep in my psyche as something I care about. And then moving on, you know, I mean, Van Gogh was the first painting I saw. I mean, how many people— it's not very original, but Starry Night in MoMA.

Incredible though.

That was the piece, you know, I lived street outside of New York, so I had the luxury of going. And, uh, so Starry Night was— just blew me away. It was all of a sudden something clicked in me that cared, and up until that point I didn't know I did. And then once I did, all of a sudden it was obvious. And it's interesting, yeah, you know, it was just a part of me that just had been dormant, um, right around when I started painting. And, um, but not because of Starry Night did I start painting, it just was sort of happened all together. And then also around that time was Gerhard Richter And he's been one of my favorite artists forever and ever. I mean, awesome. And he had a retrospective at the MoMA, and damn, I mean, that was a good show. You know, his abstract work, his famous sort of, you know, what, candle flames, you know, all the variety of things that he's done.

He's a really great example of somebody who just keeps pushing and trying new stuff. Like, I mean, he— you look at like different movements in painting and he's done them all.

Yeah, yeah, he's been moving through quite a number of them and been pretty influential on a lot, you know. So, you know, his work, that show especially blew me away. And I— the only feeling— it's funny, I remember a lot and then almost nothing of it. It's very, you know, strange. But the most important thing was I was standing in front of some giant landscape piece, you know. And at that time, I didn't care about landscape until I came to New Mexico. So at the time, it had no relevance to me other than something in the painting was talking loud. I don't remember the painting. I don't even remember what the landscape piece was of, you know. I have some notion of it and I just remember the feeling of being in front of it, and it was so powerful and so impressive to my sort of small mind and also to something beyond my small mind, you know. You know, I don't mean like a derogatory small— yeah, sure, just— I mean, like, wow, he was so accurate, how did he do that? You know, that level of sort of just procedural technique questions and the total feeling and power of like conduit of something coming off that canvas that hit me at a level that has remained for, you know, however long— 20 years, I don't know how long ago that was, 18 years.

Well, that's something I think that is, you know, that's why people still make oil paintings or, you know, make like physical paintings, being this like old, old medium, right?

Right.

But I think that that power is something that is yet to be diminished.

Yeah, I mean, I And I, yeah, it's like, um, I mean, when done right anyway. Yeah, you could go see a painting from the 17th century and it still is going to be incredible. It doesn't matter that there's all sorts of other media. It doesn't diminish to me the place of anything. You know, there's a lot of entertaining arguments to get into, I guess, about painting dying or not and all that stuff. I don't, you know, I, I think that what's interesting to me is, is how these things things that continue to matter to people change and evolve in concert with what is changing and evolving in a given time. So, you know, painting on three-dimensional objects and floating out into space, and like this museum show that I hope to put up somewhere that I currently have absolutely no idea where that might be because no one has signed on for it. Just putting together a show that someday I want to see somewhere. And I mean, that sounds like— again, I don't mean that to sound arrogant, but I wanted to—

so no, I love it.

Yeah. You know, uh, well, you have a goal, you have, you have a vision. Yeah, you know, so I mean, so maybe it'll end up just in my studio. I'd be bummed, but, but, you know, if I don't have a goal that I'm aspiring to that feels like the real thing and has a real charge and feels risky and is, you know, embarrassing to say because I might, you know, whatever, or anything it is, like, it's, it's personal. But I wanna, you know, that's— I just want to say that's where I wanted to go, you know. And, um, you know, I, I want the paintings to to go up from the ground all the way to the ceiling. I want it to be installation painting, and I want it to be plein air installation painting, which is like that 100-inch square Cottonwood. Yeah, the beginning idea, that was the study for the piece that I see that would go up to the ceiling in my studio. And like a forest painting that I want to do with the forest floor on the ground of the exhibit space going up onto the wall and then up onto the ceiling. So when you look up, you know, when you're in a big forest and you look down and up, I want that experience in paint. I have no idea why, you know, no clue why. I don't know if I'm going to vary and have even where the paintings are mounted be in space, in three-dimensional space. I have no idea. Oh yeah, but that to me is— it's because of what's going on in installation art that I'm thinking about this in this, you know, quote-unquote old medium.

Exactly, yeah.

And, you know, who— I don't know if it'll even work. I have no idea, right? I hope to I hope that it has actual, that there's a strong yes in the midst of all these sort of idle wanderings that are developing as I go along this project path, that in the end something potent actually does coalesce and holds together.

That's interesting.

I'm sure some of the pieces probably won't exactly. You know, that Cottonwood piece nearly didn't. It took me 4 months after I'd finished painting it to figure out that I wasn't finished painting it, and I nearly almost ruined the piece by not drawing it differently and not adjusting where the panels were. And now I feel pretty sure I like where it is, but it nearly didn't work at all, you know. It was nearly a big failure. I mean, I thought I was just going to let it go and break it into panels, and then I finally got what I was looking for, came to me, but it took a while, you know.

Yeah.

So I don't know, I mean, I'm glad that one didn't fail. I don't know if others will. I hope they don't. I hope the failure is embedded in the end point of success within each piece rather than the failure being the end of that particular piece, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I think so.

You know, there's a lot of things that mess up along— you know, I paint a painting and I make a ton of mistakes. You know, the mistakes don't necessarily outweigh the success. It's— yes, you get the chance to adjust along the way, hopefully. And sometimes you don't, and it's— that is the end of a piece. It just didn't come together.

But cool.

Yeah.

It's interesting to hear you talk about painting a bunch of paintings as an installation piece. And because I was talking about, I don't know, like, you know, like new experience art kind of stuff with Brandon from Lou Allen last podcast.

I listened to that podcast. Yeah, that was in a few, of course. But yeah, I remember specifically this conversation. Yeah.

And it's just like, you know, that's a big thing that's happening right now. So to be able to bridge that, that's interesting.

Well, yeah, you know, I, I, I sort of was smiling when his answer is, as far as I recall, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it was this idea that, you know, painting is an experience too. You, you know, you live with a painting for, oh yeah, hopes, a lifetime, and how it, how it changes because it's something that's on your wall. It's, it's different from something that you have to, you know, I mean, some collectors, they have the money to build a building to put an installation art piece into, right? So they go and they walk into that building and they experience this piece, or they— or, you know, the installation piece has to be presented at a, you know, film space in a museum or whatever. And so you can go back to it repeatedly, but it's not something you necessarily can just walk by when you're feeling crappy and just have an argument with your loved one, or when you're having the biggest success of your life. And that, that thing is with you in both places. And so it takes on a life of its own, I think, you know, beyond what the artist made and beyond what it was when it was purchased. It's something else because it's on the wall around what we are a part of. And maybe people don't like what it takes on, I don't know, and they divest themselves of their collection. But yeah, I like the romance of that personally. And yeah, and that is a, you know, it's its own thing. And, and, you know, it's a different experience. It's, it's two-dimensional, you know. But that also means that how we relate to it doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, like sometimes I want to go to a 3D movie, sometimes I want to sit in my house and just watch something on my flat screen way away and be able to relax, and both have their place. But it doesn't mean that either has anything to say about the validity of the other. They just exist in a continuum of, yeah, appetite, you know.

Well, that's interesting, you know, talking about you talking about like being curious about exploring, um, And I don't know if you were suggesting like archival prints coming from like digital media.

It was one idea I had.

Yeah, yeah. But like that being so separate from encountering your, like, the texture of your pieces in person, you know?

Sure, sure. Yeah, I was talking about this with Clara this morning, you know, like the thing that I'm so interested in these days is textural paint, you know, that it's a material and that out of these images that people want, you know, if you see it online you think, well, he's doing landscape pieces of traditional subject matter, and then you see my work in person and most of the time people then start talking about my paintings about the texture and about kind of these large pieces of paint that coalesce into subject matter. And for me, that's the direction I'm most interested in, is that something that's completely not objective, a tube of paint, there's nothing, there's no meaning in it as an image other than it's It's a color that comes out of a tube. And then all of a sudden, we put together this rhythm of color and form and mark and something emerges out of it. Then we recognize in some part of our brain that says, that's a thunderhead, that's a tree, that's a person on a couch. And there's some translation that happens at a certain point. Like Pointillists were messing with this all the time, right? Like they break things down into these color dots and yet it emerges into this vibrating hum of an image or, Or whatever else, the bajillion different ways this is experimented with. For me lately, that's part of what I've been wondering about with my paintings and how far I can push the chaos of mark-making while retaining a continuity of image is really entertaining for me these days in terms of, aside from compositional questions and canvases that grow to meet the day, just how I put paint on a canvas. This question of how How much energy can I get in each mark? And how far apart can the marks be? And how bright and bold can the colors be? How tamped down? How much texture can I push and still see a place and still get this nostalgia and this sentiment of a place rather than just an experience of feeling? Not again, neither being good or bad, but just when I'm focusing, these— this is kind of the play. Yeah, that I've been in lately.

Oh, that's— I mean, I think that's a really compelling tension, and it's very present in your work. It's really cool. Were you in Santa Fe for a while?

Yeah.

And then you moved up to Taos a couple years ago?

Yeah. So, so, uh, again, yeah, I, I, I moved to New Mexico in 2008, and I got stuck here, uh, on a cross-country road trip. Land of entrapment. That sounds applied to me.

And that sounds familiar, like some Founders or something.

Yeah, right, yeah, right, the wheel, right, right, right. And then all of a sudden he ended up in Taos. Yeah, not unlike that, I had Lyme disease and was debilitated and I couldn't drive myself and I couldn't walk, and it was a very dramatic sort of medical thing. Um, and, uh, got stuck in Albuquerque, and it so happened that my best friend from college had an extra room in his apartment, so I was like, can I, can I stay with you please? Hi. He was a wonderful fellow and of course was happy to help and sort of save the day then and gave me a space to be. And I spent sort of a year in Albuquerque healing and getting better and then eventually moved to Taos in 2009. Wow. And that's where I met my wife up here, though we both are from the same area of upstate New York. And then we were here for several years and moved down to Santa Fe for 4 and a half years. For her to go through grad school and then move back up to Taos in 2017. Bounced around.

Why, uh, why Taos over Santa Fe? Or, or how are they different?

Um, oh, they are.

That'd be a more politically correct way.

Yeah, well, I was so surprised. First, first it was Taos because of a series of dreams that honestly happened at nighttime, like when I was really sick. I was not a happy camper about what was going on. I was very scared. It was very scary to not know if I was going to be able to work or walk or, you know, nobody knew what was going on for a long time. I mean, I had a hunch, but I hadn't had any doctor diagnose it because that's really common with the particular version I had. Um, anyway, so it was a scary time of not knowing what was going on at a very real physical level and not being able to take care of myself. And, um, I had a dream during that time telling me to go check out Taus and And when you're pushed to your edge, I mean, why not? I mean, what else do I have right now, sitting in a room and just being scared all day that I won't ever be able to really walk again? I'll try TAOSS. And I got up here, and within 45 minutes, I had met the dean of the UNM TAOSS branch, and he had connected me with the people I ended up working with for the next 6 years.

Just randomly, or did you—

Well, yeah, so in the dream, I was— My idea of Taos was that it was a cabin-like town in the woods on the base of a ski mountain. I didn't know anything about this area. Frankly, I never was interested in the Southwest at all.

Yeah.

I did not have any desire to be here. A friend of mine had gone skiing at a place called Taos a long time ago, you know, and told me that there were no safety bars on those ski lifts. That's what I knew of Taos. And so when I had the dream telling me there was a university and that there was like a town and other things, I was blown away. I don't know where my mind got that info. That's a different discussion perhaps, but at the time it was not in my conscious waking mind that I knew anything.

Yeah.

And so, um, I decided to follow the dream honestly because I didn't have anything else that I really felt like was alive and had light in it. And the dream I dreamt was very bright with light, so I was like, okay, I'll follow that, sure. Um, and so I did, and I got this job teaching, uh, for, for, uh summer sustainability institute at Taos Pueblo's education and training division, but it was a UNM course that had students coming from all over, not just at Taos Pueblo. And it was a sustainable regenerative agriculture demonstration site with like biomass radiant heated greenhouses and super cool multi-purpose site. And so that, that's kind of what I was like, all right, well, that's cool, but I'm teaching for UNM right now, and That was really exciting. And then I spent the rest of the year and succeeding 9 months trying to figure out how I could move up here because that trip was magical. Beyond that moment, I just— I got here and something sort of came alive in my heart. It was so beautiful and everything just felt special. So I wanted to come back and it took a while for me to gain the courage to make the jump because I definitely felt reticence to do so. And also get better from Lyme enough that I could actually do it. And that's kind of how I met Taos. And then I met my wife-to-be about 3 and a half weeks after moving here at a cafe. Yeah, and then just ended up really liking how wild and raw it was. And there was a certain magic that I felt then about the place. And then we moved to Santa Fe and I was crying. I was sobbing, honestly. I was really bummed to be moving because I really liked it up there. Here, and she really needed to be down there for the grad school.

Gotcha.

So we moved down, and it turned out Santa Fe had its own magic, you know, where Taos was wild and ruffian and kind of, um, has a sort of iconoclastic quality, I guess, to it, just as a whole general ambiance of the area, and was supportive in some special ways. Santa Fe ended up surprising me with how much support and camaraderie I found down there, and, you know, My frame shop was like a really key piece of my success as an artist and career. Great guys who were just there to help facilitate, you know, making something have a place to be on a wall, which is this simultaneously small deal and very big deal.

Yeah. And, um, when you say your frame shop, you mean like going to get your work framed?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Small frame shop with some great guys who, who have been total, like, magic elves in my art career in terms of just, you know, being able to have somebody who's in the art world but not in the art world, you know, and I could talk to them tactfully about things I'm going through. Obviously, you know, tactfully, but nonetheless, they know the gallery world and they know, you know, collectors and they know installation and they know business and they know just life.

Yeah. Are they still in business?

Yeah, yeah, Perspective. Fine Art Framing. Go, go! I mean, they're crazy busy, but they're such amazing guys, um, David and Ken. Anyway, they became great. I mean, then as happenstance would have it, then my studio space opened up in the same building as their frame shop, and so I ended up having my studio in Santa Fe, my first real studio next to them, and I could just bring my big paintings over to the shop, and it was perfect, man.

Wow.

Oh, it's hard to leave. Um, and a lot of stuff like that in Santa Fe really helped me out, and move my stuff. And actually, I moved to Santa Fe, and that's when I got my first solo show back in Taos, you know, oddly. And in the world here in the Southwest, I'm sure you know, but for people not in the Southwest, like, Santa Fe is a giant art market. It's kind of like if you're in the Northeast, you want to go to New York because it's the big market.

Yeah.

But then you all of a sudden have your big break in Vermont or something, you know, like, it's a weird combo where there's something about embarking on like a hero's journey, like you've left your, your nest, right? Right.

And so like being somewhere else makes it more interesting for people back home, right? I mean, I experienced this, uh, moving from Austin to Nashville for music, and you earn some kind of like different quality. Yeah, being somewhere else, I think.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, the archetypal sort of feeling of a journey that calls us to a new plateau in our beingness. A new way of interacting with the world, man. That trip across the country, I mean, it's way too long a story now, but it was an interesting trip with some really weird stuff that happened that, that kind of was like these, these watershed moments. And if I went one way, my life would have been clearly very, very different than if I'd gone another way, especially heightened because I was really sick. Yeah, you know, I met the one person I've ever known who really truly helped me actually get cured of Lyme. I mean, it's been like a decade that I Not anything, which is rare when, when, you know, you're somebody who's struggled with it going on and off and antibiotic treatments and stuff not working, things like that. Yeah, it was a miracle. It happened to be in Albuquerque. Like, why? Nobody knows. It's not a place where Lyme disease is really, you know, it's, you know, weird. Um, and things like that, these little choices that ended up leading into a bajillion other ones, um, end up having a quality of even getting into Mexico that called for something new. Yeah. And who I was and then leaving Taos and going to Santa Fe and doing it to support my partner. Again, it's this experience that I think is, is so valuable, at least for me, that my family and, and, you know, supporting those I love and being, uh, making that a priority has yielded magical results elsewhere. Because have we not moved to Santa Fe, a lot of other things that were absolutely essential that I did not know would not have been possible And again, oddly, my big break wasn't in Santa Fe in terms of sales and success, sort of making a living as an artist level. That happened first in Taos and later in Santa Fe. Yeah, but Taos was what actually was the seed for that. And so something, you know, in the dynamic helps things shake and rattle out different that was necessary. And Santa Fe was a smart place because it was an art community. I had resources and assets to rely on, but But really the main one was my frame shop just being a solid place for me to— That's great. Like, come to terms with what I wanted to present and how. And it's so important to not, like, take yourself out at the knees when you're just about to start really moving well in your career by short-circuiting something that seems like it's going to be a big expense when really it's essential. Like, my frames for my work were what set it apart as something to be looked at. And up until that point, I was debating whether I wanted to do frames at all. And there are some artists do no frames, great. There's some artists who do presentation in all sorts of wacky ways and it works. But fundamentally, I think from within an artwork to outside of the artwork, the whole thing is the making of something generative and creative. And so at any point, it's like, do you want to put your half-ass into it? Excuse my language. You want to put something sort of half-baked? Yeah, like, you want to actually do the best you possibly can figure out how to do. And it should probably feel risky, because if it doesn't feel risky probably it's not actually pushing at the place that you don't recognize, which is the place you haven't been yet, which is probably, if you're an artist who up until that point, like me, was struggling to make a living, the place I didn't recognize was a place of some success critically in publications, a place of some financial success, and it's uncomfortable, you know, like it was uncut, it's not, and that hasn't changed, but, but especially at that point Painting a piece with 15 tubes of paint on it seemed impossible to me. Like, how can I do that? Yeah, like, I couldn't imagine how I would make a living doing art when I sold a few paintings out of a gallery in Santa Fe and was like, that doesn't even pay for my expenses, you know? And like, to up my expenses seemed crazy, you know? It seemed impossible. I mean, I'm not exaggerating, it did seem impossible to me. I don't know why I kept on doing it.

So how did you— like, why did you do it? Oh, you were You're just like, I feel like this would be awesome?

I wish I had a better answer, I really do. But part of me doesn't know. I mean, I had a disgruntled conversation with whatever form of God or whatever I tend to look at. I don't know, it's not some specific thing, but it was a conversation in a parking lot in Santa Fe being like, if you want me to keep doing this, will you please just let me support myself doing it? Please? Like, come on. You know, uh, I mean, I was probably yelling at a tree. I don't know what people thought, you know, like, but, but the upshot was that there was some— I mean, you know, I was talking to myself, but, uh, I guess just the, like, trying to rally something in that moment. I feel like I was at a breaking point because I was going into debt. I had another business. I had saved, you know, a modest amount, $15,000, and I was working less and less and less to support my continued growth in art. And then I was in debt, and then I was in more debt, you know. To the point where it was very uncomfortable. And I knew that like the amount I'd saved over 3 years was the amount I was going to have to somehow make all of a sudden to get out of this hole I dug myself. Not wise, you know, like that was not a good financial call and I really wouldn't recommend it to anybody. And yet something, uh, in me kept on wanting to do it. Um, there were magic people along the way that gave me faith and I went, you know, a certain like kind of— I mean I mean it when I say a treasure box. When you get a good compliment that means something to you, there's gonna— I feel like there's gonna be a moment when you need it, and you really will need it. And it'll be that particular special thing when you can just— it'll be that little birdie in your mind. And when you're doing something and you can feel it helps just glide through something, yeah, that you could have gotten stuck on. It's my experience.

I think that, uh, I don't know if I was recording when we were talking about that before, but we were talking about how just having a show was, you know, is a very vulnerable thing to do, right? And so, you know, you're saying like, you know, somebody says something really complimentary, you got to keep that and put in your, put in your treasure box, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And then the negative ones you can dismiss, you know.

And it's so funny with the negative ones too, because I've had, I mean, just awful. You wouldn't believe, I had one person in a comments book at one gallery actually roll, say that somebody would be rolling over in their grave if saw my work. No joke, written and for everybody to see. And I just happened to be like in the gallery, and just by chance I opened that, you know, I was checking out the book and seeing it's my show. I'm happy, you know, like I'm giving this my best. And so, you know, like somebody had written that, and like my heart— like, I feel like I wish I were an animated character in that moment that people could have seen like my entire world collapse around that, you know. Or when a really famous artist told me I shouldn't pursue a career in the arts when I hadn't asked for the feedback and hadn't hadn't known it was going to come, and I, you know, and I just got eviscerated at the time. I mean, it was 2007. The person wasn't even that mean, but at the time it felt like I was being just, you know, totally, utterly torn apart. Um, and in hindsight, I can see why the guy said it. Like, it's rough, and man, if you don't have amazing amount of fortune, it can really be a hard path. Like, I, I don't, I don't know what I would have said to me at that time. I think probably the guy was actually right on.

Well, yeah, I mean, it's We were talking about the, like, the uncertainty and always feeling uncertain about things, and it can be a difficult lifestyle. Like, it's not, it's not like the, you know, "Hi honey, I'm home." Like, yeah, sure.

I mean, you know, and there's like, we— Clara and I worked hard to try and structure some of that "Hi honey, I'm home." Yeah. Every single skill I learned in grad school that was for environmental stuff and articulating stories and learning how to make a pitch and learning how to find that essential kernel of a story that a fundraiser needs to know. Man, has that stuff been useful in the art world, and I never would have thought.

Oh, for sure, yeah.

You know, like how much advocation I've had to do for my own vision, I wouldn't have guessed it, but in hindsight, now I can see exactly why, what I think to be why, partly like if a business is existing, like a gallery, and they're doing their best to stay existing, and their business is functioning in dollars and cents, and they know the margins they have to keep to pay their insurance and pay their people and be able to give their people health insurance. This is not an environment that risk is something that's viewed as a real good element to introduce on a regular basis. It's not a good element to introduce in any business if you're trying to develop stability. You know, taking an overleveraged, uh, loan and, and ending up in a studio space you can't afford is a fear I have every time I upgrade, because it's a big risk. And when you don't have income guaranteed and lined up, and you don't have a contract, and you're not an artist on retainer You know, like, you don't know what's coming down the line. That being said, and therefore a lot of tools can be really useful to try and piece together kind of the story for yourself. And I've realized galleries, you know, they have, they have to know the story for an artist's work to sell. Like, they can't be salespeople just being like, oh, this is great. Like, there's a lot of great art out there, and each artist usually has a compelling story. If they're not a jerk, it's one you want to hear. And, you know, you hope that the artist themselves has stuff that's nice and interesting and valuable for people to hear and understand their work. Yeah. And galleries need to believe that too. And so this piece of uncertainty is like, it's a little tension thing. And why these other tools I didn't know were going to be useful have been so useful, and why I think any artist embarking on this, man, I would so advocate for letting the art be absolutely and utterly 100% your creative process and loving that part of it has to be business and has an element of understanding human nature and the desire that, that like entertaining the mystery is what artists do, and that is absolutely central and has to be. But the only reason that can exist is because a certain quality of like— my studio has a cement floor that I stand on and it is solid. Yeah, it has to be solid, and it's not going to shift too much underneath my feet while I'm trying to reach real high to finish a real big work. Work, you know, metaphorically speaking and literally.

Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, literally, like, it's, it's like a— as essential as the paint.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, how can I make anything if I don't have some form of space and, and surface on which to make the thing and space in which to do it, place in which to sell it, you know? And so, you know, you were talking with gallerists or maybe an artist about galleries in one of the podcasts, and I mean, I just have to put a plug in that I've had a lot of challenges with galleries um, but, but, uh, absolutely feel like they've been an essential and wonderful addition to my personal career as long as I've been able to maintain my sense of voice. And people will have ideas and opinions left and right, whether you're in a gallery or, you know, you get written up in a magazine and you get some letters, you know, or whatever about your work. And I mean, there's great opinions and there's opinions that won't be helpful to your growth, that may sound smart and may actually be correct in an objective way but aren't contributing to your personal process because, yeah, you're the only one on the inside of your body doing what you're doing, you know. There's all these kind of tools, both sort of psychological tools but then also practical tools of, of like being respectful to another person in a gallery situation, even though like, yeah, people get so mad about them taking 50% generally. Like, man, is it expensive to run a gallery in space and do it well. And oh my God, do the salespeople never stop working in the places that I work with. Like, I look for a sales staff that people who are passionate about art and people who, um, have integrity to not try and force stuff into people's homes. Because a good salesperson has the skill to probably convince people, most people, to buy anything, right? You want somebody who has passion and wants— and has as their priority, as far as I can tell. I mean, I don't know these people always, right, deepest recesses of their psyche to know what drives them all the time. But yeah, but at least on the surface, and at least what I know of the people, is that usually they've been really wanting to help people find their joy. And like, the people who are selling art love art usually and also want to be contributing something good in the world that they're proud of. Like a group of collectors who are their clients who are happy with their life and their choices and how their money did get spent on that risky painting that was a little beyond their budget.

Yeah.

But actually has been the most inspiring thing in their life, in their home, so to speak, you know, at least. Yeah, just in their home. I don't know about their life, but in the home, it's something that they deeply, deeply treasure. Um, that, that's the kind of salesperson that's facilitating something beautiful to occur that, that has an element of risk in its own right, you know, or feels risky.

Yeah.

So the gallery piece, I just wanted— like, they've been really important for me, uh, along with the magic sort of little elves that have showed up at right times. And, and, um, you know, why I kept on— I'm sort of circling back, I think, to why I kept on doing this. Part of it was my own inner guidance system, you know. I had a few dreams. One of them told me I could make a living being an artist. And so I was like, well, that's kind of been what's stopping me. I mean, I just don't want to have my work sitting around not moving out of the studio and finding a place in the world. I didn't want to make a bunch of stuff that stacked up because for me, I had done that already, and it I didn't like how it felt. And then also, you know, it— as much as I want to keep many of the paintings I make, I really do, you know, it's hard to let a lot of them go. Yeah. I want this to be like a river flowing more than I want it to be like some pool that eventually just gets kind of stagnant and breeds mosquitoes, you know? Yeah, that sucks. Nobody likes bloodsuckers.

I think that a lot of what you've been saying has been pointing to like your inner compass, you know, like when things go well, it sounds like you're listening to it, you know.

Sure, yeah. I mean, yeah, I got like little goosebumps saying inner compass like that. I think, yes, that to me, like, what else do we have in any career, in any pursuit we do? And the more you're engaging something that sort of is on the edge of an abyss and you're, you know, wanting to look into this mysterious depth of existence, the more probably your inner compass and awareness is an important piece of the puzzle, you know. And And along with that, you know, the willingness to use assets appropriately without glib judgment, you know, like that whether it's an iPad or the notion of QuickBooks or, you know, your Excel spreadsheet, like these are wonderful tools to keep track. Like I use my spreadsheet on my Mac to keep track of where my sales are and I see what happens year by year. And I get to, you know, over the last 10 years, like I know seasonal rhythm in my markets. I know know that— markets meaning where I'm represented— I know that, you know, I better save some money for freaking March, and if I don't, like, I'm sabotaging my ability to keep doing this thing I love, you know. And, or I know that, um, I need to find some other kind of representation, and if I don't know that I need something else, then I won't be able to make that strategic decision that supports the pursuit of the mystery.

I've been really enjoying this.

Yeah, good, good.

I have one other question that, you know, you're working with multiple galleries in different markets Um, how does that work with, uh, online sales?

Oh yeah, I let that go. Like, I let all—

I don't sell at my studio anymore, but I mean like their, their online sales.

So like, okay, I understand what you're saying. So it still does matter that I don't sell it. I chose to stop selling. Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure, um, in part for the same reason of between galleries, you know. Um, online introduces a whole nother world to the sales process. And, and I think it's an asset for galleries, and it's a frustration. The, the most balanced galleries, you know, in terms of not being overly stressed and just doing what they do really well, they tend to, I think, honestly adopt a similar posture, you know, broadly speaking, as I do with my work. Whereas I want to try and do what I do as well as I can, and in doing that, I find the collectors that are attracted to my work, and You know, I tend to not find the people who aren't because they aren't, you know. And, and that I offer, uh, metaphorically speaking, it'd be kind of the service the galleries offer, you know. It's this service I try to offer to the world, which is something powerful and beautiful that I hope does something good. And, you know, whatever the service the gallery offers, you know, if they take pride in what they're doing, a lot of times it seems to me that's their focus. And being honest, and in like, for me, I have when people contact me, I need to know how they found out about me. That's an important piece of my understanding. If I open my communication doors, I want to know, did you find out about me from Santa Fe, or did you find out about me from Timbuktu? And that way I can do my best to be fair and act with integrity and making sure that the people connect in that, you know, the gallery that put in a lot of effort gets the opportunity to complete the, the sale or gets the opportunity to continue the dialogue rather than having it be, you know, redirected without willy-nilly, without thinking about that. Um, and in terms of online sales, you know, I, I don't know what the— how the galleries feel. There's so many different iterations that are going on and variations on it, whether it's Saatchi Art or Artsy, you know, ArtNet. There's all these ways that galleries can get exposure online, and that's a different world I think that they have to navigate. Um, in terms of what I I, you know, do— I just do my best to be clear with where things are coming from and where things are going, and that way I can do my best to stay out of the way of the flow as it's working, you know. That's not really my place to be in there.

Um, interesting.

I mean, it's nice to meet people, I enjoy that, but I don't want to— I don't want to get involved with stepping on toes and ignoring a bunch of effort that somebody's put in for 5 months, you know, and yeah, all of a sudden not paying attention to that. That said, there are a lot of collectors who are super savvy and have, you know, every smart to check out things and see what's going on at different galleries. Like, why wouldn't I want to, you know? Yeah, I do that for artists that I just like their work. I want to see what they're showing where. Oh, definitely. Yeah, you know, I mean, that's a natural thing. You got to kind of compare and understand what you're most interested in. That's how you become a, a sort of active participant. And so I think the online thing is, is for me is fantastic. And I think, you know, for the galleries that are oriented that way, probably is really for them because they get sales from all over the world instead of just people who happen to come to their market, you know.

And talking with galleries about selling your work through them, have— has anybody suggested any kind of like exclusive online representation kind of thing?

No, I haven't encountered that yet. No, I don't— I, yeah, I mean, have you met people who have encountered that?

I don't know. I know I'm asking because I just—

that's just I haven't encountered that yet.

Curious about galleries competing.

Sure.

In, you know, the same space.

It's kind of the Wild West, you know. I mean, some ways, like the, you know, the online world is like the Wild West of the modern day. Like, who knows what the hell— like, how do you judge where territory ends in a contract? Because usually the gallery has a—

yeah, like the old ways, like, like, you know, mileage, right?

Yeah, yeah. You know, like, the bigger the gallery, usually the larger area. And for me, that That's been great because, yeah, you know, usually there's a good reason. And, you know, again, if you choose who you work with wisely because it's a long-term relationship, probably you're going to find that it's worthwhile, I think. You know, I mean, everything's always—

well, I guess it also is like difficult to like classify what is an online sale with a gallery because maybe somebody has like an actual like show online where the transaction happens all through the computer. But then in other cases, people see things online and then contact the gallery, which is probably the way it happens most frequently.

Yeah, I think so.

And which is that— is that an online sale or is it not? So that'd be— I think that'd be a sticky thing to try and—

it's tough, man. It's a tough thing to figure it out, you know. I mean, it is, especially like if you're in a bunch of national magazines. I still have people who see articles from 5 years ago like, I didn't know you were in this magazine, you know, and that kind of thing. Like, um, I mean, I'm not in that many, but 5 is sure enough to have some noise and, and not know if somebody saw my— I mean, in terms of articles, you know, there's like a lot of show previews and stuff, and, and there's a lot of noise. So you don't know if somebody sees your stuff because of a gallery advertisement that the gallery spent thousands of dollars on, on your behalf, and like that's an appropriate thing for the gallery to be rewarded for putting out that risk and making that effort, or if they saw it because of some university show my work was in, or or if they happen to walk into the gallery 3 years ago and not remember the name of the gallery at all, and the gallery, you know, spent how many, how many, like, how many months was my work up on the wall when they could have been doing something else? Or, you know, how many, how many dollars of time and effort did they put into talking to people and prioritizing, you know, these things? And somebody walked in and loved the work and forgot about it, and then saw it in a magazine because of another gallery's advertisement, and then went online and saw it because of a third thing, and then because I had my work on, you know, artsy, or you know what I mean, all the weird things. It's very hard to track, which is why I think it'd be crazy-making in some ways maybe to try too much. So, so it, at a certain level, I feel like it kind of defaults, at least in my experience, back to the person-to-person contact, that, that real sort of relationship I think Brandon was talking about. Oh yeah. You know, I think really to me is what ends up, I feel like, mattering the most. That's what I seek, you know, the online ends up being a way to reach a wider audience. And maybe there's some crossover, and, you know, one gallery loses a sale because of some other thing somebody saw online, but then gains a sale for the—

from the very same reason.

Yeah, it's a kind of a wash if people are doing their best, you know. That's just— that's been my sense so far. Of course, I'm not a gallerist, and so I only have the artist's perspective on it, which is the more people see my work, the better.

Yeah, yeah.

And I just want it all over everywhere, you know, and, and Certainly as I've walked down this path, it's tact and civility matter, you know, and being mindful. And I've changed my approach to accommodate, you know, interests of the people I chose to work with, just like you would have moving in with somebody, you know. It's a serious thing, and especially if your livelihood is really reliable.

Oh yeah.

You know, a third of your income coming from one place, like, that's a big deal, part of your life that requires the commitment.

Yeah.

Yeah, cool.

All right, well, thanks for, uh, total pleasure. Thanks for talking. Thanks for talking, Jeevan. This has been a great conversation. Thanks so much.

Good.

Well, I'm glad.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, really a pleasure.

Big thanks to Jeevan Lee, and thank you all for listening. If you're in the Santa Fe area, check out Jeevan's show Dynamics of Change at Llewellyn Galleries. Until next time, I'm George Irwin. Adios.