An Interview Request
Hi all!
Recently I was contacted by a young gentleman by the name of Martin Shea.
He’s a grade 10 student attending the Denver School of the Arts in Denver, Colorado and as part of his curriculum he has to interview artists that interest him. Martin saw my work on the Juxtapoz website and decided to contact me for this purpose. Thanks for the honour, Martin. You’ve definitely given me a boost. I asked him if he would send me some images of his work. He sent me some really groovy images of a multifaceted gargoylesque head in blue. Check out his sculpture below.
Click on a thumbnail for a larger view.
After reading through his questions, a preset group set forth by his class, I thought it might be a useful idea to not only respond to them but to post my answers here on seanchappell.com so anyone who’s interested can read the questions and answers and draw benefit from them should they find any to be had – based on their personal situations that is.
Here’s how the interview went:
Q1. How long have you been a working artist?
A. I’ve been professionally showing now for over a decade. I started here in Toronto with an indie show entitled ‘Razorblades for Breakfast’ and have since worked my way up to showing internationally in New York and California.
Please check out my CV here.
Q2. What media do you prefer and how did you come to use it as your primary one?
A. My primary media would be acrylic paint on canvas. Although I’ve tried painting on many other surfaces over the years, I’ve always come back to canvas. It’s classic, lightweight, easily shipped, inexpensive and versatile.
I was introduced to painting by one of my Bowmanville High School teachers, Mrs. Eccles. She was the head of the department and I had her for grade eleven Art. I was sixteen. It was in her class that I first picked up a paintbrush and it was love at first sight. I’ve never looked back.
Q3. Did you go to art school, if so, where? Do you have graduate degrees?
A. My High School didn’t have a focus on the arts but it did have a very strong visual arts department. I was able to experiment with computer art, screen printing, painting, sculpting and many other mediums. I was very lucky that way. Mrs. Eccles was a bit of a hellraiser and she fought for everything we had. I was blessed to have classes with four different art teachers over my High School career.
After High School I decided to follow my artistic dreams and went to York University in North York, Ontario to get my Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts. I graduated in 2000 with my BFA, Visual Arts major.
After that I headed to Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario and picked up an additional Certificate in Advanced Illustration under the tutelage of Joe Morse and Gary Taxali.
Q4. When did you first become interested in art? Were you doing art in high school?
A. I’ve been doing art in one form or another my entire life. My earliest work was a doodle I did under our family’s kitchen table with a red crayon. I must have been about five years old.
Ever since I can remember I’ve been drawing and creating. I’ve got books and books of old drawings that I did when I was a kid. Never throw your old sketchbooks out! I’ve been engaging in Art for as long as I can remember and that includes High School. Not to toot my own horn but I was offered the Art Award in grade 12 along with four other students who were a year ahead of me. I considered the award to be a great honour to turn down so that a girl who was going off to University the next year and could draw immediate benefit from the accolade.
Q5. How did you get involved with a gallery? How do you show your work if not in galleries?
A. There are opportunities everywhere to show your Art. Getting involved with a gallery is very easy. They’re always on the lookout for new work and new artists and would probably look at your work even if you called on them out of the blue. If you check on the internet or in art magazines and gallery guides, you’ll find ‘open calls to artists’ which are galleries advertising for new work. Sometimes they want a whole body of work, sometimes just a piece or two, and usually there’ll be a theme. Most of my Art career has been built on open calls.
There are also many other places to show your work outside of the institution of a gallery. Cafes, bars, nightclubs, restaurants, coffeehouses, office spaces, etc. are always looking for artwork to liven up their establishments. There are a myriad of opportunities probably right around the corner from you. If you’re interested in showing your work but aren’t ready to jump into the gallery arena, have a look around at the businesses in your area. That’s a good place to start.
Q6. Where do you get your ideas for your art? Do you research images, sketch from life, etc?
A. My ideas come from my boundless amount of imagination. I’ve had an extremely active imagination since I was a child and I’ve never let it go no matter what others have told me. I’m sure, due to my imagination that my model of reality must be quite skewed compared to most people. That’s fine by me ’cause I create some kick-ass Art!
When It comes to some of my paintings, if I have a specific idea in mind, I’ll often refer to some photographic references or even real-life references to get the shapes I want. This is especially true of hands. They are notoriously difficult to depict in a realistic fashion without some form of reference and I’ll often take pictures of my own hands and sometimes my wife’s, printing them off on my computer so I have something to paint by.
Q7. What percentage of your income do you make from art?
A. Zero. While I might be a successful artist in that ‘I continue to produce new work and show it several times a year’, I still have yet to become financially solvent from it’s production. This is the biggest hurdle of my artistic career as it probably is for most artists.
Q8. How do you decide how much to charge for your art?
A. That’s a good question. I personally base my prices on time, not size. The longer a piece takes, the more it costs. I also have chosen an hourly rate above what I could get at working a conventional day job. I don’t see the point of doing Art for money if I can’t make more than I can get at a day job that any other Joe Blow can do. But, there are many ways to price out your artwork.
You can price it out by time like I do or you can base your prices on size. That is another popular way of pricing you work. An 18″ x 24″ painting will always cost the same regardless of the time it takes to create.
There’s also the idea of a contractually agreed upon price. If someone is looking for a commission and you can agree on a price regardless of what it is, then get what you can get. The more the merrier I always say!
Please read my posts on pricing your artwork:
http://www.seanchappell.com/articles/how-to-price-your-artwork-part-1/
http://www.seanchappell.com/articles/how-to-price-your-artwork-part-2/
http://www.seanchappell.com/articles/how-to-price-your-artwork-addendum/
Q9. Do you have any advice for someone in high school who is studying art?
A. Take some business courses.
Learning about Art, where it has come from and how to create it is readily available and you’ll constantly be developing your own work. Unfortunately that type of education won’t prepare you for the business end of the Art world and if you truly want to be a professional Artist then you should learn a bit about it.
Take a business course or two. Learn about business models and profit margins. Understand the taxes and business laws of your area. Figure out the best way to build a business around your artwork. Artwork itself requires time and experience to develop. The basics of running a business are concrete and they’re something you’re likely to benefit from immediately.
Q10. Where were you born? Where do you live now? Does the place you live influence your art?
A. I was born in Oshawa, Ontario, the first first-generation Canadian to be born to English immigrants. I’ve lived in many places but now I live in Toronto, Ontario.
The city itself does not directly influence my work. I don’t care much for cityscapes or urban landscapes. But the people and the way they interact interests me a great deal. I enjoy social structures, concepts of social interaction and acceptable ideals of social discourse. This features heavily in my work and the people outside my door help me to acheive this.
So there it is. I was very happy for the opportunity to do this interview for Martin. I hope he gets an ‘A’ on his project 
and I hope that you’ve also received something beneficial from this Q and A. He’s certainly given me a lot to think about and I’m sure I’ll be writing a few more specific posts around some of the individual questions in the interview.
If you personally have any questions that you wish to ask me, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I’ll do my best to answer them as soon as possible.
For now, that is all. Goodnight.
