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162 David Griffin — Pursue Your Own Heart
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In our final episode of the year, we sat down with David Griffin, a fine artist with a love of capturing the nostalgic scenes of his childhood. David shares his journey from pre‑med student and college baseball player in Lubbock, Texas to becoming a successful illustrator and, later, a fine artist rooted in realism and storytelling. He recounts formative experiences at the Illustrators Workshop in New York, his years sharing a Dallas studio with top illustrators, and the lessons they taught him about composition, narrative, and creating “a place for the eye to rest.” David explores how memory, truth, and heritage—big skies, ranch life, and family artifacts—shape his work and give it emotional honesty. A major focus is David’s new long-term project, “The Art of Wandering,” where he will document how mental and physical wandering with a sense of wonder leads to ideas, large paintings, and deeper relationships with collectors and fellow artists. David also dives into the idea of art as a lifelong calling, discussing struggle, hard work versus talent, the trap of imitating others, and the importance of finding one’s own authentic voice by pursuing one's own heart. David closes by reflecting on art as a conversation without words, his hope that truthful work outlives the artist, and his gratitude for the creative community and opportunities ahead.
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Decided that I'm just going to go about trying to learn, and as I go, if someone offers me to some opportunity, I wasn't going to say no. So my goal is to always say yes to things, and I've kind of looked at everything that way. Teaching, you know, you definitely get to be a better artist by teaching, because you in order to tell someone else, you better know what you're talking about, and so all that effort makes you a better painter. In the end,
Laura Arango Baier:welcome to the BoldBrush show, where we believe that fortune favors a bold brush. My name is Laura Baier, and I'm your host. For those of you who are new to the podcast, we are a podcast that covers art marketing techniques and all sorts of business tips specifically to help artists learn to better sell their work. We interview artists at all stages of their careers, as well as others who are in careers tied to the art world, in order to hear their advice and insights. For today's episode, we sat down with realist oil painter and former radiologist Karl bretzky, who shares his journey from growing up interested in art and photography through a medical career in interventional radiology to becoming a full time artist in 2016 he explains how studying with Joe Paquette and participating in plein air events around the country shaped his love for landscape, urban scenes, and especially nocturnes, which he believes are often easier and faster to paint than daytime scenes due to their homogeneous darks and clear value transitions. Carl discusses his use of the rule of thirds and his approach to composition, often reimagining scenes like in his piece, hotel Laguna Nocturne in the studio to adjust skies colors and clouds for stronger visual impact. Carl also tells us about his use of the prismatic palette rooted in the teachings of Frank Vincent du monde, and how understanding prismatic color shifts and subtle gradations helps create convincing light, atmosphere and distance. Finally, Carl offers advice on building an art career through instruction, plein air, competitions, galleries, networking and social media, emphasizing saying yes to opportunities, maintaining an active studio practice and cultivating community with other artists. Welcome Carl to the BoldBrush show. How are you today?
Carl Bretzke:Good. Thank you. Laura, great.
Laura Arango Baier:I'm so excited to have you because I think your work is so beautifully made, and it is so like the nuance and the color and the shifts in everything it's so it's delicious to look at. It makes you feel like you're actually at the location. So I'm excited to have you. Yes, of course, you're very welcome. And I'm especially interested in your nocturnes, because I'm very much a lover of nocturnes, and it's not so often then you run into a plein air artist, or planner painter, or painters in general, who do very many nocturnes, probably because it can be kind of scary to some people to explore that, but I think
Carl Bretzke:people don't practice very often so, or they weren't trained that way. Yeah.
Laura Arango Baier:And also I think it's intimidating to attempt it, because I think a lot of people have these incorrect notions about how to paint a Nocturne and what it entails compared to daytime painting. But we can dive into that a little bit after you tell us about who you are and what you do.
Carl Bretzke:So I guess I mean, right now I describe myself as a realist oil painter. But my background goes back. So I was born and raised in a small town in Minnesota, and high school was a lot about art for me. I was also into photography back then, so when I got to college, all my fun classes were art classes, and then I kind of fit those in between science classes. For some reason, everyone thinks they need to take science classes, which I did. And at some point, a buddy of mine said, you know, you're one class away from being pre med, so why don't you do that? And I said, Okay, I'll do that. And once you get started in the medicine realm, it just kind of all keeps feeding into each other, and you don't have to think too much about it once you decide you want to do it. So I went into medicine 20 years ago. My wife, who is an artist, she was taking classes from Joe Paquette in the Minneapolis, St Paul area. And I don't know if you know Joe, but he's a kind of one of the early plein air painters of America, artists, and great teacher. And I started taking classes from him 20 years ago. I did it for 12 years, studio painting, plein air painting, which was his specialty, and figure drawing. And I did that for 12 years. And then about that time, I started doing plein air events around the country that started in 2010 and I've done anywhere from, I suppose, four to seven or four to eight events a year. And. And I did that even when I was working as a physician. But then in 2016 I quit my I retired from medicine, and I went full time into art. And so now, every day, I get up and I go to the studio and enjoy myself that, you know, people say, is art fun? Not sure it's fun, but it's consuming. For me, it's all consuming. So I get here and I start painting, and three hours go by and I'm a happy person,
Laura Arango Baier:yes, yeah. I mean, it's definitely a fulfilling, almost a obsessive thing, trying to complete something or figure something out within a painting. Yes, it's like a puzzle that, you know, you can't pull yourself away from sometimes. Yeah, you
Carl Bretzke:know, I haven't thought of it like that, but that's exactly what it feels like to me. It's like, I want to try to really create real atmosphere and see, like, where the sun comes up, make that way brighter than everything else. And how can I do that? How can I trick the viewers mind into thinking that looks real? And to me, that's that's a kind of a fun puzzle, like you said.
Laura Arango Baier:So, yes, yeah. And so much of it is also, you know, creating, like you just said, the illusion of something. And since you know, our range of values is so limited with paint compared to reality, there's so much you know, like sorcery and tricks that have to happen in order to recreate something that is actually not easy to recreate on a flat surface with the limited range that we have. So yeah, it's a fun thing.
Carl Bretzke:Sorry, light and pigment are such different things, and you're trying to create light with pigments. So yeah, that's yeah.
Laura Arango Baier:It is yeah, and it's a yes, recreating light that's that's a huge challenge, and especially if you're painting, you know Plein Air, which is what you do, and landscape. Why did you decide that landscape and plein air were going to be your, your like favorite thing to paint. How did you land on that?
Carl Bretzke:That goes back to the way I was taught. This is through Joe Paquette. He was a landscape painter, plein air painter, and before that, when I was in college, I had done more edgy kind of modern realist things, and I did a lot of graphite drawing back then, and so it was just what had presented itself, was painting with Joe outside or whatever, and by default, became nature. Although more recently, even back then, I liked doing urban things also. So really, any scene, I don't want to be pigeonholed into being a landscape painter or a Nocturne painter. I really have a kind of a diverse interest in what I want to paint. And I'm trying to think of why that was, and I'm thinking back to when I used to do photography for our high school yearbook and things like that. I was always looking for an interesting image, and so that could be anything. And so I kind of paint anything,
Laura Arango Baier:yeah, yeah. And I can totally see that. I feel like the way that you compose your images as well is kind of like the way that you would want to compose a photo as well. It like fits for both categories, which makes sense. You know, rule of thirds, finding a really nice spot for the vanishing point, higher lower, horizon line, type of playing around, which I think photography is a really great sort of playing ground for visual composition. It is.
Carl Bretzke:Yeah, glad you said rule of thirds, I use that all the time.
Laura Arango Baier:That's good. Well, it's it's a good one. I think that's one of the best ones, just for getting a really quick, good composition that really pulls the eye in and gives a sort of balance to an image. Yeah, but yeah, it depends on the story you're telling as well with the work, but yes,
Carl Bretzke:I find it really helpful for those that don't know rule of thirds is you try to put your focal point somewhere in the outer thirds or the upper lower thirds, but not in the middle, not too far to the edge. And when I do Nocturne scenes, I really use that because, like, let's say you see a gas station lit up at night by lights overhead. Both people just paint the gas station in the right spot, but then they don't realize that means the lights now are going to be on the edge of the picture, because they're so much higher. So I'm looking at the most you know, the highest contrast area, which is actually. Lights, and I will place them in the upper third or whatever, and then shrink everything else down as needed to fit into the painting. So it's something I use a lot, actually,
Laura Arango Baier:yeah, yeah. And that's another really interesting thing is kind of sort like, and I think maybe photography helps with this as well, is imagining the finished piece before actually doing it. Because I think it's very easy to get excited about a certain scene or certain image, and then, like you said, you get to the part that's actually, you know, one of the important pieces of the painting, which is light, and you realize, oh, oh oh no. I need to shift everything around, maybe start over, add more Canvas somehow, if you can. And then, you know, you're kind of Oh, in the junk, in a bit of a pickle, as I like to say. So it's better to have that, you know, all set up and ready. And I actually did want to ask you, too, since you mentioned nighttime painting of a gas station. When did you decide I want to tackle Nocturnes? Was that part of your learning with with Joe? Or was that something that you decided? Hmm, I really like the way these clouds look at night.
Carl Bretzke:I actually have a specific story about it, because I was in Carmel for the Carmel art festival plenary event. That was the first one I had ever done. And I was in 2010 and we were looking at galleries around town. And I walked into one of the main galleries, and there was a painting sitting on the floor, a big one, and I and it looked like it was just a black canvas, like a modern art black canvas or something. And I walked over to it, and the owner of the gallery came over and said, let me show you this. And he picked it up, put it in the light, and it was a beautiful Nocturne. All the color comes alive. Then in the light it ended up. It ended up. It was a Charles Rollo Peters, who's a very famous Nocturne painter from, I'm guessing, 1800s or early 1900s but at that point, I said, I'm going to try to do that in the plenary event. And I ended up doing a Nocturne painting the best I could at the time, because I really hadn't been trained in it, and I liked out. And I said, Okay, from now on, every plenary event I do at least one Nocturne painting, and I've done that now for let's say I was 2010 so 25 or 15 years, yeah,
Laura Arango Baier:yeah, that's a good amount of time to be practicing, yeah,
Carl Bretzke:but you learn a lot along the way, that's for sure.
Laura Arango Baier:I can imagine. And then what would you say is the biggest difference between painting a daytime painting and a Nocturne.
Carl Bretzke:So you and I talked about this a little earlier, Laura, but to me, if I had students that were just starting out, I think I would start them with nocturnes, because they're actually I find to be easier and quicker than doing a daytime painting. Not that you shouldn't learn how to do a daytime painting. Certainly should. But the nice thing about a Nocturne is that most the time, the darkness surrounding your focal point is pretty homogeneous, and so if you just draw where you're going to put your main structures in a little outline. You can take dark pigment and just kind of cover the rest of the painting with dark and you're halfway done painting your painting, and then you go back, and you start noodling, noodling all the illuminated parts of it. And when you're doing that, it's easier, because it's artificial light, and artificial light drops off quickly. As you move away from the light source, you can really see nice gradations of value. And at the same time as that value drops off, there's a color change, and I teach this in my workshops, but it's a prismatic color change, which I don't know if we'll get into today, but just keep in mind that as light drops off, color will change. And so those are fun things to see. You see those in a Nocturne painting, and you learn a lot about transitioning from one color to another and from one value to another. Then you go out in the daytime with the bright sunshine and the ground plane may all look the same color and value, but in fact, now that you know that it should change from right to left, if the sun's on the right, you can make a subtle shift in your value and a subtle shift in your color, which would have been hard To see, I think, for beginning painter, if you just started doing bright daytime scenes. So I don't make sense, but that's how I pick and I if I need a fast painting, I'll do a nectar, because I can get it done pretty quickly.
Laura Arango Baier:Yes, and and beautifully as well, which is the other important thing? Um. And I think that's so cool. I never considered moonlight as artificial light, because it's just a reflected light from the sun. So it isn't itself the light source, which I think is very interesting to think of it though, because it's it does have, because it's so limited in its strength, right? Unlike the sun, it is definitely much more obvious to see those nuances. And I think the best example of a daytime painter who really caught those nuances in, you know, like old painter Vermeer, you can definitely see it in the back walls of his paintings, that very, extremely subtle shift, yes, yes, yes, which is like, Ah, of course. I mean, the same thing does have to happen with the sun, especially, like you said, when it's moving from one direction to another, the light, I mean, has to taper off gently, right? Because we are in a giant sphere. So it makes sense. Oh, man. But then I want to ask you a bit more about your process, like when you painted hotel Laguna your Nocturne.
Carl Bretzke:All right, so the the one you're referring to, you can probably put it up in the after we get done. But hotel Laguna Nocturne was one I just did in the studio. In the last month or so I'd come back from Laguna plein air Invitational, which was in October, and I had done a painting of it then, and I wanted to redo it with a whole different sky and knowing what I'd learned from that plein air piece. And so I think I ended up with a better painting than the original plein air one, but it was just, it's fun to think about how I wanted to change things from the original painting. I added a little more color than was what I really saw, and the cloud cover was different from when I painted it, so I wanted to put in a lot more clouds in this one. So it was interesting painting it because a Nocturne, you can really be deceived as far as how much color you are or are not putting in things. And if you look at the clouds in that painting, they look gray. But in fact, that's got so much brown and red and yellow in it. But for some reason, against this dark background, blue, it reads as more of a gray.
Laura Arango Baier:But yeah, I can see that I actually also would have thought orange, but I mean, Brown is orange, so
Carl Bretzke:yeah, yeah. And I will sometimes mix paint on my palette and think, Okay, that's a color, but you never know till you actually put it on your canvas. See it in next to everything else. So that's kind of how I go about my final touches for like, a Nocturne painting. I just need to see how it looks on the canvas next to everything.
Laura Arango Baier:Yeah, that makes sense. And actually, now that we're on the topic of color. I do want to know a little bit more about your, you know, the prismatic palette approach to color and light. Can you explain a little bit what that is?
Carl Bretzke:Yeah, it's probably, I think people think of it as more complicated than it probably is. But back in the late 1800s Frank Vincent Dumond, I think he was credited with coming up with a prismatic palette. But if you think actually, he had a quote. He said, silently glowing over this entire landscape is a rainbow. You must learn to see it. It is always there. And he is talking about, remember, earlier I'd mentioned, as light drops off, it changes color? Well, it changes color for a reason, scientifically, and I won't go into that, but essentially, things usually move in a prismatic sequence, which is the sequence of color in a rainbow. So you go violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, right? Yeah. So that's a prismatic sequence, and you start seeing that over and over again in your landscape paintings. As you move into the distance, you lose yellow, move more towards orange and towards red, also the just the distant objects become bluer because you have blue scattered light between you and the distant objects from scattering in the atmosphere. And so it just makes sense, if you're going to put your colors out on your palette, you put them in the sequence of a rainbow. So that's what a prismatic palette is. I will, I will lay out my warm colors from yellow CAD, yellow light CAD, Yellow, Cad, Scarlet, CAD, red. Alizarin, so they go from light to dark, but they also move prismatically. And then I'll put my blues out, manganese cobalt, ultramarine blue, and then a violet. And that also is a prismatic color shift, and goes from lighter to darker. So that's what a prismatic palette is. I learned it from Joe Paquet, and he learned it from John Osborne, who learned it from Frank Mason, who learned it from Frank Vincent Dumon. And there's been, you know, 1000s of offshoots of other people doing it since then, and the original prismatic palette was laying it out in the sequence of rainbow. But then he also did strings, adding white to each of those colors to lighten them as you move out to one side, we I don't do that.
Laura Arango Baier:Yeah, I think that's something that's helpful at first, if you're like a beginner at it, because when I was in school, I definitely I had to do strings, and I had to lay out my palette in a similar way, except it was more like, it was definitely from lighter value to darker value. And then within them it would be like, Okay, this is your dark red, dark orange, and then like your neutral or like your black. So, but the difference is, of course, I had a limited palette instead of, you know, like a warm yellow, cool yellow, warm red, cool red, type of situation that some people also like to do when they sort their palettes.
Carl Bretzke:Um, yeah, I like the idea of a limited palette. It's just too late for me.
Laura Arango Baier:You've tasted the rainbow. I know, yeah, yeah, I can understand that. I think once you know how to navigate within any you know range of colors that you've chosen, I think it's, it's it becomes just so much easier to manage around something. But I think the nice thing about limited palette is the portability of it. I don't have to carry a bunch of different paint tubes. I just carry them in four. Yeah, yeah, which is very pleasant. But of course, the drawback is you have to, if you want to get a specific mixture, you have to make it yourself. So there's pros and cons to that. There is a lot of mixing that still happens with an extended palette. But when you start out with only four and you have to make the entire breadth of colors, it's a little harder, yeah, especially going to specific orange, jeez.
Carl Bretzke:I mean, people say that that gives you color harmony, because there's a little of everything and everything. But even with a prismatic palette, I don't go from cat yellow light to orange abruptly. There's usually a mixture in there, so there's always a blending going from one color to another.
Laura Arango Baier:So yeah, yeah, that's that rule that you learn pretty quickly when you start mixing color, which is how to not make mud, right? Mud is, uh, mud can be nice if you use it wisely, but it can also detract you from painting. Yeah, yeah, but you were gonna say something about mud, muddy, I was gonna
Carl Bretzke:say, I use mud in a Nocturne, pretty commonly, but I intentionally able to do it.
Laura Arango Baier:Yes, yeah. I mean, what we consider mud, I guess, is so dependent, like how you're saying earlier about the colors around it anyway, that's it can become a very beautiful gray, if you know how to manage mud, yeah,
Carl Bretzke:if you're looking great, exactly the one place where I see people make mud and they don't want it is when they try to paint sunset quickly. It's just there. It just changes so fast. And you keep second guessing what you should put down. Pretty soon you've got cools and warms mixed together, and then you get the mud.
Laura Arango Baier:Yes, oh, that's painful. That's painful. Yeah, that's one of those things that you learn over time is you need to have like, 20 brushes and make sure that they don't blend too much if you want to keep a clean color unless, of course, you have that intentional desire to, okay, I need to mix these two. And I could just use this one brush and work around it. But keeping a clean brush, I think, is one of those underrated things.
Carl Bretzke:I'm not good at it. But yes, yeah.
Laura Arango Baier:I mean, again, since painting is really just an open ended thing. We have these guidelines that we set just to help, you know, manage the medium, because oil painting can be a bit of a tricky medium, probably not as tricky as watercolor, in my opinion, but it can be tricky. And how, you know, at first it's easy to fight with the medium. You know, you're fighting with the oil paint. It's like, it's not doing what I want. So that's like, Yeah, well, you have to learn to, you know, move around it in a way. And one of those ways that I remember learning was keeping my brushes very clean. If I'm painting and I'm going to pick up the color again, I need to wipe the brush and then pick it up again. Yeah. Yeah, it's those little tidbits. Oh, man. But, and then I wanted to ask you a little bit more too about your process, like, from you know, the very beginning of, you know, I'm looking for a specific, you know, site that I want to paint, or, Oh, I'm trying to find the light hitting a particular manner that I want to paint. What is that process like from beginning to end for you when you're making a painting?
Carl Bretzke:So I guess it would be similar to someone looking for a photograph that they want to shoot. I if I'm at an event, I'll drive around until I see some composition that looks interesting to me. And I think most people that do that know that you can spend way too much time doing that. And I'll never forget, I was at Lighthouse Plein Air, which is in Jupiter beach, and I was meeting up with Jason sakran and Hannah Lucero. What was his first name? Anyway, they were painting already, and I was looking for a painting right where they were, and I could not find anything. And I came back 30 minutes later, and they said, Carl, you haven't started painting. And then Andrew Lucero said, Carl, just paint. So I set up right there and I started painting, and ended up with a good painting. But I think you can spend too much time looking so it's more important how you paint something. Try to find something in your own backyard, and something you like if you if I do happen to come across like, just the perfect scene and I can paint it. That's the That's the ultimate but you don't always find the perfect scene.
Laura Arango Baier:At BoldBrush, we inspire artists to inspire the world, because creating art creates magic, and the world is currently in desperate need of magic. BoldBrush provides artists with free art, marketing, creativity and business ideas and information. This show is an example. We also offer written resources, articles and a free monthly art contest open to all visual artists. We believe that fortune favors the bold brush, and if you believe that too, sign up completely free at BoldBrush show.com that's B, O, L, d, b, r, U, S, H show.com the BoldBrush show is sponsored by Faso. Now, more than ever, it's crucial to have a website when you're an artist, especially if you want to be a professional in your career. Thankfully, with our special link, faso.com, forward slash podcast, you can make that come true and also get over 50% off your first year on your artist website. Yes, that's basically the price of 12 lattes in one year, which I think is a really great deal, considering that you get sleek and beautiful website templates that are also mobile friendly, e commerce, print on demand in certain countries, as well as access to our marketing center that has our brand new art marketing calendar. And the art marketing calendar is something that you won't get with our competitor. The art marketing calendar gives you day by day, step by step, guides on what you should be doing today right now, in order to get your artwork out there and seen by the right eyes so that you can make more sales this year. So if you want to change your life and actually meet your sales goal this year, then start now by going to our special link, faso.com forward slash podcast, that's faso.com forward slash podcast, no, yeah, sometimes you have to work with what you got, and then you should it up, kind of like how you mentioned, like, changing up the clouds and your Nocturne, or, you know, shifting some stuff around in terms of color, just to make it even more I mean, that's what we do as artists. We're supposed to kind of make things like look nicer, in a way, like more attractive, more visually pleasant to observe. Yeah, the original Photoshop, oh, man. And then technique wise, what would you say has helped you really improve your work?
Carl Bretzke:So again, I think if I'm trying to speak generally to an audience, I would say that the years I spent learning from somebody were very helpful. And again, it was mostly Joe Paquette, but I've done lots of workshops with other people, and St Paul Art Academy, which is in was local, learned a little bit about classical painting there. So anytime you can get instruction, I would do that. That was very helpful for me. But I think one thing that a lot of people don't know, and I think it's true is that plein air painting is great for studio painting, and the more that I can paint outdoors from life or indoors from life, or whatever, the better my paintings are going to be if I'm using photo reference. So that's one of the reasons I do the plein air event. Yes, I think it makes me a better painter. And the other thing it does for me is that, you know, if you go somewhere for four days to paint, or five days and you're in a competition, you try really hard because you don't want to be embarrassed, and you end up doing two, three paintings a day. So at the end of the week, I'll have 10 paintings done. They have a big sale that they've been advertising for all year and and then they have prize money. So they're great things to do. By the time you're done, you'll have done a lot of paintings in a week. And then try to compare that to how many paintings you finished in your studio this week. It's like maybe one at the most. So the volume of stuff you get done in the plenary event, I think, is very helpful for improving,
Laura Arango Baier:yes, and that's a really great point, because, of course, I mean, how much you practice right is going to influence how good you get, especially intentional practicing. I know a lot of people talk about the 10,000 hour rule, but it's more like 10,000 intentional hours. I mean, you can't sit and paint the same thing over and over again without if you're not paying attention to it and not actually learning from it, you're not really moving forward very much, not as much as you could. You know,
Carl Bretzke:I think the learning part you might get from other people, but you may not see yourself. So, you know, there's certainly people who do the same painting over and over because it was successful. But if you want to move forward, you need someone to say, hey, paint something else. Or, why don't you try this in your painting? And I've had that, luckily, my wife's an artist, so I get lots of advice.
Laura Arango Baier:Yeah, that's the nice part about having an artist, spouse or partner, is getting that trusting their vision as well, to like, tell like, yeah, I see your potential. You could totally try this and you'll do great. You know,
Carl Bretzke:I've been surprised. Actually, people who aren't painters will come in and if I ask them what they think, they have an opinion, and they might be right, just because it's a fresh set of eyes. So I do like other people around looking at my art,
Laura Arango Baier:yeah, and that's something that's very underrated. I because I of course, being an artist, knowing other artists, we tend to be hermits. We tend to like to hide away, and then we get too much in our heads, and we don't realize how underrated and how amazing and useful it is to get out of our shell and talk to another person and show them our work. It takes the level, oh yeah.
Carl Bretzke:Sometimes it's not always negative. Sometimes they see something you did that they like, Oh, that's really good. You remember that?
Laura Arango Baier:Yeah, I was well, and that ties into what I was gonna say about you know, it's a little bit of a vulnerable thing to show your work, because you feel like, Oh no, they're gonna judge me. And it's very easy to attach our self worth to our paintings when reality, you know, it's a skill you improve at it. It's always getting better. Hopefully, if you're, you know, putting the work so if anything, it's it's even more useful to help you move forward as an artist, to show it to someone, especially someone you can trust to be kind and say, you know, what needs to be said in a way that isn't going to be like a slap in the face, you know, oh, man. And I wanted to ask you, because I'm so curious. Since you you were a radiologist, specifically, would you say that you had some transferable skills that you gained from studying radiology that helped you with painting.
Carl Bretzke:Yeah, I mean, of all the medical specialties, I guess radiology is a very visual specialty, so and my specifically, I did interventional radiology, which is surgical procedures under X ray guidance. So I'm looking at a monitor, working on someone through small incisions and catheters and trying to weave my way through the body. And so I'm looking at two dimensions, trying to imagine three dimensions. And so now it's three dimensions in art, looking at three dimensions, trying to put it down in two dimensions. So whether that really helps me, I don't know, but I thought it was kind of an interesting corollary. But, yeah, the visual specialty, I guess that part of, part of why I was attracted to radiology as a specialty,
Laura Arango Baier:yeah, yeah. And then the other aspect, I think is interesting is, you know, you might see an image in radiology, right? And then think, oh, there's this mass here. And maybe another person who's never really been able to tell that nuance apart, they can't. They don't see it until you point it out and you really shape it out for them, right? You have a bit more of that practice of nuance with value shifts.
Carl Bretzke:That's right, you learn to inspect very well.
Laura Arango Baier:Yes, yes, yeah. Would you say that that's given, definitely given you an edge when you're, you know, working on your paintings.
Carl Bretzke:But, I mean, it's fun to think maybe it did, but I was interested in art way before I did medicine. Feel like I'm still using some of those things that I learned before I was in medical school.
Laura Arango Baier:Yeah, so maybe it's even the other way around. Maybe it was, you know, observational thing that helped you with it into radio. Radiology, I think that makes sense, yeah, yeah. And then, of course, you got a lot of practice in radiology to also, you know, see those shifts. And then going back to the painting, where it's like, yeah, I can see the shifts happening just naturally, which is really awesome, because that's one of those things that I think is kind of hard to notice when you're early in you know, learning how to paint and learning to create something realistic is realizing, Oh, what do you mean? The things around me aren't just one flat tone. No, they're not
Carl Bretzke:how it works. Gradations are really important in art, and it is one of the last things you learn, I think, first and shape and color and perspective and proportion, which is all good. You need all that. But then at the end, at least start thinking about transitions so
Laura Arango Baier:and then it makes sense, too, that that would be one of the last things, because so much of the bulk of learning to paint is learning to draw and learning to see value like that. I think those are, like the core, core things, because color is the fun part. That's like the Yeah, it becomes complicated once you get there, but you can't make a painting work if your drawing and values aren't working no matter what color you use. Yeah, you can. You can't render yourself out of a bad drawing.
Carl Bretzke:And you can't keep throwing color at something without having something to balance at some neutral. The big teaching of piquettes was, you know, you balance color with neutral tones. And so I always try to think about that when I'm painting, not try to do too much color everywhere. Save it for a few spots Exactly.
Laura Arango Baier:And I think that's another, another thing that we were talking about earlier, like the gray, how it can be so underrated. It is the power color booster, in my opinion, because you can have a whole painting that's just gray or very neutral, and then you start adding those touches of color, and suddenly it's colorful. Exactly, yes. And then for you, what was it like when you transitioned out of being a physician like, Did you taper off your hours little by little? Or, you know, how was that transition like? And when did you say, oh my gosh, I'm, you know, a full time artist. Now, this is great,
Carl Bretzke:yeah, no, so let's see. 2010 is when I started doing the plenary events. But before that, I'd been taking classes with Joe for almost 10 years, I guess. And I always had, I had a day off each week, and I think I was on call every third or fourth weekend, so I had a lot of weekend time, off, vacation time, and I would always do art. And at the time, my wife would join me. She was an artist also, and so it was easy to do both at the same time. I was able to do my medical career and painting at the same time. But then in 2016 when I quit or when I retired, I take this combat over in it two, two years earlier, I went part time. I job shared with one other radiologist. And so as that two year period, I really hit it hard in the plein air world. And then when I retired, I got my studio and I was able to come here every day and do all the plenary events I wanted. And so it seemed like, I guess, it was fairly gradual in that respect, that I was part time for a couple years, and then finally, full time art.
Laura Arango Baier:That's nice. Yeah, I've had so many artists on, and some of them, you know, they have that technique of, okay, I'm going to taper off little by little as I build my career, which is, in my opinion, it can be stressful because, of course, you're trying to time manage, and I think the time management can be a lot. And I can imagine you, having been in the medical field, how much more stressful it can be, since I feel like medical fields tend to have crazier hours than. The average career depending, of course, and then I've had other guests who are like, Yeah, I just cold turkey quit and started. It's like, oh, that's scary.
Carl Bretzke:I you know, I'm so happy I had a different career earlier, or at least did two things at the same time. I think it made art a little bit easier that there was things I didn't have to worry about. But part of my career in medicine, you go from one case to another case to another case, and I really learned to compartmentalize those segments of time and you've got to totally get out of one mindset to go on and do be effective in the next one. And I think that helps me in art. Think I can put things behind and not think about them while I'm concentrating on what I'm doing. Yeah, at least my wife says I do that. So
Laura Arango Baier:I mean it, I'm it's probably extremely helpful, because there's nothing worse than being in front of your canvas and you're thinking, like, Did I take the laundry out?
Carl Bretzke:Right? I really get consumed by what I'm doing in the paint when I'm doing a painting, but I did when I was in medicine too, doing a case.
Laura Arango Baier:So, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good, because then you have all of your mental faculties just like focused on on this one thing, yeah, yeah. And, of course, that helps with improving over time at what at your craft, because you're being extremely intentional and concentrated on it, which is very important. You know, it's not just pushing paint around. Yeah, this doesn't help. But, yeah. And then so career wise, I wanted to ask you, because since you did get involved with plein air a bit, you know, within the time that you were still a physician. How has working within, you know, these groups, painting, societies, competitions, exhibitions, how has that helped your career as an artist?
Carl Bretzke:Yeah, they all contribute. I mean, I guess I like to think of it as kind of building a brand, more or less, but I've let it happen organically. I think I'm not pushing it. Someone told me what. I think it was. Joe said, you know, don't get out there too early. And by that, I think he means, you know, don't get ahead of yourself. You know, you got to learn these things first. And so I decided that I'm just going to go about trying to learn, and as I go, if someone offers me to some opportunity, I wasn't going to say no. So my goal is to always say yes to things. For instance, even this podcast, I knew that if I did it, you know, it takes a little effort, but I'll probably learn more about how to do it better next time by doing it this time. And I've kind of looked at everything that way. Teaching, you know, you definitely get to be a better artist by teaching, because you in order to tell someone else, you better know what you're talking about. And so I'll study it, anticipating what kind of questions might come up and so forth and so. All that effort makes you a better painter in the end, or a better presenter, or whatever it is.
Laura Arango Baier:Yeah, that's so true. You know, having having those opportunities presented to you and saying yes to them, yep, that's that's where opportunity becomes growth. You know, it's like growth is knocking at the door in the sense of opportunity. Of course, it isn't always helpful to say yes to everything if you don't have a bandwidth, yeah, but for a time, it is very useful to say yes and then start deciding and being a little bit more picky about what you say
Carl Bretzke:yes but anyway, it's really worked well for me to do that, but not everything is offered to you as an opportunity, either, and specifically the plein air events, you're going to have to pursue those. So the nice thing about the way most of these planner events are set up is that they're juried events. You send honest images of what you've done, and they will decide whether you're a fit for that event or not. And so that's something I would recommend. You know, if you're interested in this plein air world at all, you know, try to get involved in some of the plenary events. There's a whole range of big and small events in the plenary world. So there's should be something for almost everybody, and I think it's a good way to get your name out there. The other surprise, I wasn't surprising to me, but the Plein Air. Invention, and Eric Rhodes empire of you know, plein air magazine and all that has been very helpful for me and for my my brand. So I thank him for that. But again, say yes and pursue plenary events,
Laura Arango Baier:yeah, yeah. And would you also say that the networking that happens at these events? Would you say that that has also had an effect on your trajectory as an artist,
Carl Bretzke:probably, but it certainly has made me happier. I mean, it's really enjoyable to get to know another group of people. And so this group that does plein air events, it's like a traveling circus. You know, I say that all the time, so I see these same people over and over again, couple times a year, three times a year, and then online, I'll see them, and I feel like they're close, close friends, and that's fun to have in art, and even if you don't do the plenary events, I think it's important to try to find a group of people that do what you do, and you'll be happy to have one more group in your life.
Laura Arango Baier:Yeah, yeah. And that, you know, brings it back again to how I mentioned earlier, the importance of, you know, having other eyes on your work, especially eyes that you respect as well. It isn't just a random person, it's someone that you know you can confide in, who maybe has a similar view that's in the same like genre, right? Like plein air, it is very helpful. It's very underrated to have that community, right? Yeah, I like it. Yes, yes. And then, what final advice would you give to someone who wants to become a full time artist?
Carl Bretzke:Hmm, those are kind of my my points always say to seek, to seek instruction when you can. I'm happy that I have somewhere to go every day to do my art if you're a full time artist. For some people, that's in their house, which is fine. I do like that. I have to travel to an office more or less, and there's other people around, but you can easily do it both ways. And like you said, it's pretty it can be a solitary thing, so it may not matter to many people.
Laura Arango Baier:Yeah. I mean, it's a bit of a big question, if you think about it, because there are so many things that come into play when you're an artist, especially a career artist,
Carl Bretzke:you haven't talked about, I'm sorry we haven't talked about galleries yet.
Laura Arango Baier:Yeah, we can totally mention galleries.
Carl Bretzke:I mean, if you do, it is helpful to have galleries, to have somewhere to send your work if you're not doing a plenary event or if you don't have any sales out of your studio. So I found that to be very helpful thing. I've got about four galleries at any given time, and I guess I could name them, but do I name them?
Laura Arango Baier:You can? Yeah, you totally can. Maybe there's someone out there who lives
Carl Bretzke:close by, all right, so grinning gallery. They're in Sag Harbor, New York, out on Long Island. And then there's Callaway Fine Art in Washington, DC, Doug Flanders and Associates in Edina, Minnesota, and then the kicker, Nick gallery in downtown Minneapolis. Those are the four currently. Yeah.
Laura Arango Baier:And then, how have you managed? Because, of course, I've met artists who work solely with galleries, and oftentimes it's a bit stressful to send work to each of them. How have you managed that?
Carl Bretzke:You become an expert packer and shipper, and I honestly, my half my suiting is set up so I can pack and ship. So save all your old frame boxes, because you'll need those to ship stuff out. That's it, yeah, yeah.
Laura Arango Baier:How do you manage the aspect of like, oh, well, you know, this gallery wants to do a show, and have to send them X number of paintings, and then this other gallery is asking if I want to do a solo show or another show, and they're asking for X number of paintings. How do you balance out how many like your hours and like being able to, like, send out what paintings where,
Carl Bretzke:yeah, no, it can be a difficult if I have a solo show, or two person show or something coming up, I usually I get almost a one year notice so I can start working on pieces. And then a lot of that ends up being a. Mixture of larger studio works, and then I fill in with some plein air pieces that might be left over from one event or another. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you can see my studio. I'm just going to rotate, but I I'm not short of paintings right now,
Laura Arango Baier:so I've got lots of beautiful work, yeah,
Carl Bretzke:and I like having them up on the wall just so I can, occasionally I might see something that I want to work on, and I'll just go over and add paint if I need to. It also keeps my frames nice, not having to pack them up.
Laura Arango Baier:Yeah, that's a that's a really great point to have your, you know, your paintings displayed like that, and to have the frames as well. And then it's good that you can have a large breadth of work as well, to be able to be like, Oh, I can send this out to this gallery. I can send this out to that gallery. And that's one of those things that I think is can vary so much from artist to artist, is how much work you put out, like your speed of working and understanding like, okay, am I fast painter, my slow painter? And then how can I arrange my life around my speed as well? Because if someone's a fast painter, it's probably a lot easier to get work out there and sell a bit more. But then, if you're a slow painter, you have to find other means to, you know, support your income that isn't just selling paintings, so it's
Carl Bretzke:a bit of a or maybe you can charge more if you're a slow painter,
Laura Arango Baier:not too Yes, exactly, you
Unknown:don't know,
Laura Arango Baier:yeah, yeah. And again, that's one of those, like, dependent things, and it's so person to person, artist to artist. It's you got to discover it for yourself. Like, for example, I found out I'm actually not. I used to think I was a slow painter. I'm actually not. And that's kind of posing a bit of a problem for me, because I'm I'm even doubting if oil paint is like the correct medium for me, because I want to keep going and going. But you know, oil paint tends to dry slowly, unless you use dryer.
Carl Bretzke:So I went to I graduated from the com, from Colorado University in Boulder, and I had an art teacher out there. He said, Carl, I like your work, but you should take more time. And he was right, and I probably still need to do that, but that's probably where the plein air world kind of fits for me a little bit
Laura Arango Baier:the speed. Yeah, yeah. You have to, you have to paint so fast to catch all the stuff out there. The sun moves so quickly across the sky. Or rather, we, we spin very quickly the earth. So, you know, that poses a problem if you're not a fast painter. But yeah, yeah, that's awesome. And then do you have any upcoming shows or workshops or anything that you would like to promote?
Carl Bretzke:So they have a kind of a holiday show at grinning gallery right now with I have a few pieces in that pretty much all the galleries have some of my work right now that's on display workshops. I don't do a lot of workshops. I typically will do, like a one day or two day preceding a plenary event, if I'm invited to do that, and then I've got a three day workshop coming up at Main Street Art Center in Lake Zurich, Illinois. That's April 24 through 26 so that's available. Winslow Art Center. They've done some recordings of me that are available online, and then, of course, streamline video and what paint Tube video. They've got two of my videos out, one on nocturnes, one on Sunset,
Laura Arango Baier:awesome, yeah. And then I will link all of your your website, your Instagram, which, by the way, do you mind telling us what your website and Instagram are?
Carl Bretzke:Yeah. So my website is Carl bretzky.com very easy. And then Instagram is see bretsky art, I believe, and Facebook is just Carl bretsky. But anyway, you'll find me on both Carl bretzky would get you there. And it's interesting that you just mentioned that because I, I, I use my website, kind of as my archive, I put everything I paint on the website, pretty much, and it's chronological, so the more recent is always the first page, and then it goes back to older things as you go through pages. But I'm trying to, I was trying to think about this today, that most of my friends or people that know my work know it through Facebook and Instagram. I think they go to those sites much more frequently than your website or my website, and so I would say to anyone. Another piece of advice is, don't ignore Facebook and Instagram as far as valuable, as far as boost. In your your image, or your your work. I think it's helpful.
Laura Arango Baier:Yes, I agree. It's definitely. It's nice to have a website because it's a great landing spot for people who know you, but then they need to know you somehow. And of course, Instagram and Facebook are like, basically advertising, in a sense, like they get out there.
Carl Bretzke:Yeah, I mean, I actually, I feel guilty that I like it so much. But I like it because I can look at other people's art, and I get a kick out of doing that, and then hope, and a lot of them get a kick out of seeing mine. So depends how you use it, I think, and I just use it more in the interest of art.
Laura Arango Baier:Yeah, yes, it's a double edged sword, yeah, yeah. It can be. It could be great to research and to get excited and get inspired, but then if it takes over your life, you suddenly start hating your own work, and then, yeah, and then you end up in a pit of sadness. Yeah, I think we've all been there, but yeah, oh, continue. I was
Carl Bretzke:gonna say the website, besides archiving my work, it keeps track of, kind of all the braggy things that, you know, the awards and different associations I'm in and so forth. So if anyone was interested on the planet in the plenary events I've done that's all on there and also links to the videos. I didn't realize that Faso was its own entity, and that you're part of that, but I was going to tell you that I love Faso. I can navigate it so easily myself. I haven't had to have anyone help me. I mean, that's amazing for me. So yeah, I love it.
Laura Arango Baier:I will be including all of your links in the show notes so everyone can go check out your gorgeous Nocturnes and your gorgeous daytime paintings. And yeah. So thank you for coming on to the podcast.
Carl Bretzke:My pleasure. Thanks. Nice to meet you and talk to you.
Laura Arango Baier:Yes, same here. Thank you to everyone out there for listening to the podcast. Your continued support means a lot to us. If you've enjoyed the episode, please leave a review for the podcast on Apple podcast Spotify, or leave us a comment on YouTube. This helps us reach others who might also benefit from the excellent advice that our guests provide. Thank you.