I'm in a fight with with the work a lot. It's not an inherently pleasant space to make art. There are moments where it is. And it's super rewarding in those moments. There are these moments where you feel like you're in a flow and you know it and you're in this conversation and it feels like this incredible quid pro quo. And there are other moments when you feel like you are in a fight for your life against the work and and you you hate it. And you feel like you're you're failing miserably, and you feel scared, you know, and then you think to yourself, am I ever gonna make anything interesting again? You know, like is this journey over? Like have I lost it? Is this all? And at that point, you know, it's it's it's a fight or flight scenario. And and you have to kind of you know bully it, you have to push it, you have to to fight it because running away probably isn't gonna help you come to a solution. Wow.
SPEAKER_01Man, Nathan, that was uh pretty incredible.
I'm excited for today's episode of Just Make Art. As you and I are back together. Uh, if you if none of you watched the last few episodes that we had with our good friend uh Jamel Wright Sr., I would highly suggest going back and watching that two-part series because it is fantastic as far as art history, as far as process, so many great things in that. And I'm so excited to go through what you brought to us uh to talk about today, this incredible little blurb of Rasheed Johnson with Kerry Scott from Scene. So uh I'm excited, Nathan.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and by the way, if you're not following Carrie Scott and listening to the Scene podcast, you you you definitely need to. Yeah, you're missing out. You're missing out, yeah. The um so this came across, this is one example tie of where you know social media actually put something you know good in front of you.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_04I was I was talking to, or and we're already off track, I was talking to a friend recently about the benefits of curating your own algorithm, you know, retraining it to show because you know it's it's super important, you know, it's really easy to, without getting into specifics, you know, you watch or like one or two things, or just yeah, even just spend time on on a on a post that is interesting to you in the moment, and the feed is like, oh, you like that? Yeah, so frustrating. Here's all of that. Um, so sometimes it's it's very useful to retrain, retrain your feed and retrain the algorithm. No, this is what I want to see. This is what I want to see. And uh, so when this came across, we weren't sure what our next episode is gonna be about. And I shot it over to you and said, All right, I think we've got our next our next episode. So we should clarify this is not an episode about Rasheed Johnson specifically. We do have one of those
in the works, but um, the theme of this particular quote is gonna be our jumping off point. And so, you know, Ty, what I really liked about this is and there's a lot to unpack here. It's a long quote. There's a lot of a lot of uh different veins and tentacles that we'll definitely get into, but I think it comes down to you know, really identifying the difference between inspiration and and perspiration, you know. So Rasheed talks about those inspiring moments. We're in flow, we're in communion, you know, quid pro quo, uh, everything's working, back and forth, you know. These are great. It's what we long for, it's what I am personally addicted to chasing, but they're inconsistent, you know, they're they're not predictable. The rest of the time is much more adversarial, the relationship between us, you know, and the work. We're not on the same team. We feel like we're moving in directions, you know, we're trying to get the work to do what we want it to do, or at the very least, get it to do something that in Rashid's words is at least interesting, you know. And so I think what I what what really caught me about this quote specifically is we talk all the time on the podcast about listening to the work, how important it is to listen. But I think this really highlights the other side of the coin, which is what do we do? How do we interact with the work when it's not speaking up? When it's not you know playing nice, you know? And so I think as he lays out the the options that we have, you know, when it when it's real work, it's fight or flight. And and that's that's that's really interesting. So a lot of different directions we can take, but I just want to kind of give context to introduce this into the you know ongoing you know themes that we've discussed before. But uh, yeah, what do we do? What do we do when the work's not playing nice? What do we do when it's not working? Which I don't know about you, I got a pretty good idea. Uh, but I know about me. And uh that is more often than these beautiful, pristine, whatever moments that we strive for, but that aren't happening on a regular basis necessarily.
Well, in those moments, like they're fleeting, they're not they're not there's not an overabundance of inspiration in moments. And you know, we hear the terms creative block, writer's block, artist block, like all those things. You know, we've talked about that at length at times in the podcast and talked about which we'll talk about today, too, overcoming resistance in those moments. And I love that you use uh quid pro quo, and we were chatting before and kind of laughing just about that, and you asked me what that reminded me of. And I said one of the characters in the animated film Yellow Submarine with the Beatles, and it's a PhD Jeremy Hillary Boob is his name in the cartoon, and he says, If I spoke prose, you'd all find out I don't know what I talk about.
SPEAKER_00Ad hoc, ad lock, and quid pro quo, so little time, so much to know.
SPEAKER_01And that never I never got that as a kid or as an adult, one of my favorite animated films. But thinking about it, I was like, wait a second, quid pro quo, so little time and so much to know. And then thinking about this episode, uh, you know, I'd just laugh at the little blue meanie guy running around like yelling that, and I'm going, wait, that's how I feel in the studio. Yeah, I've got so little time here to make what I want to make, right? But yeah, and I have so much to know, so what do I do? So I I want to just read that first line from Rasheed when he's talking about it.
SPEAKER_04Can I share what I thought of when I the person that came to mind? What did you think? Yeah. I'll play it. Here we go.
SPEAKER_03Quick ProQ. I hear things, you tell me things.
SPEAKER_02What about the stage though? Quick ProQ.
SPEAKER_01Yes or no. Yes, I'm out to rate.
SPEAKER_04Another great film. That's the first thing that comes to mind for me for sure. Yeah, Sir Anthony Hopkins in Signs of the Lamps. But, you know, to carry that forward, I tell you things, you tell me things. And you think about I haven't watched that movie for a while, but just the the adversarial nature of that relationship. You know, Clarice is trying to get information out of him. He's not, he ain't giving it up easy, if at all. Right. Um, it's gonna be a battle, you know. And so uh yeah, I just thought that was an interesting, whatever reference to that to that particular theme.
SPEAKER_01Well, let me read this little beginning that Rasheed answered there when he says, Yeah, I'm in a fight with a work a lot. It's not an inherently pleasant space to make art. There are moments where it is, and it's super rewarding in those moments. All of you
artists out there, you 100% know what Rasheed is saying here that I'm in a fight with a work a lot and it's not a pleasant space to be in. We all, I'm going through this with my current mentees who are in my program who are all trying new things and experimenting with new ideas. And then I get a an email or a WhatsApp that says, I can't figure anything out. Like, this is terrible. The work's coming out just horribly. And I'm going, you've only been doing it for three days. You've only been, you know what I mean? And it's like, but in our heads, oh, that's like we've got to do this today. This is my I need to do this now, and it just doesn't work that way.
SPEAKER_04As you're talking, I'm thinking about the difference between being a tourist and being a resident. You and I both like to travel, you know, and you go somewhere, you whatever, you you dress a little more local, uh, if you're in a different country, you try to learn some basic phrases and feel like you're, you know, putting on the costume of somebody who is in that space. But you're just a tourist. 100%. You're just a you're just a visitor. You don't, you don't live, you don't get your mail there. You know, you don't know what it's like to actually be of that place and from that place and in that place all the time.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Yeah. And I lived in China, I lived in Romania, I've spent a lot of time around the world, and no matter what, I can never be Chinese, I can never be Romanian. I can try as much as I love the culture and I love the things, I'm just not. Right. And there are definite moments where you kind of I just really want to be what I'm around. Yeah. But I still don't understand what it's like to be them. I still don't understand what it's like to live the way they live. Or, you know, it's just different. It's different culturally. I want to understand the way you're thinking. Well, I'm not the same cultural person as you, so we don't understand certain things. Right. That's our art.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right?
SPEAKER_04To take that a step further, you know, when you talk to friends who have not visited those places, I've not been to either of those of those of those countries. You are way more Chinese and Romanian than I am. Not obviously, you know, at the core, but you know way more about that culture than I do. But when you're there, it's not even close. You know, so it's similar to, I'm just thinking about the relationship that we have with the people in our lives who aren't artists, who maybe have done creative things. They've done, you know, art for the sake of escape. That's not the right word, therapy,
whatever, just as a hobby. And that's and that's great. People that have done any version of art, especially as adults, certainly know more about it than people that haven't done anything at all, but they don't live there. You know, and so it's it's kind of like us um, you know, if we're really about that life, if we're really, you know, embedded in that, in this world, it's gonna be difficult for us to try to communicate that or for them to try and understand, you know, where we're coming from when we are struggling, when we are trying to, you know, complain or relate about how hard it. I mean, I think I've shared this example before, but one of my best friends, Justin, he always says, Yeah, you can just, yeah, just how's it going with your finger painting? Just back there, you know, make, you know, lighting fires and and and finger painting all day. And it's like, yeah, I mean, yeah, kind of, but not at all, also. Yeah. Yeah.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01I want to read a quote, Nathan, by Julia Cameron from The Artist Way, that we've talked about quite a few times on this podcast as well, one of my favorite books. And she says, the need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art of all. And I think that's that's kind of that fight a lot for us when we go into the studio. We have this idea of what we want to make and we want it to be great. And so we go in with this mindset of I'm going to produce what's in my head. And then you start and you're 20 years away from what you see, right? Your vision and what you can actually execute in that moment. And so that's that fight, that's not an inherently pleasant space, as Rasheed says, to be in. Because in your head, you're already going in thinking you're going to produce X. But then when you go in, you're not even in the alphabet yet when you start producing. So you're you're not getting to X. Like you're not even to A yet. You're still in your numbers. And so I think there's this fight and this understanding that Julius saying is get rid of being a great artist. You need to find that way to go in and just find the moments and make the space pleasant enough to where you can just grind out a ton of work over time and allow those things to happen. Create the right conditions that will lead to the result.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
Have to. So that's a great lead in tie to uh one of the quotes that I'd selected and dropped into the mix here. It's a William Burroughs quote. Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict. Those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war. As I was thinking about that quote relative to today's theme, you know, if we if we reframe happiness or victory as successful work, interesting work, authentic work, then we must accept that it is often going to be a byproduct of conflict, at the very least, and sometimes flat out war. Sometimes it's gonna be a battle, you know, sometimes we're gonna have to fight. But when we accept the battle as part of the process, we're prepared for it when it comes. You know, and I think as you're referencing people that reach out to you in your mentorship program and and you know, friends, friends that you have, when they are in the battle and they're not accustomed to it, they don't have the the calluses and the scars, you know, of war to know that, yeah, you're you're gonna get a little injured, maybe a lot injured. And that's part of it. So it comes back to that acceptance of this is this is just part of it. This is part of, this is a natural ingredient in in the recipe. This is a necessary part of getting from where we're at to where we strive to be.
SPEAKER_01Well, and without without time, you you can't understand it. Because over time you accumulate knowledge, and then over time that knowledge becomes wisdom, and then you gain understanding through that wisdom of creating those situations in your practice to be able to keep fighting through those moments and finding happiness even in the failure. I think you and I talked about this uh three episodes ago. Like even being able to at this point for me, I consider this a massive win. Where when I'm in the studio and nothing's working, and I'm at a fight with the work and nothing is working out, I
still am able to have gratitude that I'm able to mess up and create terrible work because of all the time I've been spending for the last 20, 30 years making work or plus, like I've been able to figure myself out. Yeah. Right? There's a lot of self-work that we talk about all the time. There's a lot of self-work we're doing as artists in the studio to recognize ourselves and recognize resistance so that we can throw it out the door and allow ourselves space to even find gratitude in moments where nothing's working.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Not easy. I'm not saying that's an easy thing. This is like an accumulation of lots of years learning that.
SPEAKER_04So that's a perfect lead into something else I wanted to talk about today. This is a quote from Soon Tzu from the Art of War. Know the enemy and know yourself. In a hundred battles, you will never be defeated. Know the enemy and know yourself. That's what I hear you talking about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Is the self-knowledge, the self-awareness, and the fulfillment that we're after the work, however it's however it turns out, however it's received, that's all great. That's a result, you know. But what I hear you talking about when you share that is knowing yourself and knowing that to get fulfillment, to be okay with all of the steps along the way that are required, you you gotta, you gotta, you gotta know who you are. You gotta know what you're about. You gotta be okay with things not working out with the sort of 30,000-foot view of, yeah, I've I've been here before. I've got I've got reps, you know. I I know what happens. It's it because all of it's cyclical, right? Everything that we do, it's it's it's very cyclical. It's not predictable, you know. It's not like, hey, the sun will come up and it'll it'll go down at a you know very predictable time. It's it's not like that. But the cycle always continues, you know, it always goes from however nasty the battle gets, however uncomfortable we are, it's gonna go somewhere, you know. And I think about the enemy is is resistance, you know. So you brought Stephen Pressville in the mix. So it's it's not the work itself. That's the work's not the enemy. It's but the resistance expresses itself, you know, through the work. So if we know ourselves, we also know the enemy because that's what resistance is using. Resistance is using our self-doubt, our fear, um, the things that Rashid talks about, right? So when he says you feel like you're failing miserably, you feel scared, you think to yourself, Am I ever gonna make anything interesting again? Is this journey over? Have I lost it? And you know, again, we're gonna do an entire episode on Rashid and and and his work, but if somebody who's operating at that level has self-doubt and fear, it stands to reason that we probably are all going to have that self-doubt and that fear. And that is what the enemy, resistance, is using something that is a part of the human condition
to get at us. That's the enemy. That's what we're fighting. It's not the work, it's the resistance and the way resistance uses us, right? So back to that Tsun Tzu quote know the enemy and know yourself. When we know ourselves, when we can recognize, oh, interesting. There I am. Nathan's experiencing some self-doubt right now. Nathan's experiencing some fear right now. Huh. Okay. There it is. I'm an acknowledge, it's it's in the room. Okay. Hey, how's it going? Right? As opposed to like I can name it, I can claim it, I can point at it, as opposed to this sort of like general darkness that I can't put my finger on and I can't wrap my arms around. You know, you can't fight something that you can't see. You can't fight something that you can't name and identify as something to be dealt with.
SPEAKER_01Well, and that's the quid pro quo. Yeah. You know, and that's what Sun Tzu is saying as well, right? There's the quid pro quo in that knowing the enemy, knowing yourself. In a hundred battles, you'll never be defeated. Like I'm getting information from here, I'm getting information from here, right? And then that's that conversation that feels incredible that Rashid's saying.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like it's going back and forth. And you're having this conversation, there's an exchange where one favors service is contingent on the other. If I don't know myself and I don't know the work where I'm going in between, there's gonna be a lot of fighting.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01A lot of fighting, and that's where that happens. I love that Sun Tzu says, in a hundred battles, you won't be defeated. Now, a battle doesn't mean that it's just making bad work. It's the attitude in that moment of I'm gonna keep going, I'm gonna keep going, I'm gonna keep fighting through this.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01And that's what Rashid's saying. He's fighting with the work all the time. It's going back and forth. That's not where I want it to go. Well, this is what, well, the work's telling me to go this way, but I don't want to go that way yet. If nothing's turning out the way I want to. How do I achieve this? How do I do that? And it is unpleasant. Yeah. Because it you want it so bad to be this way. And sometimes we're just not ready and we have to let the work lead us. This is a conversation we just had with a few mentees from my program this last week. One of my mentees, Matt Wall, asked the question in our group and he said, I keep working on this work and it's not coming out the way I intend to. I feel like something else is starting to happen. And he asked the question, Do I stay with where I want to go or do I follow what's happening? Because I have this idea for a body work, but it keeps kind of changing when I'm working on the work. And everybody in the program, Louise Fletcher and Sal Strom and some of the more wiser artists who've been making work for a long time, before I even got there, said, Follow the work. Follow the work. Don't follow you. Let the work lead you where it's going. Yeah. And that happened. I said that happens to me every time I start a body work. I have this idea. I come in and I'm like, let's go. I'm going to roll on this. And then all of a sudden, one or two pieces in the work goes, Nope. You got to go this way. Gotta go this way. Yeah. And I think that's the importance, too, of if you're not studying and listening to other artists, reading, listening on podcasts, watching YouTube interviews, whatever, you're not going to realize that you're not alone. Right. You're going to feel really alone. But the more you hear a Rasheed Johnson say what you're saying, you're like, kidding me? Rasheed Johnson's saying what I'm saying? I got this made. Yeah. I can roll. Because he
is everywhere I want to be as an artist.
SPEAKER_04Dear listener, write this down. Make this something that you revisit. It's it's a it's an incredibly simple but incredibly powerful idea. It's not just me. It's not just me.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_04In a vacuum that you're describing, in the absence of listening to and absorbing the experience and wisdom of other artists that we respect, it's gonna feel like that. It's gonna feel like, oh, surely, surely Ty Nathan Clark is just banging out work, you know, one one gym after another, no resistance, must be nice. I mean, I see his reels. It's just he's just hanging out with his puppy, drinking a cup of coffee, and boom, that's a finished piece. Yeah, that's it. That easy. No, that ain't it. That's not the truth. It's not just you, it's everybody. It's it's part of what we are signing up for when we are a resident of this life and not just a tourist.
SPEAKER_01But I want to read a quote by Madeline Langle from the book Walking on Water. It's one of my favorite books. And she says, getting, and I'm gonna paraphrase here, getting out of the way and listening is not something that comes easily. Until I've worked through self, I will not be enabled to get out of the way. Someone wrote, the principal part of faith is patience. And this applies too to art of all disciplines. We must work every day, whether we feel like it or not. Otherwise, when it comes time to get out of the way and listen to the work, we're not able to heed it. That's everything we were just saying. We have to be able to find the way to get out of our way and listen. If we haven't worked, it's going to be really difficult to get out of our way when we're in the studio. We have to have patience and work, work, work, whether we feel like it or not, whether we're fighting with our work or we're in the flow. Yeah. Otherwise, when it comes time for us to just completely get out of the way and listen, we can't hear anything. Right. We can't hear. We we talk about this all the time, you and I, outside of the podcast, but also on the podcast. Sure. We have to spend time listening to the work. Remove ourselves, remove all of our preconceived notions, remove all the doubt, all those things that Rashid's talking about, and just sit there and let the quid pro quo happen. Let the work give you something.
SPEAKER_04Let me ask you a question, Ty. I'm gonna channel my inner audience member here. Okay, you guys talk about this all the time, this idea of working on yourself, this quote, working through self. We we're nibbling around the edges of this very, you know, essential idea. What do you tell people? Like what advice do you give people to do that type of inner work?
SPEAKER_01Well, the the first thing that I tell my artists that go through my program is to get rid of the noise when you're in the studio. Find ways to get rid of the noise. Um,
obviously, we're all distracted by multiple different things. Uh, it's very, very easy right now to be angry, furious, and upset in our country in America. If I bring that into my studio, I will not be able to focus on my work. Now, that doesn't mean that that energy or those feelings can't drive my work when I'm working. But there are some of us that it's hard to turn off the phone, it's hard to turn off the TV, it's hard to turn off all the things that are making us angry when we go into the studio because it's easy to sit down while paint's drying and pop open the phone and just start scrubbing through and then get completely out of the mindset you were in when you came in the studio. And that doesn't just go with like political-natured things, which is something that's very easy. I have to shut off when I come in the studio, right? I just can't focus. Yeah, I'm too mad, I'm too angry. I can't even bring thoughts together, right? I have to find those ways to separate things. And that could be comparison. So many artists that have gone through my program that fight with comparison on Instagram. So when they're in the studio and they're working, they start scrolling through the phone and see all the artists they want to be like, and instead of using that as like fuel to fire, it then distracts them of all I'm never gonna be as good as, or they're way further than me, or they just got that show and I didn't, you know, those things. And then all of a sudden, you're in your way. You just created a roadblock of you in your way. And I mean, there's so many things that this could be for a person, but we have to figure out those ways to take that deep breath when we enter our space. I don't know, breath work, meditate, take some silence, journal for a little bit, do your morning pages from the artist way, whatever it is that kind of just I highly suggest that, by the way. For any artist that really struggles with being in their way all the time, go get the artist's way by Julia Cameron and start doing morning pages. I mean, Eric, our friend Eric does them every morning, morning pages. It's a way for him to just kind of stream a thought, just write and get stuff out. So when he starts working or starts his day, he's focused and has a clear mind.
SPEAKER_04It's so important. It's so important. It's I'm laughing because I had um I met a really cool young young man at the uh Apple store a few months ago who helped me with my phone. And uh turns out he's a he's an aspiring filmmaker, and we just got to talking. And I said, Yeah, uh, come by the studio sometime, let's have a chat. He's like, Oh, that'd be awesome, you know. And um, and I've been busy and holidays and all that, but to his credit, he was very you know persistent about like, you know, hey, let me know when let me know what I could come by, you know, just continue pinging me. So we he came over and we um we had uh we had coffee and chatted here at the studio on uh on Sunday, and I and he was looking at my my books. He goes, Oh, I've I've heard about that artist's way book. You know, would you recommend it? I said, absolutely. And then he said, Could I borrow it? And I said, No, you may not borrow it. Give me your address. I will I will send you a copy for your own. But these these notes are precious. The things that I've got highlighted and underlined, I can't get that back. Not saying, you know, that you wouldn't that you wouldn't get it back to me, but that's too precious for me to let out of my let out of my possession. I'll I'll get you yours. But it's it's such a you know, it's such an important thing to realize
is that there is so much going on. There's so much that can really what's the date? Is it the 28th today? January 28th, yeah. You know, living in the Minneapolis area, things that are happening in my in my community, it's been really hard lately. It's been really hard. And it's not to say that we're completely putting blinders on to things that matter and things that affect us. Right.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_04It is to say that an exercise like Morning Pages helps us to get that shit out. Yep. To to to be angry, frustrated, fearful, anxious, and to just let those little thought goblins see the light of day. Yeah. And then and only then are we able to go inward. You know, one of my favorite Clifford Stowe quotes, go inward. Yeah. What do you have to say? And if all we're doing is allowing the world, our phones, our feed to dictate how we feel and what we do with that, good fucking luck. Yeah. Good good luck getting anywhere that you might want to go. Like, I I yeah, it times like this, it's it's I would say necessary to have a practice like that to be able to work through those things. And again, like you're saying, you know, uh take that energy into the work, but to do it in a way where we at least create the space for us to get to work in the first place, because it can be debilitating to just get stuck absorbing all of that.
SPEAKER_01Well, and I think that feeds that feeds what you said feeds great into a William DeCunning quote that you and I both love. And he says, I know there's a terrific idea there somewhere, but whenever I want to get into it, I get a feeling of apathy and I want to lie down and go to sleep. And I think too, like if we're not able to shut off when we go in, it's really easy to fall into that right there. It's really easy to fall into I get a feeling of apathy and want to lie down and go to sleep. Yeah. We're artists, so I don't care who you are, you're an artist, you're a deep feeler. Yeah. You can argue with me, men. We've had a few who've sent some comments into us about us talking about our feelings too much.
SPEAKER_04But anyway, what's your favorite one? Just paraphrase it.
SPEAKER_01Uh, quit whining and crying and just talk about art. I think somebody said, I'm tired of men whining and crying, just talk about art. Like, sorry, I'm sure that you're doing a lot of whining and crying, buddy, in your studio when stuff's not working out for you.
SPEAKER_04Well, knowing some people like that, uh-huh, having been a person like that, you know, uh, probably in my in my younger years, I mean, you're you're you're
whistling to the graveyard. You're pretending that things that aren't that that are absolutely there aren't. Which means that you're not making authentic work. That might be a bold statement. I don't know if you agree with that or not. Um it certainly isn't back to our idea of of conditions. You're certainly not creating the right conditions to make genuine authentic work if that is indeed your aim.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Do you agree with that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_04I just I guess I just need you to co-sign um that idea as I'm as I'm working it out in in real time. But yeah, I mean it it's it I I would argue that it's that it's immature to pretend that there aren't feelings there, that there that there isn't stuff, you know. Um it's unhealthy. Like back to you know, working on back to knowing yourself. I mean, how well can we really know ourselves if we're not willing to go inward and spend time with everything that's there, especially the uncomfortable things.
SPEAKER_01Yep. I agree.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that the Kuhnin quote is so, so good. Again, like, I mean, yet another of thousands of examples that we have and will continue to share of a legend who is telling us he gets a feeling of apathy and wants to lie down and go to sleep. Okay. So obviously he said that, which means that he felt it more than once. Right.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_04Uh probably a lot. And in spite of that, made a ton of work. A ton. Of tremendous work, right? That's important. That's emp that's that's important. Oh, okay. Bill felt that way too. Great. I'm in good company. It's not just me.
SPEAKER_01Well, I love the I know. He says, I know. That's coming from experience, some wisdom. I know there's a terrific idea there somewhere. Right. But he gets in his way. Whenever I want to get into it, the apathy comes. He's recognizing his own resistance, is his hunt, and I know this from studying Dakooning and reading multiple books on him, his biography, autobiographies. Plenty of dacoonines went out the window from his loft in New York. Plenty of stretch da coonings went flying out the window. I always joke and go, oh, it'd be a person walking down the sidewalk when a Dakooning flew out the window, right? I'd have it made. Um, but think about that. I know it's in
there, but whenever I get into it, this overcomes me. He knows that fight. It's so hard to find the great idea in the work. Yeah. But you have to just keep going and go. Anyways, let me let me jump into that second part or sorry, the third part in the Rasheed Johnson quote. You mentioned it a minute ago, but I really want to go into this deeper. And he says, there are moments when you feel like you're in a fight for your life against the work and you hate it, and you feel like you're failing miserably, and you feel scared, and then you think to yourself, Am I ever going to make anything interesting again? Is this journey over? Have I absolutely lost it? Nathan, I literally was in that conversation with myself two months ago working on a piece. That piece is showing uh tomorrow night at opens at Art Center Waco. I'm showing with a few of my dear friends and a few of your friends as well, which I I can't wait. It's gonna be fun. I have never shared with shown with Eric before, so I'm super excited to show with Eric for the first time. I seriously felt like I was in a fight for my life with this work. And I was creating it for this large-scale exhibition, and I worked, I mean, I was in the flow for a few days, and then I stepped back and I went, What the freaking hell did I just make? How did I just resort back to 2013? I literally created something that looked like either something I was doing in art school or right after in probably 2001. I I don't even know where it came from because I was in a flow and things were kind of working and I was going wall to floor and wall to floor, and then I stepped back and I hung it up to take some pictures to kind of look at and went, have I lost it? I literally said those words. Have I absolutely lost everything? How did I just resort back to 20 years ago? And then it came. And I painted over it, and I created something that's nowhere close to where I started. Know the enemy and know yourself.
SPEAKER_04I'm a little bummed you didn't throw it out the window.
SPEAKER_01I've actually uh it almost went it almost went out the window.
SPEAKER_04Well, I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you I've I've paid both of your neighbors to keep an eye out. Nice. And uh if they find anything in the yard, drop it in the mail. Yep.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I that I'm sure that they heard F-bombs coming through the walls in those moments. There were plenty of loud I I talk out loud a lot when I'm in the studio. Oh, yeah. So there were there was plenty of loud uh bad words. Right. Poor cash. But what do you what do you do when you're in that moment?
Well, it's interesting. I was thinking about this. This is more the the very last part of the quote, but the you know, when he says running away probably isn't gonna help you come to a solution. This is when he's referring to the fight or flight scenario. And I was thinking about how often I choose flight. I run, you know. And I'm I was thinking back to the um uh that Leonardo Drew quote of uh or just his reference to this the seven crying babies that he always has you know in the studio at any given time.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_04When I say flight, I don't mean that I lie down and take a nap. Sometimes I actually do. Naps are great. Um I will take a nap and then I'll wake up and dust myself off and get back into the mix. But the the flight for me is not you know quitting altogether, it's going to a baby that is crying less or less recently. I think that is you know, the the benefit of figuring, you know, knowing yourself. Like I know myself, I know what works for me, I know that I am at my best when I have dozens of works in progress. I have 40 to 60 pieces going right now. Some of them I haven't touched for months. But because I know myself, because I'm aware of what works, I can engage in a version of flight, you know, that is running away from the baby who's crying loud, who is not, you know, um, where it's not working, and go to another one. You know? So it's not complete retreat, right? It's recalibrating what the data looks like, moving on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, and I think there's one of our favorite quotes that we've used multiple times on this podcast from Nick Caves' Faith, Hope, and Carnage. Nick Cave talking about mystery has really helped me understand myself better when I'm in the studio and allowing mystery to be always present when I'm working, right? Because I'm constantly in a fight situation, right? And I'm not a flight person, like you know, like you were saying, you would kind of lean towards that at times. I just get really angry and I stay in and I look and I get more angry and I get more angry. And it's really easy for me in those moments of anger for apathy to set in, like Dakoon did, where I just would just sit there and just go, what am I even doing? Right. So Nick Cave says we have to operate at least some of the time in the world of mystery beneath that great and terrifying cloud of artistic unknowing. Artistic unknowing. Everything I'm doing, I really don't know what's going on. I don't know how it's going to end up. One thing's in my head, something else comes out. The creative impulse to me is a form of bafflement that often
feels dissonant and unsettling. It chips away at your own cherished truths about things and pushes against your own sense of what is acceptable. I love what it says there because everything that I know that's a truth in what I'm doing, it's the work's not going to do it. It's just not going to happen. Everything I know in my head about what I'm going to do art-wise is only what I know how to do today. But when I'm working on something, it's not where my vision is. It can't be. I'm thinking of something that's so much better than what I'm actually doing in the moment. So it put it's pushing against my sense of what is acceptable.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's what's operating in between those two things. It's the guiding force that leads you to where it wants to go, not the other way around. You're not leading it. Right? That's my mentee, Matt Wall, asking that question. What do I do? The work keeps kind of changing and doing different things than what I'm wanting it to do. Well, the work is leading. You're not leading the work. The work is leading you, so you have to operate in mystery. There's a world of mystery that's happening between what you know how to do today with your brush or your hands or your tools or your metal or all those things, what you know today, but you and I both know. At the end of the day, I'm far better than I was when I started it because I was in the studio working and making stuff, and that's leading to something new and better down the road. So I have to operate in that mystery, that unknowing. Does that make sense to you?
SPEAKER_04It does. It chips away at your own cherished truths about things. Ouch. I like that word. I mean, you know, that could be I love the I mean the way he speaks, the way he writes, you know, that that could be a lyric. Chips away at our own cherished truth.
SPEAKER_01He's up for an Academy Award, by the way, for song in my buddy's film Train Dreams. Oh, yeah, yeah. So my I haven't watched that yet.
SPEAKER_04I for We need to talk about that offline, but anyway, yeah.
SPEAKER_01But he and Bryce Desner are up for an Academy Award for the song in Train Dreams. Amazing.
SPEAKER_04So cher so that that word cherish, I think, is really important. You know, we we have a tendency to hold our our truth, our idea of what is very tightly. And what you're describing when you talk about the mystery, what Nick Gabe is talking about, this world of mystery, the cloud of artistic unknowing, we can't we can't be gripping things too tight. We we can't be holding on to things so closely and so cherished. It's a great word. We can we can't we can't fall in love um completely and be absolutely dedicated and committed to the first idea. We have to be willing to be guided, to be blindfolded, to be shuffling through the dark in the hopes of what's to come with just that faint little glimmer of something in the distance. But the only way we get there is if we if we let go, if we are able to discontinue our addiction to control. Right? Yeah, that's that's what I read from that.
SPEAKER_01Well, and that's the Julia Cameron quote that I have listed below this one. Mystery is at the heart of creativity, that, and surprise. All too often when we say we want to be creative, we mean that we want to be able to be productive. Now, to be creative is to be productive, but by cooperating with the process, not forcing it. And I shared this with some artists this last week because I went, all too often we say that we really want to make good art, but what we mean is we want to finish a painting.
SPEAKER_04Sure. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right. And it's like if you're doing that, you're forcing the process.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I'm gonna finish this painting today. I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna make a painting, and it's gonna be awesome. Well, you've already lost, sorry. You're setting yourself up mentally to have a fight. Right. Because you're not gonna be able to do it. Yeah, right. Art is never finished, it's only abandoned. I forget who said that quote. It's only abandoned. Because every piece we hang, every piece we put out the door, we look at it later and go, oh, I should have. Oh, what if I? I could have. Oh, that could be better. I could do this next time, right? So cooperate with the process, don't force it. Operate in the mystery. Give yourself space. All right, Nathan. I've got a great quote from an author, Barbara Brown Taylor, from her book, Altar to the World, and she says, No one longs for what he or she already has. And yet the accumulated insight of those whys about the artist's life suggests, and I'm paraphrasing here, suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing right on that X. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are. I like that quote because I just want the artists out there, especially emerging artists, beginning artists, those just starting out, or those just starting their journey into the gallery world or working with curators and those things. Like, it's really easy to say, well, if my studio were bigger, if I could only afford to buy Goldens, if I had enough of this, if I were working larger scale, if I had an art education, if I had a master's, like all of those things are great. But all you need is what you have today. You don't need those things to take the next step. Right? I talk Jackson Pollock used house paint. Right? There are, I mean, I walk into museums and I look, oh, interesting. That looks like house. Oh, yeah, it's all cracked. It's all you know what I mean? It's like you don't have an excuse. Mark Bradford gets all the supplies at Home Depot. One of the biggest artists in the world, and he buys his stuff at Home Depot and collects billboards and rips posters off the street. And yeah. Hold on. I'm wearing mine. Perfect. You got your Home Depot shirt on.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My dear friend. They'll just give you t-shirts. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01My dear friend Francis Beattie, everything she buys, she gets at Home Depot for installations and her things, or uses found objects, or on site, stuff she finds on site, right? It's like, listen, all you need is just to recognize where you are and give yourself permission to be there. Yeah. Your own consent to be where you are.
SPEAKER_04This I this studio visit on Sunday, I was giving a tour of the backspace, and I uh he pointed out some of the rebar that I had um taken off of a demolition site. And he goes, where'd you get that? Uh I said, Oh, I got it from a from a demo site. And he said, Oh, they just they just let you take that. And I said, Well, you know, uh they don't guard it. I mean, these are massive piles of of trash that's gonna go in a landfill and and and be there for eternity. Yeah. So I gave myself consent to let myself onto the onto the onto the job site, move a couple of you know, very light plastic uh whatever fence pieces away and off we off we go. But we have to give ourselves consent. No one else is gonna give it to us.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I've got f artist friends who work in living rooms, kitchen tables, um, extra bedroom outside because there's no space in the house, you know, that are using natural materials that they find out in the yard, that are painting with coffee and cheap wine, right? It's like, listen, you have exactly what you need today to make your best work. So give yourself permission to do that. Let Nathan and I, hey, we are I'm looking at you all, we're giving you permission right now to do that. Whatever you have, you can make your best work with. So give yourself permission to be where you are and use what you have and go create the work.
SPEAKER_04Do what you can with what you have where you are right now. I think that's a Teddy Roosevelt quote.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say Nathan Turborg, January 28th, 2026.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, let's go with that. Yeah, cut out, cut out the part where I properly attribute it to the original speaker. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's all me.
SPEAKER_01Um fully authorized to give you authorization. I think that's a good place to stop. We we just want to encourage you all. We know how tough this is, and so we always want to be an encouragement to all of you out there making art and whatever way you are, to you're gonna have situations where you're gonna fight with the work and you're gonna doubt yourself and not think you're good. And you probably aren't yet. Most of us aren't yet. We still need time to develop and create those things. But if Rasheed Johnson is saying it, you're okay. You're gonna be okay if you're making work. If you're letting it get in the way and you're not making work, now you got a problem. Yeah. So uh I'm excited. I've I've got a fun week ending with our opening tomorrow night. I I can't wait. So we'll definitely I'll share some pictures on our Instagram page uh of the opening tomorrow night with a bunch of my friends. Uh, that's just gonna be incredible. Spencer Welsh that we've talked about on here before. Um I'll be showing with her. Winner Rosalowski, who's a uh professor of Baylor, incredible painter. Uh, there's just an incredible group, Eric Breisch and myself and Vino. Who else is in there? Uh Russell here in Waco Focus Lily from Round Rock, Texas. It's a large workshop. It's gonna be really fun. I'm excited. Fun group of artists. It's gonna be a blast.
SPEAKER_04I wish you all the best. I wish I could, I wish I could be there. I know. In the meantime, everybody, um, you know, just make art. Yeah, go do something.