For the Love of Creatives
Unlocking the Power of Community:
Imagine a space where your creative spark is truly seen—a community where people get you. That’s what Maddox and Dwight bring each week on For the Love of Creatives Podcast. As your hosts and “connections and community guys,” they bridge the gap between solo journeys and powerful collaborations, transforming “me” into “we.” This podcast is where heart-centered creatives come to unlock the power of community and thrive.
In each episode, Maddox and Dwight share insightful dialogues and host engaging interviews with fellow artists, innovators, and everyday creatives who’ve faced challenges, found inspiration, and reached new heights. Whether through storytelling, LIVE coaching, or exploring what it means to create, collaborate, and co-elevate, you’ll discover how to fuel your own creative journey and find the support to bring your best ideas to life.
Expect practical insights, fresh inspiration, and real stories from the world of art, design, dance, culinary arts, and beyond. If you’re a creative looking for support, clarity, and a sense of belonging, this podcast is your place to connect, grow, and be celebrated.
Join us each week as we celebrate the magic of community-driven creativity, and don’t miss out on the chance to join our For the Love of Creatives Community! Tune in, subscribe, and start your journey from “me” to “we” today!
For the Love of Creatives
#031: Running Towards Pain Awakened the Divine Creator Within Mark Russell Jones
What happens when we stop running from our pain and instead race toward it with open arms? In this soul-stirring conversation with artist Mark Russell Jones, we discover how embracing our deepest wounds can transform not just our art, but our very humanity.
Mark's journey into authentic artistic expression wasn’t linear. Coming from a working-class background where art was relegated to "hobby status," he initially pursued more practical creative paths. It wasn’t until becoming a father that he made the pivotal decision to fully embrace his identity as a painter – realizing he couldn’t teach his child to pursue their dreams if he wasn’t pursuing his own. This moment of clarity, coupled with profound personal losses including his father's death and his daughter's stroke, formed the alchemical foundation of his creative practice.
"The tragedy is the beauty in my work," Mark confesses, revealing how facing grief head-on rather than compartmentalizing it has deepened his artistic expression. This philosophy of "running toward" difficult experiences instead of avoiding them has become central to his approach. Through vulnerability and openness, he's discovered that creativity isn’t something he generates, but rather something that flows through him when he becomes a willing vessel.
Our conversation ventures beyond technique into the spiritual dimensions of creativity – how becoming authentic opens channels to what Mark calls "the divine." We explore the dangers of overthinking and the wisdom in Leonardo da Vinci’s observation that "the supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance." Mark reminds us that ultimately, creativity is performance – the doing rather than the theorizing about doing.
Whether you’re a seasoned creator struggling with authenticity or someone just beginning to honor your creative impulses, Mark’s wisdom will inspire you to embrace vulnerability as the pathway to extraordinary expression. Listen now and discover why the thread of love may be the most powerful creative force we have.
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Mark Russell Jones Art
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so the supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance yeah well said. Yes, creativity is the performance. Acting on it, that's your performance. You can theorize all day long, we can. We can formalize theories to her till we're not here anymore. And what will that leave us with? A bunch of theories but if we do, if we perform, we have results. Those results lead to more and more performances, more, more, more.
Speaker 2:Hello, this is Maddox and Dwight. You guessed it. It's another episode of For the Love of Creatives, and today our guest is Mark Russell-Jones. Welcome, mark, how you doing.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys, thank you Dwight, thank you Maddox. So I guess I would have to say first and foremost that I am an artist. I live that life which is all-en encompassing, to the extent that I make work, and so everything that I live going out and about traveling and seeing the world this kind of filtered through the idea that I'm going to make something from the result of that experience. It's been not that easy from the get gogo. You know, as a child I was always drawing and drawing and I thought it was just part of who I was. My dad was a farmer. I walked the land.
Speaker 1:I was always kind of noticing things and looking and transcribing pictures from encyclopedias back in the day and that's how I kind of started formulating. You know that I was day and that's how I kind of started formulating. You know that I was, that I made things, I drew and painted. Long story short, I just I ended up going to art school, finally saying yes to it, giving myself permission to say that I'm a painter. I spent a summer in Madrid and was going to look at Velazquez paintings at the Prado and I just finally realized I said, you know, in my heart of hearts, I just said, I'm a painter and I don't think I can really deny that anymore. So I went back to art school and finished a degree in painting and from that moment on that's kind of what I've been up to trying to speak through painting, if you will.
Speaker 2:So you used the word finally. I finally went to art school, and it was your second time around. You'd already been to school, so how big a span of time was in between that.
Speaker 1:So, coming from working class, it's always with me. So the idea that you work for a living and that art somehow got relegated outside of that. It got put outside as a hobby, as not a life, not a way to live from. So I was always, it was just embedded into my consciousness that that's kind of what I had, to keep it to the side. So by me trying to challenge myself and live the antithesis of that, trying to come to terms with, you know I giving myself permission to do that, I finally did by that summer in Madrid.
Speaker 1:So what I did before that was okay, I'll do graphic design. Okay, I'll do something creative, which is which I love, and actually those things that I actually entered into with the design elements and composition and so all the things I kind of laid the groundwork for have made me a far better artist skill wise. So in that regard, it wasn't ever wasted. It was just about me saying taking that toolbox that I have grown and added to as I went through life and said yes, so I basically I got married and had a child who was two months old and I went to art school. So when I became a father I decided that if I'm going to teach my child to live their dreams. I better be pursuing my own.
Speaker 2:You know, I think there's certain milestones in our lives that do exactly that. It can be a birth, it can be a death. Do exactly that. It can be a birth, it can be a death. And I've told this before, but for many years I said one of these days I'm going to take painting lessons. And when my father died, I said today is that day. I had that slap of mortality in the face, realizing I wasn't going to live forever. And I can see. I loved the way you stated. You know you wanted to model something to that child. Yes, and you wanted to model it from the very beginning. And that's so powerful, thank you. What a gift to that child. Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 1:Well, to grow up with 100% of not knowing anything other than it's okay to be, it's pretty powerful Because you don't.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of baggage that's left at the baggage claim. You don't have to go claim it, you're free, and so I mean, but that's a really hard thing to do, because I'm the first one to say that I go like this you know, I have security, stability, there's all these issues with it, and when you break it down to essence and I've said this before where the, the courageous act of being a creative making is so bold and I don't think people realize how much courage that does take, because we live in a world that's still in spite of the need for it and surrounding themselves with it and purchasing it and buying it and all of that we still are left kind of outside of that. The community of the ones who acquire it. It's a. It's a. It's very hard and but I think when you continue on and you keep going, you find that you can. You can have it all in the sense of being who you truly were meant to be, regardless of the outcome.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that. That's beautiful man. My head is just really like I'm pondering what you just said. Wow.
Speaker 1:It's. I mean, I think, and I was talking to another artist, eric, who you guys had, eric Eric Breisch, yeah, and I, I was talking to him, artist Eric, who you guys had, eric Eric Breisch, yeah, eric.
Speaker 1:Breisch and I was talking to him about it. I mean he alluded to it in the artist talk that we had at the opening and it's a big kind of a how can I say it? Well, so, authenticity correct. So being authentic, genuine, having integrity.
Speaker 1:So when one begins the plight of making and deciding that they're going to pursue this, I think the greatest challenge really is the courage to do it in the first place, yes, but then after that to stay the course, which means can you stay the course where the compromise of who you are, you don't, you refuse to, not, you refuse to not make that compromise Meaning I know that this will get me this and I know if I do this, I'll get that.
Speaker 1:And if I check, check, check, right, and there are there's maps, you can follow them to fame, fortune, getting recognized. There's things that you can do and what I've really tried to do and I've adhered to it to this day, and it's a much more difficult road is to make work that comes to me, through me and through my own thoughts and processes and living and doing, and I don't go outside of that except in the, in the pursuit of knowing art history well enough to honor it and being the lineage of it and following that, but never to try to pluck myself out of obscurity into something that I'm not in order to be recognized.
Speaker 2:So I don't believe in that Well, you may be saying something that we heard from another artist that we just recently had a conversation with. She made the comment that she only makes art that she wants to make Only Period, like she doesn't do the gee, is this going to sell? Do I need to make something that's going to sell? Do I need to make something that I know is commercial? She said I make art that I am drawn to make period, with no regard to whether it's going to sell or not. And you know, I said and does it sell? And she said yes, and I said God, every artist needs to hear that.
Speaker 1:Right. So there is a tradeoff by staying that course of being authentic in your work, and it may take a long time. I mean, one of my favorite artists right now is 91 years old, frank bowling. He's an african-american gentleman, just beautiful work, um, he's been at it for a long time and he has a solo show in paris and his acclaim has been ongoing for, you know, 20 plus years, but he didn't it's. It's something that's unfolding as he lives his life and it's happening to him and the recognition is coming from, but it is coming from a place of his own authenticity. So that's what we're after.
Speaker 1:The recognition comes from a place that is genuine. That you're not. You didn't falsify yourself to claim it.
Speaker 2:I think that is so powerful because I think we miss the mark when we make what we think we'll sell. Something that's commercial or mainstream. We've sold our souls to the devil in that moment stream. We've sold our souls to the devil in that moment. And I'm not particularly somebody that actually I'm using that just in tongue-in-cheek because I'm not somebody that necessarily really buys into the concept of devil, but I I do think that we, we somehow all of the arts, for that matter, there is a level of in order to, because it's so difficult.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's the challenge we face, right, making something and then have you know, can you live from that?
Speaker 1:And that's, I think, the approach has to be that maybe it's not about living from it, that living from it ends up being the consequence of having the courage to do it, and if it happens, beautiful. And if it doesn't, usually you remain true to yourself regardless of that. And that's really hard, because I mentioned security, stability, fame, fortune record, you know, all of those things put in, put into the pot, right, and you're, we're all vying for some of that because we're, we were born into this world. We have, there's, a mandate that requires us that we live from it. We have no choice and it's a plight because there's so much conditioning in societal evolution that requires us to make these decisions that we're not equipped to make really until much later. But it's put onto us so early in life, it's pounded into us that you have to do this and you do this, and if you do that, you get that and you'll have that, and you know, and you're just an artist who wants to make things.
Speaker 2:I've recently been studying the be do have versus do have be.
Speaker 1:It's hard for me to spit that out yeah, we do have yeah but it's a fascinating concept and I think on on some level, I'm hearing you echo, echo some of that I think and this is this is going to be emotional for me to share, but I think what happened for me as I mentioned, my daughter being born that was the impetus to say yes to this journey. But then the journey, if you will, stagnated, making a large amount of money in something else. You know journey life taking you in different directions, right, holding on to the thing, this thing of art loss. You know journey life taking you in different directions, right, hey, holding on to the thing that, this thing of art and then feeling like it's slipping away from you. Then you take a studio, and this is about me.
Speaker 1:I took a studio in Los Angeles and then I it was funny, there was a lot of things happening at the time and there was a lot of loss coming to me. It was looming large and it was. I could feel it coming. And probably the hardest thing for me to speak about to it is that I was in the studio. I had these five large canvases and they were blank, and they were blank for months and I had the studio. I mean, I had all the shit that you think, oh, hey, I got my studio, I'm doing it, but I wasn't really making the work right.
Speaker 1:I wasn't being prolific, I wasn't really addressing my inner creative urge to make something. It was just, it was all kind of convoluted and a mess and then the writing was on the wall, some of these things of financial loss. But I had a prelude to my father's death coming and I felt it and I made these five paintings in the last month that I had the studio available to me and the titles of them I can still remember them. They're the work I make today. So in a weird way, the tragedy is the beauty in my work, because I finally said yes to something out of something tragically happening to me and I was. I didn't want to experience it, I wanted to avoid it like the plague. But my dad, he dropped dead at 66 and it was something that I had. He helped me move those paintings too that I had just made.
Speaker 1:And two months, later he was dead and and it's just kind of like. It's like history, right, you know that history of a life being lived and you denying yourself what you are in order to fit into some kind of stereotypical thing that we say is the right thing or whatever. So denying oneself who they are and not saying yes to what they know entirely is within their being, can create such pain and I think a lot of humanity is walking around with that pain.
Speaker 2:I wholeheartedly agree.
Speaker 2:And I see it and I feel it and I have an empathy about it, and it is part of what I wrote in this show that I opened previously was those who have gone this way before you know, I think we live in a collective consciousness and there is a collective flow of energy and when a vast majority of the world is living in a certain flow, you know the flow of I got to do what people will like, I got to be somebody that people will like and want to be around, all those things where we sell out who we really are that flow is really really strong in that collective consciousness and those of us, like you're describing you and we've talked to other artists where we decide to not just do what the world will like or what we believe the world will like, but to really do us.
Speaker 2:It is against that flow. I mean, it's against a lot of what we've been taught in our families, in our schools, it's against the messages that we've gotten, sometimes from religion even, and on top of that, it's against that collective flow. It's like being in a stream where the water's going down really fast and you're trying to be like a salmon and swim up. It's really hard to maintain a certain level of energy when you're swimming against the current all the time.
Speaker 1:It's exhausting.
Speaker 3:It is.
Speaker 1:What I've tried to do through the work I'm making now is by staying the course, no matter what the outcome is, is to have the opportunity to realize that, you know, being who you are is more relatable and can be uniting. You know, unite others by being an example to that, so that somehow or another, as long as I'm alive and breathing, there's hope right and with that hope that you're still confirming that on a daily basis with how you live and by being a maker.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, the markings that you've made throughout your lifetime will speak to that.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, thank you for being a beacon for those who aren't so bold as to abandon the comfort of conforming.
Speaker 1:Thank you, that's a it's, it's, it's really it's. Yeah, it's one of those things where I've I'd never pictured, I didn't, I didn't figure this out. It's a it's through living, but the discoveries that I've made have kind of led to this point, which inherently was within me from the beginning, but oftentimes I don't. I actually think this is interesting, that we come equipped with the knowledge and the gifts and then we're born Children have it all, don't they?
Speaker 2:Yes?
Speaker 1:And so Herman Hess alluded to the concept that we're born into, that bliss, and it's deconstructed from the moment we breathe Because we're forced into. Here you go, here's mom and dad, here's this, here's that, this is society, this is school, and I drop you and you're just constantly just like, and the essence of who you are is being rooted out. And so to hang on to what that is and whatever that means, or even if you come around to it, eventually that's still, I mean, that's the hope, right, that everyone, I think the journey of all this, this life that we live, is about trying to find that, and if you get a chance to discover it and let alone live that, then that's what we need, because then we all start to become authentic versions of ourself, which really probably translates into being the best version of yourself, because then there's a fulfillment that is speaking to your soul as opposed to outside expectations of what you should be in order to be validated.
Speaker 2:And aren't you just describing, describing what it's about reconnecting with who you were to begin with?
Speaker 1:That's it. I really believe that. I really believe that as well, you delivered fully in the nurturing that's required to bring you in to who you are, your growth, your physical growth, your mental growth, all that. But there are, there are strings attached to the heart and mind that are there dialing you in from the beginning and they're, they're tugging at you.
Speaker 1:And that's that tug that you know, and the intuitive voice, the sixth sense, is that, and it's saying what are you doing? Why are you not doing? You know, and it can go on. You know, I've literally have taught adults their 60s and who are finally saying yes to the thing that they wanted to do from the beginning. And so that's speaking kind of you know, kind of concluding not concluding, but kind of bringing to fruition what we've just kind of discussed on this how to be a maker, be genuine about it, live that life, stay the course and then hopefully help others come to that realization too that they collectively, like you mentioned, through community, are doing the same thing, so that if we have more of those people doing those very same things together and individually, you start to have flow, which you mentioned as well.
Speaker 2:You know, I have to believe there's some purpose in all that. We come into the world having everything. Then it's beaten out of us in different ways and we spend our life, if we're lucky, finding our way back to it. That's it, and there's gotta be, because it happens to the vast majority, the masses. There's gotta be some purpose in that that we just haven't yet tuned into. It's like a rite of passage. Perhaps Is it that we wouldn't appreciate it if we had it all along. Is it that when we lose it and we have to search so hard to re-establish that in ourselves that then we have an appreciation for it that we just couldn't have possibly had if it had been there throughout the duration?
Speaker 1:Well then, that really is going to speak next to what we could discuss too within that context has to address suffering, and so suffering is the loom out of which character is made. I think is the process of what we have to go through, which you just mentioned, in order to know that the spectrum of life is full and all of it, if you're having a life that's worth living, is to be experienced, and that means good and bad, and that spectrum can be really horrific. This, this is going to speak to what recently just happened, and it's really it's kind of devastating because I haven't really talked about it. I almost spoke about it in the previous art talk At the art opening, about it in the previous art talk at the art opening it touched. So when I was in Maine, I was making this work for an upcoming show and I so we in a snowboarding accident and two weeks later was suffering an ischemic stroke, and it happened when I was shipping the paintings to Dallas.
Speaker 1:My wife and I are really struggling right now with what it's done to us. It's left a big mark and a hole and she's okay, she's alive, she's well, she's recovering, but it just whew. It took a put a big hole in there. It just whew. It took a put a big hole in there and we just took her to a CT scan yesterday and she's I think it's going to. She had a dissection of an artery in her neck that led to this, so it was not from health-related reasons, but it just the phone call.
Speaker 1:You don't want to get the news, you don't want to hear. I mean this and life is full of this for every single person on the planet and it's daily the suffering that mankind, humanity, goes through. And I just until something, until, like my dad, you know, grief, we all experience things, but we outside, you know, we collectively see it and we go, we become a bit numb to it and we don't have empathy for the others that are going through this. And, with my intimate family, have connected me further and further out to others to say, my God, you know. Oh, I mean, I thought I did, but I didn't.
Speaker 1:And now it's really made me want to make sure that, to have that awareness that this is, to have that awareness that this is an experience that we're all having, and we all are acquainted with grief and sorrow and pain, but we're also acquainted with joy, happiness and if we can somehow integrate those into the web of the life that we lead, it can be profound and you we lead, it can be profound and you can be one can be profound and that can have an impact.
Speaker 1:So everybody else which we've kind of addressed is that awareness to others and humanity's existence. You know, we don't just just, it's not just us, it's like we need to make sure that we don't lose sight of the beauty that we've been given in in life. Like my precious beautiful child, 32 years old, has an ischemic stroke and I could have lost her. I was, you know. I thought I was not gonna make it for a minute there and then I had to regroup, reclaim perseverance and tenacity and faith and stay the course, see through it, see through it, and that's why I think the Stoics refer to love everything that happens to you. That's really hard, because we do not want to suffer. It's painful and grief can take you so far down that you're acquainted with last for so long.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Billy Bob Thornton mentions it and I think it's a really great way to describe what. He lost his brother and he's been devastated ever since. It was tragic for him. And he said 50% of the time I'm happy and 50% of the time I'm sad. And he said by choice, I choose that because I don't want to lose or forget my brother. So instead of saying resisting what it is, embrace what it is. Instead of saying resisting what it is, embrace what it is and put it fully into your being and absorb it. Don't try to deflect it. So when you take it on and take it in, take the pain. Then you have an opportunity to become extraordinary, because the power that will come out of you as a result of being able to take that on results in a peace that is not of this world.
Speaker 2:You're describing alchemy. You know, I've believed for many years now that if you look hard enough in any situation, any experience, if you look for it, you will find a silver lining and oftentimes many silver linings, and you ever so beautifully demonstrated that with your story about your daughter's accident. It was devastating and you're still struggling with it, and yet you've already found the silver lining, at least one of them. You mentioned how it had deepened your empathy for those around you, that you might not have previously had so much empathy, and, my God, does our world need empathy right now? And I know we've gotten kind of esoteric here, but every ounce of what you're describing plays a gigantic role in our creative expression. If it doesn't, then something's missing in your art or in your creation, if you're doing something that's different than art.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and I think it's a great way to come full circle with what we've just kind of had in our conversation, which is it's life. I mean so when I speak of art, I speak of life. They kind of are intertwined for me, but that doesn't. That's my, because that's my journey. I'm a maker, I make art, I paint, but I that means, but I have a relatability to all in the sense I can.
Speaker 1:I can join in that conversation because of music, because of art, because of dance, because of theater, because of acting, because of the doctor, you know, because of theater, because of acting, because of the doctor. You know there's art, life is art. But if we could the nuance of that, if we could that empathy, that would go along so much, it would take us so much further into solving what's wrong and that the lifetime that we were given, whatever that is that maybe we need to become more aware, because empathy can't be there if you're not aware. And I think there's a, there's a certain kind of, like you know, shutting off, so I don't have to feel that. And where we spoke about vulnerability, when we speak about allowing oneself to become vulnerable, it's so hard because the persona that is perceived by others can be destroyed, but by allowing that to happen because of the vulnerability, you become vulnerable. An open book and thereby give permission to others as well, by example.
Speaker 2:By example permission. I agree completely. You know, mark. I just want to say we have a lot of conversations on this podcast. We have three scheduled this week. We have a lot of conversations, three scheduled this week. We have a lot of conversations and while I would say most everyone we've conversed with has been a very authentic human being Beautiful I got to say you know from where I'm sitting right now and this is moving to me to say this. You have taken it to another level.
Speaker 2:I just want to just really appreciate the realness that you're showing up with.
Speaker 3:I mean, I'm deeply moved, yeah I have to call out how it is that, sorry. What what you're describing is a depth of experience that, if we live long enough, we get to have, and I know that you talked about the significant milestones I mean you got to experience. I can only imagine an intense joy when you got to greet your daughter in this world and you had the shadow of your father's passing that weighed on you so heavily. And once again you're having this other experience with your daughter and I appreciate what it is to feel that fullness of the experience, to have that depth. A real loss can get a glimpse of the infinite and feel what it is to to have that fuller experience that most are kept from, from really having.
Speaker 1:That's. That's beautiful, dwight, because that's kind of what I'm getting at, that it's not just, it's not about me. And though we're individuals, we have autonomy, I think that the collective body, if we all and it starts, it starts here, right the individual self, the soul, your intimate, your wife, your partner, your spouse, whatever you know, who you love, your children, your wife, your partner, your spouse, who you love, your children, whatever, friends, and then it extends itself out and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. I think it takes a village, right. We don't embody what that really means. We still segregate, we still separate, we still isolate, and so we're always pushing things away that we don't want to experience or we find well, you know, or status quo doesn't meet the criteria, whatever that is, and all we're doing is extending the pain and suffering of humanity further.
Speaker 2:Yes, so if we just stopped the like, I don't know like I feel what.
Speaker 1:I'm really trying to get to is a place where the synergy is sacred, yes, and that through identifying it and being able to take hold of it and then following it, letting it lead you, we have a chance for a much deeper connection. And then the life like so when I was. You know, like the tragedy, the beauty and the horror of it all. Can you run to it? Can you run into it and embrace it, or do you run from it? And so what I've been learning is how to run to it.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:And it's so painful, but when you do, there's another side, and the other side of that is wholeness, and that wholeness starts to make the wider scope of everything be bound by love. Love is the thread through which everything should be about. Love is the thread through which everything should be about.
Speaker 2:Yes, and when you run toward it you actually have that breakthrough and get to the other side much faster than you would if you're running from it.
Speaker 1:You know that is it, isn't it, maddox? I mean, think about it. Sorry, I'm sniffing a little. I'm basically speaking about myself, so I'm not really preaching here. I'm speaking from experience and what I've embraced, or tried to formulate some sense to what it is that I'm trying to live, and still fucking it up at the same time. So there's no perfection here, it's just recognition. No, we're humans.
Speaker 2:Yes, there is no perfection.
Speaker 1:We let ourselves down, we let other people down, but I still feel like, if there's a constant sense of awareness that through all of that that we still find ourselves having that deeper connection which I mentioned earlier, earlier is the love, that thread of love, because ultimately it's not about what you do, it's not about what you have, it's about the essence of who you are, and if you express what that is, then everybody is a benefactor.
Speaker 2:You know, over the past few months that we've had so many of these conversations I have come to realize and believe that we as creatives because creatives infiltrate every part of the earth, every culture, every continent, every country, we're everywhere. And I have come to believe that we have the power to lead, to guide humanity to that wholeness, to healing, to heal humanity. I used to think it was coaches. I'm not so sure I believe that anymore. Humanity I used to think it was coaches. I'm not so sure I believe that anymore. I think that I'm feeling it's, it's much, probably much more so creatives.
Speaker 1:It's funny because I'm speaking with you, maddox and Dwight, that um and our we, we've known each other for a short period of time, but a lot of depth has been covered and discovered at the same time, like it's kind of a you know, it happened, you know, and I believe in things unfolding for a reason and there is fate played and encounters had because of that. So, that being said, we it's funny by doing this because before I had been reluctant to want to do this talk Like it's in here and I don't know if I can get it out. I don't know if I want to show, I don't want to be vulnerable, I don't want to cry on you know, whatever. But here's an example which we've just kind of had the conversation about being a maker, the courage it takes and what have you?
Speaker 1:You still, when you finally run to it, as I mentioned, like running into everything, like run towards it, don't go away from it, keep going right. Like run towards it, don't go away from it, keep going right, what ends up happening is there's an unfolding of the things you never thought you were capable of doing come into the fold and then the fate that you might have you thought was in store for you is completely off, because there's something else coming out of you that was meant to be from the beginning, but the timing of it is now. So, talking, having conversations through, from writing, from reading, from all these years of just kind of hibernating, incubating, and there's somewhat of an explosion of this coming out of you that I personally don't really know how or why, but it's coming and I'm allowing it this time.
Speaker 2:I think I've just had an aha moment. I think that our art, so often our making not just art, but making is about our pain and about our process, as we've talked about. And what if giving it a voice whether it be a guest on a podcast or in a circle of people around a table, doesn't matter where it is. What if giving it a voice and saying it out loud shakes something loose and frees it up to a degree that now it more powerfully shows up in your art?
Speaker 3:That's it.
Speaker 2:What if this is like the key to a deeper level of creativity? Because, truthfully, I personally believe creativity is not of me, it's coming through me. It's not of me.
Speaker 1:You're a vessel through which it comes.
Speaker 2:I'm a vessel, I'm a conduit, and the more I can open the lines that free up that pipeline, clear away any clogs or anything that would prevent it from flowing. And having these conversations and saying the hard things out loud does just that. It makes a better connection to the divine.
Speaker 1:Essentially, that's really. You could put that as a heading. You know I speak of aspirations to the divine, connections to the divine. The, the creative act, is of the divine.
Speaker 1:But it's my personal belief absolutely, and my personal experience but the essence of that is tainted oftentimes by what we've kind of described we're selling out compromise got to make a living, got to do this, got to have this, got to have, you know, and it's kind of societal, just forcing you to just figure out, like you know, how many people go to school at 18 years old and they become a doctor or a lawyer or whatever you know that's going to pay the most money and I'm going to be, and they're, you know, 30 years down the road, just not happy. And it's not about it's because they didn't listen to their soul. We were able to suppress that. That's one thing about humanity that still needs to be wakened to is that too much of the world population is about suppressing what they came here to do the gate ready to go and we have to develop that and nurture that, and our job is to realize our potential through the work that we put into developing those kids. But they come, they come, they're here.
Speaker 2:You know, you listed several things there, and what came up for me was yes, and there's at least one more, and that is when we try to force our creativity.
Speaker 1:That's another thing. Yeah, you can't do that either.
Speaker 2:You cannot. You know it's trying to force electricity through the electric outlet or force water through the tap in your kitchen sink. It does not work that way, you know yeah it's just as inauthentic. Well, and you know, for me, because I'm so clear that it comes from source and that it's not coming from me, I don't ever experience creative block, but I don't try to force it either I think that's that's.
Speaker 1:But that's part of being enlightened a bit there, maddox, because when that comes, when you're able to do that, the vessel through which it comes out of right it's you and you're responding to it instead of forcing it. So when you respond to what's come, what is, the vessel is allowed to express it with effortless ability, like it just comes out of you. But we're fighting that and trying to create it out of a place of non-genuine, non-authentic or you know, come on, I got to do this. It becomes other and it's contrived and it will speak to the wrong. It will speak in the wrong manner. It won't come across.
Speaker 2:I agree completely. I mean what? Hit me just this minute is. Spirit is like a cat. You know everything is on a cat's own terms. You don't get to pet them when you want to pet them. You get to pet them when they want you to pet them.
Speaker 1:And creativity and spirit work kind of the same way you know, it's true, because, um, I think that's funny about you know, animals that's beautiful to think about, like the cats are very good example because of the way in which they behave and it is all on their own time how they operate and so, and so being be do have correct right, be do have.
Speaker 1:So when I it's funny that you'd like you we finally decided that God can make an art, and then having these kinds of conversations do what we've discovered through the conversation, which is connect and um, and put people more in line with trying to aspire to the divine, because in that pursuit, I think we all find ourselves, uh, connecting to that thread of love more, which is which I, like I said, I still think that's the number one thing out of all things, because, if there is that there can be, know, it diminishes hate, it cancels out so many of the negative in life that it even makes the negative parts of life that are difficult to bear more beautiful, and that's the, that's love.
Speaker 1:So running towards the things that are we want to avoid. So I even think about anxiety and stress and nerves, and all this kind of angst is coming from the place of running away from things as opposed to running toward them. And I think, if we can embody the ability to say yes to running towards it all, like you know, jump in the cold water when you're afraid to, or you know, whatever it is moving through, the outcomes are extraordinary, extraordinary.
Speaker 2:That's where you become other, you be, you leave this planet, you're otherworldly because you're operating on a divine level you know, I just want to say I I think that your wife and your daughter are are very fortunate to have such a heart-centered man in their life thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, what a beautiful presence that you bring to the conversation and I and I think we can kind of round up We'll talk about a little bit of work kind of related to what we've just kind of had, this conversation about Stories. Right, the narrative, I think, when we like so, think of the work I'm making like a landscape is a portrait, you know reclamation. There's deep sensuality, humanness and emotion and that comes from embracing what it is like like. Like I said, I think we kind of found something today to me or at least I have through it from talking with you guys about and I I just it's. It's that running towards something instead of running away from it.
Speaker 1:I really do, and then love being the thing that drives you, because when you, when you really have that, so then we hold on to stories. There's memories, so all the things that we experience in our lives. Hopefully, what I'm doing in the work that I make is giving you an experience, creating a memory and making an imprint that is sacred, that allows you to take that imprint and go out and have that with you and carry it on in your life as well. So that's connectedness, that's human connection and that's how these things live on. There's an eternal component to the work.
Speaker 2:Rick.
Speaker 1:Archer oh my God, yes, kevin Patton, that is timelessness, so that linear time that we all operate. You know, boom, boom, boom, boom boom. Sometimes, if you're lucky in this life that we live in that linear construct of time, biology, age, we get to experience everything all at once. We are everything all at once all the time. So everything that you have ever lived is in front of you, it's with you, but instead of compartmentalizing it, it comes in and you're with it, you hold it, you have it, and that's pretty powerful, because then you are taking everything that you've instead of trying to, like bury something or push something to the side or defer. Or because post-traumatic stress syndrome I never knew what that was, because I always thought it was something that experienced something so horrific. It can be so subtle, yeah, it can be so subtle that and way more people experience than than we're.
Speaker 1:There's so many people, yes, that are going through something that hurt them and cause trauma in their lives that they had to defer, and it goes into their body, into their emotional makeup, their psyche, and they operate. They live their life through that prism. So, until it's unleashed or let go of, they don't get to embody that all at once sensation because they have to compartmentalize what it is in order to function.
Speaker 1:It's a kind of a management thing, it's a mechanism, a safety safety mechanism, if you will yes, yeah, what I'm trying to do through my work is get rid of that to be an extension of something that allows you to not have to have that, to not compartmentalize, to experience something wholly fully, in a sacred manner that's holy, that takes you and uplifts you and puts you in a state that allows for that little moment. I call it episodic reverie. So cultivating presence in the episodic reverie, the moment is sacred, it's holy, and if we can get to the present state of our, the present moment, the present moment, the present moment, well, we don't have to bury the past either. So, the past, future and present, we experience it all in the present moment, wholly fully, embracingly, like we, we we welcome it instead of well, let's put that over there, and I'm going to put that over there and I got this, and before you know it, the shelves are full.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And you're like fuck, I've got nowhere to put anything anymore and I need to be emptied out.
Speaker 2:I've been a very deeply feeling man my whole life and I have never quite grasped why people are so afraid of their feelings. I mean, they'll tell me, you know, so I can understand it intellectually, but on that internal level, being such a deep feeling person, but on that internal level being such a deep feeling person, and I'm blessed because when I was a little boy my dad had a conversation with me where he normalized it, he made it okay for me to feel my feelings and he made it okay for me to express my emotions. That's profound, and so I've been able to do that my whole life and it's always been strange to me why I I bump into so few people on the street like me. It's and it's always kind of made me feel on the outside, looking in and, interestingly enough, that is that's.
Speaker 1:You have that experience and you're outside looking in and the people that have not had that experience are outside looking in, and that is because, because of what their experience is, so they it's that deferment and you're going why I don't understand and see. That's where we want to find that thread that connects everything back to what it was originally meant to be, which was love. Creation is love. Yes, I mean, think about it. There's not really the act itself, even if it's coming from a place that's angry.
Speaker 2:There is an inherently deep level of sensation of love that is the impetus to create it you know, for dwight and I, our creativity shows up in creating experiences for people yeah, shows up and having these conversations and creating this platform for this podcast and for makers and creators to come in here. It shows up in our desire to create real community, not the facsimile bullshit that we see every day, where people call it community and it's really just a group. But we really had this vision for real, live community.
Speaker 1:I hate the group thing, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:And it's just what'd you say?
Speaker 1:The group thing, we label everything and then it becomes contrary yes, I'm sorry, and just what you say, the group thing I get. Yeah, we label everything. And then it becomes contrary.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, but this is all. Yes, every ounce of it is filled with love. Every email that I write is filled with love and my desire to have a positive impact, to make a difference, and it's such a part of us that we couldn't. It's our identity. I couldn't separate myself from this.
Speaker 1:That's right, I mean. That's why I think having something like this as a forum, without being labeled, pigeonholed or contrived in any way, that the openness for it and then the opportunity to bring as many people to that platform as possible will do what we're having a discussion about today, which is, you know, bring everything you have to the table, but bring it with love, vulnerability and the willingness to take a risk, because risks really are they risks or are they just being authentic? At the end of the day, if you really call, you know the risk is to let go of fear, take the leap right, the net will appear. But, like I say, I call making a painting a courageous act. But ultimately, those things become those kinds of acts because of the way society, it has evolved, the evolution of society.
Speaker 1:Where, why, would you know, the cave painters in lascaux made marks on a cave wall? Was that a risk? Or were they defining, were they making a narrative about something? They had something impulsively, inherently in their being, soulfully, to mark something down, you know. But as we've evolved, we've made certain things risks, because that's outside of the box. Fuck that, thank you. That's the problem. Yes, we are outside of the box. There was never a box to begin with, but they fucking put us there. They want everyone in one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it allows them to control that yeah when you're outside of that, you are free, and when you're free there's nothing that can take away what that is anymore. So then, if you create from that viewpoint, from that feeling or the essence of free, there's only love there, so then the box goes away. But people really want to put you back in there.
Speaker 2:Yes, but wait you know kind of have that filing cabinet.
Speaker 1:Marks coloring outside the colors. Well, yeah, because I don't really see. You know, I'm just responding to who I am.
Speaker 2:Yeah, outside of the lines is where all the magic happens.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:There would be no magic. I mean alchemy I love that word. The alchemy we all seek is there, absolutely. It's breathing. It's breathing, it's alive, it's right within your grasp at all times and, like I said, we just need to move toward it.
Speaker 2:I think my takeaway after today and I don't usually have takeaways at the end of episodes, but today I absolutely do, because this has been really big for me.
Speaker 3:Thank, you absolutely do, because this is just this has been really big for me.
Speaker 2:My takeaway is just when you know when our art is, almost always it encapsulates our, our pain, our trauma. And when we can give our pain and our trauma a voice and say it out loud, we are opening up something to then pour it more wholeheartedly into our creations I believe that 100, I think it's.
Speaker 1:That's really wonderful. Well put, maddox. I I mean, like I said, I think that richness and beauty, the solitude that we we're, if we can just find ways to the solitude that we, if we can just find ways to, like you said, that vulnerability but at the same time be authentic in the unfolding of your own intuitive responses to things, I think that's what being creative is, and if you can, the more you practice what that is which is a response. It's not, it's not a, it's not a checklist, it's, it's pure alchemy. But once you are in tune with that, the, the paintings paint themselves, the writing writes itself. You know, everything starts to unfold the way it's supposed to through you, because you've allowed the channel to be open.
Speaker 2:It opens a big door. I've said for some time now vulnerability builds bridges, opens doors and clears pathways in a manner that nothing else can.
Speaker 1:And it opens the floodgates of possibility. Yes, yes, yes, once. Then, once you have the opening of that, when you, when you get to discover what that possibility is, then the work that is needed to have that be realized, the work that needs to be put in the development, you know, like, going to the gym, I'm going to get, I'm working on this, I'm working on that. You know, like, going to the gym, I'm going to get, I'm working on this, I'm working on that. You know, training, the training, the work, those will. You'll discover them without having to discover them, because naturally flow, won't it?
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, because doing flows naturally from being you be do have, because when we think, here's what happens and I think this is a great way to kind of it's it's like like the memories that we have, that we're creating on a daily basis memory, memory, memory, experiences.
Speaker 1:So I think if we could dismantle hierarchy, that's one thing that is still left, that needs to be dealt with, in my opinion. I think that the hierarchies decide things for others that the others should be deciding, and I think sometimes that inhibits someone that is on the crossroads of becoming extraordinary or not, because they haven't, they can't, just because thinking. So when you be, do have, thinking is an essential thing to do. Right, you have to, you can analyze something, but there comes a point in time where the thinking has to be left to the side and you have to do, and if you don't do, you don't get a result. You can think all day long, your brain will think you did something and there will be nothing that has been accomplished no, no product to demonstrate that yeah I can look at them.
Speaker 1:I can look at that canvas all day, for weeks and months and even years and nothing. And I go, but I fucking painted that. You know, I got this painting here and I can't wait to execute it. Boy, all the ducks are in a row. Look, I got this sketch, I got this, I got that, I got, I got this, I got my.
Speaker 2:You know all the things that you need you gotta dip the brush in the paint, don't you?
Speaker 1:you don't need anything, you need you. You need to be the vessel. So the one one thing I know for sure, then, this is what we get kind of caught up into. Da vinci said it, and I love this because I think if we applied this, it's really with ai and technology and things that are unfolding here now we still should honor the creative act as being a pure form and extension of the love that we just described the thread, and so the supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance yeah well said.
Speaker 1:Yes, creativity is the performance. Acting on it, that's your performance. You can theorize all day long, we can. We can formulize theories to her till we're not here anymore. And what will that leave us with?
Speaker 1:a bunch of theories but if we do, if we perform, we have results. Those results lead to more and more performances, more, more, more. So then be do, have becomes real and it compounds itself, and then everybody's be doing and having and oh, my goodness, what's going on here? Because we're not tidying up ourselves with our thoughts and keeping them inside this little book that no one can look at. Yeah, so sharing is part of that. So that's why I say it's a courageous act to be a creative, because you have to share.
Speaker 2:You do. I love this. You're going to thrive. You have to share.
Speaker 3:Well, and it's not. You haven't really created anything until you have shared.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even if you've made it. If you're not sharing it, it's yeah. Well said, dwight, I get it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dwight, that's exactly so. We all need to get off our dead asses and make Make.
Speaker 2:I agree, make Wow. This has been one hell of a powerful conversation. I feel like I have learned a lot in this hour. Thank you, that was a hope for both of us all together. And I felt the presence of that spirit coming through all this conversation, absolutely so. One of the things we do before we wrap up an episode, mark, is we do rapid fire questions for rapid fire answers. Okay, are you answers? Okay, are you ready? Okay, here goes Question one what is a creative risk you're glad you took?
Speaker 1:Saying yes to painting.
Speaker 2:Simple and accurate. I love it. Okay, how do you define a creative community?
Speaker 1:Good, a community that operates out of love.
Speaker 2:Short and sweet, but very, very effective.
Speaker 1:Very well said yes. And last question and you guys brought that out today because the love thread really kind of came through to me really strongly- it did to me too.
Speaker 2:I'm glad. Thank you for calling that out. Yes, thank you, and it's worth repeating. So our final question is what's a failure that you've turned into a success?
Speaker 1:grief, I've, I've. I felt like I failed miserably at processing what that meant to me and I had a very bad run of it, but I I reawakened and overcame it, and that's what I came up with running towards it as opposed to running away from it.
Speaker 2:Wow, yes, I would say that's what I came up with running towards it as opposed to running away from it. Wow, yes, I would say that's a success, mark.
Speaker 1:But it's you know, it resonates deeply and it's like I said, I love that Billy, but you know, 50% of 50% it's just with me now. I carry it with me just like everything else. But when you connect that with the love thing again, it empowers you, it makes you more powerful as a human being on the planet.
Speaker 2:Yes, I agree.
Speaker 1:It gives you empathy for others.
Speaker 2:And that oozes out of you, by the way. Yes, you are very definitely a very kind and gentle soul.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I mean, that's I just I. My hope is that we all especially I think that's kind of been coming up running alongside me like that we all, we just need it. We need it. And I think when I said God, just fuck all of the steroids, fuck everything except let's just all get on board with being kind to each other, loving each other and it's just old, you know old adage, right, but practice it. A movement Simplifies so many things because then everyone has the same goal.
Speaker 2:Yep, I'm with you there. I'm on board.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you guys are on board. That's why I said yes to do this. I'm on board. Yeah, you guys are on board. That's why I said yes to do this Mark.
Speaker 2:this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for all of the truth and all of the authenticity and vulnerability that you brought to today's conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been great. You guys are wonderful. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with you and it's a credit to you too, I feel I feel free, so it's, it was a pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Maddox Honor.