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so the supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance yeah well said.
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Yes, creativity is the performance.
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Acting on it, that's your performance.
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You can theorize all day long, we can.
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We can formalize theories to her till we're not here anymore.
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And what will that leave us with?
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A bunch of theories but if we do, if we perform, we have results.
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Those results lead to more and more performances, more, more, more.
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Hello, this is Maddox and Dwight.
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You guessed it.
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It's another episode of For the Love of Creatives, and today our guest is Mark Russell-Jones.
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Welcome, mark, how you doing.
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Thank you guys, thank you Dwight, thank you Maddox.
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So I guess I would have to say first and foremost that I am an artist.
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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.
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It's been not that easy from the get gogo.
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You know, as a child I was always drawing and drawing and I thought it was just part of who I was.
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My dad was a farmer.
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I walked the land.
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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.
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You know that I was day and that's how I kind of started formulating.
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You know that I was, that I made things, I drew and painted.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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So you used the word finally.
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I finally went to art school, and it was your second time around.
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You'd already been to school, so how big a span of time was in between that.
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So, coming from working class, it's always with me.
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So the idea that you work for a living and that art somehow got relegated outside of that.
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It got put outside as a hobby, as not a life, not a way to live from.
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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.
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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.
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So what I did before that was okay, I'll do graphic design.
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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.
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So in that regard, it wasn't ever wasted.
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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.
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So when I became a father I decided that if I'm going to teach my child to live their dreams.
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I better be pursuing my own.
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You know, I think there's certain milestones in our lives that do exactly that.
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It can be a birth, it can be a death.
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Do exactly that.
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It can be a birth, it can be a death.
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And I've told this before, but for many years I said one of these days I'm going to take painting lessons.
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And when my father died, I said today is that day.
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I had that slap of mortality in the face, realizing I wasn't going to live forever.
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And I can see.
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I loved the way you stated.
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You know you wanted to model something to that child.
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Yes, and you wanted to model it from the very beginning.
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And that's so powerful, thank you.
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What a gift to that child.
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Oh, my gosh.
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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.
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There's a lot of baggage that's left at the baggage claim.
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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.
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The community of the ones who acquire it.
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It's a.
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It's a.
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It's very hard and but I think when you continue on and you keep going, you find that you can.
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You can have it all in the sense of being who you truly were meant to be, regardless of the outcome.
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I love that.
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I love that.
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That's beautiful man.
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My head is just really like I'm pondering what you just said.
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Wow.
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It's.
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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.
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Breisch and I was talking to him about it.
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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?
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Well, so, authenticity correct.
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So being authentic, genuine, having integrity.
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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.
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And if I check, check, check, right, and there are there's maps, you can follow them to fame, fortune, getting recognized.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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Do I need to make something that's going to sell?
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Do I need to make something that I know is commercial?
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She said I make art that I am drawn to make period, with no regard to whether it's going to sell or not.
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And you know, I said and does it sell?
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And she said yes, and I said God, every artist needs to hear that.
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Right.
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So there is a tradeoff by staying that course of being authentic in your work, and it may take a long time.
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I mean, one of my favorite artists right now is 91 years old, frank bowling.
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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.
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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.
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So that's what we're after.
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The recognition comes from a place that is genuine.
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That you're not.
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You didn't falsify yourself to claim it.
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I think that is so powerful because I think we miss the mark when we make what we think we'll sell.
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Something that's commercial or mainstream.
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We've sold our souls to the devil in that moment stream.
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We've sold our souls to the devil in that moment.
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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.
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I mean, that's the challenge we face, right, making something and then have you know, can you live from that?
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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.
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And if it doesn't, usually you remain true to yourself regardless of that.
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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.
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We have, there's, a mandate that requires us that we live from it.
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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.
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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.
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I've recently been studying the be do have versus do have be.
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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.
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But then the journey, if you will, stagnated, making a large amount of money in something else.
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You know journey life taking you in different directions, right, holding on to the thing, this thing of art loss.
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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.
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Then you take a studio, and this is about me.
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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.
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It was looming large and it was.
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I could feel it coming.
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And probably the hardest thing for me to speak about to it is that I was in the studio.
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I had these five large canvases and they were blank, and they were blank for months and I had the studio.
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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.
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I wasn't being prolific, I wasn't really addressing my inner creative urge to make something.
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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.
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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.
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They're the work I make today.
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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.
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I didn't want to experience it, I wanted to avoid it like the plague.
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But my dad, he dropped dead at 66 and it was something that I had.
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He helped me move those paintings too that I had just made.
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And two months, later he was dead and and it's just kind of like.
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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.
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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.
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I wholeheartedly agree.
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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.
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It is against that flow.
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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.
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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.
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It's really hard to maintain a certain level of energy when you're swimming against the current all the time.
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It's exhausting.
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It is.
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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.
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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.
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Hopefully, the markings that you've made throughout your lifetime will speak to that.
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Yeah Well, thank you for being a beacon for those who aren't so bold as to abandon the comfort of conforming.
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Thank you, that's a it's, it's, it's really it's.
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Yeah, it's one of those things where I've I'd never pictured, I didn't, I didn't figure this out.
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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.
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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?
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Yes?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And aren't you just describing, describing what it's about reconnecting with who you were to begin with?
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That's it.
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I really believe that.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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Why are you not doing?
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You know, and it can go on.
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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.
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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.
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You know, I have to believe there's some purpose in all that.
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We come into the world having everything.
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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.
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That's it, and there's gotta be, because it happens to the vast majority, the masses.
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There's gotta be some purpose in that that we just haven't yet tuned into.
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It's like a rite of passage.
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Perhaps Is it that we wouldn't appreciate it if we had it all along.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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My wife and I are really struggling right now with what it's done to us.
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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.
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It took a put a big hole in there.
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It just whew.
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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.
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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.
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You don't want to get the news, you don't want to hear.
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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.
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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.
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And, with my intimate family, have connected me further and further out to others to say, my God, you know.
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Oh, I mean, I thought I did, but I didn't.
00:25:59.974 --> 00:26:33.806
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.
00:26:34.236 --> 00:26:44.229
So everybody else which we've kind of addressed is that awareness to others and humanity's existence.
00:26:44.229 --> 00:26:56.094
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.
00:26:56.094 --> 00:27:01.086
Like my precious beautiful child, 32 years old, has an ischemic stroke and I could have lost her.
00:27:01.086 --> 00:27:03.897
I was, you know.
00:27:03.897 --> 00:27:28.048
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.
00:27:28.048 --> 00:27:33.586
That's really hard, because we do not want to suffer.
00:27:33.586 --> 00:27:40.839
It's painful and grief can take you so far down that you're acquainted with last for so long.
00:27:40.900 --> 00:27:41.161
Yes.
00:27:41.844 --> 00:27:41.943
Oh.
00:27:43.376 --> 00:27:46.961
Billy Bob Thornton mentions it and I think it's a really great way to describe what.
00:27:46.961 --> 00:27:49.259
He lost his brother and he's been devastated ever since.
00:27:49.259 --> 00:27:50.221
It was tragic for him.
00:27:50.221 --> 00:27:54.699
And he said 50% of the time I'm happy and 50% of the time I'm sad.
00:27:54.699 --> 00:28:02.397
And he said by choice, I choose that because I don't want to lose or forget my brother.
00:28:02.397 --> 00:28:07.644
So instead of saying resisting what it is, embrace what it is.
00:28:07.644 --> 00:28:11.587
Instead of saying resisting what it is, embrace what it is and put it fully into your being and absorb it.
00:28:11.587 --> 00:28:13.770
Don't try to deflect it.
00:28:13.770 --> 00:28:22.035
So when you take it on and take it in, take the pain.
00:28:22.035 --> 00:28:33.911
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.
00:28:34.976 --> 00:28:36.481
You're describing alchemy.
00:28:36.481 --> 00:29:02.817
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.
00:29:02.817 --> 00:29:11.922
It was devastating and you're still struggling with it, and yet you've already found the silver lining, at least one of them.
00:29:11.922 --> 00:29:26.545
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?
00:29:26.545 --> 00:29:39.691
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.
00:29:39.691 --> 00:29:47.527
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.
00:29:48.548 --> 00:29:56.202
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.
00:29:56.202 --> 00:29:59.084
I mean so when I speak of art, I speak of life.
00:29:59.084 --> 00:30:05.882
They kind of are intertwined for me, but that doesn't.
00:30:05.882 --> 00:30:07.747
That's my, because that's my journey.
00:30:07.747 --> 00:30:17.587
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.
00:30:17.894 --> 00:30:30.627
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.
00:30:30.627 --> 00:30:32.936
You know there's art, life is art.
00:30:32.936 --> 00:30:58.968
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.
00:30:58.968 --> 00:31:10.310
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.
00:31:10.310 --> 00:31:37.519
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.
00:31:37.519 --> 00:31:45.010
An open book and thereby give permission to others as well, by example.
00:31:45.981 --> 00:31:47.165
By example permission.
00:31:47.165 --> 00:31:48.410
I agree completely.
00:31:48.410 --> 00:31:49.721
You know, mark.
00:31:49.721 --> 00:31:54.231
I just want to say we have a lot of conversations on this podcast.
00:31:54.231 --> 00:31:59.109
We have three scheduled this week.
00:31:59.109 --> 00:32:04.661
We have a lot of conversations, three scheduled this week.
00:32:04.661 --> 00:32:18.346
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.
00:32:18.346 --> 00:32:27.434
You have taken it to another level.
00:32:27.454 --> 00:32:30.981
I just want to just really appreciate the realness that you're showing up with.
00:32:31.323 --> 00:32:38.181
I mean, I'm deeply moved, yeah I have to call out how it is that, sorry.
00:32:38.181 --> 00:33:01.164
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.
00:33:01.164 --> 00:33:16.575
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.
00:33:16.575 --> 00:33:33.934
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.
00:33:33.934 --> 00:33:52.207
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.
00:33:54.020 --> 00:33:54.261
That's.
00:33:54.261 --> 00:34:00.340
That's beautiful, dwight, because that's kind of what I'm getting at, that it's not just, it's not about me.
00:34:00.340 --> 00:34:27.769
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.
00:34:27.769 --> 00:34:30.429
I think it takes a village, right.
00:34:30.429 --> 00:34:33.429
We don't embody what that really means.
00:34:33.429 --> 00:34:56.431
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.
