Whimsy and Wonder: Discover the Art of John Schieffer

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to no Wrong Choices, the podcast that explores the career journeys of accomplished and fascinating people to shine a light on the many different ways we can achieve success.

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I'm Larry Samuel, soon to be joined by Tushar Saxena and Larry Shen.

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Please support our show by following no Wrong Choices on your favorite podcasting platform, connecting with us on LinkedIn, instagram, youtube, facebook X and Threads, or by visiting our website at norongchoicescom.

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This episode features the contemporary still-life painter, john Schieffer, whose work in some cases is literally larger than life, as we had the opportunity to see firsthand.

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Larry Shea is the person who introduced us to John.

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Why don't you set up this conversation for us?

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Yeah, sure, I think the best way to set it up is for everybody out there, first and foremost, to Google John Schieffer, because what you're going to see when you do that is all of his work pop up and it's mind blowing and it's tough to gauge the size of these things.

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As you said, it was larger than life, but these things are huge.

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When we went to the gallery we were literally overwhelmed by the size of some of these pieces.

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What I'm hoping John touches on is you know the mysterious aspect of the art world.

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You know like most people are only appreciated after they're dead and gone, unfortunately, as artists.

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And here we have John, who's a contemporary artist, and he's selling and working and this is like a money-making job for him and a career, and I've never met anybody who was appreciated while they were doing art.

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And that makes John, in my eyes, unique and I'm floored by his talent and the detail and the meticulousness.

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So take a look at some of his work while you're listening to this episode.

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I think it's going to really lend itself to something.

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I gotta tell you I was really, really happy when I looked at his art and and, like I said, when we say it's larger than life, think of like pan, like he doesn't.

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He doesn't paint on, he doesn't paint on canvas, right, he paints on wood paneling, um, and they're usually, like you know, 12 foot by 10 foot pieces here.

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So these are big, big things, right huge um, and what he, what he paints, is fascinating to me because, you know, my first observation was, you know, I think I saw one of his which was essentially candy we would eat as a kid, like you know gumballs and and gummy bears and things of that nature.

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So there's a real like whimsical quality to it and, at the same time, obviously a very adult quality to it as well.

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You know, he's painting.

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He's painting things like jacks and dice, um, you know just, and, and one of them had had a real feel of like having a background of like your mother's couch when you were growing up or your grandmother's couch when you were growing up.

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So I was really fascinated by that.

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And he started out as a restoration artist.

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So there's a real kind of mixing there of science and art and meaning.

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So, look, there's obviously two different things.

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So restoration is a lot of taking pigments and matching it to old paintings and it doesn't really mean it doesn't really, let's say, bring into much of his modern work, but there is an element of that science to it, right?

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So the resins that you use, that you're using in your modern painting, or even the way he's able to kind of capture that still life and then put it onto the wood paneling because I would say canvas, but it's not the case but just that ability to maybe transfer that science aspect of where he started to that creative aspect of where he is now.

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That's fascinating to me.

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Absolutely.

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Again, the work was truly incredible For me.

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I was captivated by the gigantic martini glass.

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That got me all excited and, I guess, in terms of the story, I'm very eager to learn about the business of art and how people can earn a living and how they view reproductions of things, prints and things of that nature.

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So there's a lot to unpack in this conversation and I'm very eager to learn more about something that I personally am not all that familiar with.

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So here is John Schieffer.

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John, thank you so much for joining us.

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Thank you for having me.

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So, john, we really like to start out with having you tell our audience who you are, what you do, what your day-to-day life is like now, and I think that's a good way to start is telling a little bit about yourself, your current status, as it were.

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I work full-time as an artist.

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I work from home, in the studio, in the home, and I do my paintings here and I sell them through the gallery I'm in Bonner David Galleries in Scottsdale and also their sister gallery in New York.

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So, john, we're going to go back to the beginning a little bit because, you know, after we had the opportunity to go to Bonner David in the city, you know, the one thing that really struck me was and even the painting that you have behind you is a lot of it just seems to be stuff I would see as a kid, as a young man or as a young child.

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So there's a great deal of whimsy in the pieces that you do.

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Was this always what you wanted to do as a kid?

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Was that, you know, you would just see life a little bit differently than everybody else.

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I, uh, you know I I never really played with marbles, but uh, you know, and and wind up toys are amusing for about 30 seconds, even to a child, um, but uh, you know all the little shiny objects that, uh, we've had, we had when we were kids.

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I mean all the little shiny objects that we've had we had when we were kids.

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I mean you could probably stare at a glass marble.

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That was fascinating for you know, quite a long time.

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You know you see so much more in it, the way it magnifies light and all.

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And my love for art just sort of takes that thing that is something that's very three-dimensional and and flattens it and then makes it three-dimensional again.

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And, uh, I love the process and I love the way that representing these sort of childhood toys and trinkets make me feel and make people feel I don't actually think of myself as a realistic painter anymore.

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I feel almost more like an abstract painter, because all of these little objects they're not realistic representations of anything in themselves.

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And when I do such a large piece like the one behind me, it's just wonderful colors and dynamic shapes and you know it sort of takes you out of your location and it brings you into the work.

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For those people who are listening to the audio cast versus watching the video cast.

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What John is describing behind him is a big canvas and I think he works on wood.

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We'll get to all that stuff later on?

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How big is the piece behind you?

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Eight feet by eight feet, so a massive piece sitting behind him.

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How big is the piece behind you?

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Eight feet by eight feet, big piece, so a massive piece sitting behind him that is filled with what appear to be really different types of marbles, and they almost look like Super Bowls in there too, potentially, but it's a beautiful work and that's what we're looking at.

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Yeah, and to pick up on that just quickly, tiny, shiny things is an expression that I kind of heard.

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Hmm, when I'm painting something small and shiny and reflective, being able to sort of push all the values in the background down so I can make the image like really pop off of the canvas.

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And you know it's got a lot to do with color and value and keeping your brightest white and your darkest dark and not, you know, just sort of wasting those dynamics.

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You know making sure that you know the whitest white in the painting is like right out of the tube white and it's sort of like you know extremes.

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You know you go from the brightest thing to the darkest thing in almost every painting that I do and it's really just everything in between is a balancing act.

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Amazing and we encourage everybody, of course, to Google John Schieffer and go see some of his amazing work and we'll show you where to find all that.

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We'll tell you where to find all of that as the interview goes on.

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But let's go back to the beginning.

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Let's go back to where you grew up.

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I got to know you simply because we grew up in Connecticut, in town over from each other, and we have mutual friends which we didn't know about.

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But I always like to tell the story of when I'm telling people I'm doing this interview, that on social media a bunch of people started saying you know, come to find out.

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The kid that sat behind me in homeroom was an amazing, brilliant artist, and that's kind of the way I feel about you.

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So I reached out, we set this up and started to get into your work and it's it is remarkable.

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So we do encourage everybody to go and check it out.

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But talk to me about when you were a child.

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Were you always a painter?

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Did you take painting lessons?

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What was your youth like?

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I, I've, I always liked drawing.

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I think a lot of kids love drawing.

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But just like a few compliments of my drawings early on I mean going back to like first grade, I don't know it just really encouraged me and my mother encouraged me and I just loved cartoons and cartooning and I thought I was going to be a cartoonist.

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But the more you practice with drawing and your art, you just have to be a good cartoonist.

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You have to be a good realism artist, you know.

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You have to know how to draw well, otherwise you know to be successful successful you'd have to be a good writer and I was not, yeah, and I didn't really have an interest in in that.

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So much um, but uh, I would say that just as time went on, I really enjoyed the realism aspect of art a lot more and cartoonists for the most part just sort of disappeared.

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That whole newspaper media disappeared and the cartoonists were some of the first to go.

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Who were your favorite cartoonists?

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Who were your favorite strips that you looked at, or or even cartoons, or even cartoons themselves, because I'm a big cartoon guy myself I loved uh bloom county one of my favorites, one of my absolute favorites snoopy and garfield and you know all that.

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I grew up on bugs, bunny and looney tunes and, uh, you know I loved it all.

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I still do.

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I still love Bloom County.

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If I ever get a chance I try and see he's still doing some new ones every now and then You're the Calvin and Hobbes guy.

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Oh yeah, I love Calvin and Hobbes Love it.

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That guy is a genius and you know the amount of writing and insightful human nature diatribes he went on were just astounding.

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So when does your formal training begin?

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Did you take classes right away?

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Private lessons when did that start?

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I did not.

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I did not have much extra curricular art training, um, and after high school I went to para college of art.

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Uh, I didn't really apply to any other college and, um, I just went right into there not really knowing what to expect.

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Um, I I think I part of went from I don't know if I'll be able to manage cartoonists, but maybe illustration, graphic design, something along that.

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And Pear was a great classically oriented school.

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It really taught people how to draw and paint and realism, and that's what I liked about it.

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The first thing I realized was like, as an illustrator or graphic designer, you essentially are drawing and doing other people's ideas, and that never really appealed to me too much.

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The classes for illustration were pretty much identical to fine art, aside from printmaking and a few more studio figure painting classes, which I ended up taking anyways because I love you know, figure painting, portrait painting, because I love, you know, figure painting, portrait painting.

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So, yeah, the more time I spent in that college, the more I just, yeah, I just wanted to do what I wanted to do and you know, it was hard for me to, you know, see myself doing other people's ideas or work, and I was kind of moving towards sort of like sci-fi illustrator, like someone that would do book covers, you know, magazine illustrations for science fiction and science fiction book covers, and that was that, was that, movie posters, whatever might have, whatever jobs might have come my way.

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And after graduation I was just, like you know, seeing more and more sort of computer generated stuff taking over, um, you know I graduated in 95 and we already had the jurassic parks, amazing moving dinosaurs, and I'm smearing colored goo on canvas.

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I'm like they're doing in in in, like moving pictures that would take me like months to do in one image.

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And I, I, I love computer graphics and I actually had a great interest in that.

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But me sitting down at a computer for more than a couple of hours is not in my soul.

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So how did that influence some of the choices you made coming out of school?

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I mean, if you've worked so hard to create this talent and to create this incredible, rare skill and you now start to see all this computer generated stuff coming on the scene like, how do you differentiate yourself in that environment and in that moment?

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well, it was actually after college.

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It was a very difficult time for me um.

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I still liked computers, but you know, in 1995, 96, the home computer was still expensive and still crashed quite a lot, especially the high level of art that you know might, if you wanted to have like a drawing tablet which was a little more natural for your, um, your artwork, those were.

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Those were also an expensive, you know item that that would add to the system and might crash it.

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Um, but uh, I ended up, just uh, getting a job right after college in Mercer Mayer Productions.

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It was a publication, it was the Mercer Mayer children's books and I was there for about three months.

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But again it was like me doing somebody else's work.

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I had friends from college that got jobs there and stayed there and have gone on to other successful careers.

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But I went from that place to going back to my father's construction company and working outside and then a couple of art-related jobs.

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I worked at a plate design company and in 1999, I got a job doing art restoration and I did art restoration for six and a half, almost seven years.

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And what I didn't learn in college?

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I learned a lot in art restoration working on antique paintings and you know seeing how time can really devastate some good intentions.

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You know I always try and keep an eye towards how my work will stand the test of time.

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You know I don't try and get a little, you know funny with the mixing of the medias or you know doing anything a little too far gone, so the paint just doesn't crack and fall off years later.

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So, John, when you talk about restoration for those people listening to the show who may not be art aficionados, and things of that nature, can you just define what restoration is?

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well, um, it's taking an old painting with maybe some damages from time or accident, um, and fixing it in a way so that nobody can see that there was ever any damage, and what I would do as a restorer would fill in and repaint the areas that were missing.

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So if you had, like, a chunk of paint that was missing off of canvas, you could see the bare canvas.

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I would fill that area in and then paint it and make it look like I didn't do anything at all.

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So it's, you know, like the CIA.

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You know the best work they do nobody knows anything about.

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Yeah, all right.

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So when we went to the gallery here in the city last week, we were told that you have done both restoration and conservation.

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I can't really say that I know the difference between them.

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Well, that was going to be my question, so let me just kind of play on that.

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So, as a restorer and obviously you're dealing with paintings that are, you know, two, three hundred years old in many cases, obviously you can't use paint from today on paint from yesterday.

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So no, it was.

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It was a totally different set of uh uh paints and and, and the studio I worked for actually was called uh uh, conservation, I think.

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Um and so, um, what paint we we use?

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The stuff that we'd fill in would be removable, and the paint that we used on top of that was conservation paint.

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That is like it's it's.

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It's a pigment suspended in resin, Right?

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So the the work that I did could easily be removed and undone, so I guess that's more of like a conservative sort of idea.

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So you're conserving the pain, you're not interfering with the actual work yeah.

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I find this part of your career journey fascinating.

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We're working, yeah yeah, on the same floor.

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Where the recording studio was was Yost Restoration, and we would cross paths in the hallways, are you?

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sure you didn't bump into each other at this point we did, but mainly it would be Christmas parties, right, like they would throw a Christmas party and invite all the Steely Dan folks, and we would throw a Christmas party and invite all the Yost folks, but we would go in there and see these incredible works of art that they were either conserving or restoring.

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So I want you to talk about that work, though, because you need the skill to paint, you need to know about the chemistry of the paints and what you know, the canvas and all of it.

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Yeah, talk about it.

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How did you audition for this job?

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They're like, eh, just give them the job.

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I mean, not anybody could do this kind of stuff.

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Well, uh, my friend helped me, uh, get an interview there, uh, and he was uh, uh, he was some guy used to rake lawns with, so there was not like a a big hierarchy of you know, a big hierarchy of you know levels of attainment before you can get in.

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And you know, I had a, I had my portfolio from college and that immediately impressed them and and they pretty much have to train everyone because it's it's it's kind of a niche where people can't just go to a lot of colleges and learn this sort of stuff and even if they do, they have to maybe unlearn some things and relearn other things.

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Museum restorers do things a little different than the private sector, I believe, but we've restored some things for museums and there's different aspects too, like if a painting needs a sort of a new canvas behind it or you know a tear that needs repairs with a patch.

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You know those things are handled differently than from what I focused on in the work and you know, for me it was pretty much learning how to use the resin paint, which would be it was like watercolor, but you're using chemicals, um, and uh, oil paintings after after 50 years, uh, most oil paintings are sort of uh, impervious to the chemicals that you would use to clean Even the work that I do.

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I can put a varnish on a painting and then strip it off with turpentine.

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Just you know, a couple of months after I painted, it, the varnish you're talking about.

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you strip the varnish off Varnish off.

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Yeah, months after I painted it, the varnish you're talking about.

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You strip the varnish off, varnish off.

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Yeah, so, like varnish, a clear protective coating on a painting and, um, uh, if there's a problem with the varnish or whatever, you can use, uh, mineral spirits and just wipe it right off, and if you scrub too hard, you can take the paint off that's what I'm thinking.

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Right, if you clean it too much, you're gonna take everything.

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I'm not gonna do.

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Um, yeah, I'm not touching that.

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But I mean and that's where I'm going with this question is like talk to me about like holding like a masterpiece and not wanting to screw things up.

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I mean we, we had pressure, really expensive works in there and uh, you know I I worked on Edward Hopper, renoir, norman Rockwell, and yeah, it gets a little intimidating.

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Sometimes they just come through and I just have to put a little dot or something on them.

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Big name art is usually handled fairly well.

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You know well, you know um, but uh, the environment in the studio, the uh, the boss, the owner, was, uh, very um.

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He really made you feel at ease with the work and I was never intimidated by it.

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He's just like here I'll show you what to do.

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This is what you do and you know, and you, we're careful going up and down the stairs with it.

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You know, you know you you.

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You got to, you got to really be at ease and, and you know, enjoy the process of restoring the paintings and as much as you can.

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When some of the paintings were just so horrible I don't know they're old.

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If some things are 100 years old, they're gonna have some value, no matter what right.

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And some of these paintings were just horrible.

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They were horrible 100 years ago, geez but now they're masterpieces.

00:25:21.364 --> 00:25:22.566
But they're masterpieces now.

00:25:22.605 --> 00:25:24.169
Somebody loves it.

00:25:24.169 --> 00:25:27.032
It's like that ugly dog at the shelter, you know.

00:25:27.473 --> 00:25:28.194
Oh, my goodness.

00:25:28.400 --> 00:25:30.188
You know somebody adopts that one.

00:25:31.119 --> 00:25:41.414
But you know the primitive paintings of the children that were done by untrained artists in the 1700s and things like that.

00:25:42.481 --> 00:26:06.550
Seeing some of those and working on it was like a little bit difficult, because I wanted to do my own work and I'm, you know, do art all day long in the restoration studio and it's pretty much just a lot of color matching and then to come home at night and do my own of my own art it was.

00:26:07.311 --> 00:26:29.681
It was kind of exhausting, like you work that part of your brain all day and right and you're like I'm done, and so one of the things I would do is I would just set up a little still life of one or two marbles, one or two marbles.

00:26:29.681 --> 00:26:38.042
So I do a very small like painting, like um, two, three inches big, you know really tiny, and uh, you know I could complete a whole painting in a very, you know, in an evening and feel good about myself.

00:26:38.042 --> 00:26:55.481
And you know I actually put together a whole little show like that of just these small works, uh, from things that I I would have done after work, um, and that's kind of how I got into the, the art gallery I'm in now that's really interesting.

00:26:55.501 --> 00:27:01.542
You know, I'm curious that the restoration work did that in any way make you a better painter.

00:27:01.542 --> 00:27:04.730
Were you practicing learning new skills?

00:27:04.730 --> 00:27:06.053
Was it helpful in any way?

00:27:07.519 --> 00:27:13.469
I learned a lot about color matching.

00:27:13.469 --> 00:27:17.015
I mean, I was pretty good from my training in college.

00:27:17.015 --> 00:27:18.121
I'm pretty good with color.

00:27:18.121 --> 00:27:38.671
But it was funny because I learned how to use those paints so well that when I try and do the same thing with oil paint which at the time I was like this would be so much easier to do with oil when I try and do that with the same thing with oil paint, it just doesn't work.

00:27:39.372 --> 00:27:53.570
Exactly the same same but uh, it was years of of being in that headspace, being in that sort of artistic mindset, all right.

00:27:53.570 --> 00:27:57.044
So I think we've all heard the phrase starving artist and probably early on in your career you were.

00:27:57.044 --> 00:27:58.170
You weren't starving all that much.

00:27:58.170 --> 00:28:05.690
You were able to get a decent job and especially at a, at a restoration firm, where you were there for seven years so when you finally come.

00:28:05.710 --> 00:28:14.728
So when you finally come to that point in your career and say you know what, it's time for me to strike out on my own, do you then fear the notion of being the quote unquote starving artist.

00:28:15.980 --> 00:28:23.230
Well, luckily I had my wife to sort of be a backup to my income.

00:28:23.230 --> 00:28:25.903
She was fully employed.

00:28:25.903 --> 00:28:27.367
When I sort of be a backup to my income, she was always.

00:28:27.367 --> 00:28:28.509
She was fully employed.

00:28:28.509 --> 00:28:43.444
When I sort of tried to make the leap and leave restoration for going on my own, yeah, restoration paid pretty well, yeah, it was great, and going on your own is more difficult.

00:28:43.444 --> 00:29:05.032
Um, the the beginning of my career I was I was doing a sort of smaller size paintings, like one a week, and I was doing like 10, 12 hour days and it was difficult and uh, became like I can't do this in a week, I need two weeks or three weeks.

00:29:05.032 --> 00:29:31.559
And it became a month and the paintings started getting larger and I was in two galleries here in Arizona and Santa Fe, new Mexico and Santa Fe.

00:29:31.580 --> 00:29:31.641
New.

00:29:31.661 --> 00:29:31.800
Mexico.

00:29:31.800 --> 00:29:33.364
I was immediately selling works and I was trying to keep up Right.

00:29:33.364 --> 00:29:39.335
So you know it was smaller works and you know you do it, you send it out, sells almost immediately.

00:29:39.335 --> 00:29:45.871
I sold a couple in the gap in my studio from the studio I was still painting it and they sell.

00:29:45.871 --> 00:29:49.606
Wow, yeah, what a great problem to have Right.

00:29:49.606 --> 00:29:51.909
And then that stopped.

00:29:55.842 --> 00:30:00.393
And we did have that sort of downturn in 2008.

00:30:00.393 --> 00:30:07.907
Which didn't really hit me until 2010, 2011.

00:30:07.907 --> 00:30:30.625
Um, I had a couple thin years, um, but uh, it, it's picked up well after that and uh, you know, I I'm back to making you know know I I'm back to making, you know, good, good income at what I do.

00:30:30.645 --> 00:30:33.214
I'm uh, that's terrific, and I want to get an idea of the time frame that we're talking about.

00:30:33.255 --> 00:31:05.692
So when did you officially leave yost and I'm assuming that that's that's where, that's where you struck out on your own after yost yeah, um, so I was with their uh connecticut studio and, you know, still living, you know, just a couple of houses up from the place where I grew up, renting a house there, and we were looking to my wife and I were looking to buy a house in town or in the area and the prices were ridiculous for what you would get.

00:31:05.692 --> 00:31:20.448
And we just took a vacation to see my cousins and in Arizona and uh, trying to, you know, keep my wife from going to you know, making us take a trip across the world just one time.

00:31:21.250 --> 00:31:26.387
And um, the real estate prices in Arizona were were ridiculous.

00:31:26.387 --> 00:31:37.365
For what I would pay for a 50-year-old shack in Connecticut, you get a big house, two three-car garage, three or four bedrooms, double the size and it's brand new.

00:31:37.526 --> 00:31:38.829
Positively ridiculous.

00:31:39.160 --> 00:31:43.663
Yeah, absolutely Nothing but space, nothing but space and nothing but sun and sun.

00:31:43.663 --> 00:31:44.366
Yeah, a lot of sun.

00:31:45.040 --> 00:31:58.107
You don't have to shovel sunshine and we were sick of the snow and so we bought a house, but still lived in Connecticut, so we were paying mortgage and a rent.

00:31:58.107 --> 00:32:03.220
The rent of our house in Connecticut was less than our mortgage.

00:32:03.220 --> 00:32:09.903
The rent of our house in Connecticut was less than our mortgage, and we did that for about a year before we actually moved.

00:32:09.903 --> 00:32:21.451
She got a job and moved out first, and then I followed, so it was sort of a long-term plan, and that was in 2006.

00:32:21.451 --> 00:32:22.510
We moved out.

00:32:22.891 --> 00:32:23.132
Okay.

00:32:23.132 --> 00:32:32.916
So obviously you said your wife's career helped to bolster some of the time when you were making your way.

00:32:32.916 --> 00:32:41.651
Yeah, what's that conversation like when you tell your wife, hey look, this is the career path that I have to go down?

00:32:41.651 --> 00:32:44.315
I understand my previous career paid well.

00:32:44.315 --> 00:32:46.324
It gave us a great deal of security.

00:32:46.324 --> 00:32:50.032
Now I need to take this leap and say we're going to.

00:32:50.032 --> 00:32:50.942
We might have.

00:32:50.942 --> 00:32:51.824
We might have a tough time.

00:32:51.824 --> 00:32:52.846
And was there a?

00:32:52.846 --> 00:32:54.109
Was there a plan B?

00:32:54.109 --> 00:32:54.951
Was there a plan B?

00:32:55.980 --> 00:32:57.721
So she had.

00:32:57.721 --> 00:33:18.542
She had just sort of graduated from her schooling, she, she went for a graduate's degree and, uh, um, so she had gotten, she had two or three part-time jobs Well, I think, fully in part-time, uh, but not in the career she was looking for.

00:33:18.542 --> 00:33:22.873
So she was able to get that in Arizona but not in Connecticut.

00:33:22.873 --> 00:33:28.902
Get that in Arizona but not in Connecticut.

00:33:28.902 --> 00:33:30.104
So she was making a career choice that was good for her.

00:33:30.104 --> 00:33:35.094
And the thing about art restoration is it can be tedious, mind-numbing work.

00:33:35.094 --> 00:33:37.824
So I was also ready for a change.

00:33:37.824 --> 00:33:48.881
Yeah, I guess the thing about the art restoration was about the art restoration was.

00:33:48.881 --> 00:34:00.286
You know, when you're matching colors on like a bunch of missing specs, like a hundred missing little color specs, and each one's a different color, and it's just all day long just coloring specs After a while.

00:34:00.306 --> 00:34:01.907
You kind of want to blow your brains out.

00:34:01.907 --> 00:34:04.131
I get you.

00:34:04.811 --> 00:34:08.556
You know your toast landed butter side down on the cutting board.

00:34:08.940 --> 00:34:10.523
You know, and that's you know, as jobs go.

00:34:10.543 --> 00:34:12.686
There's other opportunities in life.

00:34:12.686 --> 00:34:18.900
You want to.

00:34:18.900 --> 00:34:24.494
You know, live life and show everyone what you can do.

00:34:24.494 --> 00:34:36.463
And I was like, I think, early thirties, and I was thinking to myself, if I don't make this move now, it's going to be so much harder later on, right?

00:34:37.076 --> 00:34:38.139
It's great information.

00:34:38.139 --> 00:34:43.960
I mean, how many people you know have to have those tough conversations like, hey, I need to chase down a dream here?

00:34:43.960 --> 00:34:50.085
So that's part of what we talk about here is the support and the help of the people around you to get where you need to go in life.

00:34:50.085 --> 00:34:56.797
Once you, once you.

00:34:56.797 --> 00:34:57.380
I love how you went through.

00:34:57.380 --> 00:34:59.775
Like you know, it would be an evening and then the next one would take me a week and then two weeks and a month.

00:35:00.436 --> 00:35:24.943
So your, your paintings are getting larger and larger, but you're discovering who you are as an artist and I'm just curious, like how you make the leap from doing these things in your studio, where it's basically like you and your wife or the neighbor who sees it, and getting into a gallery and having them say we'd like to represent you, we need to display your works.

00:35:24.943 --> 00:35:27.996
We're gonna push your like how is, what is that transition?

00:35:27.996 --> 00:35:29.199
Is it a negotiation?

00:35:29.199 --> 00:35:31.543
Do you send them photos of it?

00:35:31.543 --> 00:35:38.300
Do you bring an 8x8 down and be like hey, check this out, tell me what that process is you strap that to the hood of the car?

00:35:55.494 --> 00:36:03.268
shipped to me so I was still doing some art restoring in arizona, okay, um, but uh, as quickly as I could, I I did like three good size paintings, you know, and uh, yeah, I I took.

00:36:03.268 --> 00:36:18.141
At the time they had digital cameras and I got my color printer take photos, print them out, walk down to the gallery district and I just walked into a place and they said I'm not really sure that this is the right fit for us, try the gallery across the street.

00:36:18.141 --> 00:36:21.543
So I did and I've been with them ever since.

00:36:22.385 --> 00:36:22.646
Wow.

00:36:23.536 --> 00:36:48.509
Yeah, what was funny was I dropped off the paintings like the following week and went for a cross-country trip back to Connecticut to you know, see family and stuff, and and then on the way back we went through Santa Fe and um, I was walking around with my wife and dog and uh they another gallery said, oh, come on in.

00:36:48.509 --> 00:36:50.798
And I wasn't really in that sort of work mindset.

00:36:50.798 --> 00:37:03.998
I just joined the gallery and and they were making conversation with me about my dog and I said, well, you know, he doesn't really bother my, my painting when I'm in the studio, it doesn't bother the paintings.

00:37:03.998 --> 00:37:10.099
You know, because I was in this gallery, I didn't want to try and put him at ease and they're like, oh, you're an artist.

00:37:10.159 --> 00:37:17.710
I'm like, oh yeah yeah, and I just joined the collar gallery and Scott's tale, bonner David, and they're like the.

00:37:17.710 --> 00:37:30.255
I was actually talking to the owner and the manager and the owner had just been to Bonner David galleries and had almost bought one of my paintings so he brought me into their gallery.

00:37:30.255 --> 00:37:36.347
He wanted to have all of them sent to their gallery immediately because it was on season for them.

00:37:36.347 --> 00:37:39.425
I got all stressed out about that because I just joined their gallery.

00:37:43.539 --> 00:37:44.844
It all worked out really well.

00:37:44.844 --> 00:37:48.974
They were selling really well for me.

00:37:48.974 --> 00:37:49.235
Yeah, he was.

00:37:49.235 --> 00:37:54.498
They were selling really well for me and it was it was.

00:37:54.498 --> 00:38:00.382
It was amazing to me that it's going to be something that somebody else wants.

00:38:00.382 --> 00:38:27.063
Just create something beautiful and everything else will fall into place.

00:38:27.063 --> 00:38:28.634
It's like a shiny red button that everybody wants to push.

00:38:29.454 --> 00:38:30.641
Yeah, love that.

00:38:30.641 --> 00:38:34.800
So how does the pricing work?

00:38:34.800 --> 00:38:39.016
I mean, do they set the price of the piece?

00:38:39.016 --> 00:38:46.360
Do you say, hey, I'd like to get X for the piece, and is the percentage that they take a fixed amount, or is that negotiable as well?

00:38:48.043 --> 00:38:49.224
I'm sure it's negotiable.

00:38:49.224 --> 00:38:50.748
I haven't negotiated it.

00:38:50.748 --> 00:38:54.635
You know it's the industry standard, pretty standard.

00:38:54.635 --> 00:38:56.217
Yeah, it's a percentage.

00:38:56.217 --> 00:39:08.023
And you know, if I say, hey, you know what I want a higher percentage, well, you know they're also going to maybe not work so hard to sell a lot more than me trying to sell them out of the trunk of my car.

00:39:08.063 --> 00:39:10.887
Sure, a lot more than me trying to sell them out of the trunk of my car.

00:39:10.887 --> 00:39:33.710
Sure, but starting out, that was sort of a difficult point for me trying to figure out all right, I'm putting X number of hours in and I need this much return and they're going to take this percentage, and oh yeah, I also have to pay the framer.

00:39:33.710 --> 00:39:57.536
Um, you know, and there's, there's a lot to put into that, but in the end, like, if I say, all right, I spend a week on this painting and that's all the amount of time I can do on that, but you get to the end of that week and you're like this needs more time, you can rush it, or you can spend more time, and when you spend more time, you can rush it, or you can spend more time, and when you spend more time, you're not.

00:39:57.536 --> 00:40:00.782
Time is money and you're not making as much on each piece.

00:40:01.804 --> 00:40:19.541
But it's better to do a good job and have work that is, you know, worthy of having your name on it and something that will sell for sure, because somebody else just falls in love with it.

00:40:19.541 --> 00:40:30.976
Um, then, you know, just trying to push it through really quick and you know, I, I made more money because I spent you know a small amount of time on it.

00:40:30.976 --> 00:40:32.240
You know you gotta to do the.

00:40:32.240 --> 00:40:33.905
You got to do the job right For sure.

00:40:34.166 --> 00:40:40.963
Yeah, you know, you set me up nicely for my next question when you said your name on it.

00:40:40.963 --> 00:40:48.755
One of the things I'm wondering is about the story of the artist and the story of the painter Meaning.

00:40:48.755 --> 00:41:04.501
Every time that I have gone into a gallery and I have looked at something, I've been told the story of the artist, and last Friday, when the three of us went in to see your work, the experience was the same.

00:41:04.501 --> 00:41:18.811
We learned about you, we learned about where you are and I'm kind of wondering, beyond the image, beyond what people see, how important is the story of the artist to the work that's put forward?

00:41:22.157 --> 00:41:22.677
I don't.

00:41:22.677 --> 00:41:26.608
I'm not sure that my story is important.

00:41:26.608 --> 00:41:32.427
I rarely get to meet the collectors of my work.

00:41:32.427 --> 00:41:43.153
I rarely get to meet the collectors of my work and I often think that the work needs to stand on its own.

00:41:43.153 --> 00:42:01.525
When I see a painting and a place with a little plaque next to it describing the work, trying to tell the viewer exactly what the artist was trying to do, for me that's journalism.

00:42:01.644 --> 00:42:02.987
That's not art Got it.

00:42:03.068 --> 00:42:21.764
Right or not painting actually, actually but I know that some of my collectors have seen things in my art that are totally different from what you know.

00:42:21.764 --> 00:42:23.710
My intentions were, you know.

00:42:23.710 --> 00:42:24.893
But that's okay.

00:42:24.893 --> 00:42:26.956
They still love it and still enjoy it.

00:42:26.956 --> 00:42:40.231
And you know the work is complicated, but for me, the thing that I'm almost always trying to get across is a sense of joy in the work.

00:42:40.231 --> 00:42:50.809
Some of my paintings have a bit of a sense of humor, some are a little more salacious or you know, edgy, you know.

00:42:50.809 --> 00:43:03.101
Or you know edgy, you know, and.

00:43:03.101 --> 00:43:08.429
But the overriding theme is joy and fun, and you know inspiration and happiness.

00:43:08.449 --> 00:43:19.648
you know, john, what would you say, and since you've done, since you've been out in Arizona and New Mexico and here on the East Coast, what would you say are the biggest differences in the feel, of the vibe of the art scene in both places?

00:43:20.775 --> 00:43:24.262
The art scene in Santa Fe and Scottsdale.

00:43:24.262 --> 00:43:28.349
I mean, there's a lot of art galleries.

00:43:28.349 --> 00:43:36.001
They're just a much larger art community and I think that really it's sort of a system that drives itself.

00:43:36.001 --> 00:44:00.048
People go to Santa Fe for the art it's a destination for, and Scottsdale too, they have the, the old town, scottsdale area that has the galleries and all the little fun things that people enjoy and it's it's something that's needed for a good art community.

00:44:00.048 --> 00:44:11.045
People don't always just go to one art gallery, they want to go to a bunch, especially the collectors and the artists that enjoy them.

00:44:11.045 --> 00:44:18.239
They, they, you know, they make a time of it, walk around, and I think it's wonderful.

00:44:18.239 --> 00:44:22.827
It's something that's difficult to just create.

00:44:22.827 --> 00:44:40.268
You know you can't say all right, we want to group a bunch of different business owners that don't know each other together and make them all buy the same area of real estate and divide it up, and it's something that's difficult to create or recreate.

00:44:42.818 --> 00:44:55.068
So would you say that, let's say, in that part of the country, the Southwest, you're seeing more of an idea of art for art's sake, rather than, let's say, here in the East, where it might be more art for profit?

00:44:56.375 --> 00:45:03.449
Well, I mean art needs to have profit you know There'll be no more art.

00:45:04.476 --> 00:45:06.934
Obviously it needs to sell, right that's obviously it needs to sell.

00:45:07.315 --> 00:45:20.570
I mean there's plenty of people out there that do it from their soul and everything like that, and you know if that's what you want to do, you know it's admirable because I know lots of artists that don't choose to sell their work.

00:45:20.570 --> 00:45:25.005
But I would say that it's not different.

00:45:25.005 --> 00:45:33.088
But the sort of the buyer end is different.

00:45:33.088 --> 00:45:38.847
So people out here they buy a lot more art.

00:45:38.847 --> 00:45:57.208
They've got big houses and big dreams and fill it with big art and I think that you know back east there's not as much um of that.

00:45:57.208 --> 00:46:10.820
Now I do sell in New York and New Jersey and in places in the East coast and stuff like that, but the gallery scene, um, on the smaller scale is just a little less.

00:46:12.262 --> 00:46:26.507
I want to get into your process a little bit, but but before I we go there, I do want to ask the question, because you're touching on it Did you ever paint something with the full intent to sell it and said and this one's for me, I'm keeping this one.

00:46:26.507 --> 00:46:28.516
I'm not getting going to give that one, no, but I've?

00:46:28.536 --> 00:46:41.016
done the opposite, Okay Well you know okay uh, I have, I have a lot of paintings that I've done, like, uh, my, my wife or my daughter, you know, little portraits and things like that.

00:46:41.016 --> 00:47:20.036
I did a painting of my dog, uh, uh, he used to eat bees and bugs and painting of him with a big bumblebee over his head and, uh, you, you know those are special to me, but you know it's funny because you know, I do this like a full-time job, you know, and when I come into the studio, I'm doing my work, you know, and when, when the day is over, I don't always have a lot of those side artistic projects.

00:47:20.036 --> 00:47:27.202
I've done them, I, I have a, I have plenty of them, but if somebody's ever interested in them, they're, they're all you know.

00:47:27.463 --> 00:47:42.277
Talk to me it's available one of my uh, one of my sort of departures was a painting I did of myself coming out of the pool, like just a portrait of me coming out of the water.

00:47:42.496 --> 00:47:46.146
Like a Fast Times at Ridgemont High thing yeah.

00:47:48.077 --> 00:47:59.362
My Bo Derek moment, your Phoebe Cates moment, for the most part, when you're painting marbles and toys, you don't have to pay model fees and when you paint yourself you don't either.

00:47:59.362 --> 00:48:22.989
But you know that painting I was just in a different place in my head and my life and I was just like I just want to try and do this and I did it, four feet by five and a half feet, and I did it in one month and the gallery actually was interested in it, which is, you know, I always tell artists you know, be careful, what you're known for.

00:48:22.989 --> 00:48:25.021
You might have to do that forever.

00:48:25.603 --> 00:48:25.784
Right.

00:48:27.677 --> 00:48:31.847
But they were totally fine with me doing something very different.

00:48:31.847 --> 00:48:41.646
And they almost sold it, but but the people didn't didn't buy it and then it's no.

00:48:41.646 --> 00:48:49.882
I entered it into a um water in the desert uh show at the phoenix sky harbor airport and it got in.

00:48:49.882 --> 00:48:53.306
So it was in the airport for a six month stay.

00:48:53.306 --> 00:49:00.547
And I had all my friends and even strangers going up and taking pictures of themselves with it.

00:49:01.396 --> 00:49:01.978
With your face.

00:49:01.978 --> 00:49:02.461
That's great.

00:49:04.077 --> 00:49:13.327
Now it's in my living room, some sort of egomaniacal guy or anything like that, but we're just storing it there.

00:49:14.355 --> 00:49:15.581
You should make an 8x8 of it.

00:49:18.795 --> 00:49:19.016
Yeah.

00:49:19.016 --> 00:49:21.503
I'm not sure this mug really sells the work.

00:49:21.503 --> 00:49:34.900
But yeah, I do enjoy, you know, when I get the chance to do different works and I've done some other figure studies and portraits I love, I love painting people.

00:49:34.900 --> 00:49:47.079
I love, I love painting eyes, um to, because they're kind of like marbles, you know, shiny, glossy sort of things that you can make them look, you know, wonderful and and and real.

00:49:47.079 --> 00:49:50.947
It's uh it's, it's, it's great for me.

00:49:51.815 --> 00:49:57.608
John, I have a quick question about the business while we're still in this realm, before we dig into your process a little bit.

00:49:57.608 --> 00:50:06.606
I've always wondered about the selling of prints, meaning you have an original work, you sell the original work.

00:50:06.606 --> 00:50:09.471
It has value as an original work.

00:50:09.471 --> 00:50:26.079
Value as an original work, um, and I'm kind of curious does creating a print of an original work, does that devalue something, or does it help create demand for the original work by generating awareness of the original work?

00:50:27.621 --> 00:50:28.621
Yes to both.

00:50:28.621 --> 00:50:36.590
Okay, um, I I'm not sure that it devalues the work that much.

00:50:36.590 --> 00:50:42.447
I've had other artists, friends, and some stayed away from it for a long time and then got into it.

00:50:42.447 --> 00:50:44.722
Some have been doing it right along and just love it.

00:50:44.722 --> 00:50:51.309
Very often they'll sell a print to a collector and then that collector eventually comes back and buys an original.

00:50:51.309 --> 00:50:55.737
So that's wonderful.

00:50:55.777 --> 00:51:12.826
But, um, as for me, um, the, the investment and the prints and the process and the time I'm and I'm not, I don't like the sales and marketing part of my career as much.

00:51:12.826 --> 00:51:18.657
I also had to say to myself that's not really fun for me.

00:51:18.657 --> 00:51:44.498
But on top of that it becomes a little redundant where I'm taking pictures of things to do a painting of the thing and then taking a picture of the painting and then taking that print right to make it look exactly like the painting, which is supposed to look, exactly like the photograph, exactly like the object it's.

00:51:44.498 --> 00:51:46.101
It gets it's a little.

00:51:46.101 --> 00:51:50.025
It departs from the intent of the work.

00:51:50.144 --> 00:52:02.003
I think that some prints, I think that most all prints, lack something that the vibrant, original oil paint has.

00:52:02.003 --> 00:52:13.545
The pigment itself has a luster and luminosity that can't be easily recreated with the printing process.

00:52:13.545 --> 00:52:26.358
It's gotten better over the years, but nobody ever looked at a photograph and thought that was reality, but very often a well-done painting.

00:52:26.358 --> 00:52:33.648
People might go and try and pick some object off of a painting because it was a trompe l'oeil and it made them.

00:52:33.648 --> 00:52:34.228
You know.

00:52:34.228 --> 00:52:35.431
Take a second guess.

00:52:35.431 --> 00:52:41.186
Or a beautifully painted person that just looks like you could reach right in and touch.

00:52:42.715 --> 00:52:46.005
You don't get that from the printing process.

00:52:46.635 --> 00:52:54.478
I guess part of what I'm wondering from a revenue standpoint and I'm the business guy here, so I can't help but think this way.

00:52:54.478 --> 00:52:56.666
I'm thinking in terms of volume.

00:52:56.666 --> 00:53:09.239
If you have an original that you can sell once, versus creating a thousand prints of that original, from a business standpoint is there an argument to be made that prints are worthwhile?

00:53:11.784 --> 00:53:13.746
I'm not the one to make that argument.

00:53:13.746 --> 00:53:14.628
Okay, fair enough.

00:53:14.628 --> 00:53:20.704
I would say that for me, it's easier to find one buyer than a thousand buyers.

00:53:20.704 --> 00:53:37.527
Okay, you know, I would certainly like a little extra revenue, but I also respect the maybe desire of the collector to own something exclusive.

00:53:37.527 --> 00:53:40.471
That is only what there's only one of.

00:53:40.471 --> 00:53:52.969

Whimsy and Wonder: Discover the Art of John Schieffer

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