We recently connected with Moncho1929 (Dan Monteavaro) and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Moncho1929 thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I think like all creatives, it’s a mixture of not really having a choice to not do what sometimes becomes a part of who we are as people. How we identify our place in the world, how we make sense of it, and having a voice in it. Growing up in a vocally loud family, I was always quiet and would spend time drawing at the kitchen table. Over time my family began to recognize what I was doing and that became a bit of an identity for me and in a way , while everyone was talking over each other, my art gave me a a way to say something that couldn’t be talked over. In school, I would draw and classmates would start to notice and that reinforced the voice that I never had at home and being alone as a latchkey kid, I spent a lot of time alone and doing art was always a place of purpose and thought where I could make sense of the time alone.
Art for me was a way to understand the world around me, and feel a part of it. It became so much a part of how I would understand things and problem solve, that I felt it was as important to me as a person and so much an intrinsic part of my growth that it would permeate into everything I did. I did a lot for my art when I was young. I quit jobs for doing art, I stole for art supplies, I yelled at teachers/professors over art and I get passionate about the title “artist” to a fault at times. I truly believe everyone is creative in their own way, but to elevate it to an artform needs to take a bit of a journey to appreciate the “why” of what we do. Much in the same way that everyone has a voice, but being the loudest in the room doesn’t make what you say poignant or important.
It really was and is a passion mixed with a dose of obsession for me and I’m very lucky that I’ve been able to create what I do and watch it evolve.

Moncho1929, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m an artist based in Los Angeles, originally from NYC. My work is a bit hard to pin down subjectwise because I work in a creatively organic way where I let the work evolve over time. Usually whatever series I happen to be focused on will start to evolve and I lean into it and let it change into eventually another series of works. I do work that I connect with and try for them to connect with the viewer. A good painting for me is a story that in open ended. It doesn’t spoon feed a narrative.
I’ve focused primarily in painting and have been fortunate enough to have work in the permanent collection at The Figge Museum of Art, shown twice at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, been in contention for the BP Portrait Award at in the UK, had some amazing commissions from Google, Porsche, Universal, Paramount multiple city public artworks and many other amazing projects.
I did apprentice sculpture at St John’s Cathedral in New York for a few years, but I wanted to focus on painting. (The only regret I have is that I don’t have any of those early sculptures and and had to turn down a group exhibition with the sculptor-in-residence at The Smithsonian because of it a few years ago.)
In terms of shows, it can vary widely based on what I want to show and if it makes sense. This past year I did a small underground solo show of unseen works, then a large solo show on museum row in downtown Los Angeles.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

NFT’s can be a fantastic way to document intellectual property and creative rights to works. An idea I’ve been toying with was to document the provenance of the work via the blockchain as it’s immutable and can show a history of ownership, exhibitions, ect. In terms of actual art, digital artwork is just art with a different brush. But at the height of the NFT craze, a lot of work that can be summed up as calendar art or screensavers started showing up and the “art” component got a bit lost. I think that shook the market a bit, but that’s a positive thing as the art component starts to take center stage and gives it time to grow into something substantial.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The best thing I had to unlearn was fear. Here are a few of the one’s I had to let go of
Fear of failure ( it’s a guarantee that we as humans will fail at times, but how we process that failure is just as important as succeeding )
Fear of criticism (just because we may not like the information doesn’t invalidate it, and conversely can say more about the critic than the work)
Fear of doubt (doubt is another way of looking at possibilities, usually it’s mostly catastrophizing and sometimes based on perceived expectations)
Fear of being alone (art isn’t always a team sport, but it’s a team environment)
Fear of being non-productive (your best ideas come when you are being “unproductive”. It gives the creative side of your brain a chance to stretch)
Fear of using too many parenthesis in paragraphs (they are awesome)

Contact Info:

• Website: www.moncho1929.com
• Instagram: @moncho1929
• Facebook: definitely no
• Linkedin: no
• Twitter: more no
• Youtube: not yet