We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tom Callos. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tom below.

Tom, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

At a young age (teens) I found myself interested in the work of artists; Picasso, Matisse, Raoul Dufy, Thomas Hart Benton, and Maynard Dixon were among the people whose work I kept coming across. But my interest in making my own art didn’t come until my 20’s; at that time I was a part of an internationally famous martial arts demonstration team and one of my teammates was a practicing painter and printmaker. In that rehearsals and the work of performing took hours and hours, downtime was reserved for things other than martial arts. It was with my classmate’s encouragement that I made my first linocut prints — what amounted to a handful of prints. But ultimately making things took a backseat to running my martial arts schools and raising three children. Fast forward to my 50’s. In 2015 I was preparing to fight in the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Senior Master World Championships when I broke my right femur in a nasty spiral fracture during training. I’d already had both hips fully replaced in my 40’s and so the fracture was especially dramatic with an artificial hip joint installed.

During recovery, bored out of my mind sitting / laying around, I dug out my art tools and with the encouragement of my wife and I started making prints again, mostly to keep myself from going mad. As I became more serious about the work, I decided to teach myself, as happens in the practice of the martial arts, how to do what I was doing BETTER, by setting out to make 1000 linocut portraits.

I’m now 8 years into the effort and have passed the 500 portrait mark –and I continue to practice nearly every day. In this effort, I simply applied martial arts tenacity and training practices to my practice of art. I have come to understand what is the same about working on mastery of the martial arts and making things. The commonalities between the arts are many, but the primary and most useful tool is found in repetitive practice. Most accurately, in MINDFUL repetitive practice. Learning a craft is part “learning,” but mostly found in learning through repetition.

It isn’t repetition alone, however, that assists in the learning about and mastery of any craft, a good deal of the work comes from having a productive and useful ATTITUDE. In making art (or anything), one shouldn’t put too much emphasis on the result of any one piece –or training session. Sometimes you’re the hammer and sometimes you’re the nail. The key is to show up the next day for more practice.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Like millions of people, I was first inspired by the martial arts I saw in popular media. The TV show The Green Hornet featured Bruce Lee and it was Lee, in 1967 with the debut of the show, that had me kicking at and throwing (on our bed mattresses) my little brother and sister. I finally took my first martial arts lesson at age 9 in 1969. Fast forward a few decades and I had become a black belt, competed nationally and internationally, been a member of a performance troop that traveled the world doing martial arts demonstrations –which lead me to working in Hollywood as a stunt man and actor. At age 22 I had opened my first school in Reno, Nevada –and that lead me to having two of the most successful and largest schools in the nation during the 80’s and 90’s.

Unfortunately, due mostly to over-training, I had to have both my hips replaced in my early 40’s –and while I kept training and performing, the writing was on the wall. After I broke my leg (one of dozen’s of physical injuries par for the course with hardcore martial artists), I began practicing more art-making, as opposed to leg breaking.

After 50 years of training and involvement, martial arts finally took a backseat to printmaking –and while I took a number of workshops and went back to college to work on my BFA, most of my learning has been facilitated by trial, error, and mindful repetitive practice. Being retired and financially stable, I have the freedom to make things I want to make –and just for the learning experience and joy of making,

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

As a senior member and thought-leader in the international martial arts community, I wanted to set an example of a concept I call “Out of the dojo and into the world.” I took the idea from a famous yogi, Seane Corn, who designed a program called “Off the mats and into the world,” about taking the philosophical / physical practices of yoga and applying them to other things in one’s life. “Out of the dojo and into the world was, like Seane’s program in the yoga community, about taking the respect, tenacity, focus and other qualities required in deep practice and applying them to just about anything one is interested in –and that had nothing to do with kicking, punching, or choking other people.

By applying a martial arts practice mindset to making art, I have been able to show, by example, how one takes skills earned on the practice mats –and applies them to other disciplines and, well, “life.”

My goal with making 1000 portraits is part of what I used to teach the 1000’s of young people who came through my schools, “That self-defense, in part, is being mindful and selective of who one spends time with, as people can have such a profound impact on one’s goals, ambitions, beliefs and attitude.” I make portraits of up-standers, people who as a result of their efforts, art, and/or actions, represent some of the best of the best of what human beings are capable of. This is a important and under-discussed aspect of self-defense for one’s mind, character, and outlook. In making portraits I get to “hang out” with people whose life’s work made the world a better place –something that has affected my confidence, education, and understanding of the world.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Practice is everything. It is in the practice of something that delivers almost all the worthwhile information, skills, and knowledge you will eventually accumulate, with…Practice. But practice isn’t bulletproof, one must cultivate a healthy and constructive attitude about the practice. Example of a “proper” practice attitude: When things don’t work as you hoped, that’s good! As the second attempt is usually far better than the first.

The joy of making art used to, for me anyway, come from producing something I liked. But as my practice has evolved, I’ve trained myself to love the practice as much –or more –than what comes out at the end. So the lesson is: Sit down at the place you make art every possible day you can. Make things over and over and over until the lessons, whatever they may be, are learned. Do NOT give yourself permission to be frustrated, instead learn to turn it into fascination for the process. And note: Make whatever YOU do into an art, as in the end, the life you imagine making for yourself is, ideally, a kind of masterpiece.

Be persistent: Some people mistakingly believe that 3 or 5 or 10 efforts with one’s entire heart and soul are, in the achievement of some ambition, a “try,” as in, “I tried that, but it didn’t work.” For me, my set-point is 1000 efforts. If I’m unwilling to do something a 1000 times, then I can acknowledge that whatever it is I was working on simply wasn’t that important to me. If I genuinely want something, I don’t even blink until I’ve made 1000 efforts. Usually, I get what I’m after with far fewer than 1000 reps, but I’m talking about one’s mindset and determination, the precursors to artful achievement.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tomcallos.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tomcallos
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tomcallos