We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brian Coxen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Brian, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I have been told I am self taught artist but I do not entirely agree with that term. If I had worked on my own with out any influence from the outside world I would then maybe consider being coined self taught. I seek out instruction by studying masters like John Singer Sargent, whether it’s through a well written book or purchased tutorials by some modern greats like Richard Schmid. Granted, I still had to stumble and work through my current process with out the direction of someone in person, which I am sure would be unbelievably invaluable, but I have always come from the belief that there is nothing more important than just jumping in and doing it. I did take figure drawing courses when I tried community college, which has proven to be a life long skill I am grateful for, otherwise when it comes to oil painting I have not had the luxury of learning directly from a skilled mentor or through the process of collecting a degree. I approached my personal curriculum as if I were in school. Picked apart what it takes to create a painting and focused on areas where I was weak or what inspired me. I spent many days and weeks on particular subjects like, mixing colors, abstraction, portraiture, principles in capturing a landscape, plein aire painting or concepts on how to manipulate oil paint. Instead of simply painting a golf course for example, I would focus on a particular area within the subject to learn something new such as how to push a mountain further back into a scene or how to mix a natural green from a limited palette.

Brian, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have always been a creative person since I was a child, playing the drums at the age of 5 and having an aptitude to draw and paint. I started oil painting when I was about 12 years old after watching Bob Ross on television. My personality has always been driven by just jumping right in and doing and typically skipping fundamentals. This has it’s positives and negatives, it wasn’t until I was much older that I realized what I was missing to have skipped the fundamentals in oil painting. Around 8 years ago I started to take oil painting much more serious. Rather than paint a few paintings a year while my focus was writing and performing music, I wanted to heavily pursue my oil painting passion. I started to learn the fundamentals of oil painting and started to challenge my artistic abilities with heavy vigor. It wasn’t until 2020 when I started to learn the game of golf and married my two passions together. I started to be inspired to paint contemporary golf landscape paintings during my rounds of golf. For the past 5 years now I have been gaining new collectors who also shared my passion for the game. Often finding golfers who didn’t realize that an oil painting could speak to them in such a unique way.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Art isn’t hard, art business is hard. Despite economic downturns or lulls in the art industry in general, selling art is very difficult and demanding. As artists we are always trying to figure out how to find collectors, how to be seen. That is our number one job as an artist, get our work in front of viewers, and if it connects at a deeper level, maybe someone will actually purchase a piece. For some artists it is very tough to even part with their work. Thankfully I do not have that problem, I have no issues with my artwork being taken out of my hands and placed in a home. Just like any business where you are selling goods and services, the resilience comes when the sales are not coming in and still paint anyways. Resilience starts with having to detach the passion of loving your art and treat it as any other business. However, with art it is very interesting, there are many who try to take advantage of artists time and skills especially at the early stages of their career. The amount of times I was asked to create and original piece or art for “exposure” is almost mind blowing. As if the years of experience and countless hours, days and weeks of building my craft is meaningless and not worth a penny. I learned quickly that I will never paint for exposure, my time and skills are too valuable to be swindled out for what generally doesn’t produce a worthy outcome. As an artist resilience is also important when standing by your price for you art. Everyone wants fine art, but not everyone wants to pay for it. It hit home when I tried to explain to someone that the price they expected for my artwork would barely cover the cost of the materials, but after breaking down the hours it took to make the painting, I basically would be making $1.25 an hour. Thankfully at this stage in my career those days are well behind me.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

In simple terms, I just want to create golf paintings to the best of my abilities and find collectors who didn’t even realize they wanted an oil painting of a golf course. My favorite aspect of oil painting is that it will be a life long journey of development. Which is also why I love the game of golf. Arguably both of these passions you can never truly master. There will always be a weakness somewhere, even if others don’t see it, that will drive the artist or golfer to continue to push and tackle that skill. In golf there is the concept of come back for more shots, where you score isn’t very good but all it takes is that one shot off the tee or second shot onto the green that teases you into believing that the next great shot is just around the corner. In painting its the same way. We go through hundreds of paintings that are not our finest, that are full of warts, and then everything aligns just right when a painting is approaching a masterpiece.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.briancoxenart.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/briancoxenart