We were lucky to catch up with Trace Deaton recently and have shared our conversation below.
Trace, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss my unique story.
I started my creative journey as a musician. At 5 years, old I watched the Beatles performance on the Ed Sullivan show and went to kindergarten the next day and proclaimed, “I’m a guitar player and I have a band!”
However, I was a known 5-year-old liar! I didn’t have a guitar and I certainly didn’t have a band.
My parents got me my first guitar that night and I have been lying and playing guitar ever since.
I expressed myself through writing songs and playing extended guitar solos. Music was magic to me and I have dedicated my life to it. Soon though, my beloved brother, Tom, turned me on to photography. I got my first 35mm film camera at 15 years old. It opened up a whole new creative outlet. I took pictures of everything, and honestly they weren’t very good at first. Photography didn’t come to me as easily as music and it took me awhile to learn an f-stop from a truck-stop.
Eventually, I began to combine my love for beauty and fashion (read girls) with my photography and started working with local models and modeling agencies in Cincinnati. Over the years, I’ve photographed hundreds of beautiful models around the country and have been published numerous times in various publications. I love this aspect of what I do.
Starting out with 35mm film cameras, and then continuing the journey to digital imaging and Adobe Photoshop, has been one of the most exciting things to me. Coming from the 35mm film era where you had to nail the shot in camera to now having endless editing and processing capabilities in an app in your hand has given us creatives unlimited possibilities to express our imagination.
As far as what I might have done differently, I often wish that I had started my full-time creative business sooner, but I spent years learning how to express myself through various forms of art and I was making a good living in digital advertising. I worked with large corporations and small businesses to help them grow their brands through marketing online. It taught me so much that I use now on my own business.
I named my brand TraceArtography because it combines digital imaging with traditional photography.
Trace, 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?
Sure. I’m Trace Deaton, I grew up near Cincinnati, Ohio and have traveled and lived across the US. I’m a musician, photographer, and artist currently living in Georgetown, Ky.
I started my career as a musician and then spent 20 years in digital advertising before becoming a full time visual artist.
Content Creator is the term now used for what I do, and it requires a lot of different tools and tactics. I use the elements of photography, animation, video, music, and words to create unique works of art. One day, I’m a fashion photographer and the next, I’m creating music videos for national musical artist, then on to landscape photography, or creating animation in order to tell a story. I photograph beautiful landscapes and beautiful models with equal intensity. It’s such a blast to combine my love of music and visual art.
I’ve been told that I have a unique perspective on life and art. I see beauty in everyday life and the mundane, but also create colorful whimsical art and animation.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
My resilience! You have no idea.
In February of 2018 I died…twice! I suffered heart failure and literally died. I had an out-of-body death experience,
in which I floated into a room where my deceased parents sat solemnly on a beautiful love seat. No words were exchanged nor needed. I floated over them briefly and then re-entered my body. Weeks later the first thing I asked when I finally came around was, “Did I die?!”
“Yes. Twice!”
The remarkable thing was when I finally regained my health, it was as if my brain reset and had been super-charged with creativity and was now on a much higher level. I started learning animation, video, and music production. Soon I could create animated videos with my original music and started exploring many new ways to bring to life the ideas I’ve always envisioned.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I have been able to create several of these videos for one of my longtime friends, Adrian Belew, who has collaborated with David Bowie, Frank Zappa, Paul Simon plus many others and also won an Oscar for his work with Pixar. Not only are we friends, but we’re fans of each other’s work and I love adding visual excitement to his music.
I also particularly love when people who purchase my artwork and photographs, send me pictures of the pieces hanging in their homes or offices. It’s a thrill every time just knowing that the pieces mean enough to them that they hang them where they’ll view them everyday.
Art is so subjective and it’s rewarding to know you’ve connected with people in this way.
Contact Info:
- Website: HTTPS://www.Traceartography.com
- Instagram: HTTPS://www.instagram.com/Traceartography
- Facebook: HTTPS://www.Facebook.com/tracedeaton
- Twitter: HTTPS://twitter.com/Tracedeaton
- Youtube: HTTPS://www.YouTube.com/Traceartography