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

Josh, appreciate you joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I have done many different things over the years, from manual kitchen, warehouse, and vineyard work to teaching, writing articles and monthly columns, and running my and others’ businesses as an employee, consultant, and owner. None of that was what I really wanted to do, just what I found myself doing by having come from very little materially but with a willingness to never turn down any opportunity. I was paid for my art and graphic design skills a number of times over the years, but that work was always in service to someone else’s vision or needs. I came back to fine art and decided to make it once again the center not just of my activities but of my life because it’s one area of life I can step into and always feel better, empowered, connected to myself and the universe in a way that simply does not often happen otherwise. The flow-state of creation is out of time, and that is priceless and something I would pay for; fortunately, others are willing to pay me for the products of those stolen moments.

Josh, 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 am a lifelong multi-mode creative artist, musician, writer, professor with multiple advanced degrees from the University of California and the University of Liverpool, adult beverage maker, and current MFA candidate at School of Visual Arts, residing in Napa, California. I have formal training in calligraphy, graphic design, and color work; almost three decades as a researcher, teacher, and writer in cultural analysis in the vein of the Birmingham and Frankfurt Schools; and spent a decade and a half as a commercial artist and designer for multiple winery clients. The results of those experiences brings my influences of Pop art, Tattoo flash and lining techniques, and Abstract Surrealism and Expressionism to the extreme edge where graphic design and calligraphy meet the Platonic theory of forms.

In my current work, I find myself drawn to the use of metallic, iridescent, and fluorescent colors in combination with textures that lift the paint from the canvas, creating what I call deep patterns, almost Jungian in a way because they seem to tap into something deep within us as people. I strive for my optical and geometric work not to be “just wallpaper” as so much in these genres has often become. Rather, I seek to force a reckoning with the artwork as a presence unto itself, and the use of these more exotic acrylic mediums really produces a moment of active tension both in person and via digital reproduction. I am continuing to explore where the idea of line itself creates or demarcates what the eye experiences as that is the essence of my work: fooling the eye into seeing things it never imagined could exist, and then going beyond fooling into willing participation in a different way to see the world around us, externally and internally. The resulting metallic and fluorescent inks and acrylics on canvas delight and perplex, moving between the worlds of solidity and abstraction.

: Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I try to say yes to everything until I am in a position to say no to anything. I create every day and will not allow myself to sleep until at least one current piece has been worked on. I intentionally spend one to two hours every night when the house is quiet doing the unseen work of an art business: inventory, emails. applications, interviews and questionnaires, outreach to curators, and on and on. The journey in all its messiness is the goal: a bad day creating is better than a good doing just about anything else. My guiding philosophy has always been to avoid regrets by never saying no to opportunity; regardless of outcome, at least I tried.

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

I return to fine art after many years in commercial production, and the work I create, the way I create, the motivations behind it–none of it would be the same without the other lives, the other work, the struggles to adapt as a creative in a world that wants to put us each into a labelled non-creative vessel of a predetermined shape and size. I don’t regret the stumbles, the falls, the wandering lost, the uncertainties–that’s what it is to be human–and no art seeking to connect to other humans can do so if the human who orchestrates it hasn’t fully lived. Our greatest strengths as creatives are all the times things didn’t work out, all the the times plans collapsed like so many playing-card houses. We create because of these things, not in spite or despite them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.steincreates.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/steincreates
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/joshsteinnapa