We were lucky to catch up with Josh Bauer recently and have shared our conversation below.
Josh, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?
There are times I wish I would have started sooner. I wish someone would have sat me down and told me what I could have done with my talent when I was in high school. I did pretty well in all my art classes, as well as my computer design classes, but know one ever showed me how I could make a career out of all of it. Even after high school it took me a few years, a move from Ohio to Florida, and then a trip to a comic con to figure out where to focus my creativity. With all that being said though, I really would’t change how things have gone down though. I have got to do some pretty cool things and meet some great people with my creative career. It has had its ups and down, but it has been the biggest part of my life.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
So, most folks know me by my artist name, JBauerart, and I have been creating artwork and graphic design work for almost 10 years now. I have been working on some kind of art since I was a kid and my art has become a second job for me. Like I said though, I really didn’t realize what I could do with my work until 2012 or so. I went to my first comic con, which was MegaCon in Orlando, FL, and was amazed with all the independent artist that were on hand. Back when I lived in Ohio we didn’t have comic con in my area. So, I chatted with many artists about how to get in to the conventions and figure out as much as I could so I could do it myself. I want to say it took about six months or so to get everything together. I then attended my first con as an artist, in June of 2013, which was Ocala Comic Con and it has been a wild ride ever since. I have had some great ups and some really rough downs.
I have actually changed up a good amount of what I sell. When I first started all those years ago my main focus was original acrylic paintings and prints. They did well for the first few years, but then I started to realize that every year are started selling less and less prints. Not really sure what it was, but I would be told things like “Oh I don’t have the wall space” or “I don’t have the money for prints”. At the end of last year I decided to retire all of my prints and change my focus. My mom and I actually came up with the idea of putting my artwork on metal tumblers. As luck would have it one of my would introduce me to a person that was selling all the things I need to create the tumblers myself. Man have the changed my career in just the few months I have had them. It’s reinvigorated my love of my artwork and reignited my passion. I have taken pictures or scanned almost every painting I have created over the past ten years and I can now mash up, tweak, and reuse all that work in to these tumblers.
I think what sets my art a part from others is my messy style and I always try to put a different twist on my piece. I think I am know for my messy style. I have a few spots that I put in art every month and most people are able to catch my submissions pretty quickly. Sometimes it’s a whole bunch of splatter paint or some drip style paint going down the canvas. I have many different ways that I put my own twist on the norm, but one of the biggest ways is my standard canvas size. I usually like to paint on a 12″ x 36″ canvas with the longest part going vertical. It just gives my work that extra something that you don’t see in other’s work. I also try to take most themes in a different direction. For example, last year I wanted to do a Loki painting for an upcoming Marvel inspired show. Instead of doing a full image of Loki, from either the comics or movies, I created a painting of just his helmet with green painting sliding down the canvas. It just those little thing here and there that I try to do to make my art stand out.
I think the thing I am most proud about myself is that I have never given up fully on my art. I spoke earlier about my career having it’s ups and downs. When I first started things were going great and I was having an amazing time. After a few years I stared to hit a rough patch. I tried a few ways to change up how I did my work, some life things, and nothing seemed to work. Heck, I walked away from everything art in 2020 for about 8 months. I was defeated! My creativity did’t stop though and I went and created a podcast to help fill sometimes during the pandemic. Then after that eight months the itch to paint came back. I slowly got back in to things and just tried to do my art for fun again. Now with the tumblers and bookmarks I am excited to see what comes next in my career.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I think this is the perfect question to go in to a little more detail with what I was talking about earlier. Now, I have had to pivot a good few times in my art career. Around 2018 I was getting burned out on comic cons and was just not having luck getting my art to sell. This was probably the starting point of my depression. I was not doing well and just kept spiraling down more and more. I actually have some friends at the time sit me down and try to help me figure out what to do. They talked me in to do live paintings with them on the Facebook Live show. That opened up some new doors and gave me some renewed love for my work. I did that for about a little over a year. I did live paintings at charity events, album release parties, restaurants, comic cons and more. Those were some amazing experiences, but I wasn’t actually working on my depression. Towards the end of that time I was even getting burnt out and then had a falling out with those friends in early 2020.
After the falling out I was just broken. I walked away from everything art and focused on other things. I did a podcast for a while, got back in to gaming, and just chilling. About eight months later I started to miss painting and the perfect art show came up at Hourglass Brewing. They were doing a Back to the Future art show and I just had to paint a Deloreon! So in 2021 I got back in to painting just for fun and things I wanted to paint. I also got a new day job and started to actual work on my depression. It was then time to get back out there…. Which was great, but people still did not want to purchase prints.
Another PIVOT! (That’s for the FRIENDS fans out there). I started to create bookmarks of my paintings. Which helped and got some new work out their to folks. At the beginning of 2023 I was on the hunt for another pivot and fell in to tumbler making. These tumbler have got me excited to work on art again. I can tweak old pieces from years ago, I can mash up pieces from different years, and even add some of my graphic design work as well. I have over 50 different tumbler designs and I have just barley scratched the surface of what I have in the vault.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Building an audience is something that you will be forever working on. No matter if you are just starting out or have been doing your craft for over a decade you will always be building an audience. My best advice to help build that audience is to be yourself and just be real. That can be taken an use in a couple of different way.
One meaning of this is I think you should just be yourself when you are out and about with your creations. I have met a good amount of people that just put on a fake personality. They try to be or act like something that they are not and most of the time people can see right through that. They can tell that you are putting on an act and can show that you are not genuine. If you are not genuine about yourself, what else are you not genuine about. I, myself, have a pretty dark sense of humor, swear a decent amount, and just have a different view of things then most people. I don’t hide that. I let people know if I am having a rough time at a convention or on a piece. I may clean up some of the swear words, but I am the same person behind my artist table that you would be on the street. A lot of folks have told me that they wanted to work with me because they knew I was real.
Another way you can be real with your audience is with your social media. My first few years of my art career I really only posted about my artwork and what events I had coming up. I would post some personal stuff once in a blue moon, but mainly kept it to just my work. I got very little feed back from that and my pages did not grow. After thinking about it a bit I realized some folk would like to know more what I am up to and in to. Over the past few years I have now posted more things about me. Now, I am not saying to go and post every little detail about yourself, that’s just not safe. I am talking about things like your other hobbies, favorite places to eat, where you like to go on vacation. I am a big Lego fan and love buying/collecting new sets. I will post unboxing vids of new sets I have purchased or if I find a new Lego store to check out. It is a great way to break up the business content, show that you are a real person, and help with those pesky algorithms. Posting a pic of a new local restaurant you tried out not only helps you connect with your audience, but it also helps that local business get it’s name and product out to new eyes.
So my best advice with building and audience is just be real. Show folk that you are actually a human being. Show the not just your ups, but your downs as well. Not everything is sunshine and rainbows all the time and a lot of folks can relate to that. You never know who you might inspire or help with what you have going on.
Contact Info:
- Website: JBauerart.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/jbauerart
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JBauerart
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-bauer-22047479/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/jbauerart
- Other: TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@jbauerart22
Image Credits
Tony Mongiat / Mongiat Photo