We recently connected with Adam Crowley and have shared our conversation below.

Adam, appreciate you joining 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.

My daughter is seven, and when my wife and I found out that we were having a baby, we talked to each other about the things we wanted to maintain in our personal pursuits after the baby was born. Having a baby take up a significant amount of time, and Stefanie and I both had interests that we didn’t want to lose in the new reality of parenthood. My wife is an avid gardener, so she took the evening hours as her time to plant and harvest. That left me with the early morning hours before I went to work. Prior to the baby, I would go into the studio maybe a few times a week for several hours at time, but the schedule was pretty loose. Post baby I definitely had to discipline myself and make the most out of my studio time. Now days I wake up at five am, Monday through Saturday. I usually work until about seven, when I need to put my brushes down and get ready for my day job. This schedule has focused my painting practice into these two hours of intense, no distractions work. And my paintings has flourished because of it. Outside of the studio I do my best to read art blogs, watch video interviews on YouTube, read art theory books, etc… in order to always have those topics fresh in my mind. I’ve also started a monthly plein air painting group. and I have a small watercolor pad and palette at my desk at work, so I’m never far from paint. I try to be as immersed in it as possible.

Honestly the only way I could have Sped up my learning process would be to have buckled down at an earlier time. The time I’ve spent learning to paint has been the most beneficial thing for me. And really, I’m not sure I’m too interested in trying to “speed things up”. Painting is a lifelong pursuit, with no defined end goal. I try to come to the easel with a sense of calm and discovery, and I try my hardest to never rush.

The most essential skill as far as nuts and bolts painting, and aside from the general idea of focused, consistent work, would be learning how to use color. Once you gain confidence in your ability to mix the correct colors, and to use the paint to your advantage, your paintings will really start to take off.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, my main obstacle was discipline. Once I decided to make painting a central focus in my life, my work improved. That meant I had to give up some other things, but they quickly lost interest as my work progressed and improved. I will also mention that I went to art school, and have been painting in some capacity for over twenty years, but it was that daily, focused regimen that pushed my work into a higher level.

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?

I’m Adam Crowley, and I’m an artist and museum worker living in Kansas City. My paintings are usually done in oil, and recently I have started using tempera as well. I m interested in several aspect of painting: the technical facility of the painter, the emotional/conceptual ideas that painting can address, and paintings continued relevance in contemporary culture.

I think painting has a unique ability to convey ideas. A painting can hold seemingly disparate ideas within a singular image. Beauty and ugliness, fear and bravery, tenderness and disregard can all be threaded into a painting. I also think painting stands as a bastion for sow observation. We live in an ever quickening world filled with disposable imagery. So to take a months time crafting a singular image seems almost antithetical to what we are being told the correct way to receive media. Hopefully my, and others, painting can serve as something of a respite from that part of society.

My work is image based. I work both from photographic sources as well as from life. I think reality is endlessly fascinating. We have movies and video games and immersive multi-sensory experience art installations that bombard the sense at all times, while the beauty of a leaf in sunlight, or a small stone dug up from the ground can conjure ideas of history, humanity, existence, and the cosmos from a humble, everyday sort of occurrence. Which in my opinion is far and away more intriguing and satisfying.

I’ve always drawn and painted, ever since I was a child, so art school was an easy choice. After a few years out of art school doing odd jobs, I decided to back and get my Masters degree in Art History. While I was in school, I learned about various museum jobs that I hadn’t known about before. One of these is called Preparation. Basically an art handler. It is a great combination of hands on work in a fine arts setting. I am lucky to be surrounded by wonderful works of art on a daily basis, and am also challenged to build crates, or move heavy sculptures in ways that will protect these objects for years to come.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Time and space are very important for creative progress. Affordable studio space, allowing people enough free time to pursue creative endeavors, and understanding the importance of a thriving creative voice within a functioning society are all paramount to a healthy cultural ecosystem.

I think there is a significant lack in thinking of the arts as necessary in contemporary society. This is surely caused by many factors, and I cant claim to have the answer for all of society’s ills, but what i do see are artists being displaced from their apartments and studios when big developers buy the buildings. When rent goes up 200% that forces lots of people to make choices that, in my opinion, hurt our over all culture. When people are living hand to mouth, they aren’t reaching their full potential. If we could put an emphasis on the arts, allow for affordable housing/studio space, I think the arts will flourish.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

One of the most rewarding thing to me about being in the arts are the conversations and exchange of ideas that are available to me throughout the days. It’s very rewarding to be a part of a community that is so engaging. And its wonderful to feel like you might be a part of something that might change the way people think down the road. It could be a tangible thing like starting a class or a crit club, or something more ethereal like the coalescing of knowledge and ideas in a certain place leading to a new movement in art or society, or both!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adam_m_crowley/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adam.crowley.9678