We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Adrian Cox. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Adrian below.
Adrian, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?
As a fine artist, the path that takes me from an idea to execution is long and winding, and usually has more to do with discovery than it does efficiency. I keep several sketchbooks, and some of these don’t even have drawings in them; they’re just filled with written notes, scraps of inspiration, partially formed thoughts, and fragments of narratives. I never know what’s going to become the seed of inspiration for a painting or an exhibition, and sometimes I resurrect partially developed ideas that I had years ago.
These scribbled notes then become thumbnail sketches, which in turn become detailed drawings, and finally I create digital studies based on these drawings. As I said, the path to a finished painting is circuitous for me, so even at this stage I experiment. I often sculpt objects, parts of landscapes, and figures using whatever cheap materials I have laying around in my studio- clay, fake flowers, cardboard, cut paper, socks, you name it.
Although navigating back and forth between mediums and approaches slows me down, I find that this slowness is creatively fruitful. It allows me to consider things in ways that I might not otherwise. Ultimately, I uncover new ideas by working in this way, and what I lose in time, I gain in creative depth.
Adrian, 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’m a painter working and living in Los Angeles, and I use my art to create a personal and ongoing mythology. My paintings are connected by a narrative set in an imagined world that I call the Borderlands. For over a decade, I’ve cultivated this internal landscape, and used my paintings to give it form. Each image that I create is an exploratory step leading deeper into a territory that exists at the threshold of the real and the imagined, the physical world and the world of dreams. Although this imaginal space has its origins inside of me, it’s something that I’ve created to have a life of its own. I invite viewers of my work to inhabit this landscape like a shared dream.
The protagonists of the mythology that I’ve created are beings known as Border Creatures. These creatures are, both physically and spiritually, an extension of the landscape that they inhabit. Their anatomy combines human traits with those of the Borderlands, and they serve as caretakers of their wilderness home. These strange but peaceful creatures are artists, gardeners, poets, scientists, and mystics. When they dream, the landscape dreams with them. The Border Creatures are antagonized by the Specters, blue spirits of pure energy that are led by the Spectral King. These spirits casually burn the landscape that they walk upon, and are alienated from the world that they inhabit. The Specters perceive that which is Other as a threat, or as a resource reducible to its usefulness. The war between the Border Creatures and Specters is a conflict between two distinct ways of being in the world.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
I partnered with the galleries that currently represent me early in my career, and they’ve both been immeasurably helpful in finding new collectors. A lot of artists have mixed feelings about galleries, particularly because this means sharing half of your potential revenue every time you make a sale. However, I’ve found that relying on my representing galleries (Beinart Gallery and Corey Helford Gallery) to handle sales has allowed me to focus more intensely on producing new artworks. Social media might allow direct access to collectors, but the traditional art gallery model remains relevant and vital. Unlike posting on social media, a gallery’s network of collectors isn’t beholden to an algorithm.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
Simply put, creation itself is its own kind of reward. There’s something immensely mysterious and beautiful in the process of growing a partially formed idea into something huge and ambitious. It’s an uncanny feeling when I walk through one of my exhibitions, because, even though I know how I made each painting, the sum is more than the parts. The exhibition becomes an entity that’s larger than my singular perspective. It becomes a world.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.adriancoxart.com
- Instagram: @adriancoxart
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/412572550169431
- Other: https://beinart.org/collections/adrian-cox https://coreyhelfordgallery.com/artists/adrian-cox/