We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Andrew Kaminski. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Andrew below.

Andrew, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Not too long ago, I arrived back from Bangkok, Thailand. The land of hungry ghosts. I thought it was a Buddhist paradise. I went there looking for enlightenment. Kind of silly, huh? You’re not really supposed to go looking for enlightenment, ya know? You’re just supposed to realize it inside yourself. I knew this, but went to Thailand anyway, because, ya never know what you’ll find. Hop on the plane, and see what happens, right?

Either way, I wasn’t a hungry ghost, but you would’ve mistaken me for one. Every morning, I’d wake up, get an ice coffee, and try not to stick out too much. I was there to work on a body of paintings I was going to ship to Singapore, and show in a hotel rented out by this entrepreneurial woman.

It all sounded cool. But… it just all felt so empty. Everywhere I went, I was confronted with an intense desire to escape a meaninglessness. Running away constantly from a depression. Like a shadow that reminded me that it would return as soon as my distractions subsided. And they always did. And the depression always came back, and I’d run away from it like a hamster on a wheel.

I was living with an artist there. Beautiful. Blonde woman I went to art school with. She was compassionate. Really. She let me stay at her nice condo on a main strip in Bangkok.

I ended up selling a painting, and winding up exactly where I was when I left from New York. Feeling empty, depleted. I may have been able to walk away with a cool story, but there was something missing. God.. always something missing..

The world didn’t really value me enough financially. I suppose that was bothering me. Oh, what am I talking about? It definitely bothered me. I remember a David Letterman skit with Eminem, and Eminem says, “Money can’t buy you happiness. It buys you crazy ass happiness.” He says that without a smile, and I know he’s suffered from addiction much of his life. So, although I valued his words, I questioned where it was coming from.

Anyway, I wind back in New York. Looking for love. Looking for roots. I end up getting mixed up with a cult, and I’m off to California to work for some Indian woman who says she has the power of the divine mother. Sheesh… another dead end.

I end up hitchhiking my way out of that one. I was testing my own limits. I ended up hitchhiking 100 miles, by foot and by car to LAX airport. I hopped on a plane, and started making my way back to New York. I kept on escaping and running away from new York, only to wind back there each time. On my plane ride back home, and after ranting to two women who must’ve thought I was nuts, but genuinely feeling something interesting, I walk off the plane, and start my life in upstate New York.

Anyway… so I’m in upstate New York now. I end up having this idea that I want to create art all over the world, and have it financed by the US military. I figured, as tax payers, we spend absurd amounts of money on our military strength.. why can’t they fund some murals and art projects?

This line of thinking leads me to talk to Bill Forte of the American Legion in Kingston, New York. I start talking to good old Bill, and he shows me this long wall next to Kingston’s high school. He asks me if I can paint a mural on it and represent the veterans of Kingston.

So I came up with a plan to paint a large mural. It turned out beautiful.. Every step of the way I got a veteran’s input. It turned out to be this giant narrative of all the wars America has fought.. but without guns.

It was a gorgeous mural.. it’s still up there to this day. I feel like I found my meaning I was searching for. I needed a meaningful container for my art, and this mural for the veterans was it! I needed it to be received by the community, and not just pouting my own glory or amplifying my ego.

But it wasn’t just the mural.. everything that had led me to the mural was also meaningful. Escaping the cult. Traveling to Bangkok. The whole adventure was magnificent. I didn’t know where I was going, but all along the way, and the hearts that I had connected with.. I suppose that was meaningful. Every step was pulling me farther and farther into some unknown truth. Some deeper level of connection with life on this planet.

I realized I loved working with people so much.. that was the part of my work that I loved most of all. Sure, I loved diving into my craft, and showing it off.. but it was all about that… showing it off to a captive audience. It was about loving the audience, and forming relationships and bonds with the people I was sharing my artwork with. That’s what I loved about the mural. I was able to express the ideas of veterans. Of people who went through something I didn’t understand, but I could feel them in some sort of way – if that makes sense..

That project led me to pursue a degree in social work, and I feel like I’ve staved off my depression. The seemingly endless search isn’t in vain – a search exists to bring you closer to your heart. Your heart being a rhythm of actions that you settle into as a routine where you are infusing your actions as a contribution to help others. Where you feel like others value you. I think money naturally follows.

Andrew, 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 just want to connect with people. You know when people are listening. And you know when they’re not. I live for being seen. For being truly seen. I feel like my art – my painting is a method to unearth this part of myself that words sort of point to, and then people kind of catch on – they say, hey.. I’m feeling that too!

I’ve been talking to more and more people who describe this experience of having an “awakening”. There’s being woke… but that’s generally a different experience than what is being conveyed when I say “awakening”. I was raised Roman Catholic, and then I had to distance myself from it at a certain point. I had to discover my beliefs for me, and not for what I was raised to believe. Not what I was indoctrinated into just by happenstance. So I started to research Buddhism, and discovered this concept of “enlightenment”, and it fascinated me. This idea of oneness. I loved it. And I became obsessed with this possibility of this state – this state of oneness. So the obsession led me to see everything as one. That’s what I wanted to convey in my paintings.

It’s not just in paintings. I feel compelled to connect with like-minds who want to unleash the “Supermind”. As if we’re all a bunch of ants.. and there’s this queen ant that we’re all working for.. without knowing her face, or without knowing ever having met her. There’s someone or something that unites all of us. I don’t know if you know what I’m talking about. I guess you would have had to experience that oneness yourself. Or maybe you’re just looking to strive to activate it again, or for the first time.

So, I use acrylic paint and oil paint, but really, I feel like I use “attention”. I become conscious and hyper focused on this idea of a cascade of light emerging from the being. Like if you close your eyes, and imagine some sort of contact with the base of your spine, and fireworks and liquid fire start to emerge. It’s not a fire that burns in a bad way. It’s a fire that ignites your purpose. It ignites meaning, and conviction to surrender. It feels good to activate. To be activated. Do you know what I’m talking about?

That’s all I’m really trying to do. I hope I’m doing it. I got to stay humble. I have to keep my humility. I have no idea what other people are going through. People live incredibly hard lives, and are generally distracted by all of this.. this society stuff. But sometimes, when we’re lucky, and we’ve staved off all the demands of our world, we arrive at this silence. And then there’s this burst in our hearts. This realization that everything is going to be alright. That’s what I’m looking to remind us all to return to.

I’ll do that through direct conversation, as I’m a social worker with an MSW. Or I’ll do that when I share my paintings.

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

In my view, just encourage people to create. More murals too. Mural mentoring programs would be great. Perhaps a merging of mental health systems and an encouragement to facilitate art.

A thriving ecosystem would be one where people feel free to create what they want. It’s not about the product. It’s about the community. It may be somewhat about the product actually. It’s more about the connection. We witness someone diving into their artistic process, and we get high off of their self-induced high, ya know?

It all starts with a conversation. To encourage one another to create. To refine one’s craft. I’d encourage art jams as well. When artists get together and they create together, something happens. Something that can only happen when artists get out of their studio.

So if we all establish rhythms to get together. To merge ideas, I think we’d make a major difference in our conviction to continue to create. We need that social support. That life line of other artists to support us.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

Just mentorship. I wish I discovered the right mentor. The right mentor can make all the difference. I find art school to be somewhat indirect. Yes, we need support – social support for our artwork, but what we truly need is the transparency that a mentor, someone who has suffered the art path, and understand the pitfalls the climaxes of thriving artistic career, can just allow another artist to shadow them.

There are social, and welcoming artists, and they need to be recognized, and artists who can step out of their shell, and invite newcomers into their world, and learn from them, by spending time – that is needed. Time. We just need to spend time with people who have been around the block longer than we have.

I went art school and got my MFA, and that whole formal environment was a little constraining. It was somewhat limiting because the context was so serious. I believe more artists just need to be welcoming when someone shows a genuine interest. It doesn’t have to be this hyper formal process. Just be open and compassionate, and allow new artists to be welcomed into your space. And the new artists – artists who are just learning how rewarding it is to dabble with their craft – with materials – those artists I encourage to reach out to older artists who have been refining their muscle memory to hold a paint brush in the right way. There is a right way and a wrong way to hold a paint brush. There is a right way and a wrong way to channel technique. Enough of this whole “everyone is an artist” thing. Not everyone is an artist. A person who has committed to their craft. You can tell when someone is committed and confident. You just feel the experience off of them. There needs to be transparency in that conversation, and a humility to listen when one person has that experience, and one person is looking to learn.      

Contact Info:

• Website: www.andrewkaminskiart.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrewkaminskiart/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrewjkaminski
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-kaminski-608836270/

Image Credits
Andrew Kaminski Art