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

Bear, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

For me, there is nothing more rewarding than being a paid artist. Especially when the money is good. An artist relies on reaching into their soul and emotions to relay a feeling to others. That doesn’t exists in other careers. You’re exposing a real part of yourself, I’m not sure if lawyers, doctors, etc use this in their everyday life and you wouldn’t want them to. But it’s also one of the scariest careers to enter. Sometimes you don’t have commissions or shows that you are working for, but you must keep working and getting better even though you’re buying materials constantly just hoping someone loves your work and wants to buy what you’re creating. In all honesty, I constantly think about getting a “real” job and living a “normal” life, but that doesn’t seem like me. I applaud those that can live that normal life, settle down, make babies, have the picket fence. It’s admirable but mentally that’s never been me.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve always relied on my creativity. I’ve dabbled in every creative pursuit (minus dance) starting at a young age. I was an only child without a lot of friends, and my imagination was my brothers and sisters. When it came down to going to college I chose photography, but not knowing what aspect I wanted to focus on. In my first photography class, I was in the darkroom and I stacked two negatives on top of each other, and my professor was blown away with what I was creating considering I wasn’t taught that, and displayed my work to her other classes. I guess I was just wanting to experiment with the process of printing in the darkroom. Yes I’m that old that I started in a darkroom and not sitting in front of photoshop. While in school I started painting as a hobby. Painting was a therapeutic outlet because I was going through a real tough time in life. After finishing my BFA, I kept painting and working meaningless jobs. One day I was showing someone my paintings and they asked how much for a particular painting and they bought it and like a drug, I was hooked on that feeling of being paid for creating my passion. When you buy a painting from me, you’re buying years of trial and errors. So far the greatest highlight was doing three murals for a tech company in my hometown of St. Louis. Working on those indoor murals while the employees were staring at their computers was extremely gratifying and the pay was excellent.

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

Please stop buying commercial art prints that stores like Target sells to you for cheap. Buy from a living artist that needs the money to keep pursuing their passion. When you buy those prints and not original art you’re killing the dream of all young artist and only making the super rich a little more wealthy. Plus it’s a better conversation piece instead of the mass produced print of Starry Night. Nobody was buying Van Gogh when he was creating, and now his work is just making a corporations rich, and he would hate that.

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

My goal is to make a living doing what I love. I work odd jobs to help make ends meet but being a painter is in my soul and I don’t want to lose that. I may never be extremely wealthy but I’ll be happy to see my work live longer than myself.

Contact Info:

• Website: bearhowl.com
• Instagram: @bearhowl
• Facebook: Facebook.com/bearhowl

Image Credits
Robert Brockmeyer