We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Blake Lenoir. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Blake below.
Blake, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
To start I for my entire professional career have lived by the quote “Find Your Yes.” My primary mission in this art world is to afford the youth either a new idea, or just the gall to find what they’re calling to higher purpose is instead of the typical approach of coercion and “have to”.
The quote “Find Your Yes” came to me honestly after hearing so many “no’s” in my career and without much explanation, I took it that the universe was revealing that I was not yet ready for what I so harshly begged it to bestow upon me. So much so that it flicked a switch of determination to see that I hear not just yes but the yes that’s FOR ME. I have now attached this energy and this mindset to
my business in art and I haven’t looked back as it’s catered to the attributed confidence to be myself in all that I do unapologetically.
It’s been a beautiful rollercoaster full of thrills, praise, losses, and lessons that I feel I needed to go through in order to find my yes, and so that I can be the adult role model that I needed coming up, also to be a resource for others like me then, lost and “doing things” without any sense of intent or purpose other than ability to feed and cloth myself, proposing myself as an acting and contributor to the greater good by doing so, when this couldn’t be further from the truth for me.
It was this realization that put my mission to the forefront of my artistry, to disillusion the distortion of the simplicity or remedy of a lot of our mental illness. A lot of it I’ve seen stems from frustration lack of knowledge in purpose and in passion, both of which coincide or fail to exist.
This for me has now materialized into a program/curriculum to help jumpstart the pinpointing of passion in children, and focusing of core values and attributes of self and pinpointing purpose for their passions rather than only placing them and their mental on a conveyor belt of educational ideals that are frankly outdated in our awareness of self.
With my artistry taking a turn stylistically for the best, I feel that exposure to artistic movements such as Surrealism & Dadaism and just reflection of self can, will, and does dial up interesting outcomes of good. My mission to help others “Find Their Yes” is another way to expand our conscious bandwidth and build better people nonetheless. My artwork challenges generational reoccurrences with a mirrored intent to reimagine better, whilst acknowledging the necessity for change. I hope we all read this and if you haven’t already, “FIND YOUR YES”.
Blake, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Blake Lenoir also known in art as my signature B.LEN, I was born on the South side of Chicago, IL, during the heat wave of 91’ born July 6th, 1991. I was raised and still currently practicing out of my home Chicago, IL. As an interdisciplinary visual artist I work predominantly with oil based paints and acrylic paints, oil pastel, but my home medium is in graphite and charcoal. As a poet a lot of my work navigates and finds inspiration in the expressionist, dada, cubist, baroque/modern art and surrealist movements, where portraiture was in its most interesting state and I use portraits in my work both literal and distortional to tell stories of one’s life or mental health from first hand and secondhand accord.
My original work comes heavily based in distortional entendres that identifies and act as an inception of ideas and/or conversations necessary to bring about relief of the given conflict. The intention of my work is to both be therapeutically comical, yet cynical to the human experiences of interaction aiming to evoke conversational healing. I have noticed while primarily navigating and focusing with creating work with intention to spark the conversational dispelling of generational and societal curses that, it is my own therapy in empathy to hear others speak about their own experiences and like a Conduit of theirs acting as their paintbrush in literal context, Painting portraits of their mind. A skillet I learned I have as an empathetic artist that I want to continue to share and I literally only need 3 adjectives to bring them into fruition. It has forged quite a few friendships, revealed a lot of truth that goes unnoticed or unaddressed. With that being said I welcome commission work for said portraits! One of which was actually placed temporarily in the Cincinnati Art Museum a year ago, this was one of my proudest moments in my career for the honestly portrayed image of the life story of a trailblazer to the Cincinnati community., Karla Boldery.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Oh man if resiliency isn’t on my tombstone I don’t know what word will be, where do I start, haha. There was a time in 2017, when I was just starting out, a time when no gallery in the city would showcase my work as I was a then I quote a “starving artist” a label I don’t really care for, I took to renegade style promotion of my work after seeing that no one would really give me any feedback or reasoning despite “liking” my work. This drove me up a wall seemingly doing the equivalent of quantum physics in my mind to try to figure out a way into these spaces I regarded so high. This happened one last time to me I remember it like it was yesterday as I was literally creating work, framing it and now looking for a venue with availability and desire to showcase my first solo exhibition. I had by this point gathered a few diy group exhibits and put done some live painting at a large number of events around Chicago, which helped me gather some attention. Not to mention I was just about to head down for my first trip down to Miami for Art Basel. This day comes and my phone rings, it’s a gallery director from a space that I popped in frequently to in renegade fashion show my artwork in hopes he’d liked it enough to give me a show there. The Gallery Director then tells me he’d like to have me show my first exhibition in his space, I was FLOORED, had all my panhandling and renegade marketing work after all? I had to self check for a moment to be able to speak calmly while we ironed the details and I was booked! Few weeks later I speak to a colleague in Art who also curated for the said space and she tells me that my show has been pushed back 2 weeks, mind you all it’s a week before the exhibit, there’s people coming from out of town and I had no notification of this except this chanced run in of information, my heart sunk into my stomach, with no email, text, or call, I found out my first exhibit was bumped for a birthday party in the space. I had two decisions to make, 1 being to call and let the director have a piece of my mind or 2 find a new space and do this myself out of self respect and not to affiliate with the said space again. I did the latter, and blessings fell into play, I found a diy space with a much more convenient location and display capability than the gallery and when my exhibit opened on its ORIGINAL date I was flowered with nearly 400 guests that marveled at every piece on the wall, it was almost movie-esque how things happened in chaos and fell into place exactly how I needed it to, and one of the core reassurances of my life quote “FIND YOUR YES”.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
One lesson I had to unlearn is that everyone that smiles and claps for you in your presence aren’t always doing so when they leave your side and sometimes your most unlikely people’s give you a good surprise.
The backstory comes as during the heart of the pandemic I lost my studio space because my residency at the space that housed me was up and COVID-19 changed my access to the building due to health regulations which were completely understood. I for a time during the pandemic struggled with my mental health and ability to create with all of what was in that time and the pressures of how ends meet were surfacing. I then put out on my Facebook that I was looking for a space where I could paint and use as my acting studio until restrictions were let up, this is where a “by marriage” cousin swiped under my post, opened up her doors and allowed me to use their basement in a building they owned but not lived in. The agreement was pretty much this “you can have this space for studio use long as you need until a decision is made to renovate and use it as a tenant living space.” I agreed and we were all good for at least a year and a half into the pandemic. This was a God send because it allowed me to create again and have a place to go relieve stress, think critically and gain my sanity back with all the mask wearing and anxiety of possibly carrying. That is until one day I got a text that a water pipe bust in the basement and I got a text from this cousin letting me know this and in this point of time couldn’t have been any worse because I was in the beginning stages of myself contracting COVID-19 and was in the beginning of my quarantining. After the info was shared about the space I asked this cousin for a time frame that things needed to be out by, as I was in no shape to do so on my own at this time. They lost it on me taking my words and twisting them as if I stated that I wasn’t going to move, then restated the question hoping they just misread the text. Nope, they demanded my things be out that day as I was supposedly “only looking out for myself”, I couldn’t do anything but stare in disbelief what she was putting me through after telling her about the condition I was in. For those that don’t understand moving out a studio is not a something you can send other people to do for you in your place for multiple health reasons alone. They did not care, they wanted me out but this became a standstill of idle threats and to make things worse, when I was done with quarantine and attempted the first time to retrieve my things they locked me out in attempts to extort money from me to open the studio space for me to get my things. This then turned into police being called on me for gaining entry into the building (even though I walked through the front door) for taking MY things out of the studio as requested without giving them the demanded amount of cash to open the door. It was a nightmare I saw through to the end and I hope to never be in that predicament again. It was in that moment I knew I needed a space for my own to create in and that’s what I’m working toward now to build the funding for my own art studio/gallery and I certainly will have it!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.blenartistry.com
- Instagram: Blenartistry
- Facebook: Blake D. Lenoir