Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Braden Walls. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Braden, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

I wish I had started sooner! I didn’t find art until I was probably 20 years old and in my second year of college. I remember I was on academic probation because my grades were so bad. I was taking a music class just as an extra curricular in the Fine Arts building. Music was on the second floor and visual arts were on the first. The stairs were right by the entrance to the building so I would just go straight up the stairs and had no business going anywhere else in the building. One day I decided I would go check out whats downstairs after class. Thats when I walked down a hallway full of student work lining the walls. As I looked at all of the charcoal still life drawings I thought, “I can do that,” and next thing I know I’m sitting in my first ever drawing class and never felt better in my life! I had always been able to draw well since I was a kid. I was kind of known for it amongst my friends but I always resented it because I was told that I couldn’t really do anything with it so, to me, it wasn’t cool. I wish I had been pushed to pursue art at a young age because I would have had so many years of experience and refining by the time I even had time to consider college that I probably would have had a lot of scholarship opportunities or at the very least a sense of who I was as an artist and the confidence and experience to step into the field. So, I would definitely say I wish I had started sooner although I wouldn’t take anything back from my experience so far and I do agree its never too late to become an artist.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Drawing is the one thing I would consider as my God-given gift. It’s something that just came to me naturally as a kid and has never left. But I would say I didn’t officially become an artist until I was in college. I took my first drawing class as sort of a last resort before I failed out and it worked. That one drawing class changed my life and took me through the whole art program, multiple scholarships, art shows, best in show, my first studio, and graduation to receive my BFA. One thing that art school taught me is to find my style. I didn’t really mess around with too many styles in college but afterwards is when I started to delve into collage. I was always a fan of Picasso and the Cubist movement so I wanted to create work that branched from that. So for the past 7-8 years I’ve refined this collage-esque, Cubist based style into something that really sets me apart from others. When people tell me they can tell when a piece is mine, just by the way it looks, that’s when I know I’m doing something right. I pride myself on my style. I break single subject matters down into multiple sensations, timeframes, styles, and mediums. Its like a puzzle of a portrait of someone but each piece is a different color, emotion, size, and shape. When you look at my work I want you to get a sense of maybe everything. I don’t want it to just be happy or sad or mad, I want it to be all three. I’m a very indecisive yet orderly person so, if my work reflects anything about me, its that.

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

My end goal is just to be great. I want to be widely known as an artist however long that may take. Every single day is a step closer to that regardless of what I’m doing. I will always be an artist and as long as I show up everyday and put in my time I will be rewarded in the end. I think an end or ultimate goal is healthy to have in any field. You need something to work for even when your smaller goals in between aren’t working out or maybe are few and far between. I have many short term goals – draw something today, come up with a new idea, have a solo art show, sell to a big collector, sell to a new collector, do an album cover, win a Grammy for best album cover, I could keep going forever. These are all smaller goals than my end goal, some more difficult than others, but are all achievable and necessary to have as I move forward. But being great is what drives me the most.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Its kind of messed up but I received a couple of larger 5x7ft paintings on canvas back from someone who was supposed to sell them for me. Long story short they didn’t sell them and left them folded up like a sheet of paper stored somewhere. When I finally got them back I pulled them out of the tube, rolled them out on the floor and was devastated to see how badly damaged they were. Creases all the way up and down and across both paintings, large smudges, scratches, cracks all over. I mean there were chunks of one of the paintings just completely missing. So, at this point, as an artist your first thought is, “How am I going to fix this?” So after some thought, instead of fixing a 2-3 year old painting and wasting however much time it would take to fix it, I decided I would just completely paint over it and make something new. The original painting was a Ferrari F-40 crashed into a palm tree in my earlier collage-esque style. At the time I got the paintings back I had just started messing around with this newer more refined style that I really liked. So I painted the whole thing white and got to work. I had just went to my first rodeo in Fort Worth, Texas and it inspired me. So, over the old Ferrari painting, I painted a horse bucking the cowboy off of him just as soon as the gate opens for him to come out. In the background is a partial Ferrari logo as a little memoir of what was there before. To me its a metaphor for getting back up when life knocks you down. You gotta get back in that saddle. Its one of my favorite paintings I’ve ever made.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bradenwalls.com
• Instagram: @b.walls.draws
• Facebook: @b.walls.draws
• Youtube: @bwallsdraws
• Other: TikTok: @b.walls.draws