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

Chadd , appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I went to college for journalism and had a 20-plus year career in the media, but my experience was all in sports. When I experienced what I describe as a “professional mid-life crisis” around the time I turned 40, I had tired of writing and talking about games and coaches. I needed to find something else to commit my energy to. Little did I know that would be art.
With almost no experience – no art history classes, no artistic talent, no art in the house, I didn’t go to art museums – I gradually and then suddenly developed a passion for art after visiting a gallery on vacation in Breckenridge, Colorado.
From there, over a series of years, I engaged in a deep self-study of art, artists, movements and art history. I watched YouTube videos, documentaries, read books, listened to podcasts, visited galleries and museums. Anything I could consume about art, I devoured, eventually acquiring a deep knowledge of art.
It was easy converting my writing and storytelling skills from sports to art. Instead of players and games, I wrote about artists and exhibitions. I used my long-developed observation and story-finding skills and applied them to art.

Chadd , 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 am a freelance arts and travel writer for a variety of online and print publications including my personal website, www.seegreatart.art, as well as Forbes.com, Fodors.com, Western Art Collector and Native American Art magazines, and Rovology.com.

My writing highlights historically underrepresented artists – African American, Native American and female. I always write about art people can go see in person, fairs, festivals, museum exhibitions and the like. I also prefer highlighting destinations around the Midwest, South and West most people don’t consider as cultural hotspots – Detroit, St. Louis, Louisville, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, St, Petersburg.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

There isn’t much money in freelance arts writing. I don’t have kids, I’m healthy, my parents are healthy, my wife makes her own money, I went to college before it became absurdly expensive, I bought my house near the bottom of the market and I benefit from a lifetime of white male privilege. Because of all that, I don’t need to make a lot of money from my writing.

What motivates my work is sharing the stories of Black artists, female artists and Indigenous artists, and the stories they’re sharing through their artwork, which woke me up to the historic inequities in America hidden from me throughout my life and which I failed to see for myself. Writing about art has changed the way I see the world, for the better.

I hope my writing can introduce these artists and their experiences to a wider audience who are able to similarly benefit from what they have to say.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

When I was still working full-time, 9-to-5 as the program director at a sports radio station, continuing a 20-year career in the field, I came to recognize the work no longer interested me. My interest in the arts had begun taking over.

I had the benefit of slowly transitioning my side hustle/hobby into my main occupation over a series of years. Thanks to the help of my wife, I launched a little arts website where I could write. I transitioned my social media accounts from sports to art. I began networking in the arts, trying to find one-off freelance writing gigs here and there.

The idea of moving from sports to arts entered my mind about three years before I made the move. I started seriously thinking about it a year before transitioning, then really, really thinking about it 6 months out. When the pandemic started, I made even more serious efforts to build a foundation upon which I could launch an arts writing career if my job in sports went away.

I was offered a generous buyout from my radio station in January of 2021 which provided me about 6 months salary to pursue this change full time and I jumped at the chance to go. With the work I’d done previously to build an arts writing foundation, I was able to make the transition smoothly.

It should be noted that my wife’s experience with building websites, search engine optimization and monetizing websites was essential in allowing me to make this move. I couldn’t have done it without her, another advantage I had which has allowed me to successfully pursue this field which doesn’t offer much pay.  

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.seegreatart.art/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seegreatart/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seegreatart
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/seegreatart
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqBDe3YPB9AJbUKAUQKH0LA

Image Credits
Painting of wolf courtesy of John Potter.