We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chasen Wolcott. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chasen below.
Chasen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
The first stride that made me realize I was going to be a full time artist was the year following after graduate school. It wasn’t the stereotypical stride where if you go to school you automatically “make it in your profession or career”, which has been marketed to most students worldwide post-school. A deeper feeling and understanding came to me through a hardworking year of discipline and passions coming together. So many creative risks and changing some painting styles that year led to this moment of feeling gratitude and meaning. A meaning of the present. Not chasing anything from the past or the future. This meaningful realization sparked and told me I was simply doing what I needed to be doing. I was going to keep afloat if I keep doing this. I was going to “make it” doing what I love to do. I don’t know who this voice in my head was, but I know for sure it happened because I finally started working for myself and wanted to better myself through my own regulations and passions. I was fully tuned and dialed in. The creative projects flowed out and had new routes of sales come in. A fresh connection with interior designers happened shortly afterwards, where I always thought I’d be selling more through galleries, kickstarting my artistic traction for the better. I sold twenty paintings that year to new and interesting environments. That route didn’t force me to take it personally towards other artists friends who were getting shows at galleries, rather take note and grow with information or strategy. The momentum came to me and I kept hold of it. I know it will be harder at times but the hard work and good attitude toward being your true self awards you.
I was always happy and confident to be myself creatively growing up but as you try to be more professional you try to learn as much as you can so naturally you take more opinions and try to switch your vision accordingly from teachers, students, critics, and other environments. That stigma can sometimes lose that youthful behavior. I would tell my younger self to be even more different from the beaten path if something meant something to me. It has to come from the heart. Be even more bold conscious decisions. Gather as much information you can to back up your decisions when needed.
Chasen, 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?
Chasen Wolcott is an abstract California painter known for capturing qualities of gesture and movement. Thriving within the possibilities of mark-making, the artist grew up finding creative lines through surfing, skateboarding, motorcycle racing, and outdoor adventure. As in paintings of Cy Twombly, De Kooning, and Raymond Pettibon, Wolcott’s work pursues a gestural interrelation of autobiography and expressionist sensibility. “Hesitation kills, whether it’s slowly or fast, all depiction requires mental discipline and physical readiness in order to be in attack mode,” he has explained. Born in 1990 in Granada Hills, CA, he received his BFA from Cal State Long Beach in 2014, and went on to receive his MFA at San Francisco Art Institute in 2018. Wolcott currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. His work has been shown in group shows at Subliminal Projects and Durden & Ray in Los Angeles, CA, among others.
The goal for each painting is to create candid work, making visible the process of searching through line, shape and color. Investigating a process of working among Abstract Expressionist and Impressionist artistic approaches, preserving color integrity helps feel the different movements of nature, find figure and ground relationships within a specific environment.
Evoking both physical and imaginary worlds, the artwork offers a psychological experience of place. A client or viewer can get reminded of places they’ve travelled and shapes that compliment designer couches in their living room. Each view into the production of landscapes, while exploring the space between memory and experience, viewer and subject.
Things that excite me are contrasts: the speed of a hummingbird floating around calm flowers. Flowers in vases. Mountains. Shapes in a city. Light and shade. Or often instincts aroused by danger that connects to our heart and mind. Momentum for me has a profound effect on willpower and productivity
keeping my paintings performative and raw speed of gesture to show decision making through paint.”
Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?
I get the business side of NFTs. Maybe even the convenience side of things like getting 10 electronic books on a single tablet for example. Or even having an archival backup plan for your artworks. Other than those aspects, I’m really not on board. I need the physicality of feeling the paint, seeing shapes in a natural perception of in person focal points. The human eye and peripheral vision creates an experience that is part of our natural existence and biology. It doesn’t do the same emotion seeing work on a screen no matter how big or small. It loses the illusion of a handmade human artifact immediately.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
I like how reading fiction and novel books can keep your inner child excited. Whether it’s creation, imagination, or the process of storytelling can relate to the hierarchy of paint layers. One recent favorite series is Jack Reacher thrillers by Lee Child. I’m engaged and organized. I can use preparation and motive to attack each piece accordingly.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Www.chasenwolcott.com
- Instagram: Poursauce
Image Credits
by Chasen Wolcott