We recently connected with Clarence James and have shared our conversation below.

Clarence, appreciate you joining 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?

I graduated from Howard university in 2014 with a business degree concentrated in marketing. I always think it’s funny when someone makes a comment like, “oh so you’re not using your degree?,” and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Even though I knew I was taking a step outside of the box. I also knew how possible things are when you are hip to certain universal truths about life, and marketing is a discipline built upon several of these truths and results from a deep study of human behavior. There is no substitute for effort and attitude, and for me imagination would be my biggest strength as I would literally dream and envision something that I would work on for the next six/seven years—what I call Artreprenuership. lol. So it took six years of authentic starving artist living. I’m out there, I’m finding art shows. I’m going to museums. I’m attending art fairs. I’m meeting people at all levels of the industry and I’m making artwork which is essentially starting a brand, and I’m cultivating an aesthetic and building an audience around what I’m doing. This is essential to creating a business in any field. So I tell anyone it takes time to do anything you want start a business or pursue a dream it’s really not about speeding up the process because what’s for you is for you in due timing and comparison is the thief of joy. It’s you versus yourself more so than you versus other people and self mastery is a key to achieving things you desire in this world.

Clarence, 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 was born in Stanford, Connecticut and I grew up in Raleigh North Carolina. I went to Howard University in Washington DC and I spent a lot of time in New York City from 2010-2018 in particular. I’m most proud of my resolve and my follow through and my relentlessness and my consistency and work ethic. These are greater than any genius – the simple things, they work like water wearing away at rock. The problem I solve for people is inspiration and information, two things that are often hard to acquire in this world. I started with a rift from the book 1984 by George Orwell and use that as a seed to describe what I see in society—the ways, we are indoctrinated the ways, marketing, commercials, advertisements, and television programs and radio, and billboards, and all of the elements of free enterprise market that may seem harmless, but when considered more deeply are actually very strong and effective on us. These psychological and even spiritual forces at play that effectively are brainwashing us, or you could say conditioning us to be the status quo. So my artwork is all about freedom, free thinking and personal dignity and autonomy. I paint paintings that serve as mirrors for the self and portals to realities perhaps not considered every day, the unseen aspects that play a huge role in the reality we experience.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

By 2018 in pursuit of my dream and vision and learning as I go and stubbing my toes and bumping my head and making mistakes and having failures and learning and optimizing, I had driven myself homeless a bit degenerate, and definitely burnt out from the lifestyle. I was living essentially a socialite as I believed that would make the most difference. I’d be Basquiat and my Warhol is out there somewhere and it’ll just connect. This is been one of the most humbling journeys and I will tell you and that year 2018, I had a 2003 Acura TL that I was driving that had all my stuff in it. No one could ride with me trunk was full seats were full and I sold that car for $1800 and used that money to get an art studio. That’s how vital art was for me in those days how essential it was for survival. I would sleep on the floor of that studio or sleep in my car or crash at my girlfriend at the times when I could, but it really put me in do or die last resort mode where every effort seemed to be all I had with no other option. It definitely felt like life or death whether I was going to make it as an artist or not. And it was getting the art studio that enabled me to demonstrate the work ethic I had and to begin to build out the art collections I was working on and it made a huge difference in all the people watching me at that time mainly through Instagram and the support I felt was tremendous. It was like becoming a professional in the eyes of those people that have been watching what I was doing the past six years. And everything has flowed from there I began working with and art gallery in 2021 called DTR Modern, and that has been life-changing and it was because they could come and see my studio and verify that what I was saying was actually true—seeing is believing as they say and I was able to make my art studio represent 1000 words.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I think the biggest lesson I learned is you cannot be scared to be yourself. Again, we are indoctrinated into society immediately even learning language is a pure process of mimicking. So when they say there’s nothing new under the sun, that cliché has a lot of depth to it because human nature is this thing that almost works against us in some ways. It’s hard to embrace the truth and sometimes it can be embarrassing and it’s difficult to embrace failure. But like they say the comfort zone kills you, and I truly believe all of the greatness anyone desires is on the other side of the fear they have about what they want to do whatever narratives and self talk they subscribe to. So in any endeavor, I just want people to realize it is mentalism over materialism, and that we influence our experience with our thoughts and words and our actions flow from our understanding of emotion and feeling and motivation. So to find purpose is truly one of the greatest things. I found purpose in being myself and expressing myself creatively when I noticed how people reacted to me in those moments and I started to understand, OK here is something unique that could be very valuable so I need to figure out how to produce something and make a product that people can obtain and participate in the value I’m creating.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ClarenceJamesArt.com
• Instagram: @ ClarenceJamesArt
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clarence-james-b2712832?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TtcnKZRxLg
• Other: 2022- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggf6KXdQeXc

  2021- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJZ901JD76c