We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful David Tripp. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with David below.

Hi David, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I may be a juggler with too many balls in the air. But there are a number of projects I’m exploring at the present:

1. As a first time gallerist, I find ownership of The Gallery at Redlands in Palestine, Texas filled with adventure. I am still learning how to balance my time as a productive artist with marketing the other artists who have joined my gallery. I have also joined a coop of artists to form the new Studio 48 located inside Gracie Lane Boutique in Arlington, Texas. I have two generous walls on which to hang my framed watercolors along with a cabinet on which I have additional paintings and my 5 x 7” greeting cards. I will be offering watercolor lessons monthly in this new space.

2. I have been reproducing all my watercolors into 5 x 7″ greeting cards, image on front, story on back, blank inside. Currently I am organizing the inventory which now totals 348 greeting cards, with at least 50 additional “incompletes” requiring my editing.

3. I am shaping all my watercolors and stories into a book titled “From Turvey’s Corner to the New Byzantium.” The story involves two young men coming of age who leave their midwestern town to embark on an odyssey of self-discovery. They meet again in New Byzantium (fictitious town in East Texas) and work to build their brand.

4. Through magazine publishing, art festivals and exhibitions, I find a network of creatives emerging across East Texas. I call this movement The New Byzantium (taking my lead from poet William Butler Yeats). This cluster of cities and small towns across East Texas are all experiencing a spontaneous renaissance of creative activity in visual arts, music, theater and writing. I am happy to cast my lot with this tribe of enthusiastic creatives.

David, 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?

Making art was the only natural talent I discovered from childhood. I was not athletic, nor was I smart in school. Art landed me a scholarship in a state university. As a late bloomer, I flourished in the university environment, and continued into graduate school, studying theology, eventually earning a Ph.D. It was then that I returned to making art, relying not only on skill, but on imagination and curiosity, hoping to make my creations meaningful to others.

I taught in public high schools for twenty-eight years, grazing out of many pastures: art, art history, humanities, philosophy and English. At the same time, I signed adjunct contracts in universities for thirty-seven years, teaching religion, philosophy, humanities, ethics and logic. Throughout those decades, I remained prolific as an artist, never using the excuse that teaching absorbed all my time.

While teaching, I managed to land my art in a number of galleries, and when I retired, some lovely patron friends who founded The Gallery at Redlands in Palestine offered me the lease, telling me it was always their intention to hand the gallery over to me, if I wanted it. I did not see this coming, and will never cease feeling grateful to them for this gift.

In addition to selling my art and that of others in my gallery, I also offer watercolor lessons out of the gallery, and have a large following. I also enjoy doing demos for art organizations all over East Texas and teach several watercolor workshops a year in Texas as well as Arkansas. Commission work also comes my way. If a patron wishes for art of a different medium or genre, I gladly make referrals to other artists I know and trust. I do not receive money as an agent, as I’m already content with taking a commission from work sold through my gallery.

I am most proud of my brand. I regard myself as a scholarly artist. I have never lost the appetite for research, stoked during my years of graduate work. I possess a large diverse library, and I devour books just as much as I produce paintings. I still feel that I am a student; though I create over a hundred watercolors a year, I still am convinced that I learn something from every single attempt. I am proud to say I have no secrets: I never answer anyone’s question with the smug answer that I possess technical expertise developed over the years that I am unwilling to share with the competition. I am a teacher. I want everyone who comes to me to learn everything I can share.

My genre is American nostalgia. I call my company Recollections 54, the year of my birth, and my subject matter is American scenes and objects that flourished in the 1950’s but are slowly disappearing from our landscape, but not our memories. I am fluent in Greek, and “nostalgia” comes from a Greek compound stressing the ache of a memory. We feel an ache for the past, and a comfort in memories.

For several years I’ve been writing a book, letting my watercolors illustrate stories I enjoy writing, many of them from my personal past, all of them essential to my core.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I am only recently trying to raise my profile on social media. I did quite well with my 14 years of blogging with wordpress.com. I was “freshly pressed” and congratulated for posting artwork as well as writing. The editors said too many bloggers do one or the other, but not both. I have accounts with Facebook, Instagram and Youtube, but last week made a firm decision to post much more creative content in video format in addition image and text. The learning curve is steep currently, but I have invested in quality technology and am convinced that I will be turning a corner quite soon. Many of my peers tell me my brand has built a solid reputation for me, but I know I can do much better.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Most definitely. I am a Youtube junkie, and last week the contributions of @garyvee convinced me to saturate social media with creative content in video format. I am only a few weeks into this experiment, but am determined to see it through. I also am inspired by the visions of Marshall McLuhan and have been reading his books “Gutenberg Galaxy” and “Understanding Media.” I am also reading Douglas Davis’s “Creative Strategy and the Business of Design”, hoping to glean new insights into the art business and marketing. Consulting my art history library, I am always studying strategies of past marketing geniuses, particularly Andy Warhol. I have read Robert Henri’s “The Art Spirit” many times along with “Creative Authenticity” by Ian Roberts and “The Courage to Create” by Rollo May.

Contact Info:

• Website: davidtrippart.com galleryredlands.com
• Instagram: dmtripp2000
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/david.tripp https://www.facebook.com/davidtrippart/
• Youtube: @davidtripp7412
• Blog: www.davidtripp.wordpress.com

Image Credits
Image of myself with arms folded over chair was taken by the late Z Jary Image of myself at the easel was taken by Cindy Thomas, 2101 Park Hill Drive, Arlington,Texas 76012