We were lucky to catch up with Duane Ackley recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Duane thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the best or worst investment you’ve made (either in terms of time or money)? (Note, these responses are only intended as entertainment and shouldn’t be construed as investment advice)
The best investment and biggest most important thing I’ve done to date that in turn fuels everything else was to begin to invest in myself. This sort of began at the beginning of the end of a 16 year career in tattooing and has landed to where I am currently with life in general. So it starts with being someone heavily tied to their emotions and experiences, and how that influences a life that’s creative expression is entangled with those very things. I found myself in a dream career of tattooing, but with it ultimately being someone else’s dream. Imagine living a life where money isn’t much of a concern, creating for a living, and being dramatically unfulfilled by it. Creative torture! That was my experience and it took years of drowning in the muck of discontent before a simple question on the back end of my complaining changed everything. “What do you want?” So simple, and lovingly asked out of frustration from a friend. I was definitely ungrateful for where I had found myself, in a career that to a large degree snuffed out my creative expression and adventure for what the customer wanted. Filtered creativity for hire at it’s best, tattooing is a commissioned, glorified, graphic designer applied to the skin. Don’t get me wrong, there are many great reasons to be a part of such a thing for a job, but it lacked one thing for me, my artistic voice. So a simple question turned into a 7 year adventure out of the particular creative pigeonhole I’d found myself in to a new found appreciation for what I actually wanted all along. Creative freedom. That’s it, whether it pays or not, the ability to express myself and my voice creatively without restraint other than my own. The path to this involved a deep dive into examining my life, call it a form of therapy and introspection, as well as the development of the spiritual aspect of being human. It was by no means and continued to not be anything short of messy, but there’s a beauty to it. I don’t feel like this was a decision to be made, as in there seemed no other choice, and if I had known what lay ahead I probably would’ve found another way. Life doesn’t work like that. A jump into the unknown reveals the most and rewards the most, but always comes with a hefty price tag. What unfolded as some of the most psychologically and emotionally painful moments of my life, where I experienced things that I had avoided my whole life, eventually led me peace and the spark of my creativity. I’m definitely still in process and may be the rest of my life, but it continues to become more freeing and open to how I fully express myself. As far as lessons, so many, but I’m not trying to write a book currently so I’ll end with what I’ve said as enough.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
To put things briefly before I get into the meat of it, I am just another creative human expressing their experience of life through whatever medium gets my goat. I’m currently in love with expressing myself through painting and tend to express my thought’s, feeling’s, experiences in word form on the comment portion of my social media. It’s sort of like an open diary, not really focused on the consequences of honest documentation. That’s to say as a brand or if I were to express what I do creatively as a brand, it’s just me and as transparent as I choose to be. What that means for anyone that comes across me and what I do is that I am willing to open and share anything I deem relevant to my expression and share a lot of things that most individuals might keep private. I think privacy is great, but I personally lean toward showing as much of the whole of things as I dare. It’s definitely not a super polished and refined method of business. Think of a clothing manufacturer being transparent and showing all the messy stuff they are a part of to bring their product to you. Would you buy that shirt that cost them 73 cents to make and did so at the cost of an individuals livelihood? Probably not. My method doesn’t quite make sense in a regular business context. I make paintings, share intimate details of my process and life, and don’t try to sell you anything. This may prove to be a terrible business model but I love it. I started painting as a way to express myself again after a long break from traditional creative means. I’d never painted in acrylics, just dabbled in some very career specific watercolor techniques when I had tattooed. Right now I’m just exploring different subject matter and styles as I learn more and more about application and painting technique, but it’s done through actively painting and watching some art content on occasion. We’ll say I’m not heavily focused on a particular way of learning because that sounds better than I’m just doing what I want and learning as I go! I don’t really know or think about what I’m solving with what I’m doing, it’s just not part of the approach. There isn’t a ton of focus on anything outside of the expression itself right now. That will shift some but I’m quite new to painting and figuring things out that a lot of stuff just doesn’t apply. The only thing I’ve really got going for me is that what I’m creating is definitely through my own voice and experience. I’m influenced by my own life so it could be other artists, or a conversation, or maybe a thought, it’s not a precise type of thing but it’s what sets me apart from others. I’m particularly proud of my approach to all of this. It’s kinda slow, or as I see it, not forced. My sales approach is process based which I really enjoy. I make things, put them on my social media, do vending events, basically just putting myself out there and showing up, all followed by just getting to know people and having conversations. That’s it. Sometimes things sell and sometimes not. I believe and practice the idea that over time and in a way that I can sustain, things will build into a career that very specifically fit’s my life and expression. I don’t know how to accurately or clearly express it. It’s like a balance of expressing my love of being alive for this short time I get to, enjoying the connection it brings, the ability to give a piece of that to someone else, and all of that feeding back into the system to keep my creativity going. Everything I’m currently doing ties back to a devotional practice to expressing my gratitude for what the human experience is and specifically the playing out of my life. Maybe some of it will outlive me, maybe I’ll make a good living at it, maybe it’ll impact others in some great way, and maybe not to all of it. Regardless, I’m just going to keep doing it until I can’t. I think that’s both a bit all over the place and also good enough!
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I’ll try and keep this as short as I can as I tend to be longwinded. When I left my career tattooing I was doing probably the best I could ever remember. I was eating well, taking care of myself mentally, physically, developing a spiritual practice, top of the world believed nothing would ever feel bad or go wrong in life type of place. It was super impactful and magical for me, definitely a high point of my life. I had never experienced that magnitude of happiness and for such an extended period of time in the thirty-six years of life I’d lived at that point. Mind blowing amazingness that can’t be expressed in words that I’ve referred to as heaven on earth. I truly didn’t think it would end. During this time I got married, pursued a farming business, built a farming business, and had all of these things that were wonderful lead ups to an eventual fall from all of those feelings of wonderfulness. It can be called ignorance, naivety, just pure dumbness, but as things progressed forward over several years the stage was being unknowingly set for the biggest blows to my life that in retrospect are just life and it’s lessons, but felt like something was out to destroy and break me. The farm business that my wife and I built, was built on very shaky foundation at best, although it didn’t feel like it at the time, and from a financial standpoint was doomed to fail. I couldn’t see it, or I wouldn’t allow myself to see it. Maybe both. At the end of a full time attempt in one season we were depleted. Massive financial burden including living below poverty level without any assistance, threat of eviction due to being 3 months behind in bills and rent, failure after failure that reeked mental havoc, the inability to effectively communicate with each other, a lack of knowledge and tools to navigate the entire experience without severe consequence… it was brutal. At the end of that first full time season, I was mentally and emotionally beaten to a pulp. It sucked. It really sucked. That experience mad eye face a decision to give up on farming. That decision began a decent into the crumbling of everything, including my marriage.One of the toughest years, followed by another year of facing the repercussions of a bunch of bad decisions. I got tore down emotionally to the core, still married at this point, but unavailable as I navigated a particular low point that I’d never experienced. I ran face first into it, and embraced it. I was determined not to be broken by the experience and to learn everything I could so as not to make those mistakes again. It was definitely one of those blessing and curse duality moments. After this I began to rebuild my life and things were looking pretty good, although not out of the thick of it all quite yet. As things improved, the next potentially devastating thing happened. My wife and I started conversations about us. They didn’t go in the stay together direction and that was a blow life. Not part of the plan, but at this point I definitely had a different view of things that allowed for it on my side to not go south. In turn, she also didn’t head south with it, so we were able to navigate what is still on ongoing process respectfully. A couple months after that the biggest experience that could ever break me happened as I had to make the decision to euthanize my dog Tito after he quickly acme sick and deteriorated over the course of a weekend. He was my best friend and companion for 13 years. I can not express the devastation.i don’t know if I hadn’t gone through everything else before that if I would be functional right now to even be able to do this or anything creative. It’s the biggest loss I’ve ever experienced. There’s not much I’d like to share beyond that. So resilience… I have a bit of it. We all do. It’s one of the most redeeming qualities we have as humans. Through everything life has to throw at us, good, bad, or otherwise… we find a way to continue on.
Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
Everyone has an opinion right! This is more of a broad spectrum opinion through the use of NFTs as a focus. I am not in love with technology, It’s a great tool and that’s it. Sure connecting with people on a computer is great, but have you ever done it in person? Sure writing notes on your phone is great, but have you ever written it with a more tactile process like pencil and paper? Sure watching nature documentaries is great, but have you ever gone out and actually f@#&ing touched and interacted with it in person. NFTs are part of the digital process of creating art. It’s great. Nfts and digital art. Great. Not my cup of tea. I’m not one of those just because it’s new it’s an evolution type people. Nfts seemed like a quick way to make money and a land grab for digital art, which for me and my experience is a good tool but lacks the experience that committing to and creating a piece in traditional methods affords. Being someone that loves everything that the process of an experience brings, lets call it the soul of it, these types of things lack soul. Amongst all the scammers and the “you’re missing out on so much money” portion of NFTs, it was flooded with lackluster work. It’s voice is weak at best. Admittedly there are great things that come with it or from it, and it’s a form of expression which I fully support. At the same time I also hold space for not liking it. I support people’s expression would be more accurate. If they choose that route good for them. It seems like a space that’s less about creativity and more about money. I love money. Money is not the problem in the equation. The problem, as I see it, is the same as possibly any other space with creatives and comparably non-creatives in it. Non-creatives don’t care about process and the soul of creativity. They don’t see it or feel it, it’s just a commodity. Maybe that word is wrong, dunno, but they don’t actually care about the core of creating, just product and ability to monetize. This is usually at the expense of the creative. It’s backwards and is tied to the root of the way we as a whole live life. Life seems for most to be disconnected from the core of what makes it so amazing. Creatives create from that space, it’s what we bring to the world. It’s highly undervalued. NFTs and the whole of what I understand about that space is just another tentacle that seems to devalue the process of creativity for profit. I’m possibly wrong, but I’m also a bit right.
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