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

Evan , appreciate you joining us today. What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you in your creative career?

One of my favorite jobs I have had besides working full time as an artist has been in an interior design studio. I have always loved interior design and still pursue it on the side and as a hobby. It was a small design studio where we were constantly learning from one another which was really special. one of the most important lessons i learned in that job was the importance of working with the right tools, software, and workflow to make the final product come together in the clearest and best way possible for both you and the client. The struggle of learning different softwares, programs and integrations could be truly maddening because of the inevitable redundancies that would occur, But through that frustration and learning curve–and in retrospect– I learned the importance in investing in software, products, and materials that work best for the way I like to work, not just the easiest or most accessible, because in the end it saves so much time and brain space when you aren’t trying to make you natural way of working and solving problems in your work fit into a software or material that doesnt quite sit right, or make sense to you. going the extra step to stay at least relatively organized and make sure that at least most of my work flow can easily speak to or be translated into the next step has been so crucial to make sure im not wasting precious creative time for administrative backlog. I know thats not the most glamorous or expected lesson from an interior design studio but wow is it important!

Evan , 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?

I am an artists from the Atlanta area. I work primarily in painting, but also love to incorporate murals and ceramics in my practices when the opportunity and time arises. I received my BFA from Lamar Dodd at UGA and my MFA from SMFA and Tufts University in Boston.

I have always been inclined to work creatively, and from a young age new that I wanted and needed to work in a creative field. In my freshman year of collage I had a professor encourage me to continue on in the drawing and painting area of study, which was a really important affirmation for me. Pretty much from then on I knew that I wanted to work full time as an artist.

Something that I want people to know about me as an artist is that I really value the persistence of inspiration and the evolution of process. I dont know if the right words exist for how to explain this, but in the simplest terms: I am deeply interested in that sublime moment of when inspiration hits, sometimes more so than the inspiration itself, as well as the subliminal way that inspiration seeps into an artist way of working. I see this a lot in when I look at how a person is making art and what their environment or surroundings look like. The whole concept that people tend to look like their pets over time applies so well to artists! If you see an artists work and then see where they made it you can see the magical way their environment either overtly or subliminally influences the work they make. This might be harder to tell in some artists over others but generally speaking it is hard to completely remove evidence of where a work was made from the artist who is making it–especially in regard to abstract artists.
the same goes for the evolution process, its always fascinating to me when i look back on works that i’ve made over time and really take stock of when certain shifts happen in how I paint. in the moment it doesn’t seem like much has changed but when im able to look back on a series of works over time you can really see the thread of continuity that tethers the work to me, but also the fascinating changes that occur both intentionally and unintentionally. this is why I think i love to incorporate thin gestural lines throughout the layers of my paintings, kind of like the weft of a tapestry that carries through each of the works, tethering it to my hand, even if the work itself seems so varied from the paintings that came before it.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think right now a lot of creatives that found freedom, community and a direct platform for their studio businesses on social media are currently really struggling as the platforms and algorithms change so much. It might not be apparent to those that use social media casually rather than as a core business marketing and community builder. there is a growing distance between the artist and the collector/interested viewer etc. before these major shifts, there was the great democratization of social media that allowed artist to show their work, tell people about their stories and reasonings behind their work in a really exciting and accessible way. but with these changes that is getting harder and harder. for a lot of creatives and of course speaking from my perspective, the new social media algorithms put more of a priority on the making of content rather than the content itself. and the new ways we as the creators have to jump through hoops and hope for the best has left us in a place of feeling inauthentic, isolated for the community we grew and cherished, and, to be honest, terrified that we are being annoying/spamming our community rather than sharing with them. allllll that to say–in this wild and hard to navigate shift, people who want to support individual artist can make concerted efforts to like, save, and share the work we put out in the world, sign up for email lists, attend in person showings of their work, and of course if possible collect works. but beyond the monetary aspect of being a creative as a full time job/small business and needing to meet the basic financial needs of life–the engagement and thoughtful actions make the largely quiet and solitary work of creating a little less isolating.
and of course, I would always recommend collecting artwork from artists. there are so many exciting new ways people are finding to bring artwork to the community to seek it out, And know that while a sale is one of the most thrilling things as small business owner and artist–to know that someone truly appreciates what I am putting out hits deeper than you might realize.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

i think it is really difficult to narrow it down to one specific aspect that feels the most rewarding. but one thing that i try to remind myself of, and maintain a sense of gratitude towards is the unique position and mindset creatives have, and spend their lives honing: to really observe the world around us. in this chaotic and overwhelming world–which, honestly, can inherently be a lot to an artist whose natural disposition and job requirement is to be open and aware–we get to zoom in to the small details and make space for the quiet magic that often gets overlooked, like light pouring in a window in a particular way, or the color of the sky in a specific region in a certain season, or the way the light filters through the trees after summer rain. And at the same time we can also zoom out and see situations from different vantages, finding new ways to look at things. More often than not, if a creative hears a no, they actually hear not that way, so which way?it is definitely rewarding to hear someone respond with a “i never thought about it like that” or “i would have never noticed that!”

Contact Info:

• Website: www.evanblackwellart.com
• Instagram: @evanblackwell_art