Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jamie Platt. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Jamie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

When I went started art school, I declared an illustration major. I always loved children’s books and I thought it would be a great way to make a living doing something I love. The first year or so of art school is the same for everyone. At my school that mean taking a variety of classes to practice dealing with the building blocks of art in a variety of ways. I took my first figure drawing and painting classes in the same semester and I fell in love with both of them. Since I had declared an illustration major, the painting class I was taking was tailored to illustration. I had friends in the fine arts painting classes and I saw that their curriculum was very different. My class was working on one painting over six weeks. The fine arts painting class started a new painting every day. I had an intuition that what I needed was to do a lot of starts. I asked if I could take fine arts painting classes and still major in illustration and was told it wasn’t possible. I knew what I had to do. I changed my major to fine arts with an emphasis on painting. I was scared but elated. This wasn’t my first time diving straight in and it wasn’t the last. I think if you really love something, it’s the only way.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I was an observant, imaginative kid. If I wasn’t reading I was drawing, sewing, doing embroidery, latch hook, baking, writing stories. Learning, dreaming, and making were what got me out of bed every morning and what kept me up all night sometimes. It was how I played and how I grew. It was life. I got scared when I started to understand money and how much it takes to be a person. I couldn’t imagine the path you take to make it as an artist. It took a while for me to figure out that I could live on very little if I had to and when I did, then I decided to go to art school. It was transformative in ways I coudn’t have imagined. Going to art school opened my mind to so many things – books, music, movies, ideas. I immersed myself in it. When I was 2/3 of the way through undergrad, I knew I was just getting started figuring out what it meant to be an artist. I knew I needed to go to graduate school I applied and was accepted to Indiana University. Graduate school will turn you inside out, if you’re open to it. It turned me inside out. When I emerged, shiny and sharp, I knew what kind of questions to ask myself and how to keep growing. The path to make a living wasn’t any more clear than it ever was, but, I wouldn’t have traded the perspective I had, the head for color and ideas, the interesting connections I had learned to make., I wouldn’t have traded that for anything. It was worth all of the risks. What I have learned over time is that I have the tools to use my experience to make art about what it’s like to be a person and, thereby, to make connections with other people. What I’m most proud of is figuring out how important it is to be true to yourself. If you engage with what you love, it connects you to the world and to others and really, what else is there?

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I thought there were some subjects for art that were off the table if you wanted to be taken seriously. Everyone worries about whether their work will be acceptable. As an emerging artist, you here/read a lot of strong opinions about what good art is and it can scare you so much you might try to tailor your choices to trends. The problem with that is, you could spend your whole life chasing trends. I received messages that sentiment was a terrible thing. I got scared. Feelings matter to me. I wanted to be able to make work that conveyed feelings without making work that might come off as sentimental. I payed attention when people spoke authoratively and made a mental inventory of what was acceptable and what went too far. For example, the phrase “kittens in baskets” was a shorthand some people used to describe paintings that were sentimental. So, I realized that cats were out. I learned to make swaps. If I wanted to include animals in paintings, I would, but it had to be something with a contextual irregulatiry like a person carrying a fish for a walk or holding a chicken in a gas station. I buried parts of my experience in a drawer because I thought the things I cared about weren’t worthy! I’m coming out of this now. It’s taken a while. The transformation isn’t fully in effect yet. I still worry. But, what I realized is that it’s ridiculous to say that one person’s experience is more valuable or worthy than another’s.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Making work to sell isn’t the point of it. What I’m trying to do as an artist is learn and feel as much as I can. I go to museums to recharge. I read. I watch movies. I see things going on around me. I bring all of that into the studio with me and when I go to a canvas, I kind of know what I want, but only kind of. I find the painting by making it. When I start another one, it starts the same way. But I learn from each painting. I carry the experience of making each one into the next one. You hope it’s going to turn out, that it’s going to be good, but honestly, the experience of making it is the point of it. It’s enough.

Contact Info:

• Website: jamieplatt.net
• Instagram: @jamie.platt123
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-platt-74304044/