We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jamie Wimberly a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jamie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?

I first started showing my work at coffee shops. It actually was a good deal, since they were happy to show the work without taking a commission. I didn’t know anything about the transactional aspects of the art market back then, with seemingly everyone having a hand out for a piece of what you are doing. The coffee shop owner would just hand over a few dollars and a latte.

But there is a progression towards a semblance of a career. I then went onto bars and clubs with big opening parties. Joining a co-op with a very nice gallery space was an important step forward. And finally, I had an agent and gallery representation up and down the East Coast. A good agent is key.  I was nominated for the Whitney Biennial mainly because of my agent.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

It is an interesting question to ask myself about what came first, the art or the business. I suppose the art since my father and grandfather were both accomplished painters. I grew up with a studio in our house and art lessons from an early age at the Toledo Museum of Art, one of the overlooked gems in the country. I studied at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC.

My art is really a combination of two intertwined strands of painting and poetry. The painting represents largely mixed media constructions using found objects and featuring an iconic treatment of a figure or an object. I am also into drawing, which I firmly believe is absolutely essential to good painting. I am interested in art for art’s sake and have published a series of “Provocations” that challenge the current orthodoxy surrounding art today, e.g., that craft doesn’t seem to matter.

I have been writing and publishing poetry for almost as long as I have been painting. I am actually a fairly well-known haiku poet, with two books published and work regularly in all the top journals. Poetry is a daily discipline. Haiku can appear in every breath so you need to be constantly attuned to the possibility of a new poem. Here is a poem that was just published in Haiku Presence:

charcoal drawing —
a bit of my father left
in the bare branches

Painting is work, and poetry is love. They go together.

If interested, you can see a lot more of both at www.jamiewimberlypoetry.com I have been focused on collaborations of late with filmmakers on a series called “haiku movies” and graphic designers.

But business has never been far behind the art. I distinctly remember asking my mother at a very early age for chores in exchange for glass coke bottles that I could return for quarters. I now am a serial entrepreneur. My focus is on bringing clean energy to everyone and not just the privileged few. To that end, I am the SVP of research and advisory firm, E Source, and an executive advisor and investor in a new company, Kallo, leveraging AI to accelerate the clean energy transition.

Business is about making money and it isn’t. I like the purity of it. You provide a good or service, and you get paid for it. And to be frank, I would not have been able to do half of my art without the business acumen behind it. Knowing how to market yourself and your work are key.

In the end though, it is about being a creative, a person with vision, and the will to execute on that vision.

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

Probably the most difficult thing to grasp is that being a creative is not about the art or business but how you see things. Or more precisely, how you see things differently than other people. A precise brush stroke is not that different than the right line at the right time to close a deal. Both take intuition backed up by skill and determination.

Also, there is a non-linear aspect to the creative process. For me, it involves leaps forward, only to return again to points in the journey. The process is looping and multi-dimensional. Experimental and routine.

Fallow periods are important for me. Like a farmer, I will let the painting go for periods and then replenish the soil with poetry.

For my artistic friends, something to think about. Instead of being in competition with the market, embrace that as part of the discipline. Selling is easy one of the hardest things to do, whether that be a product or a painting. Use your creativity then in pursuit of selling the idea that your art has worth.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

This is a really important question. Modern society has separated art into some kind of branding exercise or political expression. Being separate is being trivialized. So how do we bring art back into the core of society?

The obvious answer is to provide more funding and more types of funding so creatives can live off their art. To do that, I think we need to return to the classical conception of patronage, whereby individual patrons supported individual artists. There was a symbiotic relationship. Today, we have institutions that are deeply flawed in the middle, making what I consider to be non-art decisions.

I also have been impressed with artists, like Beyonce and Jay Z, who have created/ leveraged multiple platforms in the interest of art and commerce. I think it can go too far or is in just bad taste, with Jeff Koons coming to mind. But I like the idea of building a portfolio of platforms and products. Channel is important too. Everyone needs to be producing decent video and getting it out on social media.

Artists need to fight harder for their rights. I think there is this idea that art is part of a sharing economy where everything is free because it is priceless. Artists need to be more ruthless about what they are owed and by whom. In some respects, they are perfectly placed to do this since they have a monopoly on what they produce, meaning only that artist produces that object. But instead, artists seem to be the last in the food chain. Fighting back means maintaining exclusivity and the ability to set your prices and terms. There will be a legal battle over AI for sure.

Finally, as sad as it sounds, I would skip going to art school. We really need to go back to the apprenticeship model.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jamiewimberlypoetry.com
• Instagram: jamiewimberly4416
• Linkedin: Jamie Wimberly
• Threads: jamiewimberly4416