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

Alright, Jay thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What were some of the most unexpected problems you’ve faced in your career and how did you resolve those issues?

I had an exhibit scheduled for July, 2021. An obsessive/compulsive, I had all paintings completed by March and ordered show catalogs. My wife was in ill health, but we were managing. Then there was Covid-19. We had plenty of toilet paper and paper towels, so dodged those concerns. We started ordering food for curbside pickup. Likewise my art supplies dealer offered the same service. We would mask up to leave the house. I knew the show was tentative, then it was cancelled. I was stuck with 250 show catalogs and an expenditure of $250 for catalogs and about $600 for paint and supplies.

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 became interested in art after seeing a bracelet designed by Charles Laloma. The outside was rather plain, but the inside was ornately engraved. Laloma believed that the beauty should be closest to the wearer. I realized that each painting had two sides, so I started trying to design and construct ways to show both sides. The obvious first step was to finish both sides of a painting, then hang the painting perpendicular to the wall. Another option was to make a 2-sided piece that would stand alone and construct it to fit on a half-wall or other stand. While unique, the idea draws interest, but no buyers. I then began working with shaped canvas. I like doing 2 canvases with 3 painted sides. This is the best way I have found to give the viewer an idea of what the rest of the painting looks like.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Each person, I suppose, hopes to leave lessons so that others are spared mistakes. Each person seeks the highest possible trajectory of life such that the shadow of existence is cast over as many others as possible, leaving memories. My hopes were then, and are now, no different; I have never fully grasped the immutable truth that a sailor born on the Texas Plains faces a life of quiet desperation.

Is it an excuse that my childhood was not manifest at a place having “Beach,” “Lagoon,” or “Island” as a part of its name? (Although the nearest “town” was called “Lakeview,” even though the nearest actual lake was hundreds of miles away.) That I had not seen salt water until age 17? That my words reflect the parched landscape from which I longed to escape? Is it a twist of fate that consigned me to a bicycle, a tractor, and an automobile——rather than a dinghy, a tender, and a schooner? An accident of birth that food was characterized as “turf” rather than “surf?” Or, as a “boomer,” was I merely born 200 years too late?

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

I’m influenced by the work of Leonard Cohen. His eclectic approach to life from “The Tower of Song” has left something for the rest of us to remember. His art inspires my work, with words like “Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water,” and “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Jackson Pollock too, of course, and Barnett Newman. Each of these men have left the mark of hope. I don’t aspire to become them, but I hope some hint of recognition will come to my own work.