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

Jim, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I’m 71 years old at the time of this writing, and I have been able to earn a living with my talent for most of my life. It was really a committment or a choice about how I wanted to live that drove my decisions about what I was willing to do and how I would go about doing it. The talents I needed to get where I’m at today were developed along the way. I didn’t have all of them when I started, but talents are skills that can be developed as needed through repetition and practice.

Let me start by saying that I’m a terrible employee, but I’m a very good worker, and I take pride in the things that I do. That makes me a better candidate for free-lance projects than steady work.

I learned at an early age the keys to happiness and the keys to success. I’ll share them with you here: The keys to happiness is to know what you like to do and then find a way to get paid to do it. The keys to success is that you can do anything you want to do, as long as it benefits someone else. People pay us for the benefit they get from something, so I focus my artwork on doing things that benefit people. I see my art as a way of being of service.

I’m in the mural business, or more accurately, I’m in the home improvement business, using my murals to transform walls into environments. Examples of my work can be seen on my website at www.MuralsByGardner.com.

I started earning decent money with my talents when I realized that no one pays us just because we have talent. We only get paid when we provide a product or a service that people value. However, I also discovered that if the service we provide involves one or more of our talents, we will probably enjoy the work we do and we will probably do good work because we are enjoying ourselves, and we will probably get paid well because we do good work. But, we are not getting paid just because we have talent. We are getting paid because we have provided something of value to someone else.

The business of art is no different than any other business, in that a business exists to provide a product or a service to people who cannot provide that product or service for themselves.

What business do you want to be in? The jewelry business? The tattoo business? The interior design and decorating business, advertising and graphic arts, t-shirt design and screen printing business, etc.? They all require artistic skills and they all offer the possibility of earning a good living.

I started my creative self-expression as a wanna-be rock-n-roll superstar. I stayed with that career until my mid-thirties, when I faced my first mid-life crisis and changed careers. Starting as a production artist in an ad agency, then a print shop, and being a lousy employee but an eager student, I learned everything I could and went out on my own again ASAP.

Today, while I earn most of my income by painting wall murals around the Phoenix area, I am also an author of two books about succeeding with your talents. The first is titled, “Artists Are Like Apple Trees”, which points out that apple trees produce apples but have no use for their own products. However, if they stop producing, they die because the nurishment from the soil doesn’t need to flow through the branches and the leaves if there’s no fruit to bear. Creative people are the same way. Use it or lose it! Even if you have no use for your own products, if they can benefit someone else, you have the makings of a rewarding career.

The second book is titled, “You Have the Talent, So Where Is the Money?”, and the gist of that book is that the money always lies in providing a product or a service that people are willing to pay for. We all need a source of income, and as artists, we have our own unique gifts or services to offer. Our imaginations and our talents are our greatest assets because the more we use them, the more they increase. Nothing in the physical world works like that.

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

I started my creative self-expression as a high school wanna-be rock-n-roll star, and I stayed with that career until my mid-thirties. About that time, I faced my first mid-life crisis and changed careers. I had art skills and I decided to use them in place of my musical skills.

Starting as a production artist in an ad agency, then a print shop, and being an eager student, I learned everything I could and went out on my own again ASAP.

I designed logos and brochures at the print shop, painted signs at my home as a “side job” and I grew my personal reputation and client base until I could survive on my own income.

Today I paint wall murals around the Phoenix area. My artwork serves a specific purpose or nitch in this marketplace. The Phoenix area has brick walls around many homes and subdivisions. My artwork is meant to get you “out of the concrete box”, by creating the illusion of distance. Because my artwork affects people’s experience of their environment, it’s more than just a “pretty picture” to look at,

In the beginning of any career, it’s not what you earn, but what you learn that matters. The money comes and the money goes, but the lessons are yours to keep. I’m thankful for those foundational lessons. They help to build long lasting careers, and the ad business taught me promotional skills as I learned how to fit visual impact into a small space, whether it’s an ad or a t-shirt or business card.

I find no shame in considering myself a “commercial” artist. We are all here to serve others in some way, and we get paid in proportion to the value of the service we provide. As I increase the quality and positive impact that my artwork is having on people, my prices have risen as well, and I’ve been able to live a very rewarding and fun-filled life, while making good friends along the way.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I highly recommend the grand daddy of self-help books, “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. There are many good books available today that deal with the effective use of the mental diciplines, but this is still one of the best books ever written about personal success and how to achieve it.

The study of metaphysics and the “mind-body” connection facinates me and I put a lot of mental resources and study into those areas of interest.

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

My mission is to make this world a more beautiful place for people to live and work in. That is my mission statement, and I do my best to contribute something along the lines of expressing beauty every day. My wall transformations (murals) are a testiment to my current activities, though along the way, I have pinstriped vehicles and airbrushed t-shirts and painted custom cars. The one thing they had in common is that when finished a project, it looked better than it did when it arrived.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.MuralsByGardner.com
• Facebook: MuralsByGardner
• Youtube: MuralsByGardner/JimGardnerAuthor