Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Joe Mallory. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Joe, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
It’s difficult to pinpoint how I learned about making art, as it has come from many inspirations, and feels like this creative energy has always been within me.
I owe much of my creativity to my family. My mother went to school for art and is a talented illustrator, painter, and all-around creative. She has helped me in so many ways, always giving me constructive critiques on my work when I asked for it and certainly helping me to learn how to draw figures and shapes, for instance. My grandfather on my father’s side was a renaissance man; he was an artist and art collector, among many other things, and he was also a personal friend of Dr. Seuss. He also opened an art gallery called the Mallory Gallery in Rancho Santa Fe, CA, in the 80’s. He and my grandmother lived up the street from our home and had an eclectic artist house in an otherwise “normal” neighborhood. The house was filled with every inch of the walls – and ceiling – with large, original surrealist paintings and sculptures. Their house was always a huge inspiration to me. Also, my uncle Morgan, my father’s brother, opened and owned a frame shop and art gallery, the Corner Frame Shop, in Encinitas, California. Art and creativity were always celebrated and appreciated in our family.I owe it to my parents and family for always encouraging and appreciating my creativity while growing up.
Like my mother, I have also always been somewhat of a restless creative. I’ve always felt like I have somewhat too much energy, and creativity has always been a way for me to channel it.
Even from a young age, my parents said I would draw one drawing frantically and then another and another, until my childhood drawings would pile up. Throughout my years in school and through college, doodling on the sides of my notes in every class somehow seemed to help ease my mind. Some of the teachers would be annoyed that I was drawing so much and that my drawings were so detailed, so I would try to hide them. But even so, I did relatively well in school and graduated college, albeit with all my notes filled with illustrations. I’ve recently been diagnosed with ADHD and now, looking back, it seems like drawing and creating have always somehow helped me to relax and focus. In class, I would draw studies of the figures in the class, such as drawing the teacher in an abstract nature, the scenery out the window of the class, or drawing inspiration from the topics of the class being taught. I would draw faces over and over, enjoying creating different expressions and abstract faces combined with energetic patterns. All of this practice drawing every day played an important role in my evolution as an artist.
When I was 20, I attended my first music festival, the Joshua Tree Music Festival in Southern California. I was amazed by seeing breathtaking psychedelic art being painted live throughout the festival by many artists. I saw them painting the same type of patterns and abstract faces that I had always drawn, which really inspired me. That experience stuck with me and changed the course of my life. I remember thinking, “When I go home, I’m going to start painting and give it all I got.”
That was about ten years ago. I went home, got some supplies, and started painting piece after piece. At this point, my paintings were just simpler cubist-style abstract pieces and a few landscapes, all done on old pieces of wood with cheap paints so that I could afford to learn more while on a budget. I would have been daunted to paint at the level of detail that I do now, but I knew that even just experimenting with the paint was enough. I would experiment with making a mess of paints on the canvas and just have fun playing with the colors, sometimes experimenting with stencils and other techniques. Once I created one painting, I would create another and another. They were by no means “perfect” in my eyes, but I felt that they were aesthetically unique and that was enough. And even though I wasn’t totally invested in becoming a full time artist, I knew that each painting seemed to be better than the one before it, and so I realized that if I kept painting, perhaps ten years later I would really get somewhere.
At this point, too, I took one painting class in college that helped me to understand color theory and a few brush techniques, but other than that I learned much of what I do now through my own trial and error, as well as watching other artists directly. Finding and watching other artists by attending music festivals and events that had live painters painting was a huge inspiration for me, as I felt they were painting exactly what I sought to create. By painting live, in front of an audience, they allowed others like myself to see how it was done.
After a few years of painting on my own, I began to live paint at events myself. Painting live for an audience pushes yourself as an artist because others are watching, putting you on the spot. It makes you approach painting differently, as it becomes a performance of “in the moment” expression, rather than creating only in slower careful studio sessions. With others wathcing, I feel as though it’s best to paint quickly, to give the viewer the joy of seeing paint hit the canvas. You have to get out of your own way, and really just go for it, trusting yourself. It’s as though rather than spending so much time contemplating and planning the “perfect” painting, you just intuitively add paint to the canvas, often painting to the beat of the music, and then continuously adapting the composition to what you’ve added in your flow state. It’s like sketching, but with paint. After years of doing this and pushing myself past my insecurities, I’ve learned so much. Now many of my best paintings were those that were created spontaneously in a live painting setting.
I don’t see that there was anything I would go back and do to speed up my process, but rather it was being patient with myself that allowed my creativity to progress. My best work of art did not come the first time I picked up the brush. But rather I allowed myself to paint hundreds of paintings, knowing that after the hundredth one, that painting would be even better than the first.
I think the most important skill that helped me to progress was the balance of being constructively critical without becoming discouraged. As an artist, it’s important to always critique your work and know where it can improve, but at the same time, you have to allow yourself to continue creating, and know that it just takes practice. Even while being objectively critical, you still have to be able to enjoy the process of creating art itself.
The biggest obstacle that has stood in my way has mostly been my personal doubt of the value of my work. Even though being objective is important, always being critical of your work can become discouraging. Only seeing the mistakes can make us forget what others may appreciate. I feel that this may be the biggest obstacle for every artist. But with enough practice and patience, anyone can create meaningful art in their own way. I believe that we’re all artists, just in different regards; such as whether its painting, music, cooking, or any other form of creativity. It all applies, just through different mediums. We all have to find our passion and work through our doubts to allow our creativity to shine.
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 would describe my artwork as metaphysical impressionism and abstract expressionism, and altogether being a part of the visionary art movement. I paint many of my paintings live at music festivals and events, enjoying being in a free flow of the moment and seeing what comes out onto the canvas. But altogether how I got into being a full-time artist was mostly through intuition. After graduating college with a degree in Environmental Studies, I thought that my life path would be working in the field of environmental restoration. However, in May of 2020, with COVID-19 in full swing right at the time of my graduation, I was delayed in pursuing a career, so I had plenty of time to paint. I took what I had learned about ecology and sociology, as well as what I have learned through studying metaphysics on my own time, along with many other personal paranormal, psychedelic, and spiritual experiences, and channeled it into my artwork.
Looking back, my capstone thesis in college argued that art and music have always played a vital role in enacting positive cultural change in society. For instance, although still ongoing today, the journey of civil rights in the U.S. was in part driven by people becoming able to accept musicians and artists who were people of color because people were able to resonate with their talent regardless of what their race or creed was. Through art and music, we can communicate messages collectively and subtly that would otherwise be difficult to get across directly in such a broad way.
So from this perspective, I have always seen art and music as a way to push the boundaries of society to accept and perceive new perspectives of reality. At first, I was just painting art that was mostly abstractly expressing myself. But as I painted more and more, I saw a new meaning arise through my artwork. I felt that I could create landscapes and metaphysical art that could perhaps help make viewers more aware of the interconnected nature of reality, and with that, question and reframe how we treat the world around us. Rather than seeing what is outside of ourselves as separate, we can see it as energetic reflections of ourselves, and treat what is around us the way that we would want to be treated.
In my artwork, I choose to paint many hidden faces throughout my pieces. In my landscape pieces, I paint “spirit” faces in the trees, clouds, rocks, and other aspects of nature to communicate the idea that everything is alive around us – that energy and consciousness are in everything, as this universe exists as a fractal of awareness. Throughout my work, I try to hint at how we are each part of the universe experiencing itself through all of these seemingly separate existences, such as our own or as the trees or earth around us.
I have always questioned the conundrum of reality. In the last few years, I finally began to find answers through researching metaphysics and people’s past life regression and near-death experiences. Along with recently having many of my own unexplainable paranormal experiences with relatives who had passed away, I began to piece together a new view of reality. I eventually did a past life regression myself and was blown away. I realized that there is much more to this reality than many of us are aware of. That really we are all a part of this paradox of infinity. That is, if infinity exists, then every possible thing would exist. If every possible thing exists, that would include consciousness. That infinity would include every type of consciousness that could ever be. And each of our consciousness is a piece of that infinity, experiencing itself subjectively and through the lens of what we consider our “self” to be.
I realize that the meaning of much of my art is to convey this idea of the unity of awareness. That is, that everything around us represents the universe’s energy experiencing itself in various forms. Though we may appear separate—as humans, animals, plants, earth, or matter—we are all interconnected. Even beyond our physical existence, this energy persists in different forms. I strive to create artwork that can invoke this and inspire others to look deeper.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
At many times I have honestly felt like giving up on being a full-time artist and considered getting another job to make ends meet. It can be difficult as a beginning artist because of one’s doubts and self-criticism, as well as just being able to reach the right audience for one’s work. Yet I found that when I shifted my focus to just enjoying my art and creativity, just for the sake of creating, I realized that I wouldn’t want to live my life any other way. I just love to make art and create. It’s where I feel at peace and fulfilled. It lights me up. Some days when I would be feeling low on support, I would just bring a canvas out to the town square to paint just for the fun of painting in public. And as soon as I stopped doubting myself, and came back to being able to enjoy creating for creativity’s sake, I suddenly would find more support and appreciation than I thought I deserved. People would come up to where I was painting and remind me that my art had a value that I had earlier doubted myself. With this support, I realized that I should just stop putting down my work and know that there will always be value in creating.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
The goal of my artwork and creative journey is to inspire others to appreciate nature and to look deeper into how we see the world around us, and consciousness itself. Through my landscape paintings, I hope to inspire others to see the natural world as alive and aware in its own right. With that in mind, I hope my artwork can invoke empathy for the natural world and others around us, treating what is outside of ourselves with more respect. Through my abstract art, I hope to inspire others to creatively express themselves through color and the energetic movement of paint on the canvas. And through the figures and “spirit” faces I paint, I seek to share an intuitive knowing that we are all connected by conscious awareness and that we are all here to experience and express our unique perspective.
Aside from creating visual art, I also have always been a musician. Playing violin, guitar, banjo, harmonica, and the synth, I love to express myself through music. I write a lot of songs for guitar, play in a band, and just always love to improvise funk, psych rock, and blues jams that inspire others with a good mood. Apart from writing music for guitar, making electronic music is also a huge passion of mine.
The electronic music I produce is based in a down-to-mid-tempo style, taking influence from ambient electronica, bass music, and experimental EDM. I create my tracks with samples I find from metaphysical or biological speakers, mixed over beats and melodies that I compose using synths, live instruments, and electronic drums. With several hours of music still in the process of mastering, I hope to fully release much of it in the near future, although for now, I have many of my demos on my SoundCloud. Ultimately, I strive to create psychedelic-inspired music that explores metaphysical and spiritual themes. The goal of my music is also to create melodically-focused, introspective music for many different moods. This includes everything from peaceful psychedelic and ambient soundscapes, to intricate upbeat and driving grooves that take the listener on a sonic journey. I view my music as the audio counterpart to my artwork. I hope that anyone who listens to my music or views my artwork can feel inspired and uplifted. Altogether I believe that music and art act as methods of expression but also as healing tools that allow us to positively transmute the frequencies and emotions within ourselves and others. I hope to always be able to share my work and am so grateful to be able to create.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://joe-mallory-art.square.site/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joemalloryart/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joemalloryart/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@joemallory3929
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-817031297
- Other: https://joemallory.bandcamp.com/
Image Credits
All images are original paintings by the artist (copyright Joe Mallory 2024).