We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kelly Ferguson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Kelly, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you take us back in time to the first dollar you earned as a creative – how did it happen? What’s the story?
The first dollar I made as a creative was $400 in cash handed to me in a parking lot. At least that’s the first sale that I consider or even remember to be significant. I was in the process of officially moving out of my parents house into my own apartment. Stacking all my many paintings, which had grown in canvas size over the years, was not exactly an encouraging task. It was frustrating to keep moving around all my art which it seemed no one wanted or was interested in. Even my parents had moved them into a storage unit to get them out of the house– to be fair, they were also planning on moving soon. As I hauled a large stack of paintings out to the storage unit’s parking lot and slowly loaded them into my car, a man approached me. He was also on some task that day, moving furniture into the storage. He asked if I had painted the pieces in front of me, to which I answered yes (it seemed obvious, and I was wary of being a young woman alone in a more remote part of town). The next thing I knew, he was sifting through my work and commenting on how his wife would love these pieces for their new home. We bartered over the price, settled on $400, and he told me to wait for him to go to the ATM. For safety’s sake, I notified my people what was going down, and prepared a camera to film the exchange just in case something strange went down. What happened was in the style of the Florida Highwaymen artists, selling paintings out of the back of your car. I wasn’t prepared to sell anything that day or maybe ever, so I look back on it with mixed feelings. I wish that I got some contact information so I could keep track of my work or even just see a photo of its final resting place. But what a way to launch a professional career… maybe I should set up shop in my trunk more often.
Kelly, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a multimedia artist with a curiosity for just about everything. This leads me to work on a million and one projects, always trying to master different skills and styles. Current projects include three oil painting series, a novel, a comic, an animated show, and all sorts of crafting projects that are left half-forgotten. Through my work, I seek to create meaningful conversations and connections, originating from personal experiences through her paintings. Much of my art centers around personal identity, emotion, the figure, and expression to promote a more empathetic world. Above all else, simply the practice of painting is a solace to my soul even if only to feel the fluidity of the brush or to deeply immerse herself in the focus of her subject. The work of abstraction serves as a way to make sense of the senseless– to grab the amorphous emotions, thoughts, and the subconscious worries and to give them color and form. Of course, it is difficult to feel satisfied with one’s art so I’m surprisingly most proud of the technical skills that become necessary when working on art. They don’t always prepare you as an artist or creative for getting very familiar with a chop saw or the delicacies of wood working. Artistry gets much more rough and tumble the further you go into DIY, and I’m proud of my growing tool collection! When it comes to creating, everything inspires me. I’ve got a million ideas bouncing around in my head, and only a few make it onto canvas. My goal for the work is to foster connection and conversation through art.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
Honestly, NFTs are one of those things that leave a bitter taste in my mouth due to the place they hold in the art world. As a digital artist, I hold no grudge about their value due to the medium, but rather the strange air surrounding the concept of them. There is a bit of elitism for those who ‘make it’ — to extreme success and the ‘fine’ art world. With art, everything is subjective in value due to one’s style, preferences, and who’s who’s. Working as a curator has shown me the very subjective side of artistic success, as although there are many concrete factors for why an artist becomes supported– to many degrees it is simply because an individual liked it and said yes. Then, the art world leans one way or another in accordance to the say-so of a few individuals. It is not always a bad thing, but should be remembered when facing rejection. I try to tell myself this all the time when receiving many gallery rejection letters! To come around back to NFTs, they at first seemed to be a way for art to be more accessible, more for the people. But they have grown to either be a scam targeted at artists, or a pricey out of reach concept that is elevated for reasons of personal taste. I think if the aim is to make art more accessible, we should renew a culture of art collectors. Owning art is seen as something for the rich, but it doesn’t have to be. Supporting small artists, collecting work of your friends or colleagues is a small step towards fostering a more accessible arts community. We should return to personal interactions of works that we truly love for their artistic value, rather than monetary. I think that the rest will follow if we support each other in a more grass roots kind of way.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Other people are our most valuable resources. From the start, I believed that being an artist was like being an island– that your work had to be completely original and fully new creations. But the history of art and expression is the driving factor of what makes art continually interesting. New work is made from going against tradition, or playing into tradition, or working with tools of the past to reflect on the present. In this way, understanding historical movements, styles, and philosophies is wildly useful when it comes to making your own work. Leaning also on your contemporaries’ knowledge is also key. Building community by asking questions, seeking advise, and critique from those in different stages of their careers is invaluable. I encourage forming community within your field and with those in vastly different fields than your own. All inspires new innovations and human connection is what really matters. We make art in order to communicate with each other, so isolating oneself in the pressure of making hyper-individualized work is just setting oneself up for disappointment. There is nothing new under the sun. Instead, we should embrace community and movements to be bolstered by the creativity of our fellow artists and humans.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kbferguson001.wixsite.com/kfergusonportfolio
- Instagram: @patsknicknacks
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-ferguson-081b63185