We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Matt Moberg a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Matt, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
Whenever somebody asks me about how I started to draw, or learn the basics around the craft, my answer is boringly uncomplicated: I watched YouTube Videos. In particular, I started obsessing over an artist named Jeff Haines and the way he brought life out of the charcoal dust. I copied his moves to understand how he moved. And then I found others from which I could do the same. In the same way that I got swept up in music by learning to play the Goo Goo Dolls on the guitar, we all start out as cover artists as we set out looking for our voice. I still am on that search, but I think I’m getting closer.
The most essential skill for me as an artist is patience, and the most problematic obstacle is its opposite. Good art is laborious; it takes time and energy to see your piece all the way through. It’s so easy to throw away a piece when it’s in the middle of the mess. Patience equips you to resist that temptation and keep pushing. It really is the only way to grow in your craft.
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?
In February of 2020, I woke up one night feeling pretty battered by the anxiety I had been taking in by day. At this time, I typically would’ve reached for a drink and shrugged off the angst, but there was enough tightness in my chest that said I couldn’t. Instead, I grabbed my keys with my shoulders pinched in and headed to the hospital. After staying with them until the morning came, the doctors sized me up with all of their tests and the results came back clear. Their only ask as they sent me out was to go and speak to a therapist as soon as I could.
I did so the next day. When I laid out for her what had happened to me, and all of the piles of anxiety that had led to it, I asked her how I could sidestep that problem in the future—how I could find some more stability in my life (which has always been one of the more elusive aims). To my surprise, she asked me if there was a hobby that I knew I wasn’t very good at. The list was admittedly long for me to pick from, but I started talking about drawing right away. I told her how ever since I was a kid, my hands have shook with tremors which always talked me out of even trying to take on the craft.
“Well that’s what you need to do then,” she said. “You need to go do something that will slow you down without any kind of pressure to produce.”
I went from there to the art store where I asked a teenager behind the counter what kind of art was messy enough that somebody with shaky hands could take on. She walked me to the aisle where the charcoal powder and pencils were, and I’ve been back there hundreds of times since.
Drawing—art, it’s become my daily devotional. Most of the time I take it on because I love it, but all of the time I take it on because I need it—not just for my anxiety, but also for my addiction. What I came to terms with about a year after that first trip to the art store, is how many other trips I’ve made to the liquor store. In March of 2021, I started the work of getting sober. As I’ve taken on the heavy healing that comes with that path, art has been this medicinal gift that has both helped my mind slow down and kept the bottle down. In many ways, art has saved my life. I’m grateful for that and my hope is that when people ask me to do commissions for them or purchase an original piece from me, that my gratitude for the craft is experienced as their joy.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
For me, whether it’s in writing a song at the piano or painting a color on canvas, I’ve always been deeply moved by the blank space before me–that sense that before the first key is touched or brush is picked up, anything really could happen here. Spending time in that wide-eyed energy is where I feel most at home.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I think one of the lessons that art has taught me the most in the past few years has been that the stakes really aren’t that high. Whether you can paint like Picasso or my three year old, the world will still spin madly on. Accepting that there’s nothing that I have to do has equipped me to ask: so what now do I want to do? Taking away that pressure to be perfect has been what keeps me in my joy.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mattmoberg.net
- Instagram: @MattMoberg
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-moberg-3b9a6057/
- Twitter: @MattMoberg
Image Credits
Matt Moberg