We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nicole Eckenroad a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Nicole, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?
When have I been misunderstood or mischaracterized? First, I’ll say, this isn’t unique to me, we all feel misunderstood at some point or often and it’s one of the most isolating experiences a human can have. For me, it has had one of the greatest impacts on me throughout my life.
I simply couldn’t communicate for my entire childhood and adolescence… maybe even into my early twenties. My dad seemed to intentionally misunderstand me as an act of abuse and he intimidated me into silence in various and dark forms. I had no chance at healthy socialization with other kids and went inward. I desperately wanted to find a place with people who understood me and instead of learning how to speak and play, I figured out early on that if I became really great at something, I could sort of skip that part. Obviously I learned later, this approach has its limits, but it served me pretty well in K-12 school.
My great aunt took us to New York City around the Holidays, and that’s when I realized there was a way out. We took a bus from my home town, Reading, PA, and on the way home I was quietly and obsessively thinking, I have to figure out how to get back there… it’s art. I have to become so good at art that I can’t be ignored and it will take me to that magical place forever. I was six. We didn’t have money. I asked for cash from everyone for my birthdays and bought art books at AC Moore. The one that set me up for later was a book on how to draw realistic portraits. I cried for hundreds of hours in frustration figuring out that shadows weren’t lines, lines looked like wrinkles.
A few years ago, I ended up at a prestigious Institution after trading Fine Art scholarships for an Undergraduate Film degree at Temple University, directing a feature film and building a whole respected career in Art for Film and TV. The way I was misunderstood at this Institution, took me right back, like being humiliated by my dad all over again and on a much larger scale. I had set up meetings with the Film Production head, the Dean, and Fellow Affairs, to get help mediating with a classmate who had come for me from day one. Head of production told me to “Go to the gym.” The Dean told me “No matter what you do, you will be a lightening rod here.” Fellow affairs said, “We don’t think a mediated discussion is necessary at this time.” A classmate said to me after months of dangerous lows from the peer community shunning and two school hearings, “If people knew you were gay, I think you would have had a much easier time here.” This place wasn’t having me and definitely not ‘getting’ me. I was like, if it was my dad instead of the institution, what would I do? Get the hell out of there and go make better art.
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 am a writer-director of narrative film as well as a large scale photorealistic portrait painter. Everything I do as a creator and an entrepreneur is out of my love for humanity and my potential power to transmit that love on a Universal scale. My role is to understand the complexity of the human experience and simplify it for the world. I’m always looking for truth at the core of every human story and how that relates to and affects the people in their immediate circles as well as how it affects the culture globally. I hear as many beliefs and points of view as possible and decipher how they relate and why they differ, and boil all of that data down into one delicious and digestible bite that inspires us all to have more empathy–I’m sure that’s what a lot of artists are trying to do and we all come at it with a unique perspective and style. From my point of view, the answers to life’s biggest questions can be reduced to love and shame–that’s what the work I create boils down to.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
I’ve been meeting a lot of high net worth individuals and business-minded people this year and the general consensus seems to be that art is the riskiest thing to put money behind. People will only do it if they connect with the artist or the art themselves, understanding that they may not get a return and it would still be worth it for that art or artist to be exposed to the world. I don’t think art is that risky but if you don’t have taste, a sense for aesthetics, or don’t understand how art functions, finance-forward people will never put their money in it. Tech and stock are easier to understand for non-creatives because there are statistics to look at. Art seems so abstract to these individuals, no pun intended. What can I say that’s helpful? Invest in me, I’ll make you money haha. 
Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
The consensus is that they’re dead. I have friends who really believe in it, so much so, that I tried to understand and incorporate it in the business of my art, but then a very smart, trusted friend who builds meta verses, advised with a hard “no.” I think eventually we’ll see it functioning in a very important way that’s entirely different from what we think it is now, but currently, it feels as useless as the beginning days of the World Wide Web.
Contact Info:
- Website: nicoleeckenroad.com
- Instagram: @neckenroad
Image Credits
Seth MacMillan (Cinematographer | film stills)