We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Paul Mccombe a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Paul, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

A cascade of events that altered the trajectory of my life forever, required me to jump in with the sharks.

Early 2019, brand new to oilpainting, I took it up and starting grinding out painting after painting, on cardboard, on the backs of cereal boxes, it didn’t matter – everything was a step forward. Fixed income, poor as dirt, with a disabled parent and having never held a proper job…

Sure I went to University and got a Bachelors Degree with Honors in Computer Science, but I didn’t *want* to do that, I wanted to do art, always had. You’d catch me scribbling pictures in my notes as the lecturer went over lexicons in assembly language… staring at the light patterns streaming through the curtains as fuzzy logic models were explained in excruciating detail. I was an artist all along, but always far too afraid to take the chance. Ruled by the fear of failure without ever having tried.

Shy and self-conscious I put myself out there into the world livestreaming my painting process for all to see. Every muddy color, crooked drawing and painful progress, documented and witnessed by others. My bank wept as I purchased another tube of Cadmium. This had to work. I was out of funds.

A few months go by, I gather some recognition, some donations – Improve the setup.
Wait a second, what was that… a 200 pound donation? Then another right after?
I about fall out of my chair. For someone on a fixed income, I was floored.

Little did I know I was going to marry one of those donors.
She was going to change my life forever.

Meet Shaunna. Who stumbled into my stream one day because who she would normally watch wasn’t on that morning. Routine demanded another artist to be background noise, so she scours the dregs of 1 or 2 viewership artist to find someone else. “He’s easy on the eyes, I’ll watch him” she says.

We click right away. Bonding over games, Mexican food, love of horror and just about everything else. It’s a whirlwind of emotion and experience and about nothing could have prepared me for it and I am still stunned that it all happened in the first place.

Early 2020, I go visit. I fly to the states, I meet friends, family and we have an amazing time…but, I can’t stay, I have to leave. Time’s up. Also this small thing called COVID-19 happened about a week later after I returned to Scotland and a travel embargo between the UK and the USA was enacted.

Months pass. We’re not cut out for long distance. We’re dying to see each other again. When is the travel ban going to get lifted? Next month? Next year? Well as someone ruled by fear, at the time, I was so unsure, so conflicted. But not Shaunna, she wanted me in the USA. And she wanted me there, NOW.

Jump in with the sharks, Paul. She said.
So I did.

Without knowing a lick of Spanish I booked a trip to Mexico City via Amsterdam in a plane ride that was about the most insane love-fueled folly of my life. All risk, all reward. I couldn’t be turned away, I was going to make it to her… I didn’t care what it took. I’m swimming in chummed water.

I stumbled my way out of Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez with only Google translate and the kind of confidence that comes when you’ve not slept for three days, then acquired a Taxi to my hotel across a City I didn’t know, with a language I didn’t speak.

The poor hotel staff had to deal with me butchering their language for nearly three weeks.
Needless to say, I tipped as well as I could.

All worth it. All of it. I’d not change a damn thing. I hopped on that flight from Mexico to Chicago, waltzed right up to the port officer who had every authority to tell me to ‘stuff it’ and get back to Scotland, ‘there’s a travel ban y’know.’ – But he didn’t.

He asked what I was doing here. ‘Seeing my girlfriend’ I declared. His eyes light up, smile wide as can be… ‘Okay, have fun!’. Two oil tanker sized anchors weighing me down this entire time were suddenly lifted.

I get through baggage, I get to the foyer. I see a huge sign saying ‘ NO HUGGING – Covid Protocol’ – I see Shaunna, I run and hug her. We get shouted at. I don’t care. I made it.

Now skip forward 4 years.We have a small studio in our house. I paint daily, wrangling wolves (yes we have two!) wild Mustangs and a small collection of Doxies and Tibetan Mastiffs litter the floor – Shaunna works and runs 3 different businesses, being a total badass at all hours of the day.

The risk I took, for love, not fear was the greatest I’d ever taken. Defining my life for good.
Now I paint for a living! Doing what I love, with the people I love, half a world away and an entire life’s experience away. Wild.

Be it love of your craft or love for another…
You never know where life will lead you if only you let it.
So jump in with the sharks!

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?

So I’m Scottish born and bred – 35 years and counting, that immigrated to the USA / Indianapolis in the Summer of 2020.

I’ve always been a lover of the arts. Perpetually looking to best my older brother who was just ‘that little bit better’ at all times. Digital art was my safe haven for many years, but eventually, at age 30 I tried oils and it was just like nothing else. The textures, depth of colors, the blackest blacks and most vibrant pearlescent whites, did I mention the smell? Oh it is just brilliant.

My brand, my work and me as a person, is one of authenticity. I don’t claim to be the best, most prolific, new and improved or any of that. I’m one guy on a journey to learn a craft like many before me, but to keep it grounded in reality. I enjoy showing the ‘ugly’ stages, the failures and the struggles.

My passion is realism. Recreating nature through portraits of people / animals or in landscape work. It’s all blocks of value and color, that’s my belief.
Everything can be painted if you just get the ‘note’ right. Just takes practice in learning to ‘see’.

I’ll never turn down a commission asking me to paint something I’ve never seen before….I’ll take on every challenge and never shy away from the difficult.
Even though sometimes, after agreeing to paint someone’s long forgotten relative with the only reference being a half-destroyed Polaroid not much bigger than a postage stamp, I sometimes question why!

I’m most proud of approaching each piece as a learning experience. I draw the portraits you see freehand, no grids, no transfers – I’ll forever be teaching my eyes to ‘see’ clearly, I refuse to cheat myself out of ‘levelling’ up just to churn out the work quicker. I’m a forever student, I think that really is the healthiest approach for an artist, it promotes growth and curiosity, never allowing you to settle – climbing that one mountain, you maintain momentum to climb the next.

If I’m fortunate enough to have you come to me with work, questions or a desire to collaborate – You’ll get authenticity. A love for the craft, a love for the patrons that make something we can do for a living and a love for the artists that filter the world through their being into the most sublime and wonderful creations.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Learning a skill that simply must be earned by no other means than effort over time. Sure, there are shortcuts – but we all must retrace our steps eventually.

Knowing you could live ten lifetimes and never be ‘done’ painting. Never run out of subjects to capture.
It’s an awesome, boundless and fathomless expanse. There will always be those better than you, and those that you can elevate.

It’s a burning need. Not a want. Continuing until I cannot grip a brush any longer.

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?

Being visually creative. Learning to ‘see’. It’s like a superpower.

From the moment I wake until I close my eyes at night, I’m observing the world. We all are.
But what you might not notice, behind the eyes of someone that’s visually creative… they’re not just watching the world go by.
They’re cataloging and asking themselves questions, taking mental pictures of interesting light patterns, color gradients and shape dynamics.

It may sound exhausting, but it’s the opposite, it’s exhilarating!
The beauty the visual world, to someone replicating it on canvas – is one of constant awe and awareness.

‘How is that form turning?’ ‘Look at the dappled light through the trees, take note!’ ‘Is that rock purple-green or purple-blue?’!
A million thoughts about the world around them may be up in the air all at once.

So next time you see a creative zoning out into space. They may just be working overtime.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pmccombe.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pmccombeart/

Image Credits

Paul McCombe