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

Pete, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

The best way for me to learn any craft is to just start playing with it. I do research online such as whatching videos, and or images or how-to articles on the specific style or technique I want to use in my art, but nothing comes close to just play with it.

I have learned to get out of my own way and stop thinking. Let playtime evolve your creativity and skills.

Having learned proper drawing, sketching and painting techniques and skill are for me very essential. Once
understanding them, and what they do for you, then you can improvise them or create new ones.

For me, time to paint and be creative has always been and issue. Recently I have more of it though.

Pete, 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 started painting fantasy art in High School, as I was growing up, I started to dive in to myself to discover who I am. Which of course, is now a Journey more than a destination.

Diving within myself during prayer and meditation, I am able to see glimpses of images that carry with them an emotional energy to them. This in turn gives me insight and knowledge of what I am focused on. It’s more of a “see-feel” type of communication than a audio one. Learning to accept this gift and honor it has only made it expand to help me see these things in others, and create a powerful visual representation of that in a form of a powerful art piece.

Being able to see the unseen world is an honor. I hold it with respect and gratitude and this is what makes my art unique and one of a kind.. Being that we are all different, I will always have something to paint about.

Besides doing canvas artwork, I also do two things with my artwork that I love, the first one is that I have learned to work with Crystals and Gemstones and have them be part of the artwork. Sometimes they are the main focus of the art piece. The second thing I love to do is live painting. Live painting puts me in a different space, and it’s very fun and expansive. I do this at group meditations or live music events.

I need to mention two other ways I do art, and that is chalk painting on the sidewalk and body painting.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Yes of course. For a year or so, I had the pull or push for me to start painting live in front of people. I ignored it for a year or so. As always, spirit always guides you to what is best for you, if you let it. It came to a point one day that the opportunity for me to live paint was presented to me. The only thing I was thinking of was the fear of being wrong in what I would paint, and or making any painting mistake. In my mind, I was thinking who would want to even see this?… But then, I started to use my heart more than my mind, and a calmness came over me. I had to let go of the mind chatter and just trust who I am and what I enjoy. So I said yes to live painting, and from then on a whole new world opened up for me. I am happy that I got out of my own way.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Yes the driving force to my creative journey is to have fun and joy, that is it. It sounds simple, and it can be but you have to learn to go with the heart, not so much with your mind. Because if you are not having fun doing what your doing, then there is no sense in doing it. As a shared, I am creative in many different ways, Like the way that I work with Crystals, Chalk art on the sidewalk that I know will blow away in a couple of day or so. Or body painting that washes away in minutes. All these different ways all have one thing in common, they are fun and bring me joy, which in turn does the same for the collector, spectator or model. You can’t give what you don’t have.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://petetaboada.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/visionaryartistpete/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/visionaryartistpete
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/SpiritualArtPT
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq8NI2iClH1lj1q-cLRzZRg