How did 2020 impact your life? And your work?
2020 was weird. Huge valleys and peaks are the best way I could describe it. From crippling anxiety and depression, deaths and all kinds of crazy stuff to selling paintings and surfing, if I learned anything last year it was to just keep pushing. It’s easier said than done when your the one having success so I don’t want to sound like I’m on some corny, “everyone can do it if you work hard” stuff. I think I just got lucky and was doing the work at the right time this year and made some pretty big leaps with my art career. Out of the studio, I did get a pretty good look at what it means to live in a community after my partner and I left New Orleans this fall to come out to LA. I’ve got a lot of people that I love and respect in LA but if I had to drive to the front lines in a war situation I would be with my New Orleans peeps. There’s nothing like living in a community where you have 40 plus people in a square mile that you really know, nobody caring about new clothes and cars or credit scores, just hanging out on the same old rock pile by the train tracks drinking beers and talking shit.

Did quarantine/isolation/pandemic change your creative process at all?
No shade to anyone else, but I saw a lot of people around me stop everything they were doing because of the quarantine. It really showed me that you just have to do the work no matter what. I had moments myself where I was really depressed or going through life stuff that made me pump the breaks for a little. In the end, I had a show coming up at Residency Gallery in August and Rick Garzon (The owner and director of the gallery) and I had a lot of back and forth on what to do because of the pandemic. I think some people might have taken a big pause but Rick really pushed me to keep my head down and get the work installed. Between him, so many friends in New Orleans that have supported me over the years, and my partner Savannah Levin, I’m not sure what my process in the studio would be like, I owe a lot to quite a few folks that have held me down.

When you look back on your work from this era, how will it make you feel?
Ask me in 20 years. Haha.

Your cart

Your cart is empty