Today we’d like to introduce you to Ty Clark.
Ty, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
That’s a long journey. I turn 45 in a few days; I guess the beginning would be 41 years ago when won first prize at the California State Fair in a quilting competition. I used to draw on napkins at the dinner table when I was a child. I would create animals and make up scientific names for them. My mom ended up sewing a few of her favorites and made them into a quilt, entered it in the California State Fair, and won first prize. She likes to say that was my first art show.
Fast Forward to 2014 and I took the jump to a full-time studio artist. I have always created, always made art since 1983 when the quilt took home the prize. There have been a lot of careers, businesses, jobs and adventures along the way that I had to partake to create art full time.
I went to college on a basketball scholarship and studied art during that time. I have always had a double life, one in art and one in sports. In HS, I played soccer and basketball after quitting baseball and football early on. I was always juggling two passions that didn’t exist together (the art world and the sports world). My goal was always to create art full time, someday. I never knew how difficult it would be to get there. After college, I tried to play basketball overseas and had a career cut short because of injuries and the overpowering feeling that it was time to give it up. I ended up marrying a Texas and moving to Texas from California.
I worked in retail in the DFW area for years and had a skate/surf retail shop in Frisco with Quiksilver. My wife moved to China for 14 months before moving back to DFW where I helped start and electronics company in Lewisville and worked as a PR, Marketing and Art Director for a few years before starting a Fashion Brand called “Veritas Fashion” worn by A-List celebrities (cast of Gossip Girl, Friday Night Lights), musicians (Polica, Young The Giant) and visual artists around the globe. At Veritas we had a fun artist collective that featured artists, musicians (Green River Ordinance, David Ramirez and others) from DFW and Texas. We traveled the US for two years with the brand and ended up transitioning that into another startup called Kammok, with my buddy Greg McEvilly. Kammok is now in Austin (founded in Dallas) and is one of the brightest up and coming outdoor adventure brands in the US.
After four years helping Greg launch Kammok in Austin and raising investment through a business accelerator out of NY/SF as our Art and Marketing Director I had to make the difficult decision to leave the band to focus on art. Over the last five years I have shown my art around the US, taking part in an international residency in Budapest, named one of ten artists to watch in Austin, TX in 2017/2019 and was selected for an Artist Cohort in Pasadena, CA with four other artists in the US that, led by my mentor and world renown artist Makoto Fujimura.
My wife and I left Austin and moved to Waco in 2017 to buy a house on five acres and built my art studio on the property. I also completed my first documentary film as a producer titled “Jump Shot” created by a close friend of mine, Jacob Hamilton. Jump Shot was an official selection for SXSW Film Festival, Dallas International Film Festival, Hill Country Film Festival (Audience Award), Detroit Free Press Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, Heartland Film Festival and Dead Center Film Festival (Grand Jury Award for Best Feature Documentary 2019). Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry is the Executive Producer of the film. That is where I am today!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Art is a much different road than most. There are no directions or road maps to being in the art world, there are many things you learn along the way, some you have done right and some you have done wrong. I took my first few years after leaving the entrepreneur and marketing world to focus on my work. I spent a few years just painting and studying six to seven days a week. I had always painted over weekends or late at night after long days of building brands, PR, design or being on the road.
I had never had moments where I wasn’t creating art; the focus was just different. Now, I can completely engage the work, the technique, the mediums, the story and sink into it for hours on end. There are so many options for an artist today, and the difficult part is choosing which one to take. Do you take the traditional gallery approach? Do you seek out dealers? Should I do art fairs? Do I sell online? The struggle is in being discovered/found and finding opportunities. I have found that a specific routine has helped me stay focused, especially when I get hit with difficult moments or frustrations emerging in the art world. Every morning I spend time researching the art world after coffee, researching established and emerging artists, curators, and galleries. This year I started multiple spreadsheets of every gallery I would love to be in someday, galleries that are showing emerging artists in my range and market of work. I have learned to treat it like a business, in the same way that I would build a brand. After my study time, I move into my studio and create art.
As an artist, we have to cover every aspect of our work ourselves. We are the sales rep, the customer service rep, the web designer, the social media manager, the shipping department, and we are the product. All we want to do as artists is to be in the studio creating, but to be successful we also need an audience, buyers, collectors, and patrons. The hard part is finding them, or doing things through other means so they can find us! The business duties are always easy when you are doing them for someone else, and most of them are my specialties from the corporate world; art direction, social media management, influencer management, marketing, PR, branding and identity, photography, video editing, production… the list goes on. These things are difficult when you have to do them for yourself, especially when you want to spend all of your time painting!
Please tell us about your art.
I am an abstract expressionist painter and a speaker, film producer, and writer, known for my artwork and my process videos, which show me creating the work in time-lapse. My passion is painting large-scale canvas paintings that range in the 6-15 foot size. I put a lot of time, effort, writing, ideating into my artwork, as story and themes play an intricate role in each body of work.
Life has a genesis and a resolution. Many of us struggle with an interpretation of the personal story we are creating. My work takes a critical view of human memory. In my work, I deconstruct a collaboration of ideas and experiences that exist from our childhood to our adulthood.
Having lived and engaged in life around the world I have spent several years researching and studying subjects as diverse as civil rights movements, social, economic and cultural studies, theology/philosophy, classic literature and prose. My work engages the discovery of our human condition and its existence through a fury of movements and texture. My work falls under my abstract-expressionist mentors from Cy Twombly, Antoni Tapies, Anselm Kiefer, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Robert Rauschenberg and others.
Each body of work revolves through a specific expression of our journeys and the tension that exists in those memories. By using a variety of layers, medium, marks, texture and deconstruction I can share a story in the same way one’s life is lived, through memories and experiences, from youth to adulthood, using text to provide clues to content and interpretation.
Every piece has a specific message that speaks through the story of one’s life and the human condition, becoming intertwined between the two. I hope that the work drives the viewer to an internal conversation of memory and meaning, giving them clarity amongst the tension in contemporary life. I hope that the thought process and ideas that I put into my work set me apart from others, something difficult in art on any level.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
I think growth and connection. If I am growing as an artist within my work and technique, then ideas will remain endless and the evolution that my work moves in over the years should equal success as an artist. I want my work to connect with the viewer in deep and spiritual ways. If I can combine these two characteristics, then my work will continue to move in people long after I am gone.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.tynathanclark.com
- Email: tynathanclark@gmail.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/tynathanclark
- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tynathanclark
- Other: http://www.jumpshotmovie.com
Image Credit:
Kristopher Rutherford
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