Today we’d like to introduce you to Julian Race.
Julian, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My journey in the arts has been a series of seemingly unrelated stops, but in hindsight, the path makes sense. I started in the mid-2000s with a passing interest in interior design, which is where I started to form a basic taste palette for visual work.
That led to fine art, abstract painting. Because of the design study, I started to observe space differently, and that helped me better understand how artwork fits in. But the challenge with art was that it became as much an emotional discovery as it was a technical pursuit. I got a hold of the technical aspects of painting on canvas quickly, but since I was doing abstract expressionism, i it required a lot more of me than the brush work alone.
For 2 years, I hosted events, solo art shows, gallery showings, and made some sales in the process. I burned out, though, as the emotional toll and the life stress got to me.
This would become a recurring theme, where I pick up a new medium and exploit it to the point of burnout, trying to put my 10k hours in ASAP, even when a more measured pace would be better for my long-term creative health. The bright side is I covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time.
There was a natural segue into photography from art, which was basically just someone asking me to take pictures for them, even though I didn’t own a camera. I think this is where unlocking the “taste” aspect earlier meant I could apply the same fundamentals of composition and color theory with the emotion of the human experience and still make something passable in a medium that I lacked technical experience with. In short, I think the vision is transferable.
Photography captured my interest immediately, and it stuck the longest since I’m still doing it, 18 years in.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Not in the least bit. I look at limitations in two buckets: Challenges that help you grow and a lack of resources that make it hard to live or support yourself.
Even though creativity needs conflict to thrive, being in survival mode all the time can be dangerous. And I let a lot of that stuff get to me. I experienced all the self-doubt and imposter syndrome like any young artist, but I also layered that on top of a stubborn desire to work on this stuff full-time, to the detriment of my finances. This was Great Recession-era stuff, so I guess I wasn’t the only one struggling, but I’ll say I had more of my own personal recession going on, on top of the societal one.
Finding a lane in the 2010s as a creative didn’t get much easier despite working on it full-time for several consecutive years. However, I often revisit my old work and am still impressed by what I was able to do with very limited resources. And it’s not just the work; it was also about building a community, individual relationships with other creatives, and a wide range of creative experiences that I wouldn’t have otherwise.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
What am I most proud of? Resiliancy. I may have given up 8 times over, but I keep coming back, each time sharper than the last time. Breaking the burnout cycle and deploying some self-awareness along the way. Once I realized this is a lifelong thing that ebbs and flows rather than a destination to reach, I gave myself permission to slow down, take detours, do unrelated things to support myself when needed, and stopped seeing pauses as endings and started seeing them as transitions between phases.
What sets me apart from others?
Diversity of thought, vision, and taste. Taste is subjective, but I think it’s one of the key ingredients behind all creative decisions.
I’ve been a multi-hyphenate creative for a while, which I know runs counter to the algorithm-driven world we live in now. I used to see these experiments and side quests as a liability, but I always said it would lead me somewhere, and I’m finally starting to see it all come to fruition.
While I have roots in fine art and deep experience in photography, I’m now headed towards becoming a Creative Director and finding a way to deploy all of the hard-earned lessons as an entrepreneur. But it needs a more formal container, so I’m relaunching and repackaging my creative and marketing experience under its own umbrella as a founder of GnosisFive, a creative agency focused on branded content and creative direction for brands.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://julianrace.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jracephoto
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julianrace/
- Other: https://www.gnfive.com/
