Today we’d like to introduce you to Aric Cheston.
Hi Aric, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My path to becoming an artist (and an artist writing about art) really started around 2016. This is strange to say because I earned an MFA from Parsons School of Design way back in 2004. But, my degree is in design and the work I do today in my art life is very different from what I do in my design life.
It was also somewhat of an accident. At that time, I was working with some fantastically talented people who could really draw. I saw what they were able to do and wanted to up my own game. I found a drawing class at Laguna Gloria and signed up. They called me later to say that the class had been canceled and suggested I take an oil painting class instead. That’s where it started. I moved on from there to take classes at Atelier Dojo which really accelerated my learning. I’ve only started selling my work in the past year. All the proceeds have gone to Lifeworks, an Austin organization that works to eliminate youth homelessness from the community.
Over the years, I’ve gotten deeper and deeper into not just the painting itself but the history and culture that surrounds it. Along the way, I’ve become friends with professional artists and seen just how bonkers hard it is to make a living. I’ve also seen how people are in equal measure fascinated and intimidated by art. This inspired me to create You Should Own Art which is a monthly email newsletter that shares ten really good artworks that aren’t terribly expensive. The big idea is to give people more exposure to art and get them used to the idea that art is both necessary to a life well-lived and entirely accessible.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
As in any creative endeavor, self-doubt has been my biggest obstacle. Each step forward has been accompanied by a cocktail of imposter syndrome and insecurity about my own ability. It also isn’t always clear to me what, exactly, it is that I’m trying to do. You’d think that by now, after more than twenty years as a professional creative person, these insecurities would have been well and truly wrestled to the ground. But, through loads of conversations with friends and colleagues and after listening to about a gazillion hours of podcast interviews, I’ve come to the conclusion that these feelings are simply part of a creative life.
Time has also been tricky to manage. Building the fundamental skills takes hours, not to mention the (seemingly) aimless exploration and experimentation needed to find your voice. And hours are very hard to find in between family and professional life. I haven’t always got the balance right. Establishing a routine has been important to making progress. Equally important has been being okay when the routine is inevitably broken by life events.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I do two things. First, I’m a painter. Specifically, I love to paint and draw people. For the past several years, I’ve worked on developing my skills to the level that I’m capable of realizing my ideas. Recently, I’ve graduated from painting what’s in front of me to painting what’s in my head. In the process, my style has become looser and the subjects a bit weirder. I’m increasingly bringing in more and abstraction but always with an element that is recognizably human.
Often, I can’t really express the idea behind the work in words. In another field, that would mean you don’t have an idea. But, here it means there is room for interpretation by the viewer. Right now, I’m organizing myself around these loose ideas and producing bodies of work. I make as many permutations of that idea as I can think of, and then move on.
Second, I produce the You Should Own Art newsletter which argues that our lives are much better with art in them than without. Every month, I pull together ten artworks according to a theme and send them out to my subscribers.
I want to bring more people into the art world and share with them the really beautiful things out there that are entirely within reach. The art world and the process of buying art can be very intimidating. I try and cut through all of that by showing people work that they can buy online and explain why I like it in entirely non-academic terms.
It’s been a real joy. I frequently hear from people who look forward to the newsletter every month and even better, who have been inspired to buy art from the artists or galleries I feature.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
It’s really hard to say. It’s wonderful that there are always more ways for artists to build an audience and make money. But it also seems like each of those channels takes a ton of work and not every artist wants to be an entrepreneur. The same channels have put a ton of pressure on galleries and dealers who have traditionally been the ones that help market and sell the work.
It seems to me that as everything goes online, there’s an even bigger need for thoughtful curation than before. The question of how to connect the work to the audience for it remains, regardless of the technology.
I am excited for the future of digital artwork. I’m really interested in immersive technologies like Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. I don’t see these limited to strapping cameras onto our faces. Those traveling Van Gogh “experiences” were a little cheesy but do show how transportive they can be. I also think we’ll solve the issue of the infinite reproducibility of digital artworks. The whole NFT craze was totally bananas, but at the core, there were some very good ideas, particularly around tracking provenance and ownership, that deserve further exploration.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ariccheston.bigcartel.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ariccheston/
- Other: https://youshouldownart.substack.com
Image Credits
Aric Cheston
