Art Larger Than Me with Daren Todd [276]
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In the world that we are working to build, there's going to need to be art. And we're not going to get to that world that we want without art in our fight and in our struggle and in our rebuilding and in our dreaming. We're the dreamers. And without the dreams, what do we really have? Like nobody wants to go and live in a world without color. And we're the colorers.

Welcome to Art Juice. This is honest, generous and humorous conversations that will feed your creative soul and get you thinking with me, Alice Sheridan. And today I am joined by an artist who I don't know very well, but we'll get into the story of that in a moment. His name is Darren Todd, and you can find him over on Instagram at The Daily Darren, where you can see the most amazing work that he does in the community that he's in.

And I think this was so inspiring about there is so much to share, which is in a really kind of different space than I'm in. So it's really exciting to go into all the topics that we're going to talk about today. But first of all, should we tell everybody where we first met? Yeah, Threads of all places. Threads of all places. Are you very active on Threads?

I'm trying to be, yeah, it seems like kind of a more connected space. Like it seems like actual people are still there. Yeah. And so, you know, I'll post something and someone will respond and, you know, they're in Kentucky, but they're like a real simple person. So for now I'm trying my best to at least duplicate what I'm doing on Instagram onto threads. And also it's good for random thoughts, just like Twitter X used to be back in the day. Yeah.

I can't be on there now so you know always trying to diversify I can't blue sky there's so many apps it's overwhelming and I also hesitate to leave my 5000 Instagram followers which isn't much but has taken a lot of time to build up yeah I think that the the fun thing though about this and the point that's interesting in terms of our connection was

You made a comment about the podcast and I responded with a voicemail within threads, not as a DM, right? Just as a voicemail, just because I thought it would be fun. And you were like, can't believe that's actually you. And then we just thought we just need to start talking. And I think when everything does become so big and online and it can feel very distant, like the power of that individual connection is one of the joys.

So let's just talk a little bit about where you've come from, because I think you said, and I couldn't go back and find it, but you said something like, listening to Art Juice has what helped you go from nothing to a six figure. I don't like that phrase because it's not why we're doing it, but it's representative of the growth. Yeah. Artist that you are today. And it absolutely blew me away. Tell us a little bit about that story.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I hate that phrase too, because it's not a good barometer of what we're like, why we're doing this. I agree. But in the capitalistic world that we live in, it is a good measure of like, okay, things are going in a direction that is good. But yeah, I, and when I got that voice note, I ran around the living room and I had two friends there who have no idea what art juice is and have no idea what I listened to in my studio and was just like,

This is wild. You know, it was, yeah, it's the internet is magical in a way that we can even be talking and meeting right now. And it does help us.

keep that connection despite how big the world can feel. But yeah, and I actually didn't do any art professionally or very much at all before 2020. I'm a musician, a singer and a songwriter. And I moved from my home in California up to Portland kind of on a whim. I just met a guy while I was playing in a bar in Santa Barbara who said,

Come stay with me for a week in my house and we'll just make an album together. And then, you know, that would be a fun summer project. So I did. My mom was convinced I was going to get kidnapped and have my kidneys farmed in the basement. But I just had this inner like feeling I must have to go. So I went and I came, I moved and we did music for five years or so from 17 to 20.

That's not five years. That's three years. So three years or so. And then when 2020 pandemic hit, I got laid off from my bartending job that I was kind of working to pay the bills. And I had always talked about, oh, I would love to be a muralist. Oh, I would love to be a painter. But, you know, you can't. That's not a real career. As if music was a real career, which that doesn't make sense either. But yeah, I really was told like that's a plan. CDFE that you can't bank on that. But yeah,

I was home. We were all home. There was nothing to do. And I was just in my room and I was, oh, I bet there's like good art podcasts. And I came across Art Juice and started listening to it. And I don't remember what episode was the first one, but I felt really inspired to just start painting. I had never painted. I had drawn. I had illustrated with ink. I had done doodles. I

paint pens, but I'd never put a brush in paint and put it on the wall. But I wanted to mural and I wanted to make big paintings. And so I just got a big piece of plywood and I put it in my room and I had some house paint from the basement and I just started painting. But

On this thread of human connection, which I think might be the thread of this talk, I started painting on Reddit. And at the time, they were doing a live stream, kind of watch what people are doing in their house so that we can all stay connected. And I just started painting on the live stream. And seven people were watching. And then I turned around and 70 people were watching. And then I turned around and 7,000 people were just watching me paint and

And a friend texts me, you're on the front page of Reddit. And I was just like, okay, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just practicing. But I just made a commitment to myself to show up and practice on livestream every day. And that lasted about seven or eight months. And people started to buy my paintings just from the livestream.

Which I didn't expect at all. What did you have at that point? So you've got your piece of plywood. You're just doing it. You're thinking, I'm just going to just paint. And every day, but when you're saying people are buying things, but you're painting large scale things.

So I, so, okay. So I did the plywood for a few days. It was a quarter sheet. So it was like, you know, a two by two or a four by four, I guess a four by four sheet. Okay. And then the first day someone said I would buy that. I thought, oh, I should be painting on a canvas because then I can sell it. Right. So the second or third day, someone said, I want to buy that. And they just messaged me in the chat and I gave them my email. They gave me their shipping address and,

I horribly boxed it up and I feel so bad for all those people who have my first pieces of art that who knows how they ended up getting to where they got. But yeah, someone Venmo'd me, you know, a hundred dollars and I sent them a canvas and that kind of started it. I didn't have a website.

My Instagram was all focused on my music and you couldn't tell I was an artist because I really wasn't yet. And pretty quickly within a few months, I started a website and I started an LLC because I thought, okay, this is probably going to be my job. I'm not going to go back to bartending behind a mask and a glass and it's just never going to be the same. And I want to paint murals. So this isn't a mural, but it's getting bigger. And if I can sustain myself with this

Studio practice, I can find a wall somewhere in town that I can paint. And that's kind of exactly what happened. It was like four months of being on lockdown and kind of selling a painting a week. And then I had a friend once summer came and we were back outside who was like, yeah, my mom has this fence and she wants it to have art on it. And she's wanted it for a long time. And I know when we worked together in the bar, you wanted to paint. So you can just come and paint it.

And we can't pay you, but you're welcome to do it. So I had some house paint and I had an idea for a mural. And I went down there and just in a day and a half painted it. And friends started to show up and take pictures and people from the neighborhood would walk by. And from that mural, another couple while I was painting said, come and paint our fence. And so I went and they paid me and we did a GoFundMe and I actually did

Did some research into the history of that neighborhood here in Portland. It was like a traditionally Black neighborhood that had been like terribly gentrified and just kind of snatched right out of the hands of so many Black families. And so I put a lot of that history into the mural and people were really excited and interested and started bringing their kids and saying, you know, look at this guy. And it just, I mean, it just exploded from there.

I have so many questions. And I also want to say, because you guys can't see unless we start putting clips of this on YouTube. Yeah. But as you're talking, there's a lot of shrugging. There's a lot of I just did this. I just did this. Like it was just that. Yeah, I just did a thing. I just did a thing. And I think that is so important.

because there are so many of us at different times and also different people who get very caught up in your head about things

All the what ifs, like all the planning it out, all the doing it. And as you're talking, I can see that obviously it came from that point in time that we were all in when they're really, you know, there were so many limits that approaching things like that almost felt like the only way we could do things like I'll just try it. Is that something that you've always felt quite strongly within you, like that ability to just give something a go?

Yes, I will say, without trying to sound conceited, that yes, people do say to me, oh, you're good at whatever you want to do. And I'm like, well, I'm not good at everything, but I do have this gut feeling of I'm going to try this. And I usually follow it. And sometimes it doesn't turn into anything and sometimes it comes back later. This was just one of those moments.

things like I just knew. Yeah, I just knew it. You have to try this. You have to go do this. I also had this idea of, well, if it's bad, you can paint over it. Right. Well, that's what I've always said. Make a bad painting, you can cover it over and you can start again. And yeah, I guess I have kind of always been that person of like, I'm just going to try this and see where it goes. Don't have a lot of fear. And while I do have imposter syndrome, which is probably why I'm shrugging,

I also think like nobody really knows what they're doing really. We like, we all don't know. So I might as well try. I'm also pretty stubborn and headstrong and independent and really struggled to find a career that felt like

Like satisfying. So I bounced around from maybe 14 different jobs over my 20s, which is something you do in your 20s, but it was pretty chronic. Like I'll stay here and I'll leave and I'll stay here and I'll leave. And nothing was independent enough. Nothing was creative enough.

Nothing felt like I could really say what I wanted to say. And I'm good at being my own boss and being a business owner. And so I'm really lucky and fortunate that I found it. But also it took a lot of risk jumping off. And what do you think it was about murals? Why? Because it's quite an unusual starting point. Why were murals the thing that clearly felt so powerful? Yeah.

I think back and I've asked my mom this. I painted my bedroom walls when I was six. And in my first apartment, I didn't get my deposit back because I painted the whole hallway twice, two different apartments. I didn't learn at all. So I've always wanted to draw on the wall. And I, you know, it sounds woo woo to say like, I was meant to do this. But I think I've just always loved the idea of painting something really big. I'm pretty small. I'm only five foot two.

so I'm like a tiny guy so I just thought what better way to like say something than to say it really really big and then I would watch muralists on YouTube back in the day like Kipto and Detour these are like American muralists who spent and Ten Hundred who spent a lot of time documenting what they were doing and it just looked really cool and people walked by and said you're amazing you're changing the community and I just thought

I'm a little black guy. You know, I have kind of like an interesting different story. And I know there are so many people like me who don't feel like they have a voice. So if I can get out there and paint a wall, maybe they can be inspired to paint their own walls in their own way. And yeah,

That kind of propelled me enough to say, like, I'm just going to try it. I'm just going to try to paint this fence. And the fence is still painted. I need to actually go and redo it when the snow stops. But the nice thing about murals is they have some longevity where some of these art pieces I do say, like, I don't know how long this will last. I hope these don't end up in a museum because it will be a nightmare for the conservatorists to figure out how to pull together. They're so good. It is good. I forget.

you know, cause we're just living. I forget about how unlikely of a story it actually is, you know, cause you grow with it. I mean, I had my boss at my last job that I got laid off from two weeks before I got laid off. She sat me down and was like, I love your work. I love the way you are with customers, but you are miserable and I hate watching you be miserable and I need you to go and

Figure out what it is that you really want to do. I don't want to fire you, but you're, you don't want to be here. That's amazing to have a boss that can see that. Yeah. And to know, I mean, it does make you think, doesn't it? How many times in our life we have these points of like the sliding door moments where we could have said yes to something and what would have been on the outside of that. I've been having this conversation with someone in DMS today who said something to me about, you know, about, about luck, about being lucky and,

And maybe we can talk about this a bit. I think that's always a really interesting thing because it's very easy. You don't always see, you never see.

you never fully appreciate, I think what somebody else has been through to get to where they are. And it's very easy to see things on the outside and think it is lucky. And while I'm not saying, you know, there have been parts in my life that I am very grateful for that and no doubt have made it easier. People also don't see the other thing that goes into the luck or the creating the luck or the saying yes to things and the trying it out. And,

Even in the conversation, she's a little bit like, oh, do you want to know about all the things that have gone wrong? And I'm like, no, you're kind of missing the point. I mean, that's not really where we're going with this. Yeah. So you've told us a little bit about how you find the project, almost like through word of mouth and recommendation. Yeah.

And in terms of the kind of feedback that you get from it, how it impacts people, tell us some of those stories. What's your favourite one that you've done and what you've heard back from people? Because I always think that's almost like completing the loop for artists. We have our struggles, we have our creation, why we want to do it. And then the how it's received is such a beautiful finishing part to it.

Yeah, it's true. Yeah. At this point it is, I would say 80% word of mouth. I apply to things periodically and, you know, have the same success rate at applying as everyone else. But a lot of things, our clients saying, we saw your mural over here and we want one over here, or you worked with my friend and I want you to work with our company. Yeah.

So murals are nice in that way that they are a giant billboard everywhere they go. But yeah, I think of two when I think of my favorites that complete the circle. One was really early. It was like maybe number four, mural number four back in 2021. We have this afterschool program in America called the Boys and Girls Club. It's nationwide, but then it's really like...

local chapters. And in Portland, there are a handful, but there's one in North Portland on the main strip, which is Martin Luther King and Killingsworth. They reached out and said, you know, we have these columns, like 11 columns and people keep tagging them, but kids, you know, walk through here every day and we want something for them to look up to when they come to the club. And at the time that was the biggest, biggest project I'd ever had the most money I'd never made a thousand dollars.

Let alone, you know, it was like $10,000 or something crazy like that. And so I was really excited and really nervous, but I said like, yeah, I'll figure it out. And I ended up painting portraits of.

People from the community, Black people from the community, and the club is sponsored by the Portland Trailblazers, which is an NBA basketball team. So I put a few portraits of them. And like Amanda Gorman, who's the Poet Laureate, and Malala Yousafzai, who is an activist, and just put, you know, a blurb about who they are and what makes them great.

And was so zoomed in on, you know, making the painting good that I didn't think a lot about the impact while I was doing it. I tell people it was pretty silly because I did it in January. So it was like 34 degrees outside, which I would not ever do again. But I didn't know it was such a learning experience.

And then to this day, I have kids and their parents text me or call me or see me in public and say like, oh, you're the guy that painted the columns that I drive by every day that I have my kids read. Some of my kids' first words were reading from these columns that you wrote. That's wild. Like that, I don't think I could have...

I forecasted that. I knew it was a big deal, but I didn't know it was going to be like that. And it makes me think back to the art my mom exposed me to when I was a kid.

And some of the first creativity that I got to see. And of course, yeah, of course, that's how it works. But you just don't think about it when you're painting. You're just painting. You know, you're just doing your day, your life. And so to look back and to have children be able to say, like, you impacted me and now I want to paint. Or you impacted me and now I feel like I can go and do the thing that I'm good at because you're good at it and you did it. It does close the circle.

And I find that when I just focus on community, like uplifting people the best I can, the money is very secondary and it has been amazing and it has increased every year and it follows that. But I think if I was out here just looking for money, I don't, I just don't think the circle would be closed and I don't think I would be as successful as I am.

No. Do you do work directly with children in groups or is that like not part of your the way you work and your time at the moment? I do, actually. So some mural projects have a day built in where kids or whoever, like sometimes it's for companies and their workers will come and they'll put down the first coats.

I'll outline everything and I'll mark the colors and they'll have a hand in helping me. But I also teach four hours a week at a private school for kids who are just a little bit different. They may be on the spectrum. They may have a reading or learning disability. It's called Pacific Crest Community School here in Portland. So I, you know, I definitely don't do that for the money as all teachers know, but I get to spend about four hours a week just learning

kind of hopefully inspiring the kids. I don't teach a lot of hard skills. You know, we don't really necessarily learn how to shade a sphere, but I'm doing more of like, let's look at these artists who are making art today and let's talk about why it's important. And then let's find parallels in your life. And then let me just support you to make whatever you want to make. You need some styrofoam, I'll bring it in. You need some paper, I'll find it. And we just kind of do our projects together in class. Yeah.

I mean, that kind of relationship and input at that stage in anybody's life is so extraordinary. Who did that for you? I think first it was my mom and dad, of course. Like they just always instilled in me, you can do whatever you want to do. It will take some luck, but luck is also you have to be ready and willing to take that risk and take that jump.

And then I think I had an eighth grade English teacher. You know, I used to want to be a writer when I was that age. And I would write pages and pages and pages of probably cringe-worthy fiction at this point. But when I was a kid, you know, it was good because I was writing every day. And she really saw that. And then she put me through the paces. I mean, she was like, you have an essay due every week. And I'm not going to let you fail. I'm not going to let you slack off. She really taught me how to

take what I loved and value the putting the effort in. And my dad, you know, he's is still working today. You know, he works hard, he works most weekends. So I think I really was taught if you work hard at it, and it will take some luck. And you're ready when that when those things happen, and you're not like afraid to take that chance, you can kind of find some success.

But so many people along the way, that boss I had who was like, I might fire you if you don't find a better job. Partners along the way who have been like, you know, you can do this if you want to. Yeah.

And partners who have been like, don't get too big of a head, you know. Oh, really? Okay. What about, yeah. And I think often there's the ones who say, oh, I don't know. Is this Mike? You know, they bring that voice of doubt in. And, you know, and as you said at the beginning, mural artist, can I really be that? Is that a job? I think a lot of people have that coming with them too. Yeah.

And beyond the murals, the other thing that I saw that you did that was so cool was a streetcar rap. I mean, there is like, there are so many new things in what you're doing that I have to admit, I would just go, I don't even know how to start, how to start this, what to do. But like looking on your website, there are just so many things.

so many cool projects going on. I think that's, yeah. I say I'm a muralist, but I should probably begin to say, I don't like the word should. At some point I'll begin to say, it's just public art. I'm just an artist. But those, that streetcar wrap, that was really Portland streetcar reaching out to me and saying, send us some art and we'll put it on the car. So I don't, I mean, I think I could figure out how to get a car wrapped. It's just like calling the right business and sending them the right

graphics. I'm not the guy that would wrap it. And that's, that's one thing I've learned about being a business owner is like, Oh, I don't have to be the guy that,

that orders the sink and installs the sink and fixes the sink. I could just order the sink and somebody else can install it. But same thing with Ikea where they came along and said, you know, we want you to design a room. I'm not an interior designer, but I just made some mood boards. I gave them some colors and I gave them some art and then they took it and they ran with it and they did what they do.

So it's really collaborative, a lot of those outside the box projects. It is. And also people still have to be able to find you as well. So I'm just thinking about some of the practicalities of this. Like if you've done something and it's on a wall, like you're, there's obviously a sort of an inherent story within that, that I'm guessing gets reported locally, gets shared locally, right?

so that your name gets out there, so that people know who to contact. I mean, that's a really important part of this, isn't it? So when did you start building this into a website so that you could be found? So I did the, so I started the LLC in 2020, like two months in. I was like, art larger than me. I'm little. I want to make big art. Hadn't done a mural, but that was the idea.

And I also, I didn't realize at the time, but art larger than me is also like a metaphorical, like hopefully everything I do is impacting more than just me.

But I didn't, that's really like feel good and I didn't think about it that way at the time. So I made the site and no one went to it. No one cared about it. It just sat there. But I would send people there if they wanted to buy something and I would just update it with my projects periodically. And it was really ugly for a long time. And I think, so when I do a mural,

I kind of create a stencil for my logo and I'll put that in the bottom corner and I'll sign my name and I'll write my Instagram. So if someone sees my mural and they really want to know who did it, they probably end up on my Instagram before they end up on my website. Maybe that's different now.

And then another thing that I did maybe in 2022 was someone said, do you have your SEO hooked up? And I just thought I would rather die than figure out what that means. I don't know what that means. And I don't want to find out. And she was like, all it is, is you go on Squarespace and anywhere you can write a caption, write a caption and write your name and what you do in the caption. And I thought, okay.

I'll spend like four hours today looking at it. So every single link and every photo just says this art by Darren Todd, Portland artist. And I didn't think anything of it. And then one day someone texted me and said, oh, I Googled muralist Portland and you are the first link. Okay. That's awesome. That's the area.

SEO it really does work you just have to be really consistent and it is very very boring to sit there and rewrite every caption um but that helped I think because now people can type in like Darren Todd and if they spell it right with one r usually I'm the one that comes up on Google or on the internet at least on somewhere it'll come up okay tell us how we should be spelling it

Yeah, it's just D-A-R-E-N-T-O-D-D. Okay. No double R, but a double D in the Todd. Yeah. I'm trying to take over the double R guy too, but there's many more Darrens with double Rs. Tell us a little bit about this. There was a quote. I can't remember whether it was from your website or listening to something that

about art being not so much about the outcome as it is about the daily practice. When you focus on the practice, the outcome comes secondary because we've spoken a lot about how actually the end result of what you do, the scale of it, the way that it impacts people and becomes part of the community story is really important. So when you're not working on a particular project, what are the gaps like in between and, and,

Talk to us about this daily practice element. What does that mean to you?

Yeah, I think in the beginning, I had a really rigid idea of a daily practice. You know, I thought like I have to go into my studio every day like Alice and paint every week, you know, and be doing something with the paintbrush medium every day. But I don't think it's that anymore. At this point, it's really just making sure that I am exercising my creativity in whatever opportunity I have.

And so right now it kind of looks like I'll have a big mural project, but those happen in stages. It'll be like two to six weeks of just sitting on my iPad and pen and paper and just designing and then gathering inspiration and designing and drawing and redrawing and erasing and thinking I'm terrible and crying to my partner about why do I do this job? This is hard. And then coming to an idea and pulling it together and then saying,

selling it to the client or getting them to agree, that takes its own week. And then painting it. And in between those big projects, I maybe do five or six murals a year. It's a lot of looking for opportunities and applying. It's a lot of just wandering around life and trying to be inspired. And it has taken me, I've been doing this five years, and it's taken me five years to really

sort of forgive myself for the days where I am not outputting and realize that, oh, I'm inputting. Like, I'm downloading, I'm looking around, I'm seeing things. And when I feel that spark of like, oh, that's cool, I'm trying to record that and remember that so that when I go in the studio, I don't have that same old, I don't know what to paint. I'll just paint what I always paint and then feel really bad and leave.

So a lot of time spent in between just living, taking care of myself. And I do try to at least put pen to paper or colored pencil to paper or do some collage. I like to do like woodworking. So I do a lot of like building stuff, carving stuff and trying not to cut off my fingers in between to just stay like

keep my mind moving around solving problems, problems that I've set up for myself, really. Yeah, that problems we set up for ourselves, I think that that's a really important part of it for me, I think. And for me, you know, I like creating those problems on the painting so that I can resolve them on the painting. But there is something as well in what you said about forgiving yourself

And I don't know where we get this idea that our output, I mean, it's a Victorian thing, isn't it? That our output has to be consistent. And it's just so at odds in my experience with how almost every, I know I could, there are a few artists that I know who work on a really consistent output.

Me too. But they're few and far between. Yes.

Can you tell us a little bit more about this collaboration with IKEA? I think it was called Safe Haven, wasn't it? Yeah. What's the idea behind that? Because I think that's an important part as well about this, about how we respond to each other as people, which is a message I think we need to hear particularly now.

Yeah, I agree. I know that in Portland, and honestly, it's probably worldwide, but there is such a population of people who are just less fortunate and find themselves kind of slipping through the cracks, so to speak, in our day-to-day society. Through their choices, through no choices at all, through their circumstances, there's so many reasons why people find themselves without somewhere to live. And they often just don't get her

heard or seen or really cared about. And I think as a mural artist, I do touch a lot of community and end up as like a voice for a lot of marginalized communities. And so I don't, I still don't understand how Ikea really found me. I must've been written up on somewhere, somewhere online that was like, he's an advocate for marginalized communities. And they reached out to me with an Instagram DM and I deleted it.

Because I was like, yeah, I'm not born last night. You're not going to, I'm not, that's not real. And they sent it again. And we're like, okay, here's an email message us. We want to do this collab. And at the time my mind was exploding. I was just like, that's a, I've always loved Ikea. I've loved running around in there as a kid and getting lost. I love the simple design and yeah.

Just, it was crazy. So they were like, yeah, we love your message. And I had done a mural for like an apartment building for people who were recently unhoused and were just getting into their first apartment and getting on their feet. And it had job services and a community kitchen. So I think that must have been the way they found me. There must have been some press about that. I worked with them.

to kind of design a small space. So it was imagining like what it would be like to be in that apartment and have just, you know, closet, bed, bathroom. And my thought was you really don't get on your feet until you can invite people into your house. We just bought a house and it hadn't really felt like a home until we've allowed people to come over and see how we live and live with us, even if it's just for a few hours.

But when you're in a small apartment, do you really want people to come in? So I thought, like, what can I do with this design and with this layout that will make people feel like they can build a community in this small space? And I mean, I kind of set that project that like creative problem for myself. And Ikea was like, yeah, we love this. Let's run with this. And then I just did a lot of mood boards, gathering ideas, and

And made a couple pieces of art for them to kind of grab my specific like geometric abstract style that I do a lot. And then they took it and completely just turned it into something really cool. Do you like what they did with it?

Yeah, there's been two iterations of it. And there was like a kind of like a soft muted color earth tones version that I thought was like a little bit more feminine and like soft, which also is me. I love like a brown and a beige and some greens. I don't like painting with green, but I love living with green.

And then they did another version that's like a pop, like orange, blue, black, white. And I thought like that's full of energy that kind of speaks more to the art that I create out in the studio. But both have been really cool. I will never get used to someone saying I was at Ikea yesterday and I turned the corner and I was just about to get in a fight with my partner and then we saw you.

because we were stressed and then we saw your giant picture and it was amazing. We hung out in your room and we laid on that bed and it's just so cool to see that they have your work in the store. It's really, I think the whole story and just listening to you talk about it and why you do it and it's so important to you and it's a real discussion that a lot of people are having in many different ways about AI and

about general cost of living, funding, art being expensive, art being not necessary. And most of us listening are probably on the art is essential side of that equation, right? Yeah. I'm not even sure if there's a question behind here, apart from maybe just to reiterate to people that whatever way you're working,

whatever you've chosen, this is a valid contribution. You know, imagine what, you know, a world without this kind of thinking would be a very dry world. I'll put it like this. I think I have a friend who I met up with kind of,

Right after, well, in the beginning of January, I'll say that. I'm in America, so the beginning of January holds some context for people here. And we were kind of lamenting, she's also an artist and a gallerist. And I was saying, you know, I don't know, the same thing we all say, I don't know if this matters. Like, yeah, the murals, I can see that they matter. But my art that I do in my studio that I sell one painting at a time is

Like, how privileged is it of me to just go out there and make this and then try to find people who are well-to-do who buy it? And she was like, yeah, but in the world that we are working to build, there's going to need to be art. And we're not going to get to that world that we want without art in our fight and in our struggle and in our rebuilding and in our dreaming.

We're the dreamers. And without the dreams, what do we really have? Like, nobody wants to go and live in a world without color. And we're the colorers. And that made me really think, like, okay, uh...

I'm helping to build the world that we want. And I can build a few things. I can make a chair. You know, I can make a table. But I'm not a construction worker. I paint. And so I'm here to probably beautify things. And someone else will build the house. And someone else will design the carpet. But we all have a part to play in that. And that kind of gives me, like, a little bit of solace when I'm starting to feel like what I do is superficial. Mm-hmm.

And I've also tried to learn that like artists, we have this habit of thinking everyone's just like us. Assume that everybody can kind of do what we do and think the way that we think. On both sides. Yeah. And then you meet people and they're like, oh, and you're like, really? Is this? I don't know. Yeah. And we meet people that are like, oh, I could buy six of those. Right. I'm like, that's wild. I can hardly afford one of my own paintings.

at this point. And I definitely can't afford my own mural. You know what I mean? Like if I was going to pay the going rate, I can't do it. I have a rate that I charge nonprofits, but corporations, but that's like very limited thinking. And, you know, I, I,

I learned about like the, like the, the Esther Hicks kind of, you know, your thoughts. I learned about that from you guys. I heard we say like, this is some crazy stuff to get into. And that was enough for me to be like, okay, I want to challenge my mind and hear about this. And the more I have listened to it, the more I've been like, yeah, like we really do craft our reality through the way that we think and what we expect and

of the world is kind of what we get on a lot of levels, maybe not infinitely. And yes, there's chance. And yes, horrible things happen every day that it doesn't do any good to blame ourselves for. But a lot of the way that we shape our reality is really up to us. And so we could have like this really narrow lens and assume everyone's like us, or we could just stay open to the idea that we're all super different.

with different experiences. I've got a question for you because you're clearly very creative in the way that you actually really approach things and open up your mind to things. And I want to give a shout out as well to Denise Gasser on Instagram.

Who I first met when she was doing an art project about having really limited art. And she was on a previous episode of the podcast talking about making art in the cracks between being a mother. Oh, yeah, I listened to that one. Yeah, and she's got an idea at the moment that I saw her talking about, which was making

a different type of work, but a large scale version. And the idea behind it is that, you know, people, everybody deserves to have large scale and original work in their home. So she's doing a version of her work that is large scale, but it's going to be priced much lower. That's only open to people on her mailing list and releasing one a month. So there are obviously limits to that. And I think it does depend on the kind of work you make and,

whether that is possible. But the idea behind it, I really love because I'm with you on the sense of slightly struggling that art is this kind of elitist and maybe we need an aspirational element to it for people not to undervalue it. And I suppose in a way, it's one of the reasons why we do this podcast because it's

It's almost like this is a way that we can share something that has ripples in the world. And then maybe the paintings are what support that, you know? Yeah. But my question... That's not my question. That's just random thoughts. My question is...

How do you have multiple lots of ideas of things all the time? And how do you decide whether something is a yes for you and a no? Because there must be so many different ideas that come in all the time in your week. Endless, endless ideas. I think I've heard you say that too. Just infinite ideas. And every single one is like, oh my God, I could so totally go and just start an entire new business doing this new thing.

And sometimes I try and then it loses steam. Sometimes I try and it just takes off. I at the very least do write them down and have this like overwhelming list of just things that when I look at it, it's still a spark. Yeah. And sometimes those things merge into one project. Yeah.

I recently have begun trying to use client work to exercise these ideas. So I'll have the client come and say, we want a thing, whatever you want to do. And I used to try to like imagine what they wanted, not listening to them saying whatever you want to do. And so now I go back to my list and I say, these are the things that inspire me. Which one of these projects can I plug into this? Okay. So you're matching them up. You're kind of like seeing where the two different things mesh. That's a really nice way of doing it. Yeah.

I will say though that's only come after doing this, you know, my 10,000 hours or whatever where it's like I don't know if at the beginning of your career

you can get away with plugging in yourself as much because they, you know, may have a vision and you don't necessarily have go-to style or a go-to thing that people are willing to pay for your thing. But the more that I've come up in this world, especially on the illustration and the design for companies, I'm able to say like, oh, this is interesting to me. Maybe this will be interesting to you. But then that doesn't even begin to capture like the, maybe I should make a game board. Maybe I should design a tarot deck. Maybe...

Socks, maybe I should become a hat. Maybe I should learn to carve wood and just endless things. And maybe having ADHD is a superpower and maybe it's also really holding me back, but I get very bored doing the same thing over and over and over. So it's very helpful to have these little sparks and just find ways to plug them in. I still have trouble...

Doing them for no reason. So like, it's very hard for me to go in the garage and say, like, I had this idea that I, I don't think will sell. And I don't think anyone cares. It's hard for me to still finish it. I'll start it. But if I have the impetus of like someone out there might find this useful, might be inspired by this.

This might be a residual income stream so I can continue to support my family. Those really propel me. So I do, I have found that I do, I am enterprising. Like I do need a kind of end goal or like a reason, but sometimes I make up that reason myself. And I definitely have, my partner sometimes is like,

No one's going to want that. And then I- But then you get surprised, right? Yep. Sometimes it ends up coming back around and being like, okay. The last one was a paint by numbers kit. I thought, okay, I know how to screen print. I know how to design. I will design the paint by number. I will screen print it onto boards. I'll get all the little paint cups and fill them myself. I hate that part.

terrible and I'll put a package together and if people want to paint like me or they just want to paint they can buy it and she was like do people do that people do do that but there's like a really it seems to me that there's what you're really good at is kind of quite a short amount of time between having the idea and working out what it takes to implement it and get it off the ground like when something hits you you really you really do it

Oh yeah. Sometimes it's like overnight or it's just obsessive. I mean, sometimes, you know, I'm like, okay, actually I have to like ride on the fire of this idea or I know that it will kind of lose its spark and just go onto the list of like pipe, pipe dream ideas. Okay. I got two more questions. We could be here for a while. Yeah. What happens and does it happen when you crash and burn?

Do you mean crash and burn on following an idea or do you just mean general like burnout from so much work? I think I just mean the general, whether it is even from so much work, the general kind of like, like what does that come? It does. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, you know, I suffer from depression like so many artists do and I have my periods, especially when the seasons change where I just, I just don't have it. And I do have to come back to like my kind of like

self-care, I hate that term, but regimen of like, okay, actually I'm recognizing that my well is dry, my cup is empty and like, I'm just tired. So I have to like rest and chill out and go to the spa and exercise, which seems counterintuitive, but is really the key thing.

And again, forgive myself for not constantly being like on and ready to go and kind of trust that it will come back. That's scary. It's really scary to do. Because there have been times when I haven't painted anything for like three months and thought like, what if this is the end and I just lost the pizzazz?

But it comes back as soon as I can alleviate that pressure and just learn to trust. But I definitely get burnt out, especially after a mural project. It's a lot of standing.

and a lot of repetitive painting. And there's always three, two or three days at the end where you feel like you're done, but then you just keep finding one more little divot that didn't get painted. And then while you're painting that, it drips onto a bottom divot, but you have to fix that. And then there's paint on the floor and you've got to wipe. And I really hate those days. I almost want to hire people just to do those days. But by the end of those, yeah, I don't want to draw anything. I don't want to look at anything.

And I've just learned to kind of having like, I have to let that go. And I also have to like tap into my community. And my partner is the best like caretaker, lover, supporter. She's just always consistent. And I've like never been more thankful to have someone in my life who just like cares enough to like ride with me through the ups and the downs.

It's amazing. And what's on your dream board then? You talked about dreams earlier. What's on your dream wish? I was going to say, what's the next project? But I think I want to say bigger than that. I think I want to be bigger than what's the next project. If we take this trajectory...

What's really on the dream board? Gosh, I just pulled up my list because I do keep a list of like, I call it further out ideas. And there's a couple of things that pop up. There's three things that pop into my mind, which will already tell you how much is on the list. But the next project is giant. I get to paint for the Portland Trailblazers inside their arena. That's, I never ever would have imagined that that would happen.

But that's client work. And then I'm going to start a like a co-working space here in Portland. So I've started a second business with a friend who's an arts educator and a friend who's like a really, really good artist. She's also in public art, but she wants to transition into more like studio art and

And I want to have a gallery space again and be able to like show my work and other artists work and do a residency where an artist can come and work for free and we can throw them a show at the end. So I got a giant grant from a creative arts supporting organization here in town. And we just leased the space. We're about to like sign the lease, but we just started the LLC. And that's really exciting and doesn't feel as pressured as I felt when I had my first

gallery project where it was like the first gallery project was like this has to make money so I can eat terrible terrible never gonna happen galleries that don't make a lot of money that's not what you get into them for this time around because we have the grant this is more of a like oh let's see what happens from this let's pay it forward you know I know I can make ends meet without it and not having pressure on it keeps it being fun

And then as like a personal artist in my practice, I am desperate to move from painting in 2D public art to doing 3D public art. So I recognize that that's going to require me to like learn and level up my skills in sculpting and modeling and making, you know, clay prototypes in my studio and figuring out how to channel my ideas further

from flat into interactive or into 3D. But I had a friend the other day who was like, you know, I was like, I'm just frustrated. I feel like my work has changed and grown and I love where it's at, but I always finish a piece and I say like, it's just missing, like it doesn't quite say what I want. And she was like, well, you're like a musician and you build things. Like

why don't you do more experiential interactive like installation art because you could make the music that goes with the room and then you can craft the art that's hanging on the walls and then you can come up with the activity that the people do while they're in the space you know how to do all those things why don't you do all those things and I was like you're right right I was gonna say earlier what's happened to the music and the writing

Yeah, it's still in me. Maybe, you know, maybe this comes down to the forgiveness part. You know, there are times where there's not time for everything, but to give ourselves the time to loop back to those, I think is fantastic.

I think I had to come to this place where I'm like financially secure enough to be able to slow down and their writing's coming back. You know, I want to write like not a memoir because I'm just a guy, but a little bit more of a like, this is what I know. This is what I've learned. This is what I see kind of book. And I also, yeah, the music I have, my students found me, they found my old music persona. And so they think that I'm very cool, which,

And it blows my mind. But they're like, we know the words to all your songs. When are you going to make a new song? And I'm like, oh, I didn't imagine kids would listen to this. Oops. But, you know, it's still there. I have I am surrounded by instruments here and I can't wait.

to be able to have projects and opportunities where they're asking me to like be able to stretch and combine all of those things. So I think that it's on the way. Yeah. I think that's on the way. I think having this studio space where I can do experiments. I think you know it's on the way. Yeah. It's not just, I think it's on the way. It's coming up. It's coming, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's coming up. And also what's interesting is I think there's this kind of,

like echelon in the art world where you like, you make paintings, but then there's this level of art where you just do weird things and you just get paid a bunch of money to just do a weird thing. And somehow that's like on the top of like, like, you know, when you go to a museum, they have like light beams and you jump in the ball pit and you like,

Stuff. There's just like stuff to do. That's like a level of art that I've always been like, I don't know if I can get there. And I'm at this point where I'm like, it's time to figure out how to get there. Because I have more to say than just 2D art.

art and I would love for people to be able to walk into the world as I see it, the world that we want to make and really feel what it's like to be in there. And I think that is what is like the most activist of all is to be able to say, look through my lens, imagine what I see, and then let's work together to like build this in reality. Thank you so much. It has been an absolute joy to spend time with you. I mean, I knew it would be.

But it is also extraordinary how we can just have these things. And it's just been, you know, just lovely to hear more about what you do and why. And if you're

equally inspired by this please go and find um Darren he's at the daily Darren on Instagram and also on threads is it the same on threads yeah yeah it's pretty much I'll try to keep it the same everywhere the daily there but your website is art larger than me.com so that's basically

Yeah, that's the place where you can look at all of these projects. And it's a really nicely put together website now. There's some art for sale if you know you're inclined and you want to have a souvenir of what I do also. But yeah, there's a newsletter too. That might be the best way to stay up to date with what's going on with me. Fabulous. Yeah. Thank you so much. This is...

It's unimaginable from listening in the beginning to talking to you here. It doesn't feel real. And it's, I'm really grateful for all that you and Louise put into the world. I can't even imagine the number of people that you touch their lives. You encourage them. You're demystifying things that are intentionally kept mystified from us. And thank you really. Well, I mean, just to, to know that it,

hits is just a complete joy so thank you for spending time with both of us today I hope that this conversation has left you with this question really so Darren's website is called art larger than me it's something that maybe we should all think about a little bit more

a little bit beyond that sometimes slightly intense navel gazing relationship we have with our own art and where it actually can stretch out further I think it's something I would certainly like to give a little bit more time and thought to maybe I'll bounce back to you when I have something because I can see that any conversation with you you'll be like yeah go do it go do it yeah

So let's just keep putting that out there and best wishes for everything and stay in touch and we'll see you next time on the podcast. Thanks for being here. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you so much.