the artist episode,how deliciously overdue.

As some of you know, I’m an abstract surrealist painter, and in sobriety, I’ve found my way back to the studio with a clarity and reverence I hadn’t known before. Art has always been my portal, but sobriety gifted me the stillness to step through it properly. It’s one of those strange and sacred gifts of a clear mind like suddenly being fluent in your own soul again.

Joining me today is the brilliant Jason Mason, a fellow artist I serendipitously met at my friend Oliver Clegg’s exhibition at The Journal Gallery in Los Angeles. (Oliver, if you don’t know him, is a wildly talented British artist and all-around excellent human.)

Now, I’ve often suspected people tune out the moment I start waxing poetic about pigments and palettes especially those who don’t speak the sacred, slightly mad dialect of artists. I get it. Debating the emotional undertones of a mauve shadow for twenty minutes isn’t everyone’s idea of riveting. But for those of us who feel in color and think in texture, it’s church.

That’s how Jason and I bonded, actually over a hue. My dress, to be exact. We spiraled into a color-fueled art vortex, the kind of conversation where time folds in on itself and suddenly you’re surrounded by others who get it. Before we knew it, we were in a full-blown salon showing each other our work, dissecting brushstrokes, laughing, philosophizing. Heaven.

In this episode, we talk about the quiet joys and private wars of the creative process, the strange melancholy of finishing a piece, and the sweet vulnerability of finally sharing it. We also touch on the gallery scene, and how it might evolve to be a bit more accommodating to those of us who no longer self-medicate with champagne flutes.

It’s an easy, meandering, soul-nourishing conversation between artists. And whether or not you consider yourself one, I hope you’ll find something in it that resonates.

Enjoy.