Meet Patrick Stuver

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Patrick Stuver a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Patrick, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.

I am fortunate that I was born with a go get um, wake up on the right side of the bed, tomorrow will for sure be better kind of attitude and outlook on life. Fortunate because the challenges I faced as a kid who moved from location to location roughly every three years presented a tableau of opportunity to explore the world of being the target of bullies and established groups of local kids. If I weren’t born with a “bright side” attitude I am sure my outlook on the world would have been much more bleak. So, I started with the raw goods but my mom really fertilized the field of self confidence ensuring I fully developed a healthy self esteem.

My mother struggled with a lifetime of addictive behaviors (food, alcohol) which were bookended by undiagnosed bi-polar syndrome which was all thrown into a kettle of uncertainty and instability by a husband (my hard working, space program supporting dad) who always chose his companies’ (IBM) needs for him to move to a new project location over his family’s need for some sort of stability.

I tell you this to put a fine point on the fact that my mother, with all her challenges, infused her kids (6) with a level of self confidence that provided the foundation to each finding their own path to success. Every one of my brothers and sisters, if asked would insist they were, without a doubt, my mothers favorite child. That is a pretty significant accomplishment when you consider the level of struggle involved with just moving a family of 6 every couple years let alone battling one’s own demons and then finding enough energy to make 6 for 6 kids feel deeply loved, appreciated and seen.

I was born with the raw materials for a healthy self esteem, my mother took the opportunity to make me feel seen, loved and aware of my talents.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Following a successful career as a co-founder of a tech company I was fortunate to find myself in a position to pursue anything I had tucked away in my “someday” file. Upon my retirement from professional life I jumped into the world of creative work focusing first on ceramics then sculpture and settling on a practice of highly textured, nature inspired 3D paintings.

Ceramics was an early curiosity of mine and I spent time exploring the field but found the waiting between phases of work left me feeling anxious for completion so I tucked my ceramic work to the back of the hobby shelf. Still always willing to jump on a pottery wheel but serious pursuit abandoned.

I began gathering found items and making repurposed found item art. Sometimes I made excellent art that I would leave hanging in trees or on the side of hiking trails. Other times, if I am being honest… I took trash I found, spent weeks manipulating it and ended up with a collection of well organized, painted trash. Matter of fact, many of the final pieces I thought were wonderful inspired art turned out to be junk on a board upon reflection a year later. I determined the skill of creating really interesting found item art is indeed a rare talent I for the most part did not have.

It was the process of gathering things of interest in nature and repurposing them into tree hangers that led me to the idea of using twigs, leaves, stones, sand and other organic debris (paper, cardboard, cotton) on canvas and creating a textured sculpture then painting the resulting end product. I found that you can only load a canvas with so much weight before it starts stretching and self destructing so I began creating my own solid substrates to place my paint sculptures on. It is here, in this practice that I have found my favorite outcomes.

I build flowing, nature inspired pattern based artwork. High color. High texture. Repurposed items gathered from my hikes embedded into a piece of art and painted to created new patterns and textures from the combination of the items in unusual ways. I work hard at bringing out subtle patterns in ways that are only spotted if a viewer takes time to look and digest the art, each person finding things that coalesce for them, at the moment of viewing. I want my art to present something new every time it is seen.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Persistance. Curiosity. Confidence.

There are so many things an early artist can learn if they choose to go to art school. So many shortcuts. I decided to skip art school and begin creating straight away. I made thousands of mistakes and continue to learn the hard way every day. But, I am fortunate enough to be a naturally persistent person. I was born to try again and it is persistence which has softened the blow of failure. Stick with what you are doing, be open to change but keep moving towards the end goal every day.

Being curious is a useful trait to develop. It is curiosity that leads to artistic discovery. The willingness to try new things, new combinations, new materials that lends itself to becoming a truly unique artist, someone who brings a whole new thing to the world. Isn’t that the ultimate goal?

Confidence. Boy. If you lack confidence I don’t know how you survive in a world of subjective value. Finding what you feel best about yourself, focusing on that when things are difficult, confidence is the fuel to the overcoming failure engine and can be cultivated but must be pursued and strengthened every day through the use of affirmations, training, honing expertise and surrounding oneself with supportive experts who provide constructive feedback in order that you can develop your practice. Stop searching for a “safe space”, that is a dream killing embrace. Instead seek knowledge and work to improve the best of the things you learn. Your confidence will soar when you know you are a well educated expert.

What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?

I am a firm believer in being a realist when identifying one’s strengths. Spend the time, take the tests and figure out your strengths. Once you have determined them find jobs and hobbies that make good use of those strengths. Trying to be an excellent generalist is entertaining but will not provide the fruit hard study fosters. Money, if that is important to you is typically doled out to experts of one type or another. Gain expertise and gain power.

As I was growing up I smiled easily, overcame difficulty, bounced back from at times pretty severe beatings and was generally considered a flighty, weird-ish kid. However, one thing I heard over and over throughout my youth is that I could talk up a storm. I strung together ideas and stories in ways people hadn’t considered or heard before. I could amuse people, get and keep their attention sometimes through well designed story lines, other times by just being the weirdest person in the room. In any case I lacked a serious amount of ability to focus being a poster child for ADD.

I took an honest evaluation of my skills after graduating high school and determined a career in sales of some type would be the best path for me. I knew I wanted to sell at the top of the sales game. I didn’t want to sell door to door (I did for a period of time), nor did I want to be on a car lot or in an office so, I specialized. I took a look at the highest paying sales jobs of that time and determined it was lasers, robotics or tech/internet.

Lacking a PhD in light manipulation, lasers was out. Lacking residence in Japan (the heart of robotics at the time) robots were out but technology and particularly internet tech was wide open, new and hungry for specialists. It was there that I took up study. I had at this time earned my undergraduate and graduate degrees in business and threw myself into the world of internet technology. Over the next couple years I became an expert and that expertise gave me the ticket I needed to sit at the table when the opportunity presented itself to start up a new tech company.

How you may ask does this translate to art? I believe expertise in any field gives the expert power over that field. You are a painter? Be the best painter. Sculptor? Learn clay back and forth, go overseas and created in different places with different clays and techniques. Become a master and people will want to listen to you, they will want to see your art, they will want to collect the things you create because you are the best at what you do.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://patrickjohnstuver.com
• Instagram: @patrickjohnstuver
• Other: [email protected]