Meet RJ Gardner

We were lucky to catch up with RJ Gardner recently and have shared our conversation below.

RJ, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

I overcame imposter syndrome by remembering my reasons for creating the art that I create and what I hope to achieve with it. I make sure that I celebrate all of my accomplishments no matter how big or small the accomplishment may be. Whether it’s an art show or a magazine feature, I take the time to enjoy and celebrate that for a bit. Not in an arrogant or egotistical way but simply giving myself the validation instead of looking for outside validation from somewhere else. You have to be your own biggest fan in a way and truly believe in yourself. I trust and believe that I deserve to be in the spaces I’m blessed to be in and that I’m pretty damn good at what I do with my art.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I’m a visual artist based in Richmond, VA, I’m 30 years old and I’ve been creating my art for what’s about to be 10 years now. I got into photography towards the end of my senior year of high school back in 2012 around the same time that Instagram first started and began to become the social media platform that it is now. I found out about photographers/visual artists such as Elise Swopes, Greg Noire, and Dan Marker-Moore through Instagram and I instantly fell in love with how their work/photography looked. I wanted to do something similar with my photography but in my own way so that it wouldn’t be carbon copies of their work and styles. Something that would kind of stand out on its own while still respectively drawing inspiration from them.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

There’s two pieces of advice I have for people. The first would be to keep putting yourself out there. No matter what it is that you do creatively. Whether it’s writing, or different mediums of artistry such as music, painting, sculpting, photography, etc. keep putting yourself out there for the world to see. Share that part of yourself to the world and shine man.

Do art shows, start a blog, make a SoundCloud account, a YouTube channel, anything that showcases your talent and your creativity. Don’t hide that part of yourself. It just might be what the world needs.

My second and last piece of advice would be to push through the fear of failure. It may be easier said than done but failure is just part of the process of success. That’s all it is. Once you get past that fear of it you’ll be just fine.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

The only challenge I’d say I’m facing right now is finding the right photo printer for myself so that I can print my art on canvases on my own. Once I find the right one I can stop having a company do it for me and save myself a bit of money in the process lol

Contact Info:

• Website: https://photographicspectrum.bigcartel.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whatuprj/?hl=en