We’re looking forward to introducing you to Chuck Hoffman & Peg Carlson-Hoffman. Check out our conversation below.
Chuck & Peg, really appreciate you sharing your stories and insights with us. The world would have so much more understanding and empathy if we all were a bit more open about our stories and how they have helped shaped our journey and worldview. Let’s jump in with a fun one: What do you think others are secretly struggling with—but never say?
Whether we know it or not, we struggle with the echo-chamber. The echo chamber occurs when our opinions are reinforced because our group of like-minded people share information only with each other. Inside our echo chamber our worldview goes unchanged. Our worldview is not challenged in a healthy way, but rather reinforced. In the process the echo chamber become walls that divide us. We may fear being cast out from our chamber, so we stifle welcoming free speech and the opportunity to listen and connect.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Chuck Hoffman + Peg Carlson-Hoffman are artists, peacemakers, and community builders who co-founded Genesis +Art, a studio and life practice focused on fostering positive social change and building relationships through collaborative art.
We are a husband-and-wife team of artists that work collaboratively on the same canvas to create art that explores themes of boundaries, transformation, and holding tension in the natural world. Edges, boundaries, and intersections have been at the heart of our artistic expression for more than 20 years. In a world of polarizations, we see boundaries and edges not as divisions, but as places of potential that hold tension and allow something new to rise from struggle. Boundaries and edges are places where we sense spirit moving and creating within and through each other. When we move through the chaos of creating together and allow compassion and understanding to take hold, it opens the heart to new possibilities. We have found a heart of judgement contracts.
We live life as an artistic practice. The real work of being an artist is a way of being in the world. We tend to think of our art as the harvest of the lives we are living. We feel destined to paint, but more so, we paint to open our imaginations to wonder and help bring peace into the world. We lived our life for many years on the boundary of the wilderness frontier in a remote, off-the-grid spiritual community deep within the forest of the Cascade Mountains of Washington state. Through our experience we have come to believe deeply in the interconnectedness of our relationship with the earth, with each other, and with the Spirit that sustains us. Through our studio, Genesis + Art in the St. Croix River Valley, we continue to create and offer workshops exploring the intersection of art, earth, and spirit.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
Living in the remote wilderness for six years worked on us as spiritual beings and as artists. We found ourselves listening to the stars, the sun, and the moon. We eavesdropped on the mountains and valleys, as well as the forests, creeks and lakes that surrounded us. The meadows, wildflowers and grasses whispered their unique vibrations. We would awake to the rich conversations of mule deer and their fawns, lumbering black bears, and migrating songbirds. Within this exotic experience we felt and saw all parts of creation caught up in celebration and interconnectedness.
The mountain wilderness is an environment that welcomed and deepened our spiritual journey. Our time there was conducive to our art, our meditations, and to asking new questions. Likewise, our new home in the St. Croix River Valley has drawn us toward a deeper exploration of the transformative dynamics of life. These places have reaffirmed that love is indeed the deepest note in the universe. They have also born witness to the earth’s peril and its beauty. We are moved to action from a deep place of love for the planet and from that love stems our motivation.
We are not scientists, politicians, or economists. We are artists who believe art can open people’s hearts to the idea that the flora, fauna, and landforms are part of who we are as humans, and all of life is interconnected. We create our art, including painting on the same canvas, to encourage a new ecology of respect, tolerance, and love. We try to reflect our life guided by curiosity, not simply collecting experiences. But, before we can save this more than human world, we will have to belong to it.
When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
We both have had our share of life’s pains and joys. We suppose it’s in that paradox that we are forged in the fire of life. Our time spent in Northern Ireland during the rebuilding after the troubles helped us see the power in art for holding the knowing and unknowing of how pain and joy of living life shapes us. To hold this knowing and unknowing in a delicate, dynamic, and highly creative tension is one of the primary skills we need if we want to live with courage and wisdom in an uncertain world. We seek to find a truth by living an authentic life, holding the joys and sorrows of human existence, and translating it into an artistic language that connects us. Without the raw, undiluted expressions of art there would be little understanding of the human soul. We believe the arts, motivated by love have a power to draw us into reflection and connect the space between us. Wendell Berry writes, it may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. We experience this paradox as the cosmic dance. No despair of ours can alter the reality of things or stain the joy of the cosmic dance.
Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
The instinct to judge everything good or bad, the urge to reduce all the unknowns to simple certainties and the allure of echo chambers, where are opinions are reinforced all day, every day are being driven by algorithms and by those who exploit us for power and personal gain are dehumanizing and dividing us. For our sanity we must engage our imaginations in something creatively constructive. To keep our imagination from being sucked into a vortex of doom. We need to imagine a safe landing in this turbulent culture of violence and disconnection to one of sowing seeds for a better way of life for all to rise from the compost of our current situation. Holding the tension between what is beautiful and terrible.
Our studio, Genesis + Art has started a series of paintings, workshops, and talks around the idea of Art for a Burning World. Art for a Burning World is about exploring the power of perception. It is about discovering and shifting our perspectives and moving outside our echo chambers and discovering wonder once again. It is about new paths and possibilities. Art for a Burning World is about nurturing the creativity and imagination within us. Art can help us survive, express ourselves, and open us to wonder. The hope is to create a space to begin a new dialogue with ourselves and one another, break into our fears and worries, and create something meaningful together. Cultivating an awareness of our ways of perceiving the world together empowers us to shape a reality of a more inclusive society that is characterized by resilience, insight, and the preservation of our well-being. This feels like more than a project, it’s more like a warning siren from the earth that we are responding to in the only way we know how. As sad as those sound, even sadness has the power to create a union between souls that we desperately lack.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. If you knew you had 10 years left, what would you stop doing immediately?
We had quite the conversation in answering this question. Is it 10 years left in a career or 10 years of life? Death is never a topic of discussion and think we should all reflect on our lives and how quickly it passes. Since this is an actual reality for Chuck and something he has reflected on quite a bit he would like to have you reflect on this poem by Rebecca del Rio called Prescription for the Disillusioned:
Come new to this day.
Remove the rigid overcoat of experience,
the notion of knowing,
the beliefs that cloud your vision.
Leave behind the stories of your life.
Spit out the sour taste of unmet expectation.
Let the stale scent of what-ifs waft back into the
swamp
of your useless fears.
Arrive curious, without the armor of certainty,
the plans and planned results of the life you’ve
imagined.
Live the life that chooses you,
new every breath, every blink of your astonished
eyes.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://genesisart.org
- Instagram: genesisartstudio
Image Credits
PHOTOGRAPHY
Chuck Hoffman
Suba Nadarajah
John Noltner
Greg Pupillo
PAINTINGS
Chuck Hoffman + Peg Carlson-Hoffman
Art for a Burning World
Community Painting
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
