Aaron Grayum of Fairview, Tennessee on Life, Lessons & Legacy

Aaron Grayum shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Hi Aaron, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: What is something outside of work that is bringing you joy lately?
Returning to my childhood hobby of collecting autographs. When I was a kid, I would write letters to my favorite sports players and mail them with something to sign – and I had a pretty good success rate! Then around the beginning of college I started to lose interest. Fast forward a few decades, and I learned that people STILL collect autographs “through the mail” (TTM for short). So I decided to jump back in, and it’s been a blast. On my birthday in February, I started an Instagram account (@collect.your.things) where I share some of these autographs as well as other things I have collected throughout the years. I decided I wanted to give my collections and memories a place where they could be seen, beyond just being stored in a box.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I make art based on drawings I created when I was a kid. My tagline is “Art For Your Inner Child” which means if you let that part of yourself out to play once in a while, then my art might feel right at home. I travel some, doing a variety of indoor and outdoor shows. I am also represented by some wonderful galleries: ArtBeat and Swipe Right Art in Nashville, Abraham Art Gallery in Winchester, Plum Nelly in Chattanooga, and Sis + Moon’s in Atlanta.

My wife Michelle is also an artist, and together we own The Gray Umbrella, a freelance art & graphic design company that we operate out of our home studio.

Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. Who saw you clearly before you could see yourself?
I think my parents always knew I would be an artist, even though art wasn’t a career I ever thought about pursuing until around my junior year of high school. I’ve been creative as long as I can remember, though. My earliest memory of making art was drawing a picture of Donald Duck in my bedroom when I was 4. And then painting on the back porch when I was around 9 or 10. I had plenty of toys, but I would also make my own toys out of cardboard.

I always knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, even though it changed often – an astronaut, scientist, detective, rock star, someone who rescues people (like Spider-Man), a baseball or basketball star, a ghost hunter, an engineer, an author, a miniature golf course designer, an inventor, and on and on. But I never really saw art as a career until late high school, when my mom introduced me to a friend of hers who made art and sold prints of her work. That was really the first time I saw that art could actually be a real career.

My parents – and I’m including my stepparents as well – always just let me be creative and dream, which I don’t think happens enough. They always seemed to support whatever it was that I wanted to do. In fact, my mom always told me (and still tells me) that I could do ANYTHING I wanted, as long as I was safe, and she knew where I was 🙂

Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
The first time I remember wanting to give up was pretty early in my career – before it even began, really. It was seven years after graduating college and artistically I felt lost. I loved to paint, but my paintings didn’t feel like my own. In school, I painted with oils and my work was inspired by all my favorite artists – Rothko, Monet, Rauschenberg, and Basquiat. I continued painting here and there after school, showing in a few small group shows around town, but my work wasn’t recognizable as ME. I took my paintings to different galleries around town, but nobody wanted to show my work. It’s not because the art was “bad” but I would have three pieces that basically looked like they were painted by three different artists. Then I started showing with Plowhaus, a local artists co-op which, in those days, was where any new artist in Nashville started their career. But after showing in a few group shows, I still couldn’t generate any interest in my work. I really started questioning if I had any place in the art world at all. 



One day, my wife Michelle had an idea: she knew that ever since I was a kid, I had been making these funny little drawings in the margins of notebook paper, sketchbooks, and scrap paper, so what if I tried incorporating them into my paintings? In retrospect that sounds like a pretty great idea, but at the time I didn’t jump on board right away. To me, these little sketches were sloppy, juvenile, and boring … little birds with big eyes, pianos, jelly bean trees, boats, clowns, airplanes, etc … not the work of a serious artist. But she kept bringing it up, and that summer I created about a dozen 8x10s of ducks, birds, circus clowns, umbrellas, and trees, and brought them to the Plowhaus “Value Menu” art show where everything was priced under $50. I was nervous because these pieces didn’t look like anything else I’d ever shown. They were loose and raw and messy. Then on opening night, it took about one whole hour before every single painting I brought had sold. That’s when I knew that not only was my wife absolutely right, but also that I had tapped into a style that was truly my own and seemed to resonate with others as well. If I had truly given up like I wanted, a really important part of me would have never seen the light of day.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Is the public version of you the real you?
I think so. I HOPE so. I try to be myself around people, because whenever I try to act differently, I feel fake or silly and it just doesn’t work. I remember this one time in college I left a message on a friend’s answering machine and she said it was really weird because I was speaking in the message exactly the same as if we were in the room together. I’m generally shy and quiet, I try to be kind and listen to people, I can usually understand both sides of an argument, I prefer wearing dark colors, and I crave attention but am also very uncomfortable with it.

Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. How do you know when you’re out of your depth?
When I can clearly imagine something I want to do, but I have NO IDEA how to get there. This is where a lifetime of being resourceful comes in handy, and also the internet. If there’s nothing about it on YouTube, then I REALLY know I’m out of my depth. Then I’ll reach out to other artists, who have been incredibly generous and more than willing to share what they know, and so I try to do that in return as well. I also love Marie Forleo’s book “Everything Is Figureoutable” which is about this very thing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aarongrayum.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/aarongrayum
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarongrayum
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/aarongrayum