Meet Bert Carter

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Bert Carter. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Bert below.

Bert , we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

The first thing you asked me was how I built up my confidence which I think meant in regard to entering the perilous and uncertain profession of that of an artist. For me it was a double situation as I wanted to be successful as both a singer and painter.plus all the other interests I had. Restoring cars, etc. I don’t recall any building of confidence because I’m a planner. To become a painter or anything even with talent one must learn his craft first. In my case, a formal art and music education. Just wanting to be something doesn’t work. Too many failed artists blame the world while they struggle. I also, growing up in the Carter Automotive Family learned that everything is a business, no matter how Arty one wants to be. If you paint it or sing it you have to sell it. Find where what you do works. As to painting, while I learned, using my art degree got a job in an art department and within two years I was art director, painting in the evenings and weekends, taking voice lessons while going two evenings a week for two years to acquire my business certificate. I now was developing a simple style of painting that was salable but not yet lucrative so back to the family business and held the position of credit manager then head of the leasing department. Good money, new convertible and a corner office. A guaranteed position with many future possibilities. It was my family. What most work for, I didn’t need such as the three piece suit or all that went with it so I quit. I was never forgiven. Most of my friends were just living their lives with expectations the young always have but I needed to grow. I sold my own car, a Black Cadillac, gave up my house, stored what I wanted to keep. got a ride to the highway and stuck out my thumb. I headed South to Miami and met a lot of nice people along the way. It was an experience to remember. In the 1950’s there were no super highways most places, just two lane roads through every town and city. When I got to Georgia I was warned that I could be picked up as a vagrant and put on a chain gang for a year. I wiped Florida off my suitcase and as luck would have I walked past a chain gang working on the road. I was no more than a mile when I stuck out my thumb and the first car was a state trooper. He was taking me in and I told him that I was a college student from Canada and was hitching the USA for my thesis. He asked if I came thru Savanah and I said and had never seen anything the old 19 Century buildings. He said I’m from there. We hit it off and he called to the next trooper to give a lift South and so on. When I reached the state line that trooper told me to be careful that those police down there were tough. I got rides all the way to Palm Desert where the police told me to take a bus to Miami as there was no way I could thumb through all the towns going there. I got to Miami and called my great uncle who was the Black Sheep,of his generation, left the family in the 1930’s and moved to Miami where he made a bundle without the family. He opened the original Kit Kat Club on Miami Beach. I stayed a few weeks and learned how to work the bar, got to sing in the evenings but I wasn’t done yet. It’s funny, in the high school graduation year book under my photo it said that I had the wander lust. My uncle wanted me to stay but I wanted to keep going. So once again I was off and had so many experiences that they must be told another time or this article would require volumes. So the Readers Digest version. I thumbed to New Orleans, thru Texas visiting things such as the Alamo before they upgraded it. Across the country to Tombstone Arizona. The OK Corral was a great disappointment. Then to Los Angeles. No hitch hiking here. Too big and my first real freeways. I went to see the movie studios as they were then, Hollywood Blvd, etc. now to get out of the city. I took a bus to Santa Barbara then back on the road North to San Francisco where I spent several days just walking about and now North to Vancouver. This was to be the end but I had read all of Robert Services works written in the Yukon during the Goldrush Days I hitched a ride with a trucker going all the way with a load of pipes. I got tp White Horse to find the place full of trucks and pipes with little left from the 1890’s. They were building the Trans Canada Pipeline. It’s now late October and getting cold so time to go back. No way was I going to try to cross Northern Canada in the Winter nor thru The North West United States. I caught the bumpiest ride of my life back the British Columbia in an empty pipe truck going for another load. I hiked South into California to San Bernardino then East across the country and finally North to Canada. When I saw all my friends they were exactly where I last left them and when told them of my trip they wanted to go if I went again. After a couple of weeks and it was now getting really cold, I decided to spend the Winter in Florida so I asked who wanted to go with me. No one, I once again went to the highway and got 35 miles by midnight and it was cold.
A car stops and the driver asked me how far I was going and I said as far as you’ll take me. He had waterskies tied on the back of the car and was going to Key West. We got to Miami and he dropped me at my uncles. I never saw him again. I joined my uncle in the bar staying for a year and a half bartending and singing in the club. We went to Cuba before Castro. To the racetrack as often as four times a week. My uncle found a simple system for playing the ponies that worked because he said no gambler would do it. He was no gambler and didn’t bet a horse because of odds or the color of the jockey’s silks. He won every time, not big money but consistent. I played also and am no gambler but I saved my winnings and when I returned to Toronto I used them to buy myself one the original 1953 Cadillac Eldorado Convertibles. When the racing season started at Woodbine in Toronto I went a few times, made a few dollars and that was it.

So back to the question of how I built my confidence. I always had it but knew that you don’t know what you can do until you try. Think things out and be prepared.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I would say, mostly having fun doing what I wanted, when and where I wanted. We’ll start with my painting. I found that I was getting good fast but not highly salable when I got an idea. I had been art director for a major Corrugated Carton Company and back then there where no transparent inks so the three colors and black were it. When we designed a carton we would wherever possible incorporate the cartons color into the design. This gave me an idea when I saw the printing on flour and potato burlap sacks. I did a few tests and it was like painting on velvet. No solid nor mixing colors. I bought a roll of burlap which has no body and stretched it over a canvas when a wrap tacking so no frame was needed. I then drew lions, tigers, leopards, giraffes etc. on to the panels with chalk. It was so simple. You only had to do an dry brush effect on the outline then fill in the spots and stripes etc. with black paint, a little green or yellow for the eyes and a touch of dark red on the nose. Whiskers were applied with the edge of a palette knife. I could do as many as three of these in an evening. They were one size, one price, a sofa sized painting ready to hang for $75.00. Inshared a studio in the Village with one of my art school friends and was the most hated artist there because I had sold out to commercialism. Most of them used to just talk slot about being a new Picasso or a Maxfield Parrish.and so on. They set their bars too high and wasted years trying reach their goals. Back to keep it simple. I had no such lofty ambitions nor high aspersions, I wanted to be a salable artist and while many of they abandoned their art for the life of quiet desperation I painted for Sixty years. That period was great but it only worked from basically May to October. Once the Winter set in the snow fell and the plowing pushed up to the curb taking all parking spaces so no traffic for the Village. I wanted to be where I could work all year so Miami jumped back up but I had recently married a very beautiful model with Hollywood aspirations. Hollywood it was. She set out start her career and into find my market and what was hot. I don’t paint for me but what would sell. Her career was working in as she was getting known and getting multiple small parts but growing. I found my market and was selling as fast as I could paint. I met Bill Alexander, the Magic of Oil Painting and watched him paint never taking a lesson but my background gave me what I needed. I mastered the wet on wet style using house painting brushes and a metal spatula. These commercial paintings paid well and gave me time to do finer works which are all I’ve done for the last 25 years. The second career, singing, I was well trained by known Operatic singers I won’t name as very few would know them. I learned wel but also the business clicked in. Check what your selling. I had great success with art but to pursue a singing career was really iffy. As an Operatic Tenor I would fail. I’m no linguist, while I had the high notes and voice I didn’t have the projection needed. A mediocre career in a chorus or start singing standards and learn to do another Sinatra Tribute Show. The income loss would also played into it so I sang evenings in the many LA Opera clubs for fun. Along the way I became friends with one of these clubs owners and learned that the money was great as Opera buffs are not casual customers but come in as often as twice a week. When I went to Miami each Winter to do the big Art Festivals I found that while LA had nine Opera themed places Florida had none. I also made half my years income in Florida during the Winter Season so I relocated to Miami. It took two years to find the right location and opened an Operatic restaurant and night club “ The Cafe de Opera”. We werevthe only game in South Florida and were packed from opening night and for the next five years and I got to sing as much or as little as I liked. Unfortunately my landlord who became my friend and took good care of me. No one bothered me or shook me down He was the Gambino Family Capo under John Gotti but when the Government started closing in he got indicted. The property was seized but I was out by then. I then produced Condo Shows in the up to 300 seat showrooms in the great high rises. They were only good for the Season so I started producing art shows which also had limitations so back to California and the Festivals here. I did well but on two occasions that first year back I did two Desert Events that were most successful of my career. I moved to the Desert and started Westfest Productions, Art Shows and Festivals, Native American Festivals and spirit of the West Festivals. During the mid 1990’s I expanded my events for after the desert season ended at Easter to include Encino, Woodland Hills, North Hollywood, Glendale, Pasadena and the weekly Marina Del Rey Show from Memorial To October. The secret if to watch what’s going on and keep an open mind as to possibilities. I heard from artists for year that the Desert would be no good for art shows because of the wind and short seasons. The secret was simple, find show locations that have a wind block and do the largest possible events in these locations. Targeted advertising and street appeal to draw people.

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?

For me it’s be honest with yourself, plan what you want to so your chances are better of succeeding and if you believe in doing something go for it because even if it doesn’t work out the first time you’ll not feel as bad as you would had you not tried. Remember the two men that were both right. One said it can’t be done and couldn’t do it. The other said I can do that and did it. There is so much more that isn’t here because it would take several hundred pages just to relate the experiences, ups and downs, the wonderful people that had been part of my life that are all mostly gone. I’m writing a book, not so much about me but the people and experiences I shared these many years.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?

The secret was simple, find show locations that have a wind block and do the largest possible events in these locations. Targeted advertising and street appeal to draw people.
I’ll end this now because there is so much more to tell but again it’ll take volumes. When the art shows started to fade I bought a the Cathedral City Antique Mall 11 cheap which was failing. I restructures and had I paying in months. During r this time I found many items that were too expensive for the booth store sip I leased the largest white elephant in Rancho Mirage. A location that had never had a successful tenant. It was too big a store with only drive by traffic. I brought in 8’ columns to all the ends of the windows and put large Art Works in between them. I had A French Vanilla Colored 1936 Auburn boattail speedster that I parked in front. I called it Basil Carter Fine Art, Collectibles and Antiques. Much of which I got by going to both Desert and LA Estate Sales. It did well but I wasn’t getting the best merchandise from Estate Sales as the things were usually picked over before the sale by those running it. I opened Palm Springs Estate Liquidation where instead of running sales for people I bought the whole house for cash. Took what I wanted for the Antique Mall and the big store, had the sale in the house and took the leftovers to the third location where I was open on Saturday and Sunday only. No I didn’t do it all myself I had employeesmand I used a man with a truck with a lif gate and a crew to move the things for me. This worked out because the things usually left behind were salable. Washers, dryers, kitchen items
Mixers, bedroom furniture, sofas dining sets and so on. Thesevitems wouldn’t fit out store nor most others because they take too much room and are slow movers. Not so with the roll up door weekend sales. Really good things at reasonable prices. The collapse of the real estate industry brought about the loss of most business including interior designers that bought accent pieces from us. Most closed. I shut down the Estate Liquidation and the big store lease was up for renewal so I closed. As luck would have I got a cash buyer for the Antique Mall. At that point my life once again became one of art and music spending these past 20 years doing some oh my best works. Restoring and liquidating cars. The Estate Sale also included the cars and I had three Rolls Royce, two Mercedes. Three SUV’s and a Cadillac. At present I’m not restorting classics so I’m selling the two i have left. 1952 MG TD, 1976 Cadillac Eldorado Convertible. As I said, I’m 88 years old in very good health and looking forward to the next new adventure. For those that. Have doubts on what you can do take time and feel your way. Learn about what you want to do and never hurry, it’ll be there tomorrow
What I haven’t told you is anything is possible if you try. I’m making plans for the future and have no idea what lies ahead because things are a little different now, first my age and secondly, this past year I had a cut on my foot that turned to Ostiomyolitis, a bone infection which led to my losing my leg below the knee. This was not the end but a new starting point. A minor inconvenience. I’m very busy every day and have mastered my prosthesis so much so I’ve now put a bounce in my step so I don’t show a limp. I have a left foot accelerator installed in my car. This or any other obstacle is a handicap if you let it be.