Meet Bobby Haag

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Bobby Haag. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Bobby, thank you so much for joining us today. Let’s jump right into something we’re really interested in hearing about from you – being the only one in the room. So many of us find ourselves as the only woman in the room, the only immigrant or the only artist in the room, etc. Can you talk to us about how you have learned to be effective and successful in situations where you are the only one in the room like you?

Everything I do is for art. I am doing this for art. What I am doing is always changing, but what I do always stays the same. While things are happening to me now, I cannot say what they are but just how it feels making them happen. It is almost like what was impressive then is unimpressive now and what seemed simple then is complex now, and so it’s the opposite. I am on my way to doing something new with what I do, by building it day by day. I am still currently preparing and not ready to engage, but I am starting to here and there.
I love what I am doing and I love what I do.
The first thing I realized was what I am “doing” is not what I “do”. I am doing what I am doing so I can do what I do. I think it is easy for me to look at what I am doing and assume that is just what I do. The truth is I am making myself do what I am doing, and it would not get done if I wasn’t doing what I do. I am getting it done now because of what I always do.

The reason I am doing what I am doing now is because it is the only way I will one day be able to do what I am meant to do, and to be able to do what I am meant to do is to be doing what I was born to do. I think I am supposed to be myself in life.

All that I am doing now is not easy for me though. It takes too much responsibility for me to handle doing the hard work to keep it going… This is what I am naturally drawn to and the lifestyle luckily fits me. So, I am creating a lifestyle that is meant for me and it equals the way my brain creates my reality. Without my effort, what I was born to do will never see the light of day during my life, and if it ever happened after my death I know it would not get done by me and would turn out wrong because it is mine or my work to do. My point is what I believe I must be doing with my life can only be done by me.

This creates so much pressure, but I am inventing my own ways to blend it into (and interweave with) the work already done by others as a kind of collaboration. This means meeting in the middle and adapting to how society does things. That is creating what I am doing now because it flows with what we all have to do or are currently doing, and in return allows me to do this all together to let us be with eachother, while still leading to the day I can be with myself as what I was born to be… me as an artist.

For the first time now I seem to be learning what society is, and how it introduces my work of art into it. I already know of my own history and my own personal culture enough to be able to look forward to contributing my knowledge with society. By combining with it I can play along with others soon, too.

Turns out I am not enough for me to do this all by myself without making ways that contribute to life (as an adult) because it otherwise would have no place for who what it is in society. It may be possible, but it just isn’t sustainable for me to keep up with. If it were I would have to give away parts of myself but I refuse to do that, because I know it is too special to me. It’s important to me. And as I grow older and discover more about the world, I seem more and more excited to find out how I can play a role in society, as my true self, without completely changing who I am; I only need to change what I am doing by still continuing to do what I love to do.

One problem I am facing is not knowing exactly what I am doing as I adapt to do it. I can’t see the future. . Although I am entering new methods and practices with the new knowledge. Like looking for communities to join that I was never aware of before. It’s kind of like I am becoming more open to this kind of study or education that thrives on a back and forth / give and take of the current world we live in. It makes sense to me as a family and a business, like a student and a teacher, and like a lot of vice versa flip flop scenarios. Even when it comes to the schooling aspect, there seems to be both teaching of what others did before us as they were doing what they did to do what they were doing, while also learning the same thing about what my life offers. It is like seeing the end at the very beginning and feels like being early to the last minute of a party… or something.

As I am widening my appreciation to this deeper understanding of life as an artist specifically, I plan to take what I always understood living with into what I never knew existed wondering if it can help the same way it helps me. And in my opinion, just because there has been a way of doing things for so long does not mean it is completely completed yet. It could just mean that part was completed for the time it took to do in those days or era. And even though it was done as perfect as it could, it is not necessarily equal to being perfect now.

There is room for great things to happen again and again forever. I feel what I do and who I have been all my life is the same approach as then (just not completed yet still with room for greatness). I did things then and I am doing things now… as I am, just me. I am human. So to do my part for the thing I care about (art) I must let it be to the point that what I do needs to “let go”.

I have to be the only one who works on what I do for myself by doing what I am doing as fact. It is supposed to be becoming part of what it has been and always was, so that itself too can grow.

Believing in myself enough to feel like I can make a difference requires a lot of my energy and it is tiring to stay lifted. I am passionate about all I believe in though so it’s like nourishments to keep me going and is fine the way it is. I see this in anyone else as well because I know it to be true within myself. It just is like a tragedy being too good to be true every single time.

Some days I feel so certain of myself without a doubt in my mind that what I am doing will work out and other days I feel like what I am doing is a joke. I think it is because I am in the beginning of starting my own way of living doing what I love and there are no direct answers yet. It is a huge risk but it is worth my time I think. And it is humiliating most times or embarrassing where I will feel like a fool a lot if I try to see in the eyes of others (which is impossible to do). But when I am just with myself and see through my own eyes I know better because I know what is possible. It is a kind of feeling that even though I support myself I still have no idea if others will support me. That has to be okay. When others are doing something that you want to do but you believe does not include you it can be extremely frustrating ( by others I am talking about society again). Thinking like this became the always the same two options: discard my way and be accepted, or do my way and be rejected. Instead I thought for myself and just invented a third option for myself: to do both. Be myself and join them.

The part that accepts society into my way is what I am “doing” now. The part where I keep myself like always is how I can still do what I “do”.

The only difference is it is now split 50/50. I am using my time, space, and money to learn and grow so that all time, space, and money can grow, and in return all can co-exist. But the irony is, doing what is done to do this is only surprisingly helping me do what I was doing before, but with what I could not ever do before with the new information, experience, and wisdoms. It is allowing me to give the love I give myself to everyone (without leaving myself behind) and get love back. So, as I do what seemed possible is actually really, really possible! Just in small steps. And each step is the best thing I ever experienced. It is just really scary not knowing the outcomes.
I find it taking dedication and practice, (and so much work) it is almost insane to think about it all at once. If I do I feel doomed. So with one step at a time , and believing in myself every time I feel like I am “stucked”… I am making my way to be doing everything I can do, just so I can do what I was born to do in the first place; Phew! Just in time too.

Anyway, I have to know I can do it. I know I am each time I do no matter what it seems like right now anyway. I know that there is no proof that following my dreams will work out in the end though at the same time. Being the only me in the universe gives me the proof it can work,though, and give me the hope I need to continue. I am taking on so much work for myself to make my dreams come true and I know that I can’t slack on that too. I am taking my time because I know timing is important too. I have to face uncertainty and the unknown, too. There is no guarantee it will happen, but there is no chance it can’t happen because I am literally doing it, and that is a guarantee in itself. I will do my best to at least try starting from scratch. Building from the ground up I must start it alone. Begining by myself for a while just to begin. This makes it look different or unique and is easy to judge, I think, because it is different than what is already built and done. That is a good thing though. I remember to have to remind myself looking like me and no-one else is not a bad thing… it is just because I am the only one doing my thing, or at least the only one seeing it right now, so I must stay strong. Even when it hurts. The more I build the more responsibility to build my dreams becomes something to do and it keeps me busy. That is great too. By doing it myself, I have to do things I never have done before. That’s beautiful because it won’t be perfect, but it will be as good as I can make it.
… what I want to make is Art, because I am an artist, and my name is Bobby Haag.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

My first name is Bobby and my last name is Haag and I am an artist and I am an oil painter. I recently became an oil painter primarily. It is what I do best right now when it comes to making art in society. Before this approach I was just an artist making art (and oil paintings) for myself and for tomorrow.

I am here now today to pursue the new change. I needed to change in my life again and again was forced into new territory of ideas. It was never about abandoning or sabotaging anything that happened. Why things happen only explains what is to come next of it, and I am continuing making art, which is part of me being on Earth with humanity.

I was always oil painting since 12 years ago, and before that I naturally was always artistic and playful, loving, creative and original.

When I say I am primarily an oil painter now it means I am becoming someone new. I set my classic way of personal art making as an artist of all kinds down for now so I can do it again one day by only oil painting for now to return there. The reason I did this again returns to society.

Society is the theme of a breakthrough in why I am doing what I am doing… for me! I have to do because art has always been the number one inportance, but I needed ( then and now) to have no more space, time, and money to continue to be that sort of artist that I am.

Dreams can die and hearts can break, and I went through that. The only difference for me is that I know I can physically manifest the world like I see it by decorating “my DNA” in the most romatic sense because that is how I understand life. I am extremely prolific whether it is productive or not in the real world as it stands today and I have made more things of all kinds than I have ever seen me make once before to master this concept. This was part of my artistic expression and as my personality best described outside of my self, and I owe it to art as a medium to focus on one form of art (oil painting) for what I have already done. It feels like making an art-land.

I find the solution is to create a life that supports what makes me… me, in the first place…

Making all kinds of art all the time strictly helped me grow as an artist only just as an artist and not in the mediums of art… like oil painting. Only in “art” as a medium within itself.

This is important and confusing for me to go through, but I have to face it lately. This did not begin to make sense to me until I turned 30 ( I am 32 now speaking) and not until I was left alone in the world with who I could be. It is a choice. What matters is what I am actually actively doing, but because it is slow to show what is happening, it is going to be slow to happen. Reality is the only real thing happening that I am doing what I can do with it because I can and do, do it.

I could not sustain my lifestyle of being an artist as myself in isolation much longer. That’s perfect though to be honest.

Not because I lost something inside myself, but because I lost what was outside myself. I was alone and had to make a life as my own because of it and turn to what I can do . I had to completely stop the life I had because of my place in society after not being who I am within it for that time. For example nobody knew I was an artist. I was and still am a working class minimum wage Monday through Friday citizen. That’s fine, but not fine for me anymore. I want to be in society as Bobby Haag the artist.

Life was taking over which was always the case but with less of what I had before now. It doesn’t make sense so it was time to get serious and fix this for myself, and then it can help art.

I want to make it clear that I am never going to stop being an artist, and I am Not going to be made to quit what I love because of my adulthood priorities or my life outcomes from life decisions.

My life like anyone else’s is special and unique and I believe this about everyone. That is why artistry speaks to me I guess. Everything happens perfectly as it does; it just doesn’t seem like so at the time ( most of the time ) sometimes….

So I simply made a shift: I needed to let go of my artistic dreams so I can save them by following my dreams as my artistic self. This is again just what I am “doing” for now so I can “do” what I am best at (being Bobby Haag).

Like I said before.

Plus the only other option was to let them all fade away and watch my dreams die. Not going to happen if I have a say in it no matter how difficult it is can be!

I figured the one medium I can contribute to society and make people happy in art is oil painting. I have a gift for it. I am a natural. I just don’t know anything taught about it, but I am working on learning and changing that so I can paint better. Besides I best communicate through colors. People understand me when I color and seem to love it as much as I do.

By oil painting, I can replace my job in the custodial arts with being an oil painter in my adult lifetime. I would be able to spend my days making original oil paintings in multiple markets and distinct ways instead of cleaning rooms artisticly. And with art as being an artist, I can save my own artistic artistry by being an oil painter aiming it toward what it was made for in the truest sense. For right now I can only be an artist while having a day job not as one in order to afford to have the luxary to do what I love to do like I naturally do all the time regardless.

I still do not know anything though, and maybe I can never do what I did before again… but I can at least try to work my way back there: I can do what I would never have been able to do now by doing what I was doing then, whatever that means.

It is just a sad thing, but also an OK thing.
It is all for art and I love art.

Just know from here until years from now we will both see what happens to me.

To sum myself up, even though I love art… what is new about what I am doing comes from failure… trying to do what I attempted at a time I didn’t fully get what was happening when I had a glimpse to try… and I keep starting over again.

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

What I am doing is currently centering around the categories of “me”, “you”, and “art”. My story right now is confusing because it is currently happening and I can’t talk about it as if it is done because nothing is done yet, which adds disinterest.
I have no success at all with it yet except acting out this vision of mine day and night, but to me it is my personal achievements.

This idea when it came to me was a blueprint as a Venn diagram shaped plan about making art for me, making art for you, and making art for art so I can ‘contribute to society’ on my own terms.
Remember before this I was purely making art like a child. There was no way to be an adult like this in terms of “making living” in adulthood. So.. I made imaginary ways to do this by making each of these separate things part of one whole thing: art at its original form shown in the understanding of the world’s todays form of understood art keeping. Keep in mind these references are abstractions.

Think of it like this: Before, I was making one whole thing in order to do each one of these things (for me, you, and art) as One piece that would do all three at once in my mind. But that category does not exist today outside of my mind. And so, I had to begin disciplining the creative process to direct the piece of artwork toward a specific place or ‘home’. I still believe in those day’s thinking, and one day it could happen…
This new way is the way it is currently changing my life, and so I attach my name to each of these things as foundations. It is coming from me, to a place it can belong where it has no place of its own, but was “raised ‘at home’ before ‘moving out’ “into today’s world” to say the least.

Art can have a chance to change the world. That is the difference in what I could not sustain by myself before looking outside myself, because it requires more than me towards the thing itself. . Art!
Art is the entire thing divided into parts that belong somewhere that build the thing it came from in the first place. This is another way to look at it.

I am learning to go toward the opposite approach than what I was to reach the place I was born inside , only now met on the outside. Those are just descriptions of the picture, though, for the things I am doing to make it happen. I cannot explain what it is right now, because I have a schedule, and it is not time yet to talk about it.
All I know right now is the place that does (all three) at one time is the miracle that started it all. It is the thing that was found, again and again,and then lost over and over. That is the origin of the magic, but to do all of this at once is to create the one place that is a long ways from
now, anyway. It will take (and always has took) a longer and tougher road than I would want, but the funny part is, I cannot tell this while on the road because it is so fun; I can only feel the pain when I stop doing it. In other words, for my job, or my life in the world that I did not design ( because I have not yet helped make the world a better place in this way) it is a responsibility. I love my life and my place, but just as an anybody dreaming. I am somebody though, and so the work is especially crafted and made for nobody but me to do. It will collaborate with other people in the future in some ways somehow, it just does not exist yet, because it took up until my life crashing at my face and defeating me to have the epiphany. The pinnacle. This is like my labor of love I guess. It is all for art, and the way I was being an artist with all of my life with my family and my friends is the way. There just isn’t a place in society for it yet, and I am doing my part to play by the rules to invent, what isn’t known worldwide, even though, if, it only is known by me. I just want to be me, and this way of breaking it down lets me do this in life to build my life.

All of this improves because it comes from the same place, but by only doing so in what I do for each part separately is what allows the whole thing to manifest its focused attention to the place it has right now and give attention to that place. The attention to the bigger whole thing cannot be seen all at once, because if it requires more than just me to see it, then it is only just inside my head.

Like I said, I need you and I need art. I do not even know I exist yet. I am bringing me, from the origin of artwork to give my gift as an artist.
To love like everyone else does… I am nothing special in that way. But this is just my way of doing it instead of doing it as a given way. Or both. But I have to co-exist and that is the whole idea here. I make myself something special from the “home” that showed me the light; now I am able to share that special thing I make myself with you and with art. And then I begin to enter the real world as me being an artist.

I just wish I knew what will come of it but I don’t. I will just have to see for myself when the day comes and not give up.


Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?

I think all I have to do for me is to do what I have to do when what comes along with it and does this. I don’t want to only focus on becoming an oil painter in all ways of it I can, but that is just what I have to do as of right now… so I do.
That’s the way the painting crumbles. Literally.

I want to do it this way anyway and so I am glad for this. I think of it like oil painting is the father and mother of the family if the family is me being an artist. And I don’t know where that leads. I just know it is what I have to do. So I do it anyway.

My strength is color. Colors. For me oil painting is the most classic and finest form of coloring, and in my experience, I am drawn to the oil paint colors because they look like the natural universe. To answer the question… I don’t know if one is better to one than the other. I just know I have to set one aside to make room for the other.
I never had to choose this way before. It wasn’t a though. It wasn’t easy to either. I didn’t really have a choice. The idea just came to me when I needed it. Growing just involves it now. I cannot say what it is… it is just what I am doing, to do what I do, which will one day make sense if it ever happens or not.

And so, I am applying to school to go to art classes to learn the basics if I can afford it. I hope I can go ( check back in a year from now ). I want to learn about art basic stuff. Even if I come to comprehend a thing they teach on my own part by painting or within art through an experience, it is not the same thing. I still want to learn it the other way around now. I do not know anything about oil painting except painting with paint and color to make art.
There is a difference from doing that to making art by painting principals. It is the flip-flop again. Everything is a flip-flop when growing; I think so. That’s how I know this stage is temporary and extremely necessary. That is also why I am working so hard at it; to better make all of the areas I do with my strengths greater. I believe I must focus on the art of oil painting today to make the paintings for tomorrow- as to ever later even make art again as an artist. And I can do the vice versa combos by doing this.

Yes. It all came so clear to me one day, and I am trying to get better at it.

Yet, the things I cannot learn on my own ( the way they teach in school) interests me now so badly. I used to not care about this at all, but I have been there and done without that already. It’s time to learn again.
Along with that type of new fascinating learning stuff, the things I do not know yet all have a different place in what I am doing. I am no longer just making art because that’s what I do, and that is what I have to expect of the marketplaces to take on in society… I am working with the qualities of the places I am entering to blend my work into, which gives me a new chance at it. Ultimately, I am applying to my own artistic endeavors jusr the same as before, just at a different time, and just a different pace ans place, or angle, at something new.
I am me. I have to do it this way. This is my way, even when it is not “my” way. I say I am doing my best but I can still, do better. Because I am still living for now.

The stupid thing is I am doing all of this late. That’s fate (and destiny).

I came on to art as innocently as I could ever imagine. I had no idea I was even making art to put it that way, and I did not even call myself an artist. I didn’t know how to. Now that I am, it is why it feels like this, and why I think I can help teach art something brand new.

All of this, I think, is to learn where art came from for me in the first place, and teach where I can take it later. I cannot describe how good or how meaningful my relationship is with art is except by saying it’s something equivalent to being holy. It is baby art at its best. It is impossible.

The place I discovered art exists but right now only I can see it here because it is not there yet. I met art a long time ago without even knowing what “art” is. That is my job as an artist. The work of art itself. If I can do it right then you will see it too. And then art can see it itself. All the information I am seeking is for art, like a return, so art can see it better with a humanity eye whenever looked upon.

Anyways… People have done it again and again in different ways, and to do it everyday in every way… I guess it doesn’t matter how it happens, because it can’t not happen. All I know is I have a part in it to do it too. And this is what I am doing.
I can’t tell if it is a set-back or a disadvantage of mine to not have what is so fundamental, but I can assure art that it could not have happened otherwise. From me, if it doesn’t happen then who knows but I am making it happen (especially) by me doing it. Hopefully what will happen, will be what was happening, so that one day it happened. Right now it is only just doing what to do so it is hard to talk about which is why I can only talk about it like this. It doesn’t even matter.

No matter what I am going to do, or what I am doing to do it… I am going to put love into it. Since I love making art, painting, being myself, and life, I am creating something for myself that allows me to do all of these things at once all of the time forever and ever…

Whatever does happen is like a mystery I already solved. I just have to write the story to see if I did it or not. To prove myself wrong and prove myself right. And God bless America for letting it have a chance. Thanks for the chance to speak for myself again. It means the world
for art, I say.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bobbyhaagpainting.com
• Instagram: @bobbyhaagpainting

Image Credits

bobby haag