Meet Dante Lamb

We recently connected with Dante Lamb and have shared our conversation below.

Dante, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.

For me creativity isn’t a consistent flow that I wake up and need to capitalize on. Most days, it’s a struggle to motivate much less be creative. However, with that said, for me creativity comes from listening and observing my surroundings. Taking in people’s words, the views around me, reading snippets out of a poetry book, walking through home depot to find non-art supplies that I can use as art supplies, etc. etc. It is more often an exercise of letting go and letting whatever it inside crawl, explode, or ooze out onto the canvas, through the lens, on paper, etc. The diverse set of mediums I choose to use helps my creativity as well, every one has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, so finding out what writing can do and can’t do helps me narrow it down in choosing if I am creating using words or concrete on a given day. My creativity stays alive overall because I have a want to push myself into creating new things and with that comes looking at everything possible through as many lenses as I can muster.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

As of right now I am focused less so on any type of artistic career or “making it” and building a reel/portfolio that reflects my work. I have a job and art is a hobby more so than a career aspiration, I think this helps relieve a lot of the stress associated with being an artist and making it a primary source of income. My current goals are integrating making art into a daily/weekly part of my life. Paying down by debt and creating art that makes me happy is my main goal, having people relate or appreciate my work is nice but it is absolutely secondary to my main purpose when making art, to express myself in a medium that is expulsive. I like the idea of being thought of artistic more-so than attributed with the title of artist.

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?

I think the first quality I find most important is tenacity, without a drive to create internally there isn’t much left in art for me. My goal with my art is to express myself and as a secondary hopefully connect and relate with people through that. Keeping my focus on creating art that is genuine to me is so incredibly important as any type of selling out, in my opinion, whether it be for money or followers or emulation you loses that urge to express yourself. I think a skill that I find important is the ability to hold myself accountable, and I have to say that is no small feat. Having the ability to tell myself to work on art and hold myself to a schedule (maybe less so than I’d like to admit but when I CAN it’s nice) helps me hone the expression of what’s inside, furthering the point of my art, expression. However, with that comes the most important skill, seeing myself as an artistic person. I do not create art every day, every week, every month sometimes. I took a seven year break from making anything creative consistently. I was still an artist. I think my best advice that ticks all three of these boxes is work on yourself, self-improvement isn’t a phase and you will see your art change, adapt, and potentially stop for a while. In the grand scheme of things if you want to see yourself as an artist, or as an artistic person you need to reassure yourself that you are. It’s not about being good, or being recognized, it’s about creating art for the sake of creating art. If you can monetize it or you become well known for it I don’t think that reality should change. I would say I’m still early in my journey, most of my art remains unseen as I attempt to hone a style, I play with mediums, and make so much “bad” art. But as is the way of things, you make those 20-30 bad or meh pieces and finally kick out something that makes you say “Wait, I did that?” All feelings don’t come out as a defined piece, sometimes a piece is finished when it is technically incomplete.

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?

Life balance is my biggest issue, and realistically has been for much of my life. The hard truth is, it is very expensive to be alive. I work 40 plus hours a week and while I work early in the morning it is hard to come home sometimes and create. My biggest challenge is having enough energy to do the things I want to do. To get around this, that schedule I adhered to for so long I have given up. The intent of that is to resolve that problem, I know deep down I want to create, forcing it upon myself becomes a task, a chore, a bore, etc. When I leave myself to my own devices I still create, albeit less often, more impactful things. You should ALWAYS make time for what you love, but for me that doesn’t mean setting an alarm that says “create now” at 4 PM on a Tuesday. Letting go and letting the creativity find me has been a challenge but overall I think that shift away from needing to share my art is at the core of that. Sharing art, any way you want to put it, is a self-obsessive thing. I think to grow you need to be your own biggest fan and I am in no way knocking that. However, I think for me art is a lifestyle and so I don’t need to make art consistently when I know still I am an artistic person and that drive is there, it’s just the reality is sometimes I need to work instead of paint.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://dante.lamb
• Other: email: dantelamb12345@gmail,com

Image Credits

Dante Lamb