Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Edie Beaucage. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Edie , we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
As a painter, I like to invent narratives and characters from my imagination. So I would say that I am bold and intrepid when I paint. I don’t hesitate to go “off-road” in invented territories while betting; on the spot, I will fall back on my paws like a cat! I am most assertive when I improvise when I don’t plan. But curiously, I have a yo-yo relationship with my self-confidence. Sometimes I feel really sure of what I am doing, and other times I feel uncertain. When that happens, I give myself time to think and not rush a certainty. I learned to make friends with the feeling of uncertainty about what I am doing; I trust that I am doing it right, even if it is not evident immediately. That is where my confidence is, in being uncritical of the not-so-sure periods. With a vague idea, I get a kick in going in many directions while painting with surprising results.
Another essential factor in helping my moxie is that, over time, I have learned to create the conditions before going to the studio that will allow me to feel spontaneous and chirpy, to seek wit and invention in my action. I cherish the many details of my daily routine: tea, egg, toast, music, friends, Moony, driving, sun, wetsuit, beach, repeat.
The ultimate element that really started my feeling of assurance when I was tiny was that my dad would clip my paintings on the refrigerator with a magnet. It was the first time he gave me a sense of appreciation. That was such a moment. It had a lasting effect on me.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am a painter and video artist. I moved from Quebec in the mid-1990s to Los Angeles to engage in the art world, mainly because I saw so much audacity in the artists of this town that I was compelled to join the club.
What is most meaningful in my paintings and videos is having as much space for my imagination as possible. My work differs from the prevalent art discourse because I make works from a personal thinking process rather than a political stance. I know the present times call for robust, politically filled art for urgent social reasons, but my creativity does not come out that way. My interest in paintings is almost exclusively about people and their state of being. I love humor, and I love all sorts of personalities. For my videos, I am addressing my anxiety about the devastating environment we will face in the following decades. My videos are still based on my imagination, but I also use a lot of stock footage, bringing the work to an original world. I find a nice balance between fiction and reality in my videos. I use autofiction to create a similar mix between fantasy and reality for my paintings.
I am working on a new series of Sumi-inks paintings with a Japanese influence and a Berlin vibe about the complications in a couple’s relationship and how such a relationship can make you crazy! It is titled “The Meandering of Charly: a mustached polyamorous they in 2030.” It is again an autofiction where I find myself as a protagonist in multiple stories.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
In the art world today, everything goes. There are not one or three qualities that will be helpful, but really, you need to be yourself, whatever that means, severe and taciturn, calm and sunny, or reserved and nerdy. But be spectacularly you, super nerd, super casual, or super kind for the best chance. For some surprising reason, the “Enfant Terrible Artist” is still quite popular in creating famous personas; sometimes, I tell myself, “I am not enough of a badass brute to be taken seriously by the big timers” Watch out; I might change myself in that department and consider a mustache!
We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?
Going all in with your strength is a must. It is a benefit because developing a vision or a recognizable way of painting has to do with a painter’s personality and idiosyncratic approach to life. You find yourself going into the rabbit hole of a subject; it becomes a singularity; it might also be a playful and engaging place you work in, but ultimately, it has nothing to do with being well-rounded. That comes with the territory, an obsession or compulsiveness that feeds an artist’s creativity. But this said, being well-rounded help in every other part of your life, so I would say be excessive in your artwork and be balanced with the rest.
I think artists have a social role of being wholly free and pushing social limits because that is what most people would love to do themselves; I think of David Bowie, who started questioning male gender qualities in the early 1970s with his shows and album cover all dressed in silk with a feminine haircut. He did not write a theory about it. He just embodied it. He was a musician, which is different from painters like Basquiat and Bacon, who were also personas, but similarly, their paintings were declarative of concepts understood by many people. They had the confidence to share that vision. That is my quest to be as close as possible to my idea of what is essential to reflect on right now. Humans can connect to one another and evolve despite bad past experiences. For me, painting is the best material to create a social space within an image where something is happening to your soul once you focus on that image. A mind opener, a mind connector.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ediebeaucage.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ediebeaucage/
- Other: www.luisdejesus.com