Meet Spencer Tinkham

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Spencer Tinkham a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Spencer, thanks for taking the time to share your lessons with our community today. So, let’s jump right in – one of the most essential skills for unlocking our potential is self-discipline. Where does your self-discipline come from?

Norfolk, Virginia is the largest naval station in the world. Most people, ranging from the Subway sandwich-maker to the school teacher, have a tie to the military. I think discipline is quite ingrained in the culture that I grew up in. When I was younger, I boxed. Discipline is fundamental to boxing, and success hinges on discipline and sacrifice. I have never worked for someone else, so each day I have to prove my worth. Nothing is guaranteed. As a full-time artist with no professional education or training, I take my job very seriously. I don’t wait to be inspired, I work until I discover new concepts. Life and death are in the power of the tongue, and I practice words of affirmation daily.

I must also say that I believe it’s possible to be too disciplined. While growing up with the “hard work pays off” or “don’t work, don’t eat” adages, it is important to find a balance between work and life. My art brings me happiness (hopefully, it brings others happiness too,) but it is not my sole identity or sole purpose. I think it’s important to be disciplined enough to turn the discipline switch off. Some great relationships, experiences, and art ideas stem from spontaneity. In a way, this controlled lack of discipline can help make self-discipline more sustainable.

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?

“No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.” —Oscar Wilde

As a child, technology was scarce, and I had few connections to the world outside of my hometown. My entertainment stemmed from curious adventures around the Chesapeake Bay coastline. Each Spring, the natural shoreline was sprinkled with thousands of bird eggs. In the Winter, different bird species visited to feed on aquatic grass, crustaceans, and fish. Year-round, an eclectic variety of bird species traveled from throughout the world to spend time behind my childhood home. I realized that through birds, I could vicariously experience the world.

As an adult, my passion for studying birds gives me a deeper connection to nature, people, and the world. I capture avian beauty, diversity, and fragility in my Macrosculpture series. I began this body of work during the COVID-19 pandemic when life slowed, travel halted, and nature rebounded. These wooden, wall-hanging sculptures depict magnified views of bird feathers.

I have no formal art training, and as a self-taught artist, I previously only produced free-standing nature-based sculptures. There is a long-standing tradition of crafting birds in wood, ranging from duck decoys to totem poles. Using primitive tools, like a box cutter, I create enlarged feather sculptures from basswood and paint them in oils. The high-relief texture in these Macrosculptures conceals or reveals colors, creating optical illusions as the viewers’ perspectives shift. I travel the country to research and photograph specimens in natural history museums, discovering birds with fascinating individual narratives. In museums, specimen tags are tied to each bird’s legs and document the specimen’s end-of-life history, as well as people, places, and environments that may no longer exist. Like a scientist cites their sources, I illustrate the corresponding tag from each source specimen on the back of every Macrosculpture. The ecological fates of birds and humans are intertwined. I share specific stories of birds as a witness to natural and manmade change. Their fragile beauty and unsung voices become magnified so as not to be missed by the careless eye.

I have recently expanded my Macrosculptures into frogs, bugs, fish, plants, and reptiles. I am currently Artist-in-Residence at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, and will also be Artist-in-Residence at Rockport Center for the Arts in February 2025. Most recently, I was awarded the Marilyn Newmark Memorial Grant by the National Sculpture Society. I was selected as a David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation Wildlife Artist of the Year 2023 finalist. “Colaptes auratus auratus” was juried into the prestigious Leigh Yawkey Woodson “Birds in Art 2022” museum exhibition and acquired for the museum collection. My work is in the Dollar Tree, Inc. corporate art collection, and is collected and exhibited internationally.

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?

1. Quantity over quality- Early in an art career, I think it’s really important to just create, make mistakes, and keep going. For me, my work improved drastically when I began my career in “production mode.” I learned to hone my artistic process, and it has allowed me to be efficient and make better art in the long run. It taught me to problem-solve, because processes can and often go wrong. I gained the confidence to trust my eye and to freehand my sculpting and painting. Now, as I focus on quality and much less quantity, my experience in producing many works has helped me achieve quality with more speed. Refining this combination of speed and quality comes with experience and is essential for me as a full-time artist.

2. Outline each day- For me, planning the weeks and months ahead is much easier than planning out my next day. Before cutting off the lights in my studio, I make a list for tomorrow with three categories. I write out what needs to be done in the first 30 minutes of my day, the first three hours, and then what needs to be completed by the end of the day. Lists are proven to increase efficiency and productivity.

3. Take calculated risks- It’s important for me to invest in myself. If a new tool will increase efficiency, or safety I try to buy it. I pay to apply for opportunities that may be a stretch. I’ve received opportunities that I didn’t think I deserved, and have been rejected from opportunities that I thought were a slam dunk. It’s important for me to push my work farther than I feel comfortable. I’m my best advocate, and I am the most knowledgeable about the art that I create. If I never take chances to humble myself, be vulnerable, and share the art then I will miss out on a lot of growth.

4. (Bonus) Network- A long time ago someone told me, “It’s not about what you know, but who you know.” I think there’s a lot of truth in that. One of my favorite aspects of being an artist is getting to interact with people who are extremely creative and who are very passionate about what they do (whether they’re journalists, commercial photographers, architects, museum staff, artists, etc.) I’m genuinely interested in how people got to where they are, especially after taking a winding road of my own to become an artist. I have no secrets, and try to think of ways that I could help other people who I come into contact with. After working alongside, or meeting new people, I like to write thank you notes. Often, they’re hand-written. I love staying connected and I’m amazed by how much people have gone above and beyond to help me. As a self-taught artist, these relationships have massively flattened my learning curve. This insight and the joy that these friendships have brought me has been invaluable.

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?

When I first began creating art, I was a very strong sculptor and a very weak painter. My sculpting would make my painting look better than it was. My painting would make my sculptures look worse than they were. Wooden sculptures piled up on shelves for years as I was too timid to paint them. When I started to run out of storage, I decided to focus on my weakness– this is also something that is stressed in boxing. I spent years practicing my painting on anything 3-dimensional: 2-liter soda bottles, milk jugs, etc. Over time, I fell in love with painting. Now, I think that my painting is as good or better than my sculpting. I can achieve looks in painting that I can’t achieve in sculpting and vice-versa. I now use the strengths of each skill-set to create works that are expressive and unique.

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