We recently connected with Josh Louchheim and have shared our conversation below.
Josh, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
I think creativity is like a muscle. And if you don’t use the muscle it will begin to atrophy. So, in order to stay creative, I make sure I am always doing something to exercise my creative muscle. I keep a pretty regimented schedule for studio time and paint Monday through Saturday. And as of recently I have added sketching into the mix. Usually, I draw my painting ideas directly onto the canvas, with no preliminary sketch. And I always like having a painting in the works on my main easel, one on the backburner (second easel) and other ideas planned for the next few paintings. Including sketching into the routine has added another element to the process which keeps things exciting. It also allows me to solidify the future ideas, rather than letting them stew in my head for months, I can draw the idea out and have a better plan for when I’m ready for the piece. Since sketching is monochromatic, it has been a big help in understanding the value of the painting I am planning. Since my painting ideas are dreamt up in my mind, I usually don’t have a real source for the values, so I end up playing around with them a lot during the painting process. Sketching beforehand lets me have a more direct plan which seems to be speeding up my process.
But the creativity and inspiration doesn’t always come from artistic endeavors. Spending time with my family, traveling and building memories is great for the soul which is also good for creativity. I am also an avid golfer and try and play every Sunday. Being outside during a round of golf, soaking up the sun and the surrounding desert fills me with inspiration. Since I am a painter of the southwest, I am constantly studying the surrounding mountains and various flora and fauna, which I include in my work, while I golf. Golf is also a very humbling game so after a hard round I’m usually ready to get back to painting come Monday.
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 am a self-taught oil painter depicting the American West. Most of my paintings are fabrications of my imagination, usually a lone figure in the vastness of the desert, with a surrealistic undertone. However, over the past couple years I have been more specific with my landscapes, including the major mountains in and surrounding the Phoenix area. I consider my work to be a modern version of western art with higher chromatic colors, but lately I have been playing around with more traditional ideas.
I began painting late 2009, shortly after the band I was in broke up. After purchasing some acrylic and oil paints, and starting my first piece, I quickly fell in love with the oil, it was the medium of artist I grew up admiring and decided it was the medium for my creative journey.
I have consistently painted ever since I began, with a few different dry spells early on, mostly fueled by frustration during the learning process. Since I am a self-taught artist there was a lot of trial and error in learning how to translate what I saw in my mind to the canvas. Though after all these years, frustration seems to be part of the process as not many paintings come easy. They are all labors of love, passion, determination and a will to create.
I am currently exhibiting the largest piece in my portfolio, a 4 ft by 6 ft diptych titled Desert Lovebirds, with the Museum of Arizona Artist’s group show, “Art and the City,” at Gallery 119 until December 30th. I also just wrapped up another group show, titled Contemporary Surrealism, at the Sedona Art Center in November. As of right now I have no other shows planned which is a bit of a relief and gives me time to focus on putting together a new body of work.
I recently stretched 15 canvases of various size and have started from the smallest working my way up to the largest. My goal with these is to push myself with each painting, to make the next better than the last. Given there is no deadline looming for the pieces to be completed. I am taking my time and being meticulous with getting certain aspects more polished and ironing out some imperfections I see in my work.
I pride myself in my pursuit of perfection, though I know it cannot be obtained, I always want to be pushing myself and my work towards progress. And without a deadline forcing me to complete with speed I am planning on refining my craft in hopes to create my best work to date.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I would say three qualities that have been most impactful in my journey would have to be determination/drive, discipline and patience.
I always route things back to childhood and what fueled me as a kid was skateboarding. It answered all my questions and gave me a creative outlet to focus all my energy. To this day I attribute my drive, as a kid, to be great at skateboarding, to my drive to be great in all aspects of my adult life. My determination to learn new tricks and perfect older tricks instilled a work ethic in me that I apply daily. Skateboarding taught me to be bold and fearless in my vision. And taught me how to get back up after falling. Skateboarding in itself is an artform and just like fine art it comes with a lot of defeat. But it’s how you get up, dust yourself off, and try again that shapes who you are and helps you begins to make a name for yourself.
Though I was disciplined with skateboarding as a kid, I really had no other responsibility than school. So, I would attribute my discipline being honed during my early adult life, when I began playing music. At first it was inconsistent and more of a jam band with my friend on guitar and me writing lyrics and trying to learn how to present them. However, it grew from us jamming in his bedroom, to us getting a rehearsal space, adding a drummer, then a bassist, writing a fair amount of songs, adding a second guitarist then becoming a gigging band. We rehearsed/wrote new music Monday through Thursday and played out on the weekends. It gave me a taste of success as a working artist, though the success was small it had a very large impact and instilled me with discipline. And it’s the same discipline I carried into my art when I transitioned from music to oil painting.
Patience, I think is the hardest quality to have and maintain. I am pretty impatient by nature so to counter this I have always worked a little harder (borderline obsessive) to speed up the learning curve and put myself into the position I am aiming for. Going back to childhood and skateboarding I would practice every second I had, before school, between classes, after school, after dinner; it was everything to me. So much in fact that after I had a couple teeth pulled the first thing I did when I got home from the dentist, still numb with Novocain, was grab my skateboard and head outside. Much to my mom’s dismay. I applied the same work ethic to music and then again to my painting so I can ensure I am growing at a rate I feel can get me to where my next goal is set.
To anyone who is just starting out on their creative journey I cannot stress enough the importance of discipline. Having a consistent time and place to work on your craft is going to help you progress. You can have all the drive and determination in the world but if you’re not disciplined the drive will not be properly harnessed and directed. There will always be someone out there more talented than you, but you can always outwork them and that is done with discipline. The art world is a tricky one and one I’m still trying to figure out how to properly navigate. It comes with a lot of rejection, and you have to have patience to know that if you keep working and using the rejection as fuel to get better eventually there will be a yes and nothing builds success like success.
Tell us what your ideal client would be like?
The ideal client for art is someone who loves art and loves to collect art. But you don’t have to be a veteran patron of the arts to be an ideal client.
Finishing a painting has a specific satisfaction to it. As an artist I lived every step of the processes and remember every pain point. Because of this, even when a painting is finished, I sometimes have a hard time looking past what I think I can do better. But once I call it done and release it into the world it gives you a sense of relief that you can now move on to something new.
And when your work resonates with someone enough for them to want to purchase it and hang it in their home or office, all the flaws you might see in that piece become less apparent and you.
So really the ideal client is someone who sees something special in your work, something special enough to want to take it home with them and having it hanging on their walls for years to come.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://louchheimart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/louchheim_art/
- Linkedin: @louchheim_art
- Twitter: @louchheim_art
