Bodlar Deathbringer is a visual artist living in New York City. Since early in his life, it seemed like he was destined to become an artist. His father was a visual artist and his mother was a writer. He also started creating his own paintings when he was eight years old. So it would seem odd that Bodlar went into IT work.

After years of working in the corporate world, he finally decided he had enough. He decided he would move to New York City to pursue his art career full-time. It hasn’t always been easy, but Bodlar has been working as an artist ever since.

In this episode, learn about the challenges you face as an artist, the importance in marketing and networking, and why you need to confront your fears.

Here are three things you can learn from Bodlar:

Work Hard and be Prolific

No one has any illusions that life as a full-time artist is easy. Bodlar believes you must want it. “”It’s hard. It’s really hard, and it’s perpetually terrifying. You know, you just always have to be on point. You have to hustle. You have to be self-motivated. You have to really want it.”

When you are working a 9-5 job, there’s a certain comfort there. But when you are working for yourself, things are different. “The reason it took me so long to get out of IT work is that you get addicted to that level of comfort of having that regular paycheck. It’s very hard to look in the face of the world and say ‘No, I’m going to do this other thing and go off the beaten path…”

The key is to constantly create. Bodlar creates 600-700 pieces a year, and that’s without the comfort of his own studio. While most artists believe talent is enough, he believes in the power of being prolific. “In order to be a successful artist, you really have to be prolific.”

As an example he brings up the fact that most famous artists are prolific creators. “Any artist you can name off the top of your head got there because they were prolific and worked and worked and worked their ass off to get there.”

Network and Market Your Art

Another thing Bodlar believes in deeply is the importance of networking and marketing your art. People won’t find you unless you put yourself out there. “As a visual artist, half of your job is marketing and networking and that people aren’t going to come to you just because you painted a pretty picture. You have to go out and show it to them and find the right person to buy it. And I’ve always painted under the auspices of painting what I want to paint and then going to find someone who likes it, that wants to buy it.”

You can’t just wait for people to come to you. You have to go to them. “You have to get into the scene. You have to figure out who the important players are. Who are the important galleries? Who are the important artists? And just go to as many events as you can and network with as many people as you can.”

It’s all about being visible. You can’t be afraid to share your work with others. “You have to be visible as an artist. You have to go out and figuratively grab people by the collar and say ‘Hey look, I did this. This has merit. It’s interesting, and really get in people’s face about what you’re doing.'”

Overcome Your Fears

When I asked Bodlar what separates someone who makes the leap from their 9-5 IT job from someone who doesn’t he talked about overcoming our fears. If we want to live a life without regret, we have to make that scary leap. “Our life, our society, our world are typically controlled by fear and jumping off of that cliff into the abyss of art is probably one of the most terrifying experiences I’ve been through in my life and it still terrifies me to this day, but I finally realized that if I don’t do this, If I don’t take that leap, that it’s going to kill me… and I don’t want to be one of those people that wakes up when I’m sixty-five and realize I wasted my life doing nothing.”

He believes many people never make the leap because they’re afraid of discomfort. “I think people are just very afraid of discomfort. We have this evolutionary precept to where we want comfort. We want to be comfortable. We want to have abundance… We want to have all of those things, and so, it’s hard to balance those things, because when you’re starting out, they’re very much at odds with one another.”

He also has no illusions that our fears and struggles will ever go away. We just have to be willing to deal with them. “Even if I’m selling tons of work, and making tons of money, I’m still going to be worried about what’s next. There’s still going to be newer, bigger, struggles to tackle and I think that’s one of the other things that a lot of people don’t realize that no matter where you’re at in life it’s going to be a struggle. It’s always going to be hard and that if you’re afraid of it being hard, then you’re never going to get anywhere. You have to be willing to say, ‘Okay, this is going to be hard and then go out and do it anyway.”

Shownotes

• about Bodlar
  • born into a family of artists
  • father is a visual artist/painter/sculptor
  • mother is a writer/pianist
  • created his own paintings starting at eight
  • very first pieces were created from construction paper and markers
  • mom had art pieces framed, interior decorator friend asked who made them
    • got first commission at twelve to decorate a riverboat casino with twenty of the pieces
  • thought it was common to get commissions that early
  • didn’t put much focus into it, but did get into music
  • had bad experiences with art and music which turned him off of art as a profession
  • got into IT work after high school
  • did it for 13 years before realizing he hated it
  • turned back to music but it didn’t really grab his attention
  • thought about painting more and realized it was his thing
  • in 2012, gave up his full-time IT career to do painting full-time
  • got help from his dad on what it meant to be a classically trained artist
  • asked himself “Why does a canvas always have to be a square?”
    • started experimenting and ended up creating wild shaped canvasses
  • Las Vegas was a creative black hole
    • decided he had to move to NYC to get the most out of his art career

4:34.5 “It was really difficult to live in corporate America because they have so many standards. They’re very conservative. You can’t do this with your hair. You can’t have visible tattoos. It was just very stifling and realized I had to find a way out.”

• networking in NY
  • people are very busy, it’s hard to line people up and schedule them

“It’s just a grind. You never know where a break is going to come, so you just kinda have to treat everything and everyone you meet as though they’re going to be that person.”

• favorite style of art
  • doing the same style over and over can get boring
  • has 3-4 directions he goes in
    • minimalist/subtle
    • abstract – emotional dumps
    • aggressive – censorship culture
    • vortex pieces spawned from happy accident
    • traveler – abstract/landscape – journey as human beings
    • Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey in The Hero With a Thousand Faces
• how he works on his art
  • usually creates multiple pieces at the same time
• learning from his parents
  • mother wanted him and his brothers to develop a strong sense of initiative
    • built a strong foundation for building a critical and capable mind
    • learned a lot musically from his mother because she was a pianist
  • father gave him strong background in visual arts with color theory and design principles
  • both taught him life lessons on what not to do
  • saw his parents struggled, so he decided to get regular job

24:25.4″The life of an artist is very challenging. It’s very typically like… it’s always a roller coaster. You go through periods of feast and famine and because you’re individually employed, you don’t know where the next job is coming. You don’t know where… It’s always this tenuous sort of, on a razor’s edge type of life.”

25:24 “It doesn’t matter what you do in your life. You are going to have stress. You are going to have challenges and ultimately came to the conclusion that if I’m going to have to deal with challenges in my life, I want them to at least be on my terms, and that was ultimately what pushed me into painting full-time.”

• dealing with the fact that there’s no guaranteed salary or stability
  • has little freak outs, but always hits the pavement again
  • does not think he could turn back to having a full-time, non-painting job
  • large disconnect with visual artists and performance artists
    • talent vs. practice
  • works at frame shop because of his experience with

“It’s hard. It’s really hard, and it’s perpetually terrifying. You know, you just always have to be on point. You have to hustle. You have to be self-motivated. You have to really want it… The reason it took me so long to get out of IT work is that you get addicted to that level of comfort of having that regular paycheck. It’s very hard to look in the face of the world and say ‘No, I’m going to do this other thing and go off the beaten path…”

“In order to be a successful artist, you really have to be prolific.”

30:27 “Any artist you can name off the top of your head got there because they were prolific and worked and worked and worked their ass off to get there.”

• where he sets up his studio since he moves around so much
  •  creates 600-700 works a year
  • can’t paint as much as he would like because he doesn’t have a permanent space
  • has a small mobile painting rig where he takes to parks/bars/etc
• where he gets the most sales
  • come through personal networking
  • goes out 2-3 times per week to specific bars to do personal networking
  • started working with a broker to sell larger pieces

33:40.8 “As a visual artist, half of your job is marketing and networking and that people aren’t going to come to you just because you painted a pretty picture. You have to go out and show it to them and find the right person to buy it. And I’ve always painted under the auspices of painting what I want to paint and then going to find someone who likes it, that wants to buy it.”

• social media
  • has sold a few pieces through Facebook promotions
  • hasn’t had direct sales through Twitter/Instagram, but Instagram has been a powerful tool since moving to NYC
    • being introduced to galleries
    • got recognition from Jerry Saltz a famous art critic
    • Instagram is a good way to network with people
• strategy for Instagram
  •  presenting your work in a more professional and systemic way
  • using the right hashtags
  • tagging different boroughs and parts of NYC
  • using it as a portfolio
  • mohawk as a conversation starter
  • you need to be willing to talk to people everybody and promote
  • business card with fuck on one side, and Art by Bodlar on the other
    • the card requires an explanation, which allows him to show people his work

38:09 “You have to get into the scene. You have to figure out who the important players are. Who are the important galleries? Who are the important artists? And just go to as many events as you can and network with as many people as you can.”

38:44 “You have to be visible as an artist. You have to go out and figuratively grab people by the collar and say ‘Hey look, I did this. This has merit. It’s interesting, and really get in people’s face about what you’re doing.”

39:33 “I don’t get to stop working ever. Really, I mean, I’m always working. Whether it’s somebody I meet on the street who makes a comment on my hair. It’s always this way of creating a conversation.”

• his choice isn’t to stand out, it’s a stylistic choice
  • likes punk rock/industrial music
• most interesting interaction in NYC
  • interesting interactions with his friend Andre who is a violinist
    • hosts miniature loft concerts
    • meeting talented artists and trying to reach that higher echelon
• artists that influenced his work
  • favorite artist is Mark Rothko
  • fan of Vincent Van Gogh
    • put emotion into his paintings
  • “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” ― Cesar A. Cruz

“I always really appreciate artists that work on an emotional level.”

44:45.7 “I think really good art is going to hit that chord where it creates this sense of discord or at least creates this emotional connection or a little bit of unease or it just starts this conversation rather than just being a pretty picture to look at.”

• best/most powerful comment he’s received
  • any time another artist compliments him
    • they understand the elegance and simplicity of it
  • Convergence
  • some of his most powerful compliments were intended to be insults
  • does a lot of work with curse words
    • people being offended highlights what he’s trying to say/show
    • words only carry the amount of power that you give them

45:51.5 “Any time I receive a compliment from another artist, it always really carries a lot of weight, especially if it’s an artist that I respect because that’s saying ‘Wow, I’m an artist, and I’m really blown away by a painting you did. That means a lot to me.”

• source of his inspiration
  • when he was young he had shapes he had to get out of his head
  • for his abstract work, he goes into it with an emotion in mind, then lets it come to him
  • emotive work is the same as it was when he was young

51:16.5 “Art is all about expression and it’s all about, for me it’s all about emoting and I’m trying to convey some sense of feeling and emotion and through that, sometimes I get to do it in the moment and sometimes it’s this longer, gradual, methodical thing. So It’s a good mixture I think.”

• how he paints
  • comes up with the image in his mind first
  • the process he uses
  • studying art under his father
  • design as an important part of art as well as color theory
• advice he would give to his younger self

54:58. “The advice I would give to my younger self would be to don’t be afraid of being an artist. That being genuine to who you are and what you want to say is extremely important, and that people are going to judge you anyway. So, you might as well be the most genuine form of yourself possible.”

• the difference between someone who makes the leap and someone who doesn’t
  • If you imagine yourself in 5, 10 years, etc. are you happy with the course you are on? If not, you need to take that plunge and change course
  • it took him 4 years to leave his job before becoming a full-time artist
  • it’s a matter of conquering your fears
  • it takes 10 years to become an overnight success
  • you don’t ever see the struggle it took to become successful

55:57 “Our life, our society, our world are typically controlled by fear and jumping off of that cliff into the abyss of art is probably one of the most terrifying experiences I’ve been through in my life and it still terrifies me to this day, but I finally realized that if I don’t do this, If I don’t take that leap, that it’s going to kill me… and I don’t want to be one of those people that wakes up when I’m sixty-five and realize I wasted my life doing nothing.”

56:44 “I think people are just very afraid of discomfort. We have this evolutionary precept to where we want comfort. We want to be comfortable. We want to have abundance… We want to have all of those things, and so, it’s hard to balance those things, because when you’re starting out, they’re very much at odds with one another.”

1:00:07.7 “Even if I’m selling tons of work, and making tons of money, I’m still going to be worried about what’s next. There’s still going to be newer, bigger, struggles to tackle and I think that’s one of the other things that a lot of people don’t realize that no matter where you’re at in life it’s going to be a struggle. It’s always going to be hard and that if you’re afraid of it being hard, then you’re never going to get anywhere. You have to be willing to say, ‘Okay, this is going to be hard and then go out and do it anyway.”

• Bodlar talks about his name
  •  he was not born with his name
  • never cared much about birth name
  • got into role playing games at 11-12
  • came up with the name Bodlar Deathbringer for a roleplaying game
  • liked the name and character, kept it for future characters
  • everyone knew he was going to use it
  •  2000 joined tabletop game for warhammer and colored and detailed figures
    • first time someone called him Bodlar referring to him instead of character
    • it really resonated with him and felt like it was who he’d become
    • by 2008 he was using it full-time
    • when he went into painting full-time, it made sense to use it
  • didn’t want people to view him as his father’s son, he wanted to be known in the art world for his work
  • reacts negatively to his legal name, because that’s not who he is
  • friend looked up meaning of his name and it’s a Scandanavian name meaning executioner
  • didn’t know the two names were related when he created it
  • wants his art to be a way to start conversations and change people’s perspectives
  • Jason Zook selling his last name
• Infected Mushroom by Dropout
  • listens to the song to remind himself he’s on a journey

1:11:50 “We’re so busy going from A to Z that we forget that there’s twenty four letters in-between.”

1:12:04.4 “Yes everybody has a lot going on in their life, but don’t skip through the process. Don’t skip through the details and appreciate the journey.”

1:12:58.5 “The end is boring. The beginning is boring. The real meat of anything happens in-between.”

• morning routine
  • is nocturnal so his morning doesn’t usually start until 11-12
  • starts with coffee and cigarette
  • then goes on to social media then tackles his task for the day from gallery submissions to talking with collectors
• recommendations for books, documentaries, tools
  • A History of Doubt by Jennifer Michael Hect – history of great doubters of the world that made a profound change
  • DMT: The Spirit Molecule
  • Simon Schama’s Power of Art – follows series of impressive artists
• creative people
  •  Yayoi Kusama artist who committed herself by choice and continues to create
    • her work is similar to some of his art
•  definition of creativity

1:19:25 “My definition of creativity would simply be making something, anything, that wasn’t there before. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate or extravagant thing. Just making anything, I think, takes a certain level of creativity.”

• being more creative
  • creativity is like a muscle
  • every time he creates, he gets five ideas from it
  • everything creates more inspiration and motivation
  • it’s hard at first but eventually you’ll pick up momentum

1:20:07.4 “I really believe that anybody can be creative, that anybody can express themselves if they want to, but it takes practice and you have to take really small steps at first.”

1:20:44 “If you really want to do something creative, it’s really more about consistency and showing up and doing it over and over and over, and eventually you’ll get to a point where you’ll look at your work and realize it’s not terrible anymore.”

• challenge
  • you have to be prolific to be a great artist
  • Picasso quotient – during 70yr period he had 35k works
    • roughly 500 works a year
    • includes sketches/studies, and production pieces, etc.
  • challenge yourself daily to do two things
  • by doing that you will hone your skills and build momentum
  • keep track of the things that you do and measure it out over the year

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