Keith Bond — Constraints and Creative Growth

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For today's episode, we sat down with Keith Bond, a landscape artist who primarily focuses on painting scenes from nature, with a strong emphasis on plein air sketching as a research and reference tool for his studio work. He believes in the importance of painting from life to develop fundamental artistic skills, stressing that understanding principles like value, composition, and color provides a foundation for creative expression. Throughout his career, Keith has learned to approach plein air painting as a way to capture the essence of color, light, and atmosphere, rather than creating finished pieces, and uses these sketches as references for more contemplative studio paintings. His artistic journey began with a love for art in school, and he transitioned to being a full-time artist with the support of his wife, navigating the challenges of an art career through discipline and continuous learning. Keith advocates for building personal relationships with clients, maintaining an email newsletter, and having a strong website as key marketing strategies for artists. Finally, Keith reminds us of the value of constraints in fostering creativity and encourages aspiring artists to paint from life, return to fundamental principles, and understand that creativity is a dialogue between the left and right brain hemispheres.

Keith's FASO site:
https://keithbond.com/

Keith's Social media:
https://www.instagram.com/keith.bond/
https://www.facebook.com/KeithBondFineArt

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Transcript:

Keith Bond: 0:00

By having that project where I was forced into problem solving, and that's what creativity is. It's a it's problem solving, right? You have certain constraints. And so I think if you can give yourself constraints, that's a great tool to to you know, foster that imagination, that creativity, by giving yourself constraints, you learn to grow in ways that you never will if you don't welcome

Laura Arango Baier: 0:35

to the bold brush show where we believe that fortune favors a bold brush. My name is Laura Arango Baier, and I'm your host. For those of you who are new to the podcast, we are a podcast that covers art marketing techniques and all sorts of business tips specifically to help artists learn to better sell their work. We interview artists at all stages of their careers, as well as others who are in careers tied to the art world, in order to hear their advice and insights. For today's episode, we sat down with Keith bond, a landscape artist who primarily focuses on painting scenes from nature with strong emphasis on plein air sketching as a research and reference tool for his studio work. He believes in the importance of painting from life to develop fundamental artistic skills, stressing that understanding principles like value composition and color provides a foundation for creative expression. Throughout his career, Keith has learned to approach plein air painting as a way to capture the essence of color, light and atmosphere, rather than creating finished pieces, and uses these sketches as references for more contemplative studio paintings. His artistic journey began with a love for art in school, and he transitioned to being a full time artist with the support of his wife, navigating the challenges of an art career through discipline and continuous learning. Keith advocates for building personal relationships with the clients, maintaining an email newsletter and having a strong website as key marketing strategies for artists. Finally, Keith reminds us of the value of constraints in fostering creativity and encourages aspiring artists to paint from life return to fundamental principles and understand that creativity is a dialog between the left and right brain hemispheres. Welcome Keith to the BoldBrush show. How are you today? I'm doing great. How are you I'm doing great. I'm so excited to have you. You've been with FASO for very long time, and of course, your work is absolutely breathtaking. I love the fall leaves on the trees that you've painted of like the birch trees with those beautiful yellow leaves. Oh, you're welcome. And yeah, I mean, I was looking through all of your paintings, and it's always a joy to see someone who puts so much love and care into outdoor painting, and to make a landscape really speak the way that your landscape speaks. So I really appreciate your work.

Keith Bond: 2:47

Oh, thank you so much. Very kind of you're trying to better me up.

Laura Arango Baier: 2:51

Oh, no, I mean it. I truly mean it. I think I mentioned this too in our first meeting, actually, that I am absolutely terrified of plein air, and I have a deep respect for people who paint plein air, or people who paint landscapes, because it's just, it is, in my opinion, it can be a really challenging portrait, because it is, you know, a portrait of a day on Earth. And so intimidating, so intimidating for me. So I'm,

Keith Bond: 3:19

you know, it can be, it can be, sorry I cut you off. But you know, you can transplant a tree, or you can move a limb on a tree, or whatever, and that's perfectly fine. You can't move a nose on somebody's face. So there, you know, there's a little bit more latitude in certain respects with landscapes than some other figurative or portrait or or something like that. But there are also a lot of challenges too. You don't have the controlled setting that you do when you're doing a portrait. Light changes, the weather might change, and storm might blow in all of a sudden, whatever. So there's there's definitely challenges, bugs, you have to deal with those sorts of things, but I paint the landscape because that's what I love, that's what I'm passionate about,

Laura Arango Baier: 4:12

absolutely. And then, of course, we'll talk more about your process and all of those delicious details. But before we do that, do you mind telling us a bit about who you are and what you do?

Keith Bond: 4:22

Yeah, so I guess for those who don't know who I am, I paint landscape paintings, pretty much exclusively. I have done a few figurative or throw animals in once in a while, but very rare, it's almost entirely landscape paintings. I do a lot of plein air, but I no longer sell any of my plein air work. I only exhibit and show my my studio pieces. I live in the Western United States, currently in Utah, but I've moved around quite a bit during my lifetime. Lived in several different places. I. Um, and it, you know, part of that is, my wife is very adventurous, and she loves experiencing new things. So every few years, she kind of says we should go somewhere new. So, so we end up moving, which is, you know, the benefit of being an artist, working for yourself, you can move, and it's not, it's not that difficult, although he can be challenged with kids not wanting to move so but that's a whole other story. Yeah, I'm not sure if I grew about myself. Yeah, I don't know if I covered that or

Laura Arango Baier: 5:39

not. Yeah. I mean, I think it's very good starting point, and then, of course, we can continue from there. And actually, I was going to ask, because you mentioned it, and I'm very curious, why don't you sell your plein air?

Keith Bond: 5:51

Because that is my research, and that's me, I guess. Well, we can get into that? Yeah, so I learned a long time ago that it's, it's so valuable for me, invaluable to have my references, that when I go out and paint and plein air, I'm responding to color and light. I'm responding to the well, I guess in some there is some element of truth that a planner has, that a studio piece will never have, and there is validity in selling those. But to me, when I go out, I don't try to capture a finished painting. I just try to capture color and value and atmosphere relationships, and so I don't ever even finish them anymore. So my paintings are just sketches. When I go plein air, in fact, there were, I remember one time I was doing plein air sketches of a couple horses. Again, I'm not an animal painter, so I don't do that very often, but I really liked these horses, and I loved the setting they were in, and I wanted to capture the colors, so I did. There were two horses standing side by side, grazing, and I painted half of each of them, but didn't even draw out the whole horse on either one so, but I wanted the color relationships, and then I took photos so I could have the anatomy and stuff. But I realized those who are animal artists will say, well, the photograph will distort the anatomy, which is another issue all in itself, but I haven't painted those finished paintings yet. Anyway, so, but, yeah, I guess my my point being, when I paint plein air, I am after the truth of the color and value and light and all of that stuff. And then I can work out composition in the studio, and I can work out what I want to say, what I want to try to express, what mood I want the painting to have. And I will sometimes find a photograph of one place that I, you know, have been, and want to do a painting of that. But then to get the mood that I want, I actually pull out my plein air study from a different plein air piece from somewhere else, some other time, and it's just kind of putting all those different pieces together to express something that I want to say to to make a creative expression. So,

Laura Arango Baier: 8:33

yeah, that's really interesting, because it's kind of like how you know when you go to school and your teacher tells you, everyone has to take notes, right? And then you have the student who takes very, very detailed, comprehensive notes. And then you have a student who with a couple notes, they're they're good, right? Because they, they've already built up this repertoire, also of experience of maybe in the subject, versus someone who's much more at the beginning, right, where they feel the need to write down every little note. So that's kind of what it sounds like, like, maybe at first, when you first started doing plein air, that was like a very deep, reflective note taking. And then as you've progressed, it seems like your note taking has become more abbreviated, because you got what you needed from all of your experience as well. So it's really interesting, right,

Keith Bond: 9:21

right, right, yeah, yeah, I used to, and it's interesting. I did it myself, and I see a lot of my students do the same thing. They spend way too long on a planar piece at the beginning, and by the time they're done with it, the light has changed three or four times. The scene is completely different. Fact, there are some students, it kind of boggles my mind. We start in the morning, do you know, start working on a planar piece, and then we break for lunch, and they come back, and in the afternoon, they're working on the same piece, and the light's completely different. You know? I try to talk to him and say, well, the light's different. Why don't we start a new piece? Well, I've got to finish this first. I'm almost done, yeah, but it, you know, but it's a learning process when you you know, I spent so much time early on when I would try to finish a painting. And, you know, plein air is hard. It's really hard with all of the everything changing all the time, and the percentage of paintings that actually turned out and were good was fairly low. You know, that's just the way it is. You know, as you as you progress, hopefully that number goes up, but I don't know. I go out. In fact, I went out a few days ago with some friends. And yeah, I probably did five plein air paintings, six plein air paintings, and maybe only two of them I'm happy with the other four. I mean, I've got the color notes, so, you know, I can do something with them. But as far as how, just in and of itself, what I was able to capture at that given time, now, only two of them I'm very happy with. So, you know, the batting average is still low, even I guess maybe partially, that's because the standards get higher as you progress as an artist. So, you know, I said a few minutes ago that I only, I never finished my plein air paintings. You know, I still bring them far enough along to know whether I've got something good. I guess that's what I was trying to say with that. And occasionally, sometimes I do get a finished painting that I think could be frameable and sellable, but I will seldom sell them anyway, because I want that reference to refer to in the studio. Right,

Laura Arango Baier: 11:50

right? Yeah. I mean, it's, I think that's one of the realities that a lot of people who are very much at the beginning of being an artist, don't realize, because, of course, it comes with experience, which is that not every painting is going to turn out, and that's fine, right? Like you have to make peace with the fact that in order to get better, you will make mistakes. It is necessary. If you have a lot of wins, that's awesome. But at the same time, you don't learn much from winning. You learn more, much more from from those failures, or from those, you know, things that just didn't work out, because they show you where you need growth, right? Yeah, it's, it's an interesting, an interesting little tidbit that I think a lot of people miss out on,

Keith Bond: 12:40

and you know that to expound on that. So when I'm outside, if I don't have the idea that I have to get a finished painting, it takes the pressure off, and I'm a lot freer to just capture the essence of what I what I want to try to capture in that scene, and not worry about, is it a successful painting? Can I sell it? Can I win the award at the plein air event, you know? So,

Laura Arango Baier: 13:05

yeah, yeah. I think artists also at any at any stage. I think there's always like that lingering pressure, if there's, like, you just said, an event, or some sort of competition or something, if you, if you put that as the priority instead of making just a painting, just letting the painting flow, like you said, it might add that unnecessary pressure. Some people might thrive with pressure. I don't. I personally don't. I'm sure there are a lot of other artists who also have a love, hate relationship with pressure. You know, pressure can be good, but also pressure can it can make things difficult, or make make you make rash decisions in the moments that if you had allowed yourself the time and space, and, you know, the release of pressure, to be able to work through those things, it would have had a different result, right? So it's a little balance.

Keith Bond: 14:03

It is, it is. And I think all of us, there are times when the pressure comes and it causes, you know, a breakthrough in something. You Excel, you know, you you reach a milestone or whatever, and then sometimes you fail. And it's that fear of what's going to happen because of this pressure that sometimes we become too cautious because of that. But just a quick story. There were years and years and years ago, there was a show coming up, and I knew about it. I had, like, six months that I could have prepared, but I wasn't really going to enter anything into the show, because I didn't have any ideas for it that I was excited about. I couldn't come up with an idea. I mean, it wasn't just a painted landscape, it was a little bit more themed of a show. The day before the deadline, I finally had an idea. Well, my wife said, Are you ever. Are you going to do anything for that show? When's the deadline? It's like the deadline is tomorrow. I haven't thought of anything. I don't think I'm going to enter. And then that day, I came up with an idea. So I stayed up all night painting it, and submitted it and ended up becoming a purchase award. I got a purchase ward for it. So, you know, there are times when, you know, that pressure at the very end, and it's something that I had never done before. I mean, it was way out of my wheelhouse, but it was really, you know, when that inspiration hits, and it was a good idea. Once I finally got it, I tried it, but I knew if it didn't succeed, I don't have to turn it in, I don't have to submit it, so I just gave it a shot and not tried it. You know, I'm getting ready to take a bunch of paintings to a gallery for a group show next week, and I've had one canvas that I was like, Okay, this is my last one. I only have a week to get it done, but I want it drawn early enough that it can actually dry. So do I go with? I have like, two or three ideas, and I'm trying to figure out, Okay, which one can I actually pull off in this amount of time? And so that's kind of been a little bit of that fear working in there. You know, do I go with the one that I feel a little bit more confident in, or the one that's a little bit more of a stretch of my abilities. And I actually still haven't decided, and I have a week, so no problem. I don't know what. I don't know what I'll end up choosing. But anyway, Oh man, that's tough. No matter where we are in our in our career, I think there's always a little bit of that that comes into play once while, the pressure of the having to perform, and can I do it? I don't know. So,

Laura Arango Baier: 16:53

yeah, yeah. And again, it's that balance, you know? If, yeah, yeah. If you, if you can make a breakthrough with, you know, that pressure, then it's worth it. But then at the same time, I feel like the difference with like the other competition, right? The competition that you painted it the night before, you had nothing to lose, whereas this is like an exhibition, right? So it's a little bit more of like a well, I mean, I want to be able to present the best of my work, so it's that valid point, yeah, yeah. So it's that, should I take a risk, even though I'm not quite sure, or should I do something I know for sure would fit in? And, of course, discretion, yeah,

Keith Bond: 17:33

and even though I feel more confident in some of the other ideas, I still don't know for sure, right, whether it will turn out. I mean, there are paintings that I've done that it was a subject that I was quite confident in, and thought, yeah, this will be something that I can pull off. And they failed. Every painting is a new beast. Every painting is unique. And no matter how much you think you might have things figured out. You run into things that it's painting is hard. It's not and it doesn't get easier with more practice. I mean, I guess that sounds pessimistic, doesn't it? I'm supposed to encourage everybody and say, You can do this. You're going to get better. You're going to get great. It's just that my standard, you know, the more I progress, it's, you know, like the dangling carrot out in front of you. It doesn't get easier for me. In fact, I look back at some of the my earlier paintings and think, How did I do that? That was good. I can't do that anymore, so I don't know. It's you learn, you grow, you change, you evolve. And it's never stagnant, or it shouldn't be. If it becomes stagnant, stagnant, then I think there's a problem, and it will show in the work.

Laura Arango Baier: 19:02

So, totally, totally, yeah, and, I mean, it's organic, right? It's kind of like I was saying not every painting is going to pan out. And oftentimes we think that technique is this kind of, like, up right. Like, like, a line that just, you know, goes up right, right, like, perfect line that just goes diagonally up. And we get better over time, but it's a little bit more like the general trend is up. But maybe you have like in the chart. You have like points that go a little higher than the line, a little lower, a little higher, a little lower, and right their average, I guess, is that you improve over time. But the reality is, you get a little better. Maybe it's not so great, maybe a little better, maybe it's not so great, and that's and, you

Keith Bond: 19:53

know, sometimes it feels like an artist that it's not necessarily, you know that going up, it's more like you're wandering all over the. Place sometimes, but I guess maybe that's in part, my tendency to want to experiment and try new things, and I don't know how readily it is available, or I don't know how obvious it is, rather, to people looking at my work from the outside to see, because my subject matter hasn't changed. And my, you know, my, what I want to express about the landscape hasn't really changed. But in trying to make marks and trying to to make a beautiful surface, a beautiful painting. You know, I want the paint itself to be beautiful beyond just the scene that it's trying to represent. And so in trying to come up with ways to apply the paint and make beautiful marks, I experiment a lot, and I play with a lot of different tools and techniques. But I don't know if the outside observer notices that, you know, the layman,

Laura Arango Baier: 21:11

yeah, yeah, it's, it's a lot of painting, just because you mentioned, it is so much interior work as well that isn't, you know, visible to people as well. I mean, maybe another artist might be able to notice, like, oh yeah, your brush strokes kind of loosened up more. Or the way that you describe this form does look different, right? But that's a trained eye that can catch that, versus, you know, just maybe a possible collector who just appreciates art, they might not totally noticed that. And, of course, the quality is still really great. But at the same time, you know, you've had a, I guess, what I would call a small win, which is, oh, I learned how to better describe this form over here, even though I was describing it nicely before. It's one of those things, you know, it though the playing field is very strange with paintings. Then, actually, I did want to ask you, before we continue talking about your process more, when did you first begin the path of the artist?

Keith Bond: 22:15

Good question. So I've always been an artist. I was one of those that in school. I was always doing art. I was always doodling on all my pages papers. But I remember, well, in high school, I took every art class that they offered a couple of more than once as my electives. I just loved art, but I never really thought that I would do art as a career, because, you know, when you grow up, that's always something that, you know, people say that you don't make money at art. So I never really thought about doing art as a career. I just did it because I loved it. In college, I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I actually switched my majors a couple times I ended up getting a degree in marketing, but I took some art classes as electives, and knew immediately I wanted to do something with art, but I didn't want to change my major again, and I knew a well known professional artist who lived nearby, And I went to school with his son, and he told me, you don't need a degree in art to be an artist unless you want to teach at a college level. That's the only reason you really need a degree in art. So he said, Just get good practice and and if anything, you know, go to something like the palette and chisel, or go to, you know, that type of place where it's not really accredited, you're not getting a degree that you can study under artists that you admire. I didn't go that route, by the way, but he his point being study with an artist that you admire that can teach you what you want to learn, but don't worry about getting a degree. But I still actually didn't know if I wanted to be a working fine artist or not. I ended up out of college. I thought, Well, I do have an art background. I do have a map marketing background. I can do something in the field related. And I didn't know. I thought, maybe I could go advertising route. Maybe I could go illustration route. Maybe I could go, you know, whatever. I ended up getting a job at an art gallery. Became the the assistant gallery director at the gallery, and it was great. I mean, being surrounded by fine art, nationally recognized, top tier artists. It was a great environment to be surrounded by all of that, and I learned quite a bit about the other side of the art business, the gallery side, which I think was very beneficial for me to see what is involved in that, because a lot of artists complain about how much a gallery. Takes for commission, and, you know, all they do is just put it on the wall and they're taking, you know, 40, 50% whatever. But there's a lot that goes into running a gallery and the work that goes behind selling work and promoting it, if the gallery does its job well. So I appreciate that, but I wanted to be an artist. You know, I probably six months after working there, I knew gallery isn't for me. I wanted to do art. I wanted to be an artist. So, you know about, oh, gosh, how long was it? Maybe about a year and a half after I worked there, I quit and jumped into art full time. And actually it was my wife who, she was very supportive. I had an opportunity. I would have had to go. I got, you know, I was trying to do art in the evenings and weekends and stuff. But it was, I wasn't making a whole lot of progress. It was tough, you know, to try to get enough time to get good enough but I had an opportunity. I was like, Well, I don't know. And she encouraged me. She said, just put in your notice. Go ahead and try it. If things don't work out after, you know, a little bit of time, then we can reassess and figure out what to do. So I quit my job and jumped into doing art full time, and it was tough for several years. I mean, I could say, you know, that's almost 30 years later, it's still tough, you know, it's still up and down, but we made it work. We I am very grateful. My wife is very supportive, but she's also she is extremely frugal. So that was very, very helpful. You know, she would manage the book. She would say, Okay, we don't have enough money for you to go out and do this or that, so you gotta figure out something else. So she was very good to stay on top of all of that and take care of that, and kind of keep me reined in and in line so that, so that we could get through and so, gosh, when it wasn't quite 30 years ago, it was like 2627 28 somewhere in there. I can't remember exactly, but the only job that, after I quit, that job, that gallery, the only time I did any work, was about a year later. Year and a half later, I worked for the Census Bureau for about six months, and that, you know, was very beneficial financially. We needed the money. But then, you know, after that, you know, the census only comes around once every 10 years, so I, I did that, and then I just went back to doing art full time, and that's the only time I've gone out and got a job. So we made it work. It wasn't always easy. There were definitely lean times. And there it, you know, it's feast or famine with art sometimes. So a lot of ups and downs. But yeah, that's kind of how I got into it, how I got started. So I submitted to a show, got accepted gallery there that was kind of involved with the show, asked me to join the gallery. They got me into another show. And from that other show, I got news, an article in southwest art, and that got me into other galleries. So, you know, it all just kind of one thing led to another, which led to another, and it kind of grew from there. So,

Laura Arango Baier: 28:54

I mean, because you met, you mentioned a couple things there that I like to highlight. Because one is it is so underrated how important it is to have support from your spouse or your partner or your family, having someone there that can, you know, provide a bit of an anchor, or a bit of like, Hey, this is what's going on. Kind of almost like a, I was going to say, your wife sounds like a really good like a really good manager, like, economic manager, just manager, just like, Okay, this is what we're doing now, because we

Keith Bond: 29:30

Financial Officer of Keith Bon fine art, there you

Laura Arango Baier: 29:33

go. And you have a very excellent chief financial officer then. Because,

Keith Bond: 29:40

although I will say, sorry I keep cutting you off. She she was a stay at home mom. We had two little kids at the time, and she said, I don't want somebody else raising my kids. I don't want to put them in daycare so that I can go out. I meaning her. Um, so that she could go out and get a job. She didn't want that. So she said, if things didn't work out, I was the one that had to go back and get a job, not her. So that was always part of the plan, part of my, you know, my agreement with her, but it was also kind of what gave me the drive and the motivation to make things work is I, I couldn't fall back on, relying on her to bring in the income so that I could play art all day. So anyway, yeah, go whatever you were saying you

Laura Arango Baier: 30:36

can, yeah. I mean, it's, and, you know, that goes to show too, that there is, there's that sweet spot of pressure, right? There is that sweet spot of not too much pressure, but just enough where it really motivates you. And of course, now you've been a career artist for a while, right? You've been doing this and selling your work. Of course, there are ups and downs, just like in the act of painting, there are ups and downs, there are ups and downs in the actual career as well. It's almost like a Russian doll of like, like, ups and downs, you know, or like, inside of the painting, you know, creation process ups and downs. And then in the career side ups and downs, because it's just so organic, right? It's so dependent on outside factors, inside factors, right. And then even just having that creative side basically down right, that's the given before you even sell. That's like the 80% right? That is most of the work. And then the 20% is the actual, like selling. So being sure that that works is really important. And then, yeah. And of course, it's also like, if an artist finds that, man, we're going through a lean time right now. I'm going to take a quick job. I'm going to just work for a couple months just to get us, you know, to keep going then do it right? Like, kind of like how you had with the census, right? There's no shame in that, because, hey, you gotta eat you can't eat oil paint, and I don't recommend it either. It's usually very dangerous. So, yeah, those are all really, really excellent points. And actually, since you know, we mentioned the length of your career as well, I wanted to ask you if you could tell us a bit more about how your artistic process has changed over time in your paintings?

Keith Bond: 32:28

Yeah, great question. So early on, I did do a lot of plein air painting because I knew, I knew the benefit, the value of painting from life. I tried painting from photographs I had. I'd always taken a lot of photographs, knowing, hey, eventually I might, you know, want to do something with art. So I was always taking pictures of, ooh, that would be cool. Early on, when I did try to work from photographs, they turned out awful, because I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know where and how the photographs lied. I knew that they were wrong because I remember seeing something, ooh, that's so exciting. I took a picture of it and go back and get and that is back in the day when it was actual film, get it developed, and the photos look awful. Like, Oh, I can't work from this. It's terrible. So I recognized very early on that I needed to paint from life. And I did take workshops early on with artists that I admired. The very first workshop I took was with Matt Smith, great teacher, great artist. And, you know, just learning the basic fundamentals of, you know, design, color value, drawing those types of things, that's the foundation, and just learning from him how important it is to go out and paint from life very regularly, and learn, you know what colors of nature and the relationships and light? You know how it really all works together, you know? And once you learn that, then you can kind of deviate and kind of, you know, throw all the rules out and do express yourself however you want. I tend to try to stay somewhat close to reality. I don't go get too far off, but I do push color and things sometimes, here and there, to express a certain to emphasize a certain mood or something that I want to do, but I do want it to feel naturalistic. I don't want it to deviate too far from reality. So oh, the question was about how I've progressed or changed. I'm getting off on different tangents, aren't I? So throughout my entire. Career, you know, I've, I've done some plein air and some studio work. It's never, there was never a point when I was only a plein air artist, but I, I would take my plein air paintings, and early on, I tried to sell them. I tried to get finished paintings, and then, but I would go back in the studio, and as I was trying to do a studio painting, I would sometimes refer to the plein air, and I would try to Ooh, that one's a good one. I want to make that one bigger and do a bigger painting of the same scene. And 99% of the time, I hated the studio version, and I realized I was trying to replicate a success that I had outside and translate that into a big painting. But studio painting has so many other challenges that you have to work through and obstacles that you have to overcome, and every decision that you had to make in a plein air piece, you have to make those all over again in the studio on a different scale, which means you have to work out, figure out a different way to address those same questions or problems. And so I realized the purpose of my studio painting can't be just to make a bigger version of one of a success I had in plein air. I have to have a different reason for making the studio painting. And so I, I was, I am a lot more about, okay, what do I want to say with the piece? And you know, if the plein air painting was about kind of the in the moment, response to nature, my studio painting was a little bit more reflective of an idea or a mood or or something like that. And then, okay, so how do I make the decisions to support that idea in the studio? And so the paintings, sometimes the paintings may look somewhat similar to the reference, but sometimes they are very different. And as I mentioned earlier, sometimes I take, you know, two or three or four different studies and create a painting from them. One might be kind of the subject, while the other is the color palette. You know, it could be a variety of different things. So, yeah, my my work now, a lot of it is a lot more imaginative, a lot more creating, moving things around. Oh, I should also say, so maybe about 10 years into my career. Was it that? I can't remember how long it was, but I took a workshop with Skip whitcom, and he's a fabulous artist, fabulous teacher as well. And the workshop that I happened to take with him was on composition, and it was a plein air workshop, and we went out and to watch him look at the landscape and borrow something from here and move it over here and and even if it was something that was right in front of him, just rearranging the shapes and elements to make a more interesting design. It in theory. I already knew that, and I was doing it to some extent, but to the extent that he was doing it just opened up. My mind is like, Wow. I mean, you can change it that much, and I knew that. But I guess, in practice, I don't know if it was the fear or the not knowing how to do it. I'm not sure what it was, but I didn't rearrange things to the extent that is possible. So that workshop was really beneficial open my, you know, just that other door that it opened for me to really experiment and push things around in my compositions. One other thing that really was influential in being able to rearrange compositions and kind of veer away from being slave to what I see in front of me, and really open up the possibilities to express myself as years and years ago, I got a commission to paint a mural that wrapped around four walls of a room, and It was they wanted. So it was a finished painting on canvas that was hung on the wall like wallpaper, basically. And they wanted it like, the same level of finish and detail that I do my regular work. So it's not like, you know, you get house paint and a roller brush and, you know, make some simplified it was like a. My art on four huge canvases that wrapped around the room. But I had to, you know, sometimes when I'm out there and I come up with a great composition for, you know, just a framed painting, there might be a line that leads off the edge that, you know, really strengthens a composition. But if you were to, you know, turn the corner with that same scene to try to wrap around the room that line going up the edge would really make it hard for the adjacent panel on the next wall to work. So I had to really learn how to think in three dimensional terms, to move things around in a way, to compose things in a way that made sense across the room. So that anybody sitting in the middle of the room what happened on one wall would make sense. They can imagine how it translates to what's on the other wall. So that really, really pushed the limits of my design ability to try to figure out a way to make it work in the round. And so I had to move things around. I had to change things just to make it work. So that was also very beneficial in my development as an artist, to be able to to be able to move things around, and that, it requires creativity and imagination, but all of those are built on memory. I mean, you can't imagine or come up with something if you don't have kind of that memory to draw from in the back. If you've been

Laura Arango Baier: 41:48

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Keith Bond: 44:07

so, yeah, it's, I mean, I'm kind of rambling now, but yeah,

Laura Arango Baier: 44:13

it's, I'm, I'm completely in agreement. And that brings it to mind. You know, the the fact that there is nothing that will test you more deeply than attempting to draw or paint from imagination, because it will highlight every single thing you thought you knew that don't Right, right? It's like, try to draw a person from imagination. Suddenly, it's like, Wait. Is that where that muscle is supposed to go. How long is the arm supposed to be? How does, how do I make this proportion work, right? And you start suddenly, you see all of the gaps, all of the gaps and everything, which is actually that brings me to my next question, okay, which is, how can an artist who really. Wants to, you know, paint believable images. How can they develop that imagination more and apply it to their work?

Keith Bond: 45:12

I think I alluded to it when I said that you have to draw on memory so the more you actually paint from life, I would say life over photographs, the more you paint from life, so that you're observing what nature actually does, the more you'll the more you'll fill that well of experience, the more you'll you know, you'll have that memory to draw from. So when I go out and plan our paint, I do even, even if I don't necessarily borrow something from way over here and bring it in, I am always aware of everything around me, and I'm looking around and seeing how everything relates. But you do have 360 degrees of information to draw from. You don't just have this little viewfinder amount of information. So I think that's one thing is to just to have as much experience working from life as possible. That's not the only way to build memory or imagination. Gosh, I know you gave me this question beforehand, and I was kind of trying to think of, how do I do it? And I'm not sure if I know exactly how how I do it. I think part of it is by having that project where I was forced into problem solving, and that's what creativity is. It's a it's problem solving, right? You have certain constraints, and so I think if you can give yourself constraints, that's a great tool to to, you know, foster that imagination, that creativity. Years ago, I would, I don't do it as often anymore as I used to, but I would give myself, like, maybe an hour or something, half hour, and do some sort of exercise that I didn't intend. It to be a finished painting. It was just learning one or more principle. Sometimes it was I would take all of the colors that I have, put them in a bag, and I couldn't see and I would pull three out and have to try to make a painting with those three colors. Some of them were awful. Some of them turned out great, but it was the challenge of learning the possibilities with those colors and what I could achieve and try to get the color harmony. Sometimes it was take my photograph and turn it upside down and paint from it that way. And that exercise was more to see the big shapes rather than the details, or, you know, to try to disconnect from what it the thing that it is to to see in the shapes and, you know, there were all sorts of different types of, you know, little exercises like that. You could write a whole book about it, if you wanted to. So, doing those types of exercises was also very beneficial in learning the fundamentals and and learning to explore years and years ago, it was actually after there were a couple well known artists who had very limited palettes that I thought, Oh, I gotta try that. So I had just alizarin crimson, Cadmium Yellow, lemon and Ultramarine. And those are my only colors. And that was I had been painting only about five or six years when I decided to do that, and I probably should have done it sooner, but I the very first painting I did with just that palette. Just wow. This is amazing. Look at what I can achieve with that limited palette. And it blew my mind. And so I used that palette for several years, many years, but I would eventually add a color back into my palette. But with this painting, I really want to get this that I can't so I would add that back in, and then I would add another one back in. And now, until recently, I I have about 10 colors on my palette with two or three other colors that I only pull out for certain things. So 10 pal, 10 colors, that's for me, that's a lot of colors. For some artists, that's still very limited. You know, everybody's different, but recently, I have gotten into exploring limited palettes again, and I have loved it, and it has been so much fun, but I'm not I don't have to. Three colors that every painting is done with. I choose three or four and sometimes five colors based on what I want to get out of a certain painting. So I have a scene that I want to paint, okay, which colors will work for that painting, and that's my approach now, and I'm even dipping into colors that I had never, ever, ever used before, but they are the colors that I need for a certain painting now. So it's, it's been a huge growth experience for me. Oh, shoot. We were talking about imagination, and I'm getting off on top. No, but

Laura Arango Baier: 50:42

again, something else that's totally fine, because, I mean, it led into the discussion, which is, sure, sure, like, because you, you mentioned something that was so powerful and interesting, because it's a paradox, right, which is that there is growth and constraints. Yes, right? Like the by allowing only certain things right, like a limited palette, or I'm going to try to just paint this one thing from memory, just from memory, and take it as far as I can go, that that is a way to grow right. And it's so funny how that's kind of been the the repeating theme of this conversation as well, because there there's, like, time constraints, right? So, like, that's pressure or economic constraints, or now it's, you know, like, oh, even in the creative aspect of, you know, palette constraints or size constraints, or time constraints, right? Where, you know, with plein air, especially, you do have a time constraint, which is why it is so beneficial for growth. For a lot of people, if they can handle the pressure

Keith Bond: 51:49

right. Interesting and actually so when I would teach a thing that I often do when I teach workshop, is the first day, and it's usually only half of the day, I set the timer for 20 minutes, and every 20 minutes we start a new painting. And the reason I do that is to get people to learn to focus on the essentials first and not get caught up in everything that's superfluous, you know, all the detail and everything else, just to figure out, okay, what are the the most critical important things to get, what's the most fundamental thing that I need to get? And the color value relationships, the simple design that is so crucial to get first, you know, and to So, anyway, yeah, so the time constraint is something that I would do in the workshop so that they weren't distracted by all of the things that were unnecessary, and just learn to focus on what is most important at the beginning, and then, you know, the next day, okay, we can spend two three hours on that painting, which I still Think is way too long on plein air painting. I never spend more than an hour and a half ever on a plein air painting and but I would also say that maybe a good 40% my plein air paintings are half hour or 45 minutes. There is something about just being able to dial in on what's most critical and important and capture that and with my process now, then I move on. If I can get five plein air sketches in a day, that's five potential well, actually, I can use those for multiple paintings in the studio. But if I, if I spend so much time to get a finished painting plein air, then I only have two or three potential references to use in the studio, whereas I could have five or six. So yeah, so it's, you know, since I never sell them anyway, and it's just for reference, I'd rather have more information available to me in the studio. So, yeah, yeah. Going back to the limited palette, I do have a couple things here. So when I have a painting I want to do, I'll just take the four color. So this is four colors I can't remember that's indian yellow, phthalo green, dioxazine Purple and permanent red. So I just see what the possibilities are. You know, just do. And obviously this isn't every possible color combination you can get with this, but I want to see what the range is, and see when I have a painting that I want to do, I Okay, which color will get me the hardest to mix. And if I can mix, you know, those, once I figure out which colors I need to get the hardest mixtures, all of the more neutral colors I can probably get. With most any palette. Well, not any palette, but, yeah, so that's my approach to figuring out which palette I want to do for a given painting. Is just doing these little or sometimes I'll do just so there's four, I put the four colors up there, and then just kind of did a quick sketch of the scene that I wanted to paint, which, by the way, is this painting right here? Yeah. So I figured out which four colors I wanted to use for that painting by doing this. So, yeah, I mean, it's, here's another one for a different painting. But, yeah, I mean, it's, I can't remember where we were going with the conversation, but

Laura Arango Baier: 55:52

we were discussing, you know, finding the palette, yeah,

Keith Bond: 55:55

constraints, yeah. We were talking about palette and constraints and when you can give. And that's what those exercises were that I was talking about earlier. I used to call them etudes, you know, for what it's worth, which basically in music, an etude is a study, but a study that could be a performance in its own right. Yeah. So, I mean, back in the day, I wanted the I was, yeah, anyway, that's off topic, but I kind of would often sell those little late dudes if they turned out, which I guess is kind of why I gave it that name, because they were completed works, Even though there were studies. But yeah, by giving yourself constraints, you learn to grow in ways that you never will if you don't. So yeah, beat that dead horse.

Laura Arango Baier: 56:53

Yeah. And again, I love that. It's so paradoxical, because you would think that constraints are limiting, but there's as you you know, you showed with your limited palette studies there that there's a lot of freedom within a little limited palette to create a breadth and a range of color and mixtures that can just sing, you know.

Keith Bond: 57:16

And with a limited palette, there's that built in harmony that is a little bit more challenging to achieve if you have too many colors, Yep, yeah, you can still get the harmony with the larger palette, but it can be more challenging.

Laura Arango Baier: 57:31

Yeah, yeah, you have, you run more of a risk of mud, mud happening, which I had an instructor in one of the schools I attended that would his rule to prevent mud was, if you're mixing three pigments, that's your limit. That's your limit to get that color.

Keith Bond: 57:52

Oh, I never do, yeah,

Laura Arango Baier: 57:53

if, and that does, I think that doesn't include white. Um, right, but the limit is three. Once you get to that fourth pigment that isn't white, it can become mud if you're not careful.

Keith Bond: 58:06

Well, I will say that. So even when I have 10, when I use my 10 color palette, there are probably 80% of the mixtures on that painting have bits of all 10 of those colors in them. So I don't agree with the rule that you have to limit it to three. Oh no, for sure. That's not to say that that's not good advice to follow, because there is value in that. Yeah. But I think a lot of the a lot of the things that we preach are general ideas to kind of steer you in the right direction, but in reality, in practice, it's not quite so cut and dry like that. But I will say I really like Richard Schmidt's definition of a muddy color, and according to him, a muddy color is a color that's the wrong value. I mean, not value, I'm sorry, the wrong temperature. So if, if you were trying to get a certain and oftentimes it's kind of in the neutral colors is where they end up muddy, right? If you have this muddy color and it's kind of warm, maybe if you cool it all of a sudden, it works, and vice versa. When I read that quote from him, it it made a lot of sense to me, and from my experience, I tend to agree with that. Yeah,

Laura Arango Baier: 59:42

yeah. And like you said, I mean, it's a good guideline for maybe an artist who's just dipping their toes in color and has no idea what they're doing, which is the point where I was at when this instructor mentioned that. But also, you know, later on, I did learn that one of the most beautiful ways to get a really. Lovely neutral is, you know, you take all of your leftover oil paint on your palette, maybe not so much if you have black, trying to not take too much black. But if you mix them all together, you get this really lovely neutral of all the colors. And it usually ends up being like this gorgeous violet, sort of grayish color. And

Keith Bond: 1:00:19

as a landscape artists, mine tend to lean towards the green, of course. But yes, yes, I love, I do use my mud. I call them mud piles. Yeah, even though I'm they're not muddy in color, hopefully. But yeah, olive as every time I even during the process of painting, I'll scrape off and clean an area of my palette, and I put it in this puddle, and it's my neutral, and I I dip into that, and it's beautiful. And there's that harmony already built in, because it's the colors you're using in your palette. So black, you mentioned black. I rarely use black. Black, to me, is a when you use black, it shouldn't be used for its value in terms of light and dark. It should be used for its temperature. And I think if you think of it in those terms, it works. It's a cool color. It is the blue on a lot of people's palettes. But when you're dipping into black to try to darken a color, to create a shadow or or a shade, that's when you run into problems, because it isn't always the right temperature for what you need. Sometimes you and yeah, so that's my little my my two cents on black, and why I think a lot of beginning artists struggle with black is because they think of it in its light and dark properties rather than its temperature.

Laura Arango Baier: 1:02:08

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Black is it's one of those that I put on my palette for the blue, but I rarely use it, if only to maybe mix like a nice brown instead like a nice, neutral sort of Brown, because it, yeah, it's, it could be a little too much. And like you said, it really depends on the context of the the temperature of what you're trying to paint, what you're trying to capture. Because Black isn't always useful for that.

Keith Bond: 1:02:38

Another thing that I really So oftentimes, most times, people like transparent colors for their darks. Most blacks are not transparent. So if you mix your own blacks and so depending on now, with a limited palette, I am learning different recipes, if you will, for the blacks, but when with my bigger palette, I always use my so I use Quinacridone Magenta. Now instead of alizarin crimson, I like it better and transparent oxide red I use instead of burnt sienna and ultramarine blue. So those three are my core that I will use any combination of those three for my blacks. They're all transparent. They're all rich. And by varying the amount of which one dominates it, you can have a cool black, a warm black. It could lean more violet, it could lean more brown, you know it there's so many possibilities with those, but any combination of really dark colors can work it. You know that that's kind of a those are the three that I would tend to use the most with my big palette. But sometimes it would be my phthalo green and my Quinacridone Magenta. You know, sometimes it would be a couple other options in there, but depending on what undertone I wanted in it,

Laura Arango Baier: 1:04:15

exactly, yeah, yeah, that's really cool, because I was actually at one point trying to research the most transparent black that isn't ivory black, because ivory Black is such a slow dryer and and

Keith Bond: 1:04:28

it's also only semi transparent. Yeah, it's not. It's the

Laura Arango Baier: 1:04:32

most transparent compared to all the other blacks, right? Because if you have, like, lamp black, or if you have Mars Black, they're, they're quite opaque. And what's really beautiful about transparent pigments is that they create a sense of depth that you can't get with opaque pigments. So hearing your recipe, I jotted it down. I'm going to try that because I'm on the hunt for a good black I do have Ultramarine and Quinacridone Magenta. So I'm going to going to try those.

Keith Bond: 1:05:01

Yes, so I will say that, if I'm not mistaken, I've never used it, but I think gamblin's chromatic Black is transparent. And I think what it is is it takes two colors that are on complete opposites of the color wheel that are transparent, and mixes those together, which is essentially what I do, except what I do is I control the ratios with each mixture. But you might try that chromatic black, so don't quote me, because I'm not 100% I've never used it, but that's what I've That's what I remember reading about it is it's a transparent plaque.

Laura Arango Baier: 1:05:40

Awesome. I have to, have to research it, but yeah, and then now I'm actually, I'm really curious to hear a little bit more too, about the more of the marketing side and the sales side, because, of course, you did study some marketing and then you worked at the gallery for a bit.

Keith Bond: 1:05:56

Yeah, I wish I paid attention during my marketing classes. Yeah,

Laura Arango Baier: 1:06:00

these days it's, feels like that's all there is, right? But I did want to ask, you know, when you were working at the gallery, what would you say is, like the number one, or like, some of the key things that really helped you on the other side, right, which is being the artist rather than the person at the gallery.

Keith Bond: 1:06:19

So I will clarify. When I worked at the gallery, I I was more as the assistant director, I was more behind the scenes, duties and responsibilities. I didn't work directly with the clients as much. I did some, but not to the same extent as you know you would expect working in a gallery. So I didn't necessarily learn as the gallery in the gallery setting, I didn't necessarily always learn what to do to market my art as an artist, but what I did observe from those who did the selling at the gallery, is how important those personal relationships are with the client. And that is number one, that is key is to build that relationship with the clients. You know, all of the marketing should be to build that relationship. You know, there's the earlier on in my career, I was a lot more religious about sending out email newsletters, and I have not done them as well in the last few years, which I'm getting back to them because I know they're important, but I would say when I was religious about it, and send them out regularly. Things would happen as a result. On a regular basis. I didn't always sell something directly from it, but oftentimes I did, but oftentimes it would lead to other things. It would lead to a commission. It would lead to, you know, maybe not the painting that was in the newsletter. But they would, we'd have a discussion, and they would see a different painting that I had, or they'd say, Do you have anything like this? And I said, Well, I'm working on one right now. It's not done, and, oh, can I see it? You know? So things would always happen when I was a lot more religious with the newsletters, I got really busy and distracted. And I had galleries who were selling enough, and I had some, like these mural I mean, I've done several of those big mural commissions, and those are, like, one or two year projects. So, you know, sometimes I would be so involved in those that I neglected the newsletters for a while. And so, yeah, I think, I think keeping in contact with your client base is also very important. The newsletters being the one of the methods of doing that. But I have other collectors that, you know, I might send them an email or, you know, not necessarily a newsletter, but send them an email or a text or something occasionally that you know, just kind of keep in touch. So yeah, there's I do. I do the social media thing, but I am becoming more and more disenfranchised with that, and am doing it a lot less than I used to. Partially the algorithms just Dave changed instead of sending the image to your followers, they tried to send them to non followers to create, yeah, and it's just, it's weird, it's a mess. So I don't do that as much as I should, and I've never relied on Instagram or Facebook as the primary source of marketing. I see so many artists who that is they. Don't even have a website. That's their portfolio. That's they put 100% of their eggs in the social media basket, and that's a dangerous way to do it. Yeah, the website is so important, and that email news, your mailing list is your number one asset as an artist, and then using it is probably the best marketing decision you can make to actually use it. How to grow your email list. You know, of course, there's ways on the website to do that, you know, you have to have a prominent you know, sign up for my newsletter, whatever. Although I hate those windows that pop up in the middle of something, I hate those. I don't even know what they're called in computer terms, but whatever I would go out and about. You know, I rarely do the shows you know where you set up a booth and sell very rare I could probably count on between my two hands I would probably have fingers left over for the number of shows that I've done like that in my almost 30 years as an artist. But when I did, I and we got into a conversation, I would ask them if they're interested in joining my newsletter. You know, there's various different ways to word it, but a newsletter is a permission based way to reach out to them, so I would ask if they were interested in receiving that. And I still ask people all the time that I run into, or, you know, even some people that I meet that we start getting in a conversation here in town, just getting to know each other. And, you know, I'll ask if they're interested. If they express interest in my art, you know, say, Oh, I have a newsletter. Well, I don't know if I say a newsletter, but I say I send out emails every once in a while with my art, if you're interested. So I tried to do that to help build the email list as well. I used to, but I'm not as diligent anymore, but I used to on the back of my paintings have like, either a QR code or something that I don't know, whatever, if that ever really amounted to much, but it was just another way to have it out there. I don't always do it anymore.

Laura Arango Baier: 1:12:36

Yeah, it's one of those things, and I love that you mentioned now how, yeah, social media is awesome, but it is unreliable, right? Like, the most reliable thing you can have, like you said, is your websites. And then try to get, if you do have social media, try to get people on that newsletter list, that email list, because, right, that is so key. And I mean, I've interviewed so many artists who have said exactly the same thing as you that email newsletter list is so crucial it you know, and like you said, do if you're diligent about it, you send out your newsletters whatever time between newsletters that you choose, whether it's once a week, once a month, once quarterly, once a year, it can have much more constant results than social media on its own, because that algorithm is always going to be changing. They're always going to be playing around with it. But your website is such an important home base, so I'm really happy you mentioned that, because I completely agree with you.

Keith Bond: 1:13:40

So yeah, there's the things that I know in theory, and then there's what I actually do sometimes out here. But yeah, but I definitely 100% think that that is the number one thing you can do. I just need to actually get myself to do it more regularly, don't we all

Laura Arango Baier: 1:14:02

Yeah, it's one of those things we know that, that the proof is in the pudding, and there are so many people who benefit so much from a newsletter. Email is so I think that's that's pretty good encouragement on its own. So we should all work on our newsletters and decide a proper schedule based on how we like to send out stuff, but yeah, and then I wanted to ask you as well, do you have any final advice for someone who wants to become a full time artist?

Keith Bond: 1:14:32

So from the art development side? So I have, I think the market, the newsletter would probably be my advice for the business side, although, I mean, there's so many other business things that are so important, but yeah, we'll stick with that one. We'll stick with that one. That's my advice. Is, if you want to build your business, build. That relationship with your clients on the art development side, again, I think it's paint from life as much as possible, I think is the most valuable way that you can progress and grow as an artist. Also. I mean, it's hard to narrow it down to one single piece, yeah, I think the fundamentals so, yes, I come from a representational the representational realm. And there are people who may, you know, who come from a different school of thought, who might disagree with this, but I think learning the fundamental so called rules are actually liberating and not constraining. But you know, throughout my entire career, when I, you know, there's you grow, and then you kind of plateau a little bit, and then you kind of feel like you're stuck, but then you grow again with every time that I've, you know, pushed through to try to figure out how to move to the next level, it has always been by coming back to those fundamentals, I used to put value as the most important and design closely relate. I mean, they're all entertained, inter connected. You can't, you know, talk about one without it affecting the other. But value and composition were the most important, then drawing and then color was lower, and I probably still think that that is the most. I think that's the how I prioritize them. Even though I'm focused on color right now, I still think value is more important than color. So anyway, but my point is, go back to those fundamentals. Every time I come back, I'm at a higher level of understanding and learning and trying to figure it out, but it's the same principles over and over. So yeah, paint from life as much as you can, but return to the fundamentals and study those and, and, yes, the more you understand about them, the more freeing you can be to throw it all away. You know, there are so many great artists who just their work is so they're breaking the rules, but you can tell they know them and understand them. You know, I know we're probably running long on time, but you know, the the very first artists who really got into abstract and all of the you know that stuff, when you look back in art history. They were trained in the fundamentals, but they deviated and went into the abstract or or wherever they went with their art. And they did amazing stuff that changed art history. I think a lot of the problem with the abstract artists now is they don't have that foundation. They just looked at the end result that these artists came to, and then try to go from there. But they didn't look at where those artists started from, and what knowledge and understanding they had to begin with. And I think if you have that foundation, you can go completely abstract. You can go in whatever direction you want. If you have that foundation of understanding to go from. So anyway, that's my soapbox. Oh, no,

Laura Arango Baier: 1:18:47

totally, yeah, I can totally see that. And also, I think the first name that actually came to mind, which is actually surprising, is Turner, who, of course, he painted seascapes. He was a realist painter, right? He painted these beautiful boats and harbors. And then towards the end of his life, he loosened up and created, you know, these beautiful paintings that to us today, if we're presented with it without knowing its Turner, we'd say, Oh, this is an abstract painter, and this is beautiful, and the color and the shapes and the atmosphere, right? So I think it's very interesting perspective. Yeah, I can totally see that,

Keith Bond: 1:19:26

yeah. I mean, even look at Picasso, his early work, you can see how well he was trained as an artist. Then he got, you know, he went down this different path, this different direction that we know him for now. It was very different from his early work, but he had that base, that understanding. But then he Yeah, he stepped away from that intentionally with the choices that he made. But even the artists who are like completely abstract back in the day, they had that foundation of. Hmm, but you know, you mentioned Turner and how the abstract quality of his of his work, and I would argue that even me as a much more representational than a lot of artists, it's all about that abstract foundation underneath that's you could break the paintings apart and find that abstraction underneath which I I don't know, yeah, anyway, yeah,

Laura Arango Baier: 1:20:26

it's interesting. I mean, just final note on that is it feels like a very circular thing where, like, because things existed before language, right? The world around us has existed before language. Language is just translation, right? So I feel like everything is abstract, but then we translate it into something more logical, foundational value drawing right composition, color, and then we have to re translate it back into the abstract, almost like a double translation, if you will, which is really interesting because so

Keith Bond: 1:21:02

actually, that brings to thought, brings to mind, I don't know how much time you have. I've got time if you, oh, you're

Laura Arango Baier: 1:21:08

old, yeah, go for it.

Keith Bond: 1:21:11

So have you heard of the hidden brain podcast? No fascinating podcast, a fun one. And there is an episode on there that I absolutely loved, Ian McGilchrist, psychologist, and it's the one head, two brains episode of the hidden brain podcast. And this supports what a lot of what he said, articulated, in a way, some thoughts that I've had for years that I didn't know how to articulate and and it also supports some evidence of some other research that I had read, and that is that creativity isn't a Right brain activity, like a lot of people say a lot of what we under a lot of the what people say is the difference between right and left is a misunderstanding. Creativity is a communication between the right and left. And there's been a lot of research that supported this, that the stronger the connection between the right and left, the higher the creativity. And it's not a right versus left, but it's the marriage of the two. That's not kind of where the podcast went. Though where the podcast went is, what actually is the function of the right versus left hemisphere. The right is seeing the big picture, the abstract things, and the left is seeing the details and focusing on the details. And it was really interesting. He said, When, when somebody has brain damage, if their left brain, the left hemisphere is damaged. The right is very aware that they are missing part of their brain when the right hemisphere is damaged, but the left is functioning. The left has no clue that they are missing half of their brain. And it kind of, I can't remember exactly what you said, but it's seeing the abstract and then bringing it into the details. But then going back to the abstract again, the two hemispheres, they interpret our world in different ways. And he, you know, he gave some great examples in the podcast. He says, you know, if you're a hunter out there, you know, 5000 years ago, you know, if you are so focused on trying to find your animal that you're hunting, you know, if that's 100% of your focus, and you're not paying attention to your surroundings and what animals are hunting you, then you are going to be the prey before you get anything. So we have to have this big, broad picture, this more abstract thing, and as well as the more detailed, nuanced, you know, focused side of the brain. And so those two have to work in conjunction, yeah, yeah. So it is, yeah, you know, on so many of these things, there's so much that is in the world of art that relates to life and vice versa.

Laura Arango Baier: 1:24:28

It's a microcosm of the macrocosm, which is why it's, uh, it's so wonderful when people are artists and they translate, you know, their thoughts and their reality into the small painting that speaks to a higher sort of message, like a grander sort of message that we all can relate to. Just really cool. But yeah, so do you have any upcoming exhibitions that you'd like to

Keith Bond: 1:24:56

so I do have so at a gallery. So it's a loom gallery West up in Montana. I've got, I'm part of a group show coming up. The paintings will be hanging for a week. There's no, you know, event, organized gallery opening or what, but it's just kind of a spotlight of, I think there's six or seven artists in this so I'm taking next week a bunch of paintings up for that. I don't have anything else necessarily scheduled, you know, just trying to supply paintings to galleries and and whatever commissions I'm working on, although I will say I have a couple projects that I wanting to do, and maybe if I publicly announce them, I'll have to do them so year years and years ago, when I was I was five years old, so that was many years ago. My dad's work took us to La Paz, Bolivia for a couple years. So I actually went to kindergarten and first grade in Bolivia. And about six months ago, I was able to go back for the first time since I was a kid. And, oh, it was just one of the most wonderful things that I was able to go do, is go back there and and I spent about 10 days, and I went out and hiked some areas up in the Andes, and did a bunch of a bunch of plein air sketches, and took a bunch of photos. And I want to do a body of work based on this trip, so I guess if I put it out there, then I have committed myself to do it. So watch for that. I have done a couple paintings, but I want to do like, a bigger, you know, 810, 12, big. You know, nice, big paintings based on that trip. So where it will be displayed, whether it will all be displayed in one or if I'll just do one at a time here and there, I don't know, but, but I want to work on that so well.

Laura Arango Baier: 1:26:57

That's exciting. And I guess if we all want to keep track and see if you complete these paintings, where can people see more of your work? So Keith bond.com

Keith Bond: 1:27:10

Yes, yeah. And of course, I do want to give a shout out to my galleries. They are very good galleries. I work with both the galleries and my own clients, so I do both, which we never, didn't talk about that, but if you do that, you have to treat your galleries right and don't undercut them. So I charge the same when I sell direct as the gallery would charge. So don't undercut your galleries. But yeah, I have Sanders gallery in Tucson, aluminum. Gallery West in Montana, wild horse gallery in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. And I just joined a gallery, although they don't have anything yet, I'm still working on getting them some paintings. Berkeley gallery in Virginia. So I'll be sending them some paintings soon. As soon as I get them done,

Laura Arango Baier: 1:28:05

I believe in you. I believe in you. You got this that

Keith Bond: 1:28:08

pressure, that's where you can see in my stuff, my website, or these other fine galleries that I really appreciate what they do. So perfect.

Laura Arango Baier: 1:28:16

Yeah? Well, awesome. Thank you so much, Keith for Well, thanks for having interesting conversation. Yeah, of course, this was great. It

Keith Bond: 1:28:23

was fun. It was good. Thank you, of course. Yeah.