Ep. 9 - The Joy of Making Art with Doug Gorney

In this episode, I chat with my friend, Doug Gorney about the joy of making art.  What I appreciate about Doug is his passion and warmth on the subject. I think you'll really enjoy hearing about Doug's creative journey.

Music Credit: 

Reflection Flow by Doxent Zsigmond (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/doxent/58328 Ft: Javolenus, Rocavaco, Siobhan Dakay

Links mentioned in this episode:

Doug Gorney’s website – https://gorney.studio

Doug’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/outeravenuesart/

Sunset Sketchers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/SunsetSketchers

The B0ardside - http://theb0ardside.com/

Outside Lands – Western Neighborhoods Project - https://outsidelands.org/

Outside Lands Podcast - https://outsidelands.org/podcast/

Books mentioned in this episode:

The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron

The above are affiliate links.

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to the Creative Shoofly Podcast. I'm Thomas Beutel. This podcast is about my creative process, and one thing I've found is that I really get in my way a lot when it comes to making art and being creative. I want to do this podcast because I know it will force me to think more deeply about creativity. I'm hoping that doing this will push me and challenge me to create better art.     Well, welcome back everyone to the Creative Shoofly. Today I have guest and a friend of mine, Doug Gorney. He is a brilliant artist. He's the founder and organizer of Sunset Sketchers, our local  urban sketching group here in the neighborhood. And also a member of the B0ardside collective.

Doug welcome. I've been looking forward to have you on today.

Doug: Thanks, Thomas. Well I'm very excited to be here and to talk about creativity with you.

Thomas: Doug, can you start by telling us just a little bit about your background in the creative world? How did you get started?

Doug:  Well,  my career path is rather circuitous, but  I  was always interested  in the creative arts. I  spent most of my time in high school, in the  art room or the art teacher's office,  hanging out and doing art and taking as many art classes as I could.

I sort of majored in art in high school, as if there were such a thing. And then  going on to college,  I came back to art in my senior year, sort of minored in art and then  got a lot of encouragement from a sculpture teacher   who told me that this was really something that I should consider doing for a living. That I was, that I had some facility

with it.

And  I was majoring in history, which is a springboard into many fields like unemployment. So I was  open to suggestion and this seems like a sign. So I went on to art school from there. Once I graduated from UC Berkeley and really was going after another bachelor's degree because I didn't have  the equivalent of a BFA that would have allowed me to get a master's degree.

And I didn't, also  having been away from art and then just come back to it. I didn't really know what I was doing. So another a BFA program seemed appropriate.  I started at,  then California college of arts and crafts now, California college of the arts, and then transferred to  the school of the Art Institute of Chicago, where I was for a year and a half.

And that was very interesting and seemed to be pretty promising. I was  developing more of a  sculptural style, sculptural language of my own. But life took a series of left turns as it will. And  I didn't come back to art for another 30 years after that point. I didn't really even pick up a pencil during that whole time.

What I was doing  for a lot of the time was, well, I've been  practicing transcendental meditation since I was 13 years old. And  this was a practice  that was very fulfilling for me on an, on a very holistic level.

So I went in,  I became a teacher  of the TM program and  was full time  in the TM organization and  teaching  TM for a number of years.  And then  another sort of compass shift occurred.

And I while still enjoying the practice and enjoying teaching, I started to feel that I should be doing something more creative, something more personal. And so I  came back to the Bay Area after traveling and living all over the continent and in the UK for awhile.  So I came back to the Bay Area  with a vague notion that I should be doing some creative stuff. And  I was trying a bunch