Meet Richard Bledsoe | Painter, writer, curator.

We had the good fortune of connecting with Richard Bledsoe and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Richard, how has your work-life balance changed over time?
As I have a full time job in addition to running my own business, in the past I struggled with work/life balance. I often blamed the demands of my employment as the reason I did not make more progress in my creative entrepreneurship.
Then I read a book called “Our Band Could Be Your Life,” by Michael Azerrad. It told the stories about the DIY spirit of many of the underground punk and alternative rock bands I grew up with in the 1970s and 80s. These groups literally started from nothing: no resources, no fans, no social media, no corporate support. Yet they persevered and many have achieved legendary status.
The title itself captured the essence. It is a quote from a spoken word song by the band the Minute Men. These guys admired the surging cultural movement of punk, but they were not just passive consumers. The Minute Men picked up instruments and got up on stage too.
They believed working people deserved art as well. The band had day jobs, and played shows early for those fans who still had to get up the next morning. Their music career was tragically cut short when the singer/guitarist was killed in a car accident. But now the Minute Men are considered among the greats of alternative music, mentioned alongside the notable musicians who initially inspired them.
This book changed my ideas about work/life balance. It made me realize my complaints about my day job were really just covering up for my own time management issues. I’ve been much more balanced ever since.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I am an intuitive artist, working not from observation but from visions that arise in my mind. The potential subject matter is limited only by the freedom of imagination, my capacity to comprehend what is presented to me, and the skill I have to render it visible.

I am not after a naturalistic recreation of the world. Painting is a dream world, and requires its own particular forms of creation. Its beauty transcends realism.

Other artists might work in the great traditions of landscape, still life, portraiture, or figurative painting. The visions I present are a blend of all these different explorations into a single unified image.

I’m sort of a mutant form of a history painter, the genre once considered the highest form in the hierarchy of Western art, but much neglected in the modern and contemporary art worlds.

The difference is story telling. Rather than make a detached work of art for art sake’s, emphasizing merely formal concerns, history painting depicts a moment of drama. It shows action arrested for contemplation, rich in implications of past, present, and future activity. It injects the element of time, suggests consequences and resolutions are pending, and extends the liveliness of the art beyond the edges of the canvas.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We love to see live music, so a trip would have to include a show at a venue like the Crescent Ballroom, the Rebel Lounge, or the Marquee Theater in Tempe.
For lunch we’d go to India’s Flame, the best Indian food I’ve ever had.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Michele Bledsoe, my brilliant and talented wife.

Website: https://remodernamerica.com/

Twitter: @remodernamerica

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/remodernamerica/

Image Credits
Richard Bledsoe, Michele Bledsoe