Coming this Tuesday, January 10th is a co-curated print release from 1xrun and Creep Machine. The print entitled “The Calming” is by Aaron Nagel and is 14″ x 20″ on 140lb French Archival paper, signed and numbered in a max edition of 60. In lead up to the print release, Aaron was nice enough to answer some questions for a new, very in-depth interview here on the site. The image shown below is of the print that will be released tomorrow (right here) at 1xrun, and the rest of the interview features some random images from some of Aaron’s past shows.
Creep Machine: Your a self taught artist, which is very impressive when looking at your work, but music was another path you might have taken. What was it that made you choose painting over music?
Aaron Nagel: I spent years pursuing music and touring with bands, long before the idea of pursuing art as a career even occurred to me. With the bands…the idea of pursuing a career in music started to get in the way of playing music because we loved it. There was a point where we had been touring for so many years that we lacked the energy to keep at it at that level…without some degree of success. We could support ourselves on the road, but only long enough to live a couple months back home before we’d have to go out and make money again. That was fine when I was younger, but even by my mid twenties, the idea of touring for 6+ months out of the year started to become really undesirable. Plus, there were so many factors in whether or not a band “makes it”, that were entirely out of our control, which became really frustrating. Basically, at some point we realized that if we wanted to be in a band, that we would be in band, and we would function in that band exactly how we wanted to, without any consideration for the career aspect of it. That made playing music much more fulfilling, but removed it from the potential careers list. I was getting more serious about painting at the time the band thing was wrapping up, so I decided I’d try to make it my focus, at least for a while. It’s just as hard to make a living painting than it was playing music, but I feel like i’m much better at it, I have more control, and am entirely fulfilled in my career choice…regardless of how successful I am or will be. It’s a good feeling.
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