Today we’d like to introduce you to Dave Vescio.
Hi Dave, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
The easiest way for me to describe my life’s story is to say that I went from ex-con to movie villain to international winning contemporary artist. The longer version of my story is that it took me thirty years to make that all come true! 🙂
So, let’s start from the beginning… Ever since I was 21 years old, I always wanted to be a professional artist. The reason why is because when I was a middleman in an LSD drug cartel, I was also doing my own supply, and one night, when I was getting high on LSD with my friends staring at the skyscrapers of Honolulu, Hawaii I started to see why art is art. It totally made sense to me why my brother wanted to be an architect. [Before that I never knew what art was. I just saw dry paint on a canvas and that’s it.] So, doing LSD totally opened my heart, my mind, and my soul to something entirely else. I totally got art now, and now, I have to figure out how to become an artist myself. Well, that took me about five years to start because I finally got caught for my drug dealing crimes and I got sent to a maximum, hard labor federal prison called Fort Leavenworth. I was sentenced to ten years in prison for my crimes. But once I got myself on federal parole, I started to take all different kinds of art classes in all different types of schools. I studied culinary arts in community college and then became a professional line cook / pastry cook. Then I studied broadcast journalism at Virginia Tech and became a TV photojournalist for CBS News.
Then I studied acting at David Mamet’s acting conservatory in NYC and became a professional film & TV actor for over a decade specializing in playing the movie villain. I just loved playing the movie villain and I got to act in film projects with the best of the best. I acted with 19 actors who either won or got nominated for the Oscar, Golden Globe, or Emmy. Which led me to work with the world-famous contemporary artist Paul McCarthy for two years straight. I performed in two of his immersive video art projects called “Coach Stage Stage Coach” and “Donald and Daisy Duck Adventures”. Which totally inspired me to then become a contemporary artist myself. So, I spent two more years learning everything I could about contemporary art by studying all the great contemporary artists and past artists who created new art genres for the world to see such as abstract, surrealism, cubism, to etc. Then I turned 50 years old during the lockdowns of 2020 and I started to create my own kind of contemporary art and since then I have won thirteen international awards from the top photography contests in the world, and I have sold 95 wall art pieces to 61 private collectors in the past year and a half. So, as you can see my story is full of all different kinds of schooling and pivoting into new art mediums & art genres. Learning everything I could about art and making all different kinds of art in all different kinds of ways. 🙂
Side note: Don’t do illegal drugs. I haven’t done LSD or any other illegal drug since I was 21 years old, and I never plan on doing them ever again.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Yes and no. Yes, it’s been a smooth road when it came time to study a new art medium. And no when it came time to do it. But the more I create art the more I learn, it’s all about repetition and having the courage to try new things. Practice makes perfect. The more I do, the better I get. But to also be honest with myself and allow my art to stand next to the best art in the world and to see the difference between the two. Which I feel majority of the artists on the planet just do not allow themselves to do. Which I believe is the #1 reason why they will never rise through the ranks. Because that’s a very tough road to follow. To see your own artistic flaws and to admit that you have flaws & weaknesses and to then allow yourself to figure out how to overcome those weaknesses & flaws so, your art can one day stand next to the great artists of our time period and not totally suck. The moral of the story don’t be a narcissist, don’t think you don’t have anything new to learn, and don’t think you’re great or a genius. Only the world can decide that for you, not the other way around. 😉
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
The easiest way for me to sum all that up is to say this…
On my 50th birthday, I picked up a camera to invent a new style of abstract/fine-art photography that deals with that fine line between the life & death of objects, then death & decay, and now, a rebirth (aka spirits or otherworldly beings like the supernatural). I specialize in up-close and personal macro photography of urban decay.
My mission is to reveal to the world that even in death & decay, there is still beauty, as well as a new source of energy / life that wants to be born into this world, just in another way. We just need to look at it from a different light, a different perspective. Life truly never ends! It just gets reborn into this world again & again as another essence, another beautiful being. Just like how a caterpillar gruesomely transforms into a butterfly!
I also give my limited-edition abstract / fine-art photographs another kind of *rebirth*, by printing them on materials close to what they were originally born on. My macro/close-up photographs of metal decay are printed on archival metal; my macro/close-up photographs of decaying plastic are printed on archival acrylic (which is a plastic); to etc. It is my way of making sure my abstract / fine-art photographs become more life-like than ever before; making them seem like the actual objects that I photographed in the first place.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
I would say patience. Overnight success is going to take you at least ten to twenty years as an artist and studying something for 10,000 hours with the best teachers is only going to make you an expert. To become the best of the best you got to study even longer than that. Maybe 20,000 hours to 30,000 hours to maybe even 40,000 hours. So, patience is the #1 characteristic I think any professional artist should have if they truly want to compete against the best of the best in the world.
But, also have the patience with the marketplace as well. Art is ever evolving, ever-changing, and you got to evolve and change with it as well. You can only sell what sells and if it’s not selling, then try something else. Or be okay just being a novice or an amateur and there’s nothing wrong with any of that. We all create art for different reasons, and we all must be willing to accept what we can and can’t do if we ever want to have happiness in our life. Not everyone was born to be a professional artist. Most of us were born to be hobbyists or amateurs or just fans instead. 🙂
Contact Info:
- Website:Â https://www.davevescio.com
- Instagram:Â https://www.instagram.com/davevescio/
- Facebook:Â https://www.facebook.com/dave.vescio2
- Twitter:Â https://twitter.com/DaveVescio
- Youtube:Â https://www.youtube.com/@DaveVescio
Image Credits
All images were created by me –> Dave Vescio
