Hi Ken, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Being an artist was all I ever wanted but I never thought it would take me down the route I’m on today. I always loved to draw and paint, I was always drawing in school and took so many art classes that I didn’t even have enough math and science credits to go to a four year university if I wanted to. I left home when I was 18 and came to California in 2013 to get away from the cold and rain of Washington. It was my dream to live in a real metropolitan city and I ended up in San Francisco, where I stayed for a few months. Those few months were rough and trying times for me and they were life-changing.
At the time, I worked for Postmates doing bike deliveries and was living homeless, staying between SRO’s, youth shelters, and couch surfing. Art really saved me because I began volunteering at a community-based art project at the time called Freespace where people could just go to this huge warehouse on Mission St. and do art or whatever they wanted expressively for free. Being in a positive environment kept me from a life of petty crime and drugs etc. I was able to recognize the potential l had as an artist encouraged by those around me and decided to go to art school. I left SF and got into art school in Calgary, AB in Canada where I focused mainly on printmaking and exhibiting my artwork. I really enjoyed my program but the city was pretty small and I missed being close to popular arts and culture, so in 2015 I transferred to another art school in Vancouver, BC.
During the summers, I began going back to SF and exhibiting my works there. I was involved in two shows at the historic Luggage Store Gallery on Market St. that gave rise to many prolific SF artists. In 2017 after a show in SF, I decided to come to Los Angeles just to see it. I’d never been here before as an adult and only know of what I saw on TV. LA was nothing like I’d ever experienced before. It was like the first place in my life where my personality and individuality was embraced like nowhere else I’d ever lived. The nights were warm and the nightlife was so much fun. I’d seen and met people that I’d recognize from the internet and it was surreal. I fell in love with the city and I just knew that I wanted to live here. I had to go back to Vancouver and finish my degree but by that time, I was so ready to leave. I began making paintings and clothes inspired by what I had seen and experienced in LA. It was in that last year in Vancouver I went to see Jaden Smith perform and at the end of his show, I gave him my own custom jacket I made. It blew up. Jaden wore it for the rest of the tour and then shot a whole music video part in it. My jacket was seen on GQ and almost every time he went out. I could tell he loved it. I told myself and everyone around me that after I graduated, I was going to LA to find Jaden. After graduating art school in 2018, I went to Europe for a bit. After that, I came straight to LA.
The previous summer, I had lived out of my car in Beverly Hills and so knowing that I could pull it off, I did it again. I was homeless for several months, living between my car in BH and doing art in a storage unit on Sawtelle. At night I would walk up and down Sunset Blvd, fully immersing myself in the West Hollywood nightlife. After several months of working out of a storage unit, I got a job working for one of my favorite LA artists as an illustrator/assistant. The project I was hired for was Tech-based and was funded by SnapChat, so I began working at one of their offices on Abbott Kinney in Venice. I slept there most nights after the other staff left. It was fully furnished, included a full kitchen, showers, and amenities. I worked/lived in Venice for about six months and then our funding from SnapChat ended so I had to go. The artist I was working for had been given an empty storefront in Beverly Hills and he was gracious enough to let me squat there so for a couple of months so I was just living in the back of a storefront right next to Rodeo Drive. That couldn’t last forever though but during that time, I had met a gallerist who owned a gallery across the street from my spot where I was staying, she allowed me to live in her back house in the Beverly Hills Flats.
Around that time I’d had a falling out with the artist so I no longer worked for him anymore. I got a job at Fred Segal on Sunset and it was there that I encountered my most recent and most consistent living situation. My manager there happened to be renting out a spot, so after a couple of months at the gallerist’s place almost a full year of being homeless, I finally had a place that was my own. Nearly a year on the dot since I began working at Fred Segal, the pandemic hit and throughout that time, I was able to get a studio space downtown and seriously return to my art practice. As of currently, I am surviving off of my art and doing commercial/modeling.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It most definitely has been a challenging ride, very much so. Just trying to be positive and stay hopeful. Being persistent as I am doesn’t make things easy in the instance that something goes wrong. I gave up everything I had to pursue the life I wanted, and I had to just trust that an opportunity or something better will come tomorrow or the day after. Loneliness and depression was also huge factor. Not a lot of people understand what it’s like to have the mind of a creative. It takes a certain amount of intensity and insanity (in my opinion) to be a successful creator and that comes with emotions and perspectives that are difficult to express. Having moved to so many places by myself as well, it took a while before you can open up to anyone or build close relationships.
I also never really told people where and how I was living because I wasn’t sure if they would understand. During the times I was homeless, I constantly worried about being found squatting and kicked out of wherever I was staying or losing the place I was staying at due to unforeseen circumstances. The notion of having a roof over my head was constantly unstable and was a huge source of anxiety for me. Above all else, I had to maintain the drive to stay creative and make art under all the circumstances I was up against. How does one still have the drive to make work when everything is so chaotic and unstable? You have to use it as fuel to keep working.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My art captures the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character. The realness of something can sometimes be defined by its abstract qualities, in other words, its essence. “Does it, or did it feel real?” The works I create, whether in the form of 2 Dimensional, 3 Dimensional or wearable art, lies somewhere between a memory and an idea. The essence of their respective subject matter of which they capture represents something beyond its realness and what it’s supposed to be, but rather the individual’s experience and recollection of it. I am most proud of the experiences I’ve had in my lifetime. Sometimes I have something to show for it, sometimes I don’t have anything but a crazy story. Many of the people that I’ve been blessed to encounter and the doors I’ve walked through that led to magical places were only made possible by my faith in God and my will to manifest. My journey and my path set me apart from others, as no one else can do exactly what I did to be here. That’s the beauty of being an artist is that you choose your own path, and for me I always choose the path that’ll lead to the most interesting result.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
Art, especially fine art, is definitely changing. People are beginning to see it and experience it in a post-COVID age. It’s been a better time than ever for artist patronage. Private collectors are buying art more than in the past because people are finding themselves at home more and looking to decorate. This could potentially mean new art created during this time will lean more towards aesthetics rather than conceptual, which was able to be facilitated by galleries in the past when they were operating normally before the pandemic. Internet presence will become quintessential for every artist looking to make a living and networking will continue to move more and more online as well.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: krpsyartist.com
- Instagram: @KRPSY
