Today we’d like to introduce you to Kyle Boatwright.
Hi Kyle, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My passion for art took shape at 16 during a one-year stay in a youth institution in Provo, Utah for teenagers with psychological and behavioral issues. Feeling a desperate need for escape, I found myself drawing for hours every day. I met a guy in the institution who would draw graffiti letters and I was immediately hooked. By the time I got released and went back home to San Diego, I was obsessed with graffiti and began taking buses and trolleys searching for abandoned buildings and freeway overpasses to paint. Over the next three years, I would paint regularly until the consequences caught up to me and I was arrested. I was sentenced to a year in jail which is where I would sell my first pieces of artwork, hand-drawn envelopes for candy bars and ramen soups.
Upon my release, I pushed to make art a legitimate career. I started by walking around parts of San Diego, offering free murals as well as painting on large canvas rolls for friends. Over the next several years I was able to build up a resume and started a website. Live art for parties and events began to take popularity so I marketed my website toward live art in the San Diego area. The idea worked and I soon was painting murals for corporate parties and events for companies such as Microsoft, Adidas, Jack Daniels, Coca-Cola, Sprint, and The Marriott Hotels. These murals helped my art gain the opportunity to create large-scale murals around southern California in addition to giving me the chance to sell canvas art around the US and even some canvases in Europe as well as one in Australia.
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?
The journey certainly had its bumps. I struggled a great deal with purpose and self-image after getting out of jail. I had to really focus on changing my self-beliefs and mindset before I could work toward developing an art career with any true confidence. During this time I was working construction to support myself and every day I wasn’t working I would drive around looking for businesses with blank walls to offer my services for free to build up a resume. I was very rarely successful in finding walls for murals in the first few years but stayed persistent and allowed myself to get comfortable dealing with rejection and disappointment. I kept trying and after about five years I had finally built up enough work to land jobs on a somewhat consistent basis. I quit my job and tried to go into art full-time but was initially unsuccessful and unable to pay rent which forced me back into construction work. I gave up on my art career for a year or so but was left unfulfilled by life and began painting again. I got back to what I loved about art and decided I was going to just enjoy myself and see what happened in the future. I began posting some canvas paintings on social media which then led to landing a few timely murals and my career finally took off allowing me to work full-time.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a muralist who specializes in creating large-scale realistic black-and-white portraits with spray paint. I also like to blend colorful abstract elements to the realistic portraits. The portraits are painted in a somewhat calculating manner while the abstraction is entirely free flow and on the spot. I really enjoy blending the two styles and different mental approaches that go into the painting process. Much of my art depicts fractured aspects of portraits or repetition. I’ve come to understand that my inspiration for this changes from painting to painting. I sometimes feel that it illustrates the brokenness from within which I feel can be our greatest strength and teacher in life. While other times I think it shows a complexity of ourselves as we attempt to find whom we are and how we can hide behind masks to satisfy our need to belong or to just seem normal in society. The mural I am most proud of is the 280 ft. x 18 ft. mural I created in the NOHO West Mall in North Hollywood.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kyleboatwright.com
- Instagram: @boat__wright
Image Credits
Nick McCormack – Personal Photo
