Today we’d like to introduce you to Donna Bates.
Donna, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I am a native Southern Californian, that lives and paints in Los Angeles, CA. My years of experience as a commercial illustrator and 3D Artist for over 20 years has finally evolved into a career in painting. I am a self-taught artist that is known for my own mash-up style of urban, tough-chic edgy strong independent women or “Bad-ass Chicks”. My women aren’t pin-ups nor portraits they are a different vision of power and sex flavored with leather, metal, graffiti and fantasy! While they are representational, they are also experimental.
Art and being a creative have always dominated my life. I started drawing as soon as I could pick up a pencil and as with so many creative people, I wanted to do it all.
Although art was always my driving force, I started playing drums when I was 16 and played in numerous bands. Touring Viet Nam in a USO Show during the war with an all-girl band to playing with bands in the early LA Punk scene in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I then transitioned into computers in the early ’90s, being one of very few women who entered the male-dominated 3d Animation/VFX field and went on to be one of the only women to teach CG Modeling at Gnomon School of VFX.
After getting laid off my last job I decided I wasn’t getting any younger and it was time to go back to my first love, Painting and I have been doing that for almost five years now.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Oh god no! Nothing smooth about it, except maybe my childhood and that is questionable. I have worked my ass off! Being an artist or musician are notorious for not making any money and that has certainly been true for a good deal of my adult life. When I got into computers in the early 90’s that started to change.
I started with Photoshop 2.0, taught myself Illustrator and started to see my earnings really increase but I was never content and decided I had to learn 3D. 3D was new and exciting then. I started on Power Animator and was taking a class in Maya the day that Maya 1.0 came out. I had a full-time job and would leave there and either go to Art Center or Gnomon School (when it opened) and work until 1 am the next morning, go to the gym on my lunch break and work through the weekends, this was my life for a number of years.
My original intent when learning 3D was to take the characters that I create and make them come alive and have personalities, I mean how cool would that be? Right? It was cool in the beginning but the programs were extremely buggy then also. As I started to work in production, I found out what crazy hours really were! Sometimes doing 100 hour weeks, still going to the gym at lunch (now businesses will do anything to keep you from leaving the building).
I started to work on jobs that had nothing to do with Character work, with no ownership and very little creative input but I sure did like that paycheck. Creatively it was becoming less and less fulfilling, not at all what I originally envisioned as happens so many times.
At the end of the day when working long hours and teaching there was little or no time to work on my own projects. When I got laid off my last job, I was finding it harder and harder to find a job. Besides being a woman, I was beginning to realize that I was aging out of the 3D world. I had some savings and decided that I really didn’t want to go back to what I was doing.
The aging thing also highlighted the fact that it is either now or maybe never to do what you love! So I returned to painting! I found that the more my money started to run out, the more all I wanted to do is paint! In the last year, I feel that I have really found my voice and my joy!
My work has found a much wider audience and acclaim. I feel much more creatively inspired and fulfilled! Although I find myself skating precariously close to the financial edge, I have sold 4 paintings so far this year, had my first solo show, had 2 paintings on HBO’s 3rd season of Insecure and will be in my first Museum show in July, so I am optimistic! If It were easy, everyone would do it.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Donna Bates Artist/Painter @donnabatesart story. Tell us more about the business.
Well as you know I am an artist/painter. Having always been fascinated by people and their story, I guess that is why I create and am a fan of Figurative Art! I try to create big, dramatic, sultry, sexy mash-ups. I like to combine realism with other genres to keep it new and fresh.
I consider myself a post-contemporary figurative painter. I am NOT a photo realist! I really like to see that it is a painting and the artist’s interpretation. My girls are not fussy or prissy, they are strong but vulnerable! A lot of my paintings speak to political issues and human rights without hitting the viewer over the head with it.
I am most proud that I bring a modern and edgy approach to representational painting. That I am not afraid to experiment and don’t play it safe. If I hadn’t created them I would want to own them.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Soooooo much! Many things I thought were bad luck have turned out to be the best thing that ever happened.
Pointing me in a different direction and forcing me out of dead-end or harmful situations. I really do try to see these things as lessons and extract what positive message I can and grow stronger.
As far as good luck, I kinda feel it is the same as Picasso’s quote about inspiration, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” I think that many times it is the same with good luck. I think so much of our luck we kind of make ourselves. If you are working on your craft and putting it out there, opportunities will find you, maybe not as fast as you want or in the way you hoped but it will find you.
Certainly getting into certain prestigious shows is good luck but also hard work. Being found by Poets Artists magazine a couple of years ago was good luck and I have gone on to be in eight of their issues, two of their exhibits in Chicago and in July 2018 the “Painting the Figure Now” exhibit at the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art curated by Poets Artists.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.donnabates3d.com
- Instagram: @donnabatesart
- Facebook: donna.bates.artist
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
