Meet Rancho Palos Verdes Artist, Writer, and Entrepreneur: Wylder Flett

Today we’d like to introduce you to Wylder Flett.

Wylder, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Growing up as a child whose father worked in the Foreign Service, I was privileged to receive an exceptional education and exposure to a variety of different cultures. However, much to my parent’s dismay, I was the daydreaming doodler in school, showing little interest in academics and more for the extracurricular activities outside of school.

After graduation, I attempted the conventional route of what my upbringing expected but couldn’t escape the quirkiness of my artistic side. While pursuing a degree in architecture, I took a leave of absence to visit my parents stationed in Ethiopia. There, I found myself volunteering for an aid and research organization where I was asked if I had any ideas to improve the roofing problems they had within the impoverished housing developments, I did. I designed a roof structure, utilizing existing materials found within the country, which they ended up implementing throughout eastern Africa. By age 20, I was made an honorary member of the board of engineers for Ethiopia. My parents deemed my future set, but in secret, I had already planned to discontinue my degree program in pursuit of theater. I abandoned the life preplanned for me, and became a full-time bohemian without financial and parental support. I started at the Peter Breck acting academy in Vancouver, Canada followed with a stint at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in NYC. With my artistic fire fueled and a few awkward stage and screen performances under my belt, I decided I was ready to try my luck at making it in Hollywood.

With $90 in my pocket and not a clue to what I was doing, I moved to Los Angeles at the age of 25, and at the best time possible, during the Northridge earthquake. I did my actor thing for a while but found myself gravitating to artists of the non-performing kind, painters. Discovering a simpatico in expression with that world, I willingly abandoned the desire for the limelight and began my journey into the fine arts. I studied art books, took classes, visited museums, attended art shows and moved to Venice, CA. I immersed myself into the last remaining days of the counter-culture world of hippies, renegades, and the disenfranchised. Influenced by outsider artists, the ragtag environment, and a rebellious lifestyle, I began developing my manner of self-expression. I showed at festivals, galleries, exhibitions, wherever I could and gained an eclectic clientele in the process.

With an insatiable appetite to learn and discover different applications of art, I began sketching fashion. I always had a love affair with fashion, especially the avant-garde, but never considered it something I could do. The sketching lead to learning clothing construction and how to use a sewing machine, before I knew it, I was designing clothes for people to wear. I kept painting and applied my newfound knowledge of fashion to what I painted and vise verse. Finding I had limitless boundaries to what I could do artistically, I delved into photography, computer design, and video/music editing, anything I could get my artistic hands creatively dirty with. I learned the importance of self-promotion by building websites, submitting to online galleries, etc, whatever it took to get my work out there.

With my formal education as a designer along with all the self-taught talents I acquired, I wound up being lured to a small startup beauty company becoming its creative director and then working in conjunction with its larger parent. I traveled the world, designing beauty shows, showcasing my designs, and producing videos, music, and any other creative know-how required of me. The new experience proved challenging as I faced a corporate environment with corporate decision makers, a clashing force to a creative free spirit. Maintaining creative independence and artistic freedom of expression is difficult when working in someone else’s playground, so after 6 years, I left. Not wanting to waste the knowledge and experience gained, I started my own product company with a partner and now have the complete freedom to be an artist while owning a business that compliments my passion. I continue to make art daily and have expanded my creative expression to include writing, with a novel due out sometime in 2017.

Has it been a smooth road?
It’s never a smooth road, being an artist, nor should anyone expect it to be. Without the struggles, the torment of rejection, the self-doubt, how can one ever find out what, truly, your potential and capabilities really are? I’m not suggesting you must be a tortured artist and drink a lot Jack Daniels and do a lot of drugs in order to be a successful artist but facing adversity and learning how to deal with it certainly makes you find out what kind of artist you are and can be.

I’ve dealt with every kind of struggle from financial destitution, having my ideas ripped off, dealing with skeptics, to staring at a blank canvas not knowing what to paint. The hardest aspect to deal with has always been the self-doubt, though. No matter the accomplishments, most artists question their worth and their abilities, at one time or another. Whether you paint, write or sculpt with your bleeding heart, it’s scary to have it exposed for all to see and if the reaction isn’t what we want, it can leave us a broken and lacking confidence. I’ve had my insides ripped out lots of times but, fortunately, all my parts kept growing back stronger and more resilient each time.

When you look back, can you point to a period when you wanted to quit or a period that was really frustrating?
I don’t think quitting was ever an option for me. It’d be the same as saying “I don’t want my legs anymore because the walk is getting too hard” but I’ve definitely had tough moments that made me question what I was doing and why.

The hardest point in my career came when I misplaced my integrity as an artist and allowed myself to be manipulated by someone with delusions of grandeur and the seduction of a big paycheck. Swept up in the excesses of another person’s inherited privilege, I failed to recognize the abuse and exploitation of my creative efforts. I had unwittingly become a well-paid robotic tentacle to a corporate octopus.
Waking up one day to realize I had sold my artistic soul to a devil dressed in plagiarism, I made a decision to forsake the false sense of security and take back my creative identity.

Although a harsh lesson learned, it proved invaluable. Keeping your integrity, as an artist, is far more valuable than the expensive carrot someone dangles in front you to steal a slice of your creativity.

What advice do you wish to give to those thinking about pursuing a path similar to yours?
Whether it be when first starting out or having been here for years, perseverance, staying true to your artistic self and developing a thick, tough layer of skin to combat the doubters and naysayers are essential to surviving as an artist in Los Angeles. Study, learn from everyone, and experience as much about your craft as you can but always remain receptive to wise words of advice and thoughtful criticism.

What are you most excited about these days?
I have numerous unseen art projects yet to show and am looking forward to debuting them in the near future, but my current focus has me dedicated to completing my novel. It’s a fictional work loosely based on a true story of an unlikely friendship between a young man and an acclaimed Broadway icon who turns his world upside down, altering the course of the young man’s life. I’m excited, added with tons of anxiety, about its release in 2017, and I’m already set to begin work on my next novel.

For me, creativity is migratory and I’m forever looking at the next artistic venture to tackle. Whether I am a painter, designer, entrepreneur, or writer, as long as I feed my creative expression and refuse its compromise, I might minimize the amount of trouble I still, most likely, will get into.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://wylder.carbonmade.com/
• Phone: http://www.wylderflett.com/
• Email: [email protected]
• Facebook: https://www.saatchiart.com/wylder
• Other: http://www.olliegirl.com