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Volume 3, Issue 12
ARTMAKING A LIVINGMichael Gadlin makes a go of the artist's life
Michael Gadlin leaned forward in his seat. "I've sold out completely," he said, "and I love it. I love it all the way to the bank." "Are you serious?" I asked. "Of course not. I'm joking. You didn't write that, did you?" Gadlin was nervous. He hates interviews, and usually responds with humor. Bad humor. After warning him about the dangers of joking around someone in the media, he became more serious, answering questions like he paints, searching for the right word to color his response. "My painting is simply an illustration of the simplicity of experience," Gadlin said. "I want viewers to feel a relationship with my work where they are asking questions about their own life or about me. It just breaks down to evoking an emotional response. I found myself leaning more away from shock art because you can be a flash in the pan by being a gimmick. I didn't want that. I didn't want my work to pull the strings of the viewer. I want to evoke emotion but I want it to be truthful and honest. Force can create animosity, and people will jump to conclusions. They won't approach the work with the amount of depth that the artist intended. Then there's a level on tension that the work must have. It really comes down to finding a balance. For every individual, the pendulum is going to sway one way or another. I'm the kind of artist that I go against what's hip and create my own vision." Gadlin, a 29-year-old Denver native, knew he wanted to be an artist since he attended East High School. "I was young and fantasized about making a statement and living the artist's life," he said. "Little did I realize what it was really like." To pursue his dream, Gadlin attended a semester at the Metropolitan State College of Denver, then moved to New York to study at Pratt. "I went to Metro because it was convenient, cheap and accessible," Gadlin said. "I went to Pratt because it was inconvenient, expensive and had a name for itself in the art world." During his sophomore year at Pratt, Gadlin's life dramatically changed. Gadlin moved back to Denver when he learned his mother had been diagnosed with lung cancer. "My priority became my mother and not my next semester at school," he said. "When I came home to stay for a while, I was kind of expecting to go back [to Pratt], but it turned out my mom got sicker and I stayed to take care of her." While staying with his mother, Gadlin filled pages of his sketchbooks with pencil and charcoal drawings of his mother, both sick and well. For Gadlin, the drawings in his sketchbooks not only are figurative studies for his abstract work, but serve to document his life and his relationship with his friends and family. "During that time a local artist, Darrell Anderson, took me in just to keep my mind fresh and to teach me about being a professional artist," Gadlin continued. "I felt like I was still challenged here. That was something an artist who wants to succeed has to find. If you come back and you find everything you left is still the same, you fall into a comfort zone." Gadlin's mother died in 1994. "That's when I became a man," Gadlin said. "I used that as a positive drive as a discipline in my art," he said. "You have to chase a dream. I wanted to act, being that life was so fragile around me at the time. I said, 'I'm going to jump out there with all I've got and see if I float or sink. '" The following year, Gadlin rented a studio in Capitol Hill, and focused on his artwork, seeking advice and instruction from Anderson, Roland Bernier, and Richard Vincent. "There were no pressures for me, and my statements were really a direct interpretation of my experiences day to day," Gadlin said. "I turned around and made it a part of my own language. I began to soak in as much as I could not only artistically, but culturally. I had time to digest my statement." 
Like with many beginning artists, however, his path was not an easy one. "I questioned what the hell am I doing," he said. "Every artist will have that time where they1re asking themselves what can I say, and what importance does it have. It causes us to thing about a deeper relationship with your work. I think it really challenges the artist's language. To be where I am now, of course it's necessary." His persistence paid off. In 1999, his second year at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, Gadlin won Best of Show. Within the year, the William Havu Gallery in Denver and the MacLaren Markowitz Gallery in Boulder represented him. During the last year, Gadlin has been exploring more changes in his work. "It's becoming less figurative," he said. "I feel it's beginning to represent a lot of my intuitive nature. It's no longer just building a structure, but becoming more analytical."
--Sean Weaver (Photos by Sean Weaver) DOWN FOR THE
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