Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrew Crane
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’m pretty sure I came into this world with a dual diagnosis. I had art running through the veins of my mom’s side of the family and music in the DNA of my dad’s side of the family. From an early age, I had piano lessons and underwent the torture of trombone lessons. Being small and prepubescent, my arm wasn’t long enough to reach all of the notes on the trombone, and I became the kid carrying “the bazooka” to school. I kept ditching my piano lessons.
My Mom had this book called “The everything book,” and I’ll never forget it. It shaped me. It was perhaps the best antidote for a kid with an overactive mind looking for a creative outlet. This book was written on multi-colored construction paper and listed project after project that engaged my imagination through the use of my hands with uncommon objects and approaches. For example, when my brother and I were driving my mom crazy, she would say, “Hey, let’s go paint the backyard fence!” She would set us up with a bucket of water and a paint brush and we would start to “paint” the fence with water. When wood gets wet, it turns darker, and in our minds, we were painting the fence. The genius part of this project came in when we were about halfway done with the fence, and it would start drying up where we began. We would rush back to the beginning, then back to the middle, then back there, and it kept us busy for hours. This project, along with carving soap, water coloring on the slider, and arranging every pot and pan on the kitchen floor as a drum set really molded my creativity into a viable voice of expression in which I could learn and interact with the world around me. I’d be dead without it.
Fast forward to when I was in college at CSU Chico, studying for my BFA, I had an amazing professor named James Kuiper who pushed me so far outside of my comfort zone to keep making larger and larger paintings. I showed up to a critique with a painting that was 3′ by 4′, and ‘Colonel Kuiper’, as we called him, said that still wasn’t big enough. So, the next critique he showed up to the painting studio and stood in front of my painting that was 11′ tall by 24′ long. It was one of the most beautiful “middle fingers” I’ve ever given anyone. Word got out that some kid in the art department was making huge paintings, and the news traveled to the head postmaster of the USPS in town. They were looking for someone to paint a mural on the post office, we met and went through a series of ideas, and he gave me the job. It was very special to be a part of a long line of artists working on federal buildings that stretched back to the New Deal with President Roosevelt. I took a lot of pleasure in having my John Hancock on such a building given how much punk rock I had listened to over the years.
When I moved back to San Diego in 2000, after living in Berkely and working at the Braunstein/Quay Gallery in San Francisco, I met a guy named Robert Burt. He was a ceramicist who also did a lot of faux finishes. I jumped into a few projects with him, and he taught me how to work with metallic paints, glazing, wood graining, and gold leafing. I loved the work so much that I quit my job as a receptionist, (I gave myself the title, “Director of First Impressions”) and began to hustle with only 1 job on the books.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
In terms of the road, it was definitely the one less traveled, and that has made all the difference. A nod to Frost. There are two camps I’d put my challenges: professional and personal.
Professionally speaking, I’ve faced challenges ranging from clients hovering two feet behind me during an entire project, to not getting paid, to scope-creep, to accidentally choosing the wrong product for the wrong surface, to not having any jobs in sight. I even had one project where I was commissioned to paint three 5’x 5′ portraits. After 8 hours of adjusting the look of the paintings onsite, and after the client polished off two bottles of wine, the client pulled out their paints and brushes and began “fixing” the paintings alongside me. The paintings were so bad that I doubt even a thrift store would try to sell them. Thrift stores are where bad paintings go to die. I barely got paid.
It has been my experience that the freedoms of working for yourself at something you love to do is in direct proportion to the amount of stress involved with keeping work coming in the door. I believe it’s called the “Cliff Theory.” There is always a cliff approaching just after your current project. I like the heat and the challenge, but there also needs to be a balance.
Personally speaking, and to put simply, I’m an alcoholic in recovery. But it wasn’t always that way. Most of my professional challenges stemmed from my personal issues with an active alcoholism. I’ve heard the common misnomer that most painters are drunks, and it’s just not true, however, I was one of them. Alcoholism is a disease that tells you that you don’t have it, and there’s no amount of will-power that could have made me stop, regardless of how bad I wanted to quit.
I have been sober 7 years now and so many gifts have come from sobriety. I found the love of my life, I was able to clean up my past accordingly and spent the last 6 years playing bass in blues bands, the last two of which were spent touring the world. Last year I came off the road (speaking of roads) and started my mural/faux/custom painting business back up. I love painting creatively; it’s one of the things I’m here to do while in this human-suit. I couldn’t feel happier or more grateful.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
When I first began my career doing faux finishes, murals, and custom painting, I began thinking about the projects in terms of “wallscapes.” Doing a faux finish on a countertop or a dining room seemed so isolated to me, so I began thinking about the overall mood and tone a painting treatment can give to an entire space. Being able to consider and adapt to all the other existing elements in a space keeps a continuity and harmony. The trick is to compliment rather than complicate. Regardless of which treatment or approach is chosen by a client or designer, they all have to end up as authentic as possible.
One of my most favorite parts of this work is the design process. I love being at the drawing board coming up with a vision for a space. I’m a big believer that 1+1=3. My second favorite part is doing the final walk-through with a client where they get to begin a new relationship to their space and enjoy it from a new perspective.
I specialize in venetian plaster, marmarino plaster, lime wash, glazing, aging, gilding, wood graining, murals, and trompe l’oeil. For a while there, I was painting a lot of realistic monarch butterflies.
I am most proud of the mural I did, with the help of a good friend, for Ponce’s Mexican restaurant on Adams Avenue. Over the years, that street has had so many great murals done by really good artists that it’s truly an honor to be a part of. Their food is great and the family who owns the restaurant are such good people, too.
Two things that might set me apart from others are my focus on being consistently inconsistent with my mark, brush or tool, and leaving little to no evidence of the tool that made the mark.
How do you think about happiness?
Interesting question. This could be a very long list, but I’ll pluck out a few chart-toppers…
Having both feet in today, the first sip of dark coffee in the morning, blasting house music down the freeway with my love, belly-laughing with my love, our dogs and deaf cat, being sober, helping another alcoholic, spending time with family, traveling, making art, playing music. But I think my favorite kind of happiness is the kind that sneaks up on you out of nowhere, for seemingly no reason, and you become enveloped in the sense that you are right on schedule for your life, and everything is in its right place.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.andrewtcrane.com
- Other: agentcrane@yahoo.com
