David Carl

David Carl, Actor/Artist

I have been a student of acting for 25 years, and a professional actor for 16 years. More than one mentor on my journey told me to always have a few other artistic endeavors besides acting. They will bring you joy, allow you to decompress, organically deliver revelatory metaphors for acting, and frankly give you something else to talk about besides acting! Ever talk to an actor about acting? If you have, I apologize to you on behalf of all actors. So over the years I have always enjoyed getting lost in the art of painting.

During the pandemic many of us found new passions or re-discovered ones. In the past 29 months I have painted and sold over 100 pet portraits, and illustrated over 30 pages of an old Welsh tale The Knight of the Black Leg by Dr. James Battles. How did I go from hobbyist to professional? I’ll do my best to explain.

While I have always enjoyed painting and drawing, I had friends that were much better than I was, so I always considered it a hobby. I took visual art as an elective whenever I got the chance and mostly kept my work to myself for many years.

I am now 41, and in my 30s I started painting more than ever: still just for fun. Right after I turned 39, my girlfriend, now fiancée Katie, and I adopted our beautiful dog Bongo.

Naturally, he became my muse and I couldn’t stop painting him.

At the time I was also having fun playing with abstract paintings, mostly to explore color. We didn’t have much to hang on our walls, so I asked Katie what she would like, and she said she really liked my color gradients where I would start with purple and go all the way through the color spectrum through red, orange, yellow, green, blue and back to purple.

Katie’s brother-in-law, Todd London, was and still is our landlord. He saw the painting and said he would like to commission me to do something similar on the wall of his staircase downstairs. I was in shock! Someone wanted to pay me for my painting? When I picked my jaw up from the floor, I said “Yes, of course.” So we talked about designs and colors, and I came up with this.

And then the Pandemic hit in March 2020, and like many performers I lost several paying gigs that I was counting on to pay the bills for April. Since it was taking awhile for PUA and unemployment to kick in, I needed to act fast to figure out a way to pay our bills and feed Bongo! Eureka! Bongo! Dogs! I can paint people’s dogs and cats.

I posted on Facebook that I lost 3 paying gigs and would love to paint people’s pets, and because humans have a natural tendency to come together in times of crisis, I sold 12 paintings in that first month of the pandemic.

Not only was my old hobby now providing economic relief, but it was also providing emotional relief. I truly can’t think of a better way to take a break from the horrifying repetitive nature of a global pandemic, than getting lost in a cat painting for 4-8 hours a day. Time disappears and you forget that the world is burning for a few hours, while you create a beautiful acrylic image of someone’s beloved pet.

Did I make mistakes? Of course I did. Do I still make mistakes? Of course I do. If Writing is re-writing, then painting is re-painting…or something like that. What you do want, I’m a painter not a writer, okay?! And when you have all the time in the Covid-riddled world, you can live with the painting for a day or two before you ship it, so you can see it in the dark, full light, dusk, and dawn to make sure those whiskers look just right. You learn the value of patience. You learn that just because it’s called INSTAgram, doesn’t mean you have to post everything INSTAntly. Once you say the painting is done and ship it across the country, you don’t get a chance to add a little more shadow to bring out the cheekbones.

Every painting is an opportunity to learn and raise my standard just a little bit. And unless someone needs it for a surprise birthday next week, I trust that my customers will be happier if I take my time. And lessons that translate to acting are truly endless. I’ll spare you the metaphors because really…actors talking about acting? Blech!!! Just take my word for it: painting has made me a better actor. Whatever your “brush” is, pick it up, start painting, breathe, and take your time. And if you start making money from it, try to remember that you are doing it because you love it. The money is dessert.