Wes Lang

34:10And then Will asked him a specific question, I can't recall what it was, it doesn't matter. But it clicked in him like, oh, I don't have to be like Ramdas magazine article version of myself. I can just talk to these guys. And then it was like magic art. This guy who is so incredibly devoted to this loving awareness in the world is still gets pissed off of people and has bad feelings towards people and bad feelings about himself. And he's just like, you know that, but to hear it really come out of us, we see him set like this close, like see him say it. He's human. Yeah. He's still human. And like he's one of the only people though, he was somebody I couldn't look at that way.

35:13He was too important. He knew too much because that's what you got when you read the books and stuff. And listen to him talk. He didn't have a goddamn thing figured out except the love. And how to stay there. And that's all we can do. It's actually pretty easy once you realize that. You know, I know you're very interested in those thought processes and all those things as well. And that's why I had called to reach out to see you originally. I needed to talk to somebody because I was going through all kinds of shit. And I couldn't talk my way out of it. I'm not fooling myself to think that I've got to figured out just because I met Ramdas and he made me feel a certain way.

36:00Staying in the practice of doing this stuff really helps to keep my anxiety almost zero now. You know, it's the only way I'll get a little anxious if I don't eat enough and have too much coffee. And that's a very easy thing to fix. Just eat something.

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37:10Refreshing flavors include grapefruit, citrus, watermelon, and chocolate salt. Formulated with the perfect balance of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to keep you hydrated and energized throughout the day. These minerals help conduct the electricity that powers your nervous system so you can perform it your very best. Element electrolytes are sugar -free, keto -friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit drinklmant .com slash tetra and stay salty with Element electrolytes. L -M -N -T L -M -N -T Would you say you were more anxious in the past? I went through a really long period of...

38:07You can very easily correlate anxiety and financial success where they just went and exploded. And I was living in a state of crippling panic attacks where will... Well, somebody who was like my speed dial, who I could call when I was really losing it. Because when you have a panic attack, it feels like the entire world is just... I had had them when I was younger, but I wasn't living in a state of them. And I was living in a state of them. I was selling every painting I could make to every single person on the planet that meant something. And I was fucking miserable. So it was in success that you had the panic.

39:18Because I have no self -worth whatsoever. Zero. I don't expect to sell paintings. I've come to a much different place with it. I'm good with it. Now I look at it totally differently. But at that point in time, it's really easy to understand it. I was drinking, smoking cigarettes, eating pizza and hamburgers and treating myself really, really, really badly. I thought I knew what these books and stuff were about. They were very much a part of my life. I was reading them. I thought they were getting in. I wasn't letting them permeate me properly. And it's a life's pursuit to let them do that for you.

40:14But I don't know. A bunch of different things happen. It's clicked more. Some of the things that I see in these books. My favorite being the Dow is the one that really resonates with me. I wouldn't call myself a Dowist. I just practice my version of the Dow. Does that make sense? Absolutely. I don't want any rigidity in it. I can't define it for anybody. But I know how I practice it. I know how I meditate. I know how I study these words and I know what they do for me. I think the nature of the Dow is so open to interpretation anyway. That if you read the words and then read them a year later and they'll mean something completely different.

41:07It's totally different. What I do is I wake up every morning and that's how I start my day. I go, I give myself 10 minutes of perfect quiet and breathing and staring out a window. That's a pie in my room. Do you do this in -better? Do you get out of bed? No rule. Typically. Just describe typically how I usually wake up. I'm woken up usually because I have a two -year -old son. So his noise will wake me up. My wife usually is the one that will go in and see him first. And I'll just sit there and breathe for 10 minutes. And laugh and listen to what's happening in the other room. Then I'll read a verse of the Dow.

42:01I actually open my phone and read, there's a Ramdas app. And every day there's these words of wisdom. There's two to three of them every day. I read those first. Then I read my Dow verse. And then I'm ready to go. I'm up and I go see my son Otto and that kid is SXASBRA. My wife walked in here into my studio one day. A mutual friend brought her along a studio visit randomly and I went outside in the parking lot. To open the gate and this girl opened the back seat of the SUV they got driven here in and stepped out and I literally lost my breath. I was just like, who is that? And now I'm married to her.

43:02I have a son. Congratulations. And yeah, that's SXASBRA. I never wanted it. I saw my friends that had kids and I'm, I'm going to guess you probably, you probably felt this way. You like look at your friends that have kids and they're like, ha, like your sucks for you. You don't get to go do this, you don't get to go do that. And like luckily I did get to go do all the things. Now I'm in my 50s, I have a two year old son and it's like, it was the right time for me. Do you think your mom's, um, I for detail in her work influenced you in any way? 100%. Yeah, I mean, we're almost, we're like facsimiles of each other.

43:50It's probably, I look a lot like my mom. Do you think it's genetic or do you think it's seeing her do it? Her modeling it for you. It's hard to say. My father's super creative too. He writes about jazz. My mom is a, does her thing. My aunt is an art teacher. Like there's creative people. I was just brought up around creative people. They definitely didn't encourage me to do this. I can say that. There was a lot of budding heads like get a job kind of conversations. I just wouldn't do it. I just wouldn't do it. I got a job when I was five at the pharmacy on Sunday mornings putting newspapers together.

44:38Because the Sunday papers came in sections and you had to put them together. And I wanted comic books and toys and that's how I got them. Sorry, not five, eight. I was eight. And then I worked in a rug store, which was all about detail. And being around these beautiful rugs. And there was a very specific way to unroll them and a very specific way to re -roll them. And I loved it. And I was really, I took a lot of pride in how I did it. And then my dad opened his store. And I worked in record stores. And then in my late 20s, I started to work at like sort of like blue chip art galleries in New York City.

45:23What motivated you to move west? There was a couple of things. But like I had this idea in 2009 or early 10 that I wanted to come out and stay at the chateau and make a series of drawings on that letterhead that you get when you stay there. And they print your name on it, right? What started that idea? What was it about the chateau? I had been there and I just liked it. You know, it was just like a place. The first time I went there, I was just like, it's so storied. And I like went and stayed there. The first time I could like afford to stay in a really nice hotel. Expensive hotel. So I flew out to LA and I went there.

46:17And I didn't have like this crazy time there. I just, I left there feeling like I wanted to be there. Right? I get this room, my home, any other home I've had in California and studios I've worked in. Since I've been able to have studios, it's like, and what, what a dump it is when I walk through the door. There's like, I just get this feeling. The energy. Yeah. And this place was just a disaster area. I bet. And I crossed the halfway point. This building is twice as big. I crossed the halfway point into the building. And I got to the beam that separates the space. It's cut buried in that wall now.

47:05And I looked in here and I got the chills up my spine. Amazing. That's amazing. That's amazing. Anyway, to go back to, it was like, Shatou just felt like a place to be for me. I just needed to be there. I didn't know why. So a long convoluted story is to how I got there. I had nothing to, you know, I had to have a pot to piss in really. But I found the money. I sold some works. I got the money and I went, came out here in early 2011 and rented room 34 in the Shatou. And lived there like I was supposed to be there. Because I was supposed to be there. I stayed for 30 days and I made a drawing every day.

48:00Then I went back to Brooklyn for a couple of weeks and then I came back and I rented the penthouse. For a night and threw an exhibition up there. It did really, really, really well. This was another thing that some people that I was working with in New York had discouraged this idea to put it lightly. And I was like, well, I'm doing it. However I can do it, I'm going to do it. I did it and it changed my life, man. I met a good buddy of mine, Darren Romanelli in my room at the hotel. He came in and I was listening to a live dead show. And he was a big dead head and we got to talk in and he introduced me.

48:53He helped me get involved in a project for a great -fledged box set. That was all happening at Rhino, Warner. So I kept having to come out here for meetings with the producer of the live dead releases a guy named David Lemieux. So I was coming out here meeting with him. He's like an encyclopedia of grateful dead. Just a really cool guy. And I'd come out to LA. I'd have to stay the chateau. I have a fantastic time. And then I'd get back to Brooklyn and I would be around a bunch of painters. And there's too much negativity going on around me. I don't understand how people have turned art into a fucking competitive sport.

49:52But they've figured out a way to do it. And I was not willing to play that game. So I decided I was turning 40 in 2012 and I just decided to come and move here. And I moved into the chateau, Marmont. Amazing. I had no plan. And so I just kind of started drawing and making these paintings on paper basically. Because that's all I could really pull off in there. And I did another one night exhibition up in the Belushi Bungaloo. And sold it out. I would say in 10 minutes, literally. It was just like, yes. And the next day... It's not typical for an artist to sell his own work. No. No, that's another...

50:46That was something that I found that the system that I was presented with to work with in was not the one that I was willing to do.

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52:31Tell me about the system. I really know very little about the art world. What's the typical path? I don't know if there's a typical one, but the relationship between a gallery and an artist is... At the level that I was operating at, which was not emerging, but not... There's like emerging artists and mid -career artists and late -career artists. I was in between emerging and mid. And there's just sort of this indentured servitude that you feel by the people involved in the gallery system. You feel like you work for the gallery when you have a gallery? They try to make you feel that way. Yes. That's not a game I'm going to play.

53:16I'm not going to do that. So the very short version of the long story I didn't say is like, I wanted to come to the chateau. The people I was working with said, no, we're not going to help you financially to do that. Get a kickstarter. And maybe you can get... I didn't even know what that was. They showed me what that was. I was like, I'm not doing that. You couldn't pay me to do that. Well, if you're not going to do it, then you're not doing that project. And I said, I quit. On the spot, I quit. Yeah. Give me the couple things you have. My truck's outside. Yeah. I'm out. Call the collector. Sold the big painting.

54:04Got 40 grand in my pocket. And spent it all to live at the chateau for 30 days. And rolled it. And it turned into more than that. And then more than that. And these are the times, though, where I was like getting anxiety and panicky and tweaky about things. And I just kept... I'd answered the phone and it would be the best news in the world. And I would have a panic attack. What's the call you would get that would put pressure on you? That was so difficult. Because it didn't feel like pressure to me in my mind, but my body felt it that way, I guess. And my mind subconsciously was doing that to me.

54:49I don't know. It was just like so and so of world renown would like to come meet you and buy a painting. And those calls were like happening. Like, not like once. But like, weekly, you know. And I'm so thankful for it. Yeah, I mean. But tell me where the anxiety came from that. What do you think it is? I really don't know. I mean, the only thing I can answer for, the only thing that I can think of is having no self -worth of any kind. I'm a tall guy. I'm covered in tattoos. I'm relatively well -spoken, bird educated enough. I've got a good head on my shoulders and stuff. Financially succeeded in this world.

55:50And up to a certain point, I just like hated myself. What was your first tattoo? I got a little like crappy line drawing version of a, of a Jimmy Hendrix flying eyeball that like Rick Griffin had drawn from a Jimmy Hendrix concert poster on my ankle. I think I was like 16, this place in Jersey, tattoo 46. A big old biker dude gave me the tattoo. How did you pick the image? You know, it picked me, I think. You know, I just walked in there and... You didn't know before you walked in when it was going to be? No, I just wanted it, I just wanted my first tattoo. I was obsessed with tattoos. Because spending all the time in New York City, I was seeing tattoos and chatting with New Jersey.

56:47You didn't see tattoos. But being in the East Village, you saw people with tattoos and they were the scariest people on the street because they had tattoos. Tattoos were, you know, they weren't fashionable. They were a way of marking yourself as like the outside. And I mean, I had friends growing up after we had gotten out of high school, but we're still like around the area that come home from college and stuff. Like their parents didn't want me to come over because I had tattoos. You know, that was a thing and then all of a sudden... A lot of it, I was working at a tattoo shop. I was in a print -toss in a tattoo shop when I got out of high school in Jersey.

57:35And this is 91. But I would say that was one of the last truly fantastic moments in American music, at least for me, was that era. So at that point in time, like then the music that was coming up that became so big, all these guys had tattoos. And it was like changing the world, it was changing fashion, it was changing the tastes of the world that music. Anthony was like literally the most beautiful man on the planet at that time. And he had the most amazing beautiful tattoos. And like it changed people's perception of tattoos. Like right, I saw it happen in the tattoo shop. Like we were tattooing thugs from the oranges in Jersey.

58:34And like garbage men. And frat guys. With their frat logos and stuff. So you worked in the tattoo salon? Yeah, I was like a... I would draw and make needles. Maybe make needles. You soldered them together. Like you'd buy... you'd get packs of needles. You'd have a bar and you'd solder them together. You had jigs and you put extra amount of needles in the jig. Slaughter them together. It was a patience. A lot of patience to do that. But you got good at it and I would take pride in it being good at it. That was a great time and the music was so crazy. Again, not to keep blowing smoke up your ass, but you were making a lot of it.

59:24And I was working at this tattoo shop and at the same time there was like a sort of like real wave of like the rave scene happening in New York. And I went with my boss at the tattoo shop. Skycarry. Brief. What's his name? This is his name.

59:53And we went to the limelight on a Wednesday. To this part. Part Old Church. Yes. We went to this party called Disco 2000. That was this like amazing part. It was fucking crazy man. Nothing like it on the plate. I'd never seen anything like it. The club kids that were like on whatever. I remember they were on like a talk show one day and the afternoon they were on like a Donahue type show or something like that. I knew all these guys were guys I was hanging out with. But then also it was Tuesday. Wednesday was Disco 2000. Tuesday or Thursday. I can't remember which one was like the industrial night.

1:00:34With like ministry and when you first walked in we were talking about you know nine. I was listening to nine inch nails like they were playing that and stuff like that. That was also a crazy party. It was so cool to go there on Wednesday and the freaks. They were into that scene. We're there. And then the next night a whole other subgenre of New York City and the surrounding burrows would show up for this party. And it was so special. Did you ever go to limelight? Absolutely. And it was that was that couldn't happen today. I don't think. There was an incredible club scene in New York all through the time that I lived there.

1:01:15Yeah. Nothing like it. Yeah. There was that NASA which was down next to wetlands. And then club USA opened. I remember a Webster. I remember going to like Webster Hall opening night with Michael Alec that guy that ran this party disco 2000. And he like ended up killing a drug dealer and hacking his body up and going to prison forever. And there was a movie about him. Wow. He was my boss. Boss. I got paid 75 bucks to go to the club and have fun. You know, it was really cool. I remember there was like a room away up in the back of the back of the back of the VIP area that HR Geiger had done. Like all this furniture was like all sculptural stuff that he had made.

1:02:09That was so cool. Unbelievable.

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1:03:35Tell me about that moment when you're making something, and you feel like I have to walk away, what would be an example? Where would you be in the project? And what would the voice say? I mean, when I first started to paint, I would draw so much, right? And I was really confident in my drawing. And I'd get in front of a canvas, and I would just fail instantly. And then I'd just paint over it. And then I'd start something else. For me, you talk about this in your book, too. It's like you walk away from it on a Tuesday, and you feel like it's the greatest thing you've ever done in your life. And on Wednesday morning, it is dog shit.

1:04:25And it is. Dog shit. So from like, when I really really started to paint, I would say I was like 25. So from like 25 to 40, I drew, and then I painted. And when I moved to California. You drew first, and then painted the drawing. I would say, no, I would paint this much, and I drew this much in my practice. So I spent like 15 years predominantly drawing. My drawings would get big, they'd get complicated, they were really, you know, I'm proud of them. They were remarkable. And hyper derivative of certain people very much on purpose. Because I looked at those people that I admired, and I looked at how they worked.

1:05:23And that's what they did. They looked at the people that they liked before them, and they copied the shit over and over and over and over again. I think one main difference in music is that it is quite possible to become hyper successful as a musician when you're a teenager, and still be really fucking good at it when you're 70 years old. It's possible. It's possible, but not often. It's possible. Painting is not possible. You just have to grow into it. You have to have a life experience, because paintings are generally not about...

1:06:14I don't know, this is going to be right either, but you could write a song when you're 18 about the girl that broke up with you when you were 17, and it could become a classic song for the rest of time. You can't paint a painting at 18 to create that same thing at 18 with a canvas. One person I know of is Donut, that was Boscow. He did it all by the time he was 27 years old, and he had a mastery of the history of... Very specific history of art, but a mastery of it. And he liked all the artists that I liked, and then I looked up to. And he had this way of looking. He created a way of art. All art is talking to art that came before it.

1:07:12He had a way of turning it into the first bookie down record for me. Sampling, and layering, and bravado, and mystery, and violence, and romance, that were like... They were identical to each other to me, visually and sonically, those are the closest... That's how I can put them together. Seeing his work for the first time did the same thing to me that that bookie down record did to me. What was the first time he came across his work? I was in my... I was probably like 24, something like that. Never heard of him before that. And my girlfriend at the time gave me a book for my birthday. And I was like, what is this?

1:08:14Paintings didn't look like that before. No. It was a new language. And he was dead by the time I saw it, but not that dead. You know? No, he was... He was just around in the same places that you were... Yes. Yeah. No time ago. And I spent like a... you know, a really... And I'm still hyper -influenced by him. Hyper -hyper -hyper -influenced, but unapologetically. Somebody comes... like I've had people come in here and be like, that looks like a basket. And I'll say, thank you. Thank you very, very, very much. Because I do headlong into understanding him and his process. And what motivated him and the corollaries were so strong between us, minus the fact that I'm a white guy and he's a black guy.

1:09:09Oh, there were so many things that happened. And the things we were both drawn to were so similar. I felt like, you know, art is a conversation, music's a conversation. You're talking to the people that did it before you. And I decided to have a really, really in -depth conversation with Jean -Michel Boschia. And find what that could do for me. I remember just being like... At first being like really scared of it and like wanting to like... That's where I would get lost on a canvas as I would try to not do the very thing that I should be doing. Which was talk honestly and openly and copy what the hell that guy had done.

1:09:56And then I embraced the conversation. And my life changed drastically. And that's when those phone calls started coming. And the great opportunities started rearing their heads. And like, just... And it's like, yes, I am doing that. I am openly, publicly telling you, I spent my life copying what that guy did and making my own new fresh version of it. Because it is markedly different than what he did, but the structure is the same. Identical structure. Because the guys that I looked at, that's what they did. And then all of a sudden, they didn't need to do it anymore. And I'm just over the last couple of years.

1:10:51I have done something unique in here that is mine. And I know that. I had no plan other than that. First little painting and being told not to do it. And I'm that encouragement from Damien. And then sort of... Sort of set this parameter on myself that I had never done before, which was to... Make a gigantically ambitious body of it. There's 96 of these paintings. I've never made 96 paintings that went together. I think the number. It was just kind of thrown at me by a friend. Like that you can get there. Like if you do that many, you should feel done. And I started doing it.

1:11:48And the number for like the first hour after hearing that suggestion, I was like, I can't do that. That's insane. You know, that's crazy. I'm just one guy. And then I came to the studio the next day and I made one. And I was like, well, there's one of them. And come back tomorrow and do another one. And this turned into like... I've had many challenges with them as far as pushing myself and my technical abilities and finding things inside of myself that I didn't know that I had. And I will not say that it has been easy, but it has been effortless. And I've had no self doubt. Because I had no point where after that first hour of saying I couldn't do it.

1:12:50And once I said I can do it, I did it. And I never was like, no, I'm not going to do this. I can't go on another day. About two weeks ago my assistant Ben was with me and we were in my house studio. I love painting at my house because I get to be around my son and my wife. And not have to drive anywhere. And I was kind of like, I'm getting sick of this. I was up like 90. I was like, I just can't do any more of these. Instead of, I just had to say it. And then I went right up to a canvas and I did the goddamn thing. And then I got really excited about it again and I really fell in love with the whole process.

1:13:36All over again. It's amazing how even a small breakthrough changes the whole picture. Changes are understanding of what's happening. I can never do this again. And then even a glimpse of something interesting is enough to just erase that. Yeah. Those battles that you have with yourself, they never go away. But they get a hell of a lot easier to win. In a shorter period of time. But always won them. But some of those were 12 rounds. And they were draws. I've been going in and having early Mike Tyson fights with my paintings. And that is a good feeling. Tell me about the first time you were at the museum.

1:14:31Well, I remember in 2003, I got a call that the MoMA had bought a suite of drawings of mine from a gallery that I was working with at the time. But I never went to see it installed that I'm pretty sure it was installed in this collection. But then in 2014, I had sold stuff to museums in Europe. But I had never gone to see any of it. But then in 2014, I was given an opportunity to do like a sort of survey show at a place in Denmark called the Aros Museum, which is in a tiny college town called Arhus. It's one of the most magical towns I've ever been to in my life. They came to my studio in Brooklyn.

1:15:39Because I was still there when this was conceived. But then by the time it was happening, I was living here. But the idea was to replicate my studio in Brooklyn inside of the museum. Because my studio is, you know, it's interesting in place. And the one in Brooklyn was smaller and jammed up and different vibe. I was a different person. So I lived at a little apartment around the corner from the museum for a month and went and worked in the studio that they built me a footprint of Brooklyn in the museum. And I went there and made paintings and made it covered in paint and pinned little pictures all over the place and shipped my books like everything.

1:16:29And it was really cool. That was the most memorable experience I've had with a museum. Other things have gone to museums over the years, but I've never gone to visit them. Do you think there's a spiritual aspect to your work?

1:16:48For myself, absolutely.

1:16:54It's my practice.

1:17:01It's my way of one of the ways I can meditate. And I can do it for many, many, many, many hours.

1:17:15You just zone. And I don't have to talk. That's one of the great things about this job is I don't have to speak to anybody to do it. So I can sit in absolute silence alone. Or even if there's music, I mean, you know, music can become the soundtrack to a silence that you need. Even though it's on, it becomes that headspace you need. Creates an internal silence, right? Like a good song can quite your mind, like nothing else. I think I touched on it earlier as like I would like for my paintings to make people feel something. To feel a desire to look at the world in a different way. One of the greatest things that happened in my work life, my uncle, is very close to my uncle, Bill.

1:18:19And he had made me a copy of the power of intention, the Wayne Dyer lecture. And it gave it to me. At the time I had this big wall of CDs in my studio. And I was about to start a project for our Basel in 2004, I think it was. And he had given me this stuff. I took it, put it in my CD case. I couldn't even see it. And I went to reach up for something. And it's like this set of discs just shot out and landed on the floor. And I picked it up, thought of my uncle, walked over, put it in my 6 CD changer, turned it on, started this group of drawings I was going to do. I drew all these drawings of myself dressed up as a zombie from a Halloween costume that I had had.

1:19:32And all I did was draw myself with a snake coming out of my head and blood all over me. And I just wrote everything he was saying that meant something to me on these drawings, all over them. And I just listened to it for like a month.

1:19:54And then I went to Miami, we installed this stuff. I had no expectations of any kind. I wasn't killing it by any stretch of the thing. I was making a living that I wasn't. And then I was just going to the beach and hanging out with friends and doing whatever during the day. Every 10 minutes my phone kept ringing. So the another one, sold another one, sold another one, sold another one.

1:20:27That was a turning point where I had always been writing on stuff, but what I was writing changed. And what I was putting out changed.

1:20:40That was a stepping stone in my life where I was treating myself badly, but I needed to treat myself better. And I had a moment where I did it. And it made work that I was really proud of. And it succeeded in helping me. And it succeeded by going out into the world as well. And it was successful in a myriad of ways. So that started a practice for me where I was really intentionally placing these texts that I was studying. And I was just sitting into my artwork all the time. And it was the beginning of me really, truly getting to make a real living at this. Amazing. Yeah. Let's look at the Dow.

1:21:33And I want you to randomly open to a page and read to me what's there. And let's see how it impacts what we're feeling today. Without going out the door, you can know the world. Without looking out the window, you can see heaven. The farther you travel, the less you know. Thus the wise person knows without traveling, understands without seeing, accomplishes without acting.

1:22:27And I want you to know that I'm not a bad person. And I want you to know that I'm not a bad person. And I want you to know that I'm not a bad person. And I want you to know that I'm not a bad person.