Artists are well known for taking inspiration from other artists. But what if you’re a painter inspired by basketball? Sheldon Draper says the flow and energy of the game is similar to a jazz group. And he consolidates those ideas into his paintings of jazz musicians. Torin Andersen talked with Draper for this month’s ArtWorks.
“But I think there's like three main things that I feel like relate to each other that I like - jazz music, painting and then basketball. 'Cause if, if you think about, like, a basketball player, like there, there's a lot of creativity that goes into that. You gotta like, find open spaces. You gotta like, you know, there's, you're working on these set of moves, set of things. And then just the opportunity presents itself. You kind of have to just naturally and automatically just, there's a lot of action and reaction the same way, like, I put a mark down, the next mark is a reaction to that last mark I put down. It's like this constant, like push and pull, and it’s kind of like that with music, like there's like, the horn player does something so like the piano player, responds. I don’t know, I think there's a lot of that in my work too.“
“So this watercolor piece was featured in a national exhibition at Mark Arts for watercolor paintings. I was listening to a lot of the album, Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. And the piece is actually titled “Kind of Blue.” It's kind of like a guy at nighttime and like a cityscape background where there's all this like busyness around him. He's just kind of in the middle of it. I guess, kind of finding solitude and just stopping, just, for a smoke break. I just, I don't know, probably thinking about life or something.”
“Music usually has, like a, a lot of influence on what I'm working on, you know, kind of sets the mood and like the energy and I can kind of, you know, match that and put it in a piece.”
“I do listen to it like tons of music while I'm painting. So it can, it can incorporate like hip hop, jazz, like punk stuff when I'm, like drawing like, the skulls and that, you know, that type of stuff. But that's kind of like, intentional though. Like, I don't know, I'm listening to this, I want to draw this. And like, it's, they kind of like go hand in hand.”
“My music collection is, I basically, it's made up of like a bunch of records and a ton of CDs. Got like a Thelonious Monk album here, Monks Blues. Miles Davis, Complete Birth of the Cool. There's a lot of improv, a lot of stuff like just happening on the fly and like, so, and that I feel like that's, you know, how I like to work is just kind of just putting stuff together and kind of just pulling it outta nowhere. But it's not outta nowhere 'cause it's like this buildup of years and practice and expertise that gets you to that moment to where you can just kind of just where it feels like intuition takes over. I feel like I can hear that in the music and I feel I can, it feels like a very similar process of when I'm, like, painting.”
“Painting is just the easiest way for me to put everything I'm learning about studying and like, feeling, into like, into a piece and paint about it. I feel like it's more fun to paint a jazz musician than a painter.”
Torin Andersen explores the local arts scene every First Friday. An exhibit of Sheldon Draper’s work opens today at the Mulberry Art Gallery.
