Listening to that little voice

Adventures in scenic painting and queerness

This past week has been a total whirlwind. On Wednesday, the day after my mom left from a fun but busy visit, I got a gig as a scenic painter for a YouTube set that started on Thursday. Since then I have been working 12-hour days to make a solo show’s worth of paintings, as well as taping off a small bus so that it can be sprayed brat green, and a number of other odd jobs at the set located at a mansion in Tarzana.

Have you, like me, ever wondered, ‘What can I do with my over-education in painting that will pay my bills, without the pressure of becoming an art star?’ Well, scenic painting may be for you. Day rates can go up to $1500, and maybe more. You get to work on television shows and movies that millions of people all over the world might see. One guy I worked with helped make the creepy caves for the Stranger Things series. “Lots of garbage bags,” he said. If you work on an award show, or an afterparty, for example, you get to stay for the party.

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The down side is the hours are insane. You work a minimum of 12-hour days. Often people work those hours in the heat, without the correct equipment for the job, and without a ton of safety measures in place. I’m not trying to call anyone out, it’s just what I witnessed and learned from my conversations with the seasoned pros I worked with.

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I feel like I have been hit by the aforementioned bus because of the physical demands and creative energy required to make so many paintings in such a short time. But it was a rush and I totally get why people get hooked. There was something so cool about knowing your creative product was going to be part of something bigger. That it is guaranteed to go somewhere and be seen by an audience, possibly a big one.

There are so many things that came up for me during this gig that I feel like I will be unpacking my thoughts for a while. For one, I was asked multiple times to plagiarize, or at least take heavy inspiration from, other people’s work. The point was to make some art for the house the show was going to be shot in, and have it fit their design profile on a short timeline. I suppose it’s it’s safer to say I want this exact painting than trusting an unknown painter to do what they think is right. I started to follow orders but as I did, I thought about how I would feel if people copied my work for a show or movie, and I realized I would be pissed. Knowing my karma it would absolutely happen - or it would show up somewhere else in my life - and so I took a hard right.

What came out of it are paintings that I feel good about but that are schizophrenic to look at. I tried to keep the color palette relatively aligned throughout, but because of the source images the styles range wildly from gestural abstraction to a painting of my sweet kitty Didi. They had wanted a big cat painting, and I was much obliged.

The other thing that happened worth noting here was a moment where, in contrast, I didn’t listen to my intuition.

One of the perks of the job was they gave us a budget to order DoorDash for lunch everyday. It was the last day and I had about an hour to finish detailing the edges of the paintings before one of the scenic painters from the main set was to pick them up. I went to pick something up from the art store and decided to order before I went back to the studio. A couple times I thought, hmm maybe I should order something for the guy picking up the paintings. It will get there right around the time he shows up and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind lunch. The thought came through a couple times. But I was anxious about my deadline, and didn’t know who he was at that point, or have his phone number, and so I didn’t make any effort to get in touch with him, or do what my instinct told me - just order him a sandwich.

Fast forward I meet the pick-up guy, Evan, who is a scenic painter and an artist in his own right. He tells me about some of the gigs he has worked on, including a really cool set he and his buddies built for the HBO Emmy afterparty. We fuss around for a few minutes in his truck trying to figure out a good setup for my paintings, and then he is off.

Later that afternoon, I get called to the set in Tarzana: a gorgeous modern house with an infinity pool that overlooks two mountain ranges to the east. The sun sets a dusty pink and I notice my paintings still haven’t arrived along with the driver. Where is Evan? I ask the PA.

Evan had stopped downtown after picking up my work to grab food, and while down there, someone smashed and grabbed his backpack. He then got further delayed at IKEA and so on. The memory of my nudge came back to me, but it was only until today that I realized the impact of what that little voice was trying to offer me. It’s not that I am responsible for his backpack getting stolen, or that I blame myself. But at the same time, listening to that inner voice and trying to take action could have saved Evan some trauma and a stolen backpack, as well as hours of his and his team’s day - all from following that voice that I heard but did not understand.

What do lessons like this have to teach us? For one I realized it’s harder to spot the gain, or have proof that you have done the right thing when you do listen to that voice. For example, nothing crazy has happened because I decided to make paintings from my own ideas rather than directly copying another artist’s work. When things run smoothly there’s fewer if-onlys or what-ifs. The feeling I have when someone compliments the painting and I know that it is my creation, even if one I wouldn’t usually make in my studio, feels good. There’s also the lack of the icky cringe feeling I might have otherwise had if I knew the work wasn’t truly my own. But the lack of something isn’t always the most obvious signifier.

In contrast, when bad things happen you can usually quantify and qualify all the ways in which you f*cked up, or missed an opportunity to do something differently.

For me this contrast is most clear in my process of coming out, and now in the process of identifying as non-binary. It drives me nuts that there is no correct answer or rules to follow, and that only I will know what’s right for me. All I have is my intuition and my feelings to guide me. When I do something that doesn’t resonate, something that makes me feel small, I know it right away. Whereas when I expand a little, and hold my ground, it makes me open up and feel connected to myself and others in a new way - even if it’s scary or doesn’t make sense.

One step towards expansion that I am embracing is that I am now using my last name Thibault, as my first and only name - which some of you have called me by for years. If that’s the case, carry on. I am choosing Thibault because is a boy’s first name in French and since it is also my last name it seems the most efficient way to shuffle things around a bit. I thought maybe I could make my Instagram Thibault squared or something. To be continued…