Gabe Gault

GABE

There is a saying by Thoreau: “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” Gabe Gault is a portrait painter who, with each and every piece he makes, does so with truth. To depict someone as powerful as Cornell West or Martin Luther King requires a certain caution and care in order to show humanity in figures who stand as giants to us. Gabe does that with the ease of a brushstroke. When we met in his studio, he had just gotten home from starting the largest mural in the Midwest; some would be panicking about the hundreds of thousands of buckets of paint required to accomplish such a task, but to Gabe, it was just about dipping the brush. He smiled easily as we sat down amongst his paints and spray cans - all that mattered in that moment was finding his truth.

GAULT

What is it that you create, and how did you start creating?

I like to create work that is based off of people that have done something meaningful in my life, or at least someone I admire. Leaning into my background with the camouflage, it’s all about blending in and standing out. It’s about people who blend into your everyday life but stand out by doing something spectacular.

Can that be someone who you know personally as well as someone who’s globally known?

Exactly. So it could be a globally known person who’s inspired me since the 90s, someone I looked up to or has always had an impact on me. I paint the people that inspire me to work. I want to be the Mike Tyson of my field, an All-Star.

What was the first medium that you worked in? Where did your interest in art come from?

I wanted to be an animator all the way up to college. I dropped out of college at SMC (Santa Monica College) to intern with my mentor, Rob Prior, he was in the industry for 30-plus years at that point working in animation and commercial art. He does comic books, video game posters, and all that kind of stuff. We were working on a 400-page comic book and then everything fell through and I decided to pursue fine art. I was not making any money, I was breaking even. But then it occurred to me that I can do this for a living. From there, I just started painting large scale. Painting

the people I wanted to paint. Doing pieces I wanted to do, kind of finding my way and finding my style, which was a whole process of its own. What year was it when you made your first large-scale painting?

I want to say it was around the beginning of 2017. I started working on three-foot by four-foot pieces. That was the first time I worked on anything that big. I was scared of using such big sizes. Before then, 19-inches by 12-inches was the biggest I had worked with, but after that first large painting it snowballed. What are the biggest lessons that you learned from your mentor?

Was it daunting to go big? Once you did, was there no turning back?

Oh, yeah. 100% I feel like it was a big moment where I was like, “Shit, I can’t do this. I don’t know if I have the confidence to do it.” And I think once you kind of go big, you don’t really want to turn back. There was a turning point where I was working and doing a collab with my friend K-Fish (KELCEY FiSHER) and we did a big eight-foot by eight-foot piece and after that, I knew all I wanted to do was work big. Bigger than life. And now I’m doing the biggest mural in the midwest. A lot of that integrity came from mentors in life.

Working hard and knowing the worst thing that could happen was that you’d have to start over, even on pieces I worked hours on. Understanding that consistency is important. Being consistent is, I

think, the biggest key point for an artist because if you don’t have the work ethic you’re not going to go anywhere, you can be pretty stagnant. I feel like that was the biggest takeaway for me. Also, learning you can be famous and successful as an artist. Not that money is a metric of success, but I feel there’s a lot of people who are more famous than me but maybe don’t make as much money. But, there are also people who are less successful than me who make way more money. So it’s a happy balance. There’s always a big balance between making it as an artist and maintaining your lifestyle.

Are there any contemporary artists you look up to? Actually, how I kind of got my style was taking my five favorite artists at the time and using what elements of theirs I liked the most. I thought, What messages do each of the artists teach me? What can I take from those elements and turn into my own? Andy Warhol did a series of camouflage paintings that I thought were really cool, so I started to mess with my own kind of version of that. Shepard Fairey was a top influence for me, he did some portraits of people that are very iconic and paints this stature that I admire. Banksy of course... I was looking at CRYPTIK and David Choe. James Jean is also a good one, I appreciated his technique and his different mediums, using many little elements in his pieces. Also the artist RETNA, I appreciated how simplistic and easy it is for him to make pieces and put stuff out. The quicker you can produce the better. Some guys take months and months to finish one piece. That’s not what I want to do. I could do that and paint super realistically but that’s what I appreciate photography for. I don’t want my paintings to be photographs, a painting should be my own representation. When I started out, I was doing super-realism, enough that if you saw it online, you’d scroll past because you’d think it’s a picture. That’s something I had to switch up because I wanted to have a looser style. Something that’s loose enough that you’d know it’s a paint-

ing. That should be the point. I also like to reference Renaissance painting in my work. I like the style of it and the colors but with a pop feel. My friend Crispy’s always said, “You’re bringing back a black Renaissance.” That’s been a key point in my mind.

You recently started working in Ohio on the largest mural in the midwest, how is that project going?

For that project, I did triptychs on 26 big silos, there were these figures referencing Renaissance style. I painted the first farmers of the land as three figures: a mother, a child, and a grandmother, all with sunflowers and botanical themes.

Your themes remind me of Kehinde Wiley, who was Obama’s portrait artist.

Yeah, he’s a big influence on me and my paintings.

There’s a really cool resemblance between you both. He uses vegetation as a different means of camouflage. Where did your idea of using camouflage come from?

I was in a show called “We Rise” in Downtown LA. It had all the best artists in LA, like 100 artists. Shepherd was in there. They throw it downtown, like every year. I did my first camouflage piece for that show, one was Tupac wearing a Kaepernick jersey, during the time when Kaepernick took a knee. I did a piece of MLK as well, in a jersey using camouflage in the background. That was a big turning point for me, it was one of the biggest shows and was the first time I did a piece that big. I had two weeks, so I ended up doing a piece a week. At the show, they ended up not having any more wall space so they laid them against the wall, behind the DJ booth. I wasn’t pissed off or anything, but I was like, “This sucks.” It ended up getting a lot of attention and was one of the most talked-about pieces in that show, if not the most. I got hundreds of DMs by people, sending me paragraphs, saying how much it meant to them. That was a switch to me, where I realized I wanted to do

something impactful. I can change somebody’s life or their point of view. The next show I ended up being in was with Shepard and he really put his guns out for me, which was really awesome. I made a Nipsey Hussle piece about two months after he died.

Nipsey believed in refuting the idea of escaping the hood, a similar philosophy to that of Kendrick Lamar, where you don’t leave your community behind. Instead, use your fame and power to build it. I think with Nipsey dying, your work takes on a level of commemoration, almost that you’re painting this figure and making him eternal.

Similarly, I made one of Kobe, and his wife Vanessa reached out and reposted it. It’s been cool and crazy to see that kind of reaction. I always try to stay as positive as I can, but it’s been a rough couple of years, but I think it gives people comfort to see representation. It’s everlasting in that sense.

Have you gotten reactions from anyone that you painted? Did Emma Gonzalez see your portrait of her, or did Dr. Cornel West say anything?

I don’t know about Cornel but I think my subjects do see almost every piece. I did a huge eight-foot by eight-foot Spike Lee and he loved it. He wanted to buy it, but it was just too big...

Thinking about what camouflage represents, I’m reminded of Vietnam. It’s a symbol of immense ferocity. Even with a dark history, it’s a symbol of power. You’re putting powerful people in front of a powerful symbol.

I appreciate that. That’s the endgame, if I were to say I have an end game, it would be painting a city just in camouflage. People blending in and sticking out.

Are there other mediums that you’d like to explore? What about your John Lewis and George Floyd pieces?

Definitely. I really want to explore clothing, that’s one of the main ones I’m interested in, just to make for myself. More recently, sculptures, I have a 3D printer, so I’ve been messing around with it. I printed a life-size version of my head. The modern-day Roman bust, something you’d see in the Getty. I would like to make a bust of Mike Tyson or something but 3D printed. I think that’s a cool medium that’s not explored and is underutilized. I also want to do an installation and just fill rooms with the camo. I did a piece for Complex and did a whole room in camo. I always forget I did that. Those were for the NAACP, they did a campaign a couple of months back, I did Walter Scott as well.

It must be really powerful having people connect with your work. How do you find a balance between commercial and personal work?

There’s always a process, thinking about what pieces you can make without sacrificing the integrity of what you stand for. It was hard with a couple of projects that paid decently but weren’t easy to do. The best client is one that just lets you do a piece in your own style and understands that this is what we do for

a living. In my case, this is what I do, this is what I’m hired for, I’m going to produce the best result if I can just work in my own ways.

Where do you hope it all goes from here?

In the future I hope I can just keep scaling up, that’s the ultimate outcome. Then hopefully, by the end of my career, my work will be somewhat unrecognizable from the beginning of my career, but have that same feeling and integrity. It won’t be too unrecognizable. That’s what it’s all about at the end of the day, staying true to yourself. I don’t want to be some pretentious asshole artist. If I do, well fuck, I hope I earned it. I just want to make what I want to make. Keep getting the opportunities to create new pieces and new styles. That’s the end game there.