Inside Artist Geoff McFetridge’s Prolific, Obsessive, and Fulfilling Creative Life
Geoff McFetridge explores questions about leading a fulfilling creative life and living with intention through his drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Images: c/o Geoff McFetridge.
Artist Geoff McFetridge spends his mornings on Los Angeles mountains, running uphill. By mile 40, he’s completely stopped thinking about anything, as if his head has disappeared somewhere in the miles. And he just keeps going. Why? Because he can’t not. It’s like he’s wired this way; on this nonstop quest to explore and push his limits.
It’s the same with his art; Geoff travels so deep into his work that his hand moves without him thinking about it. His head disappears somewhere between drawing #10 and 100. The further he goes down this “white well,” the brighter it gets.
Geoff’s world has a lot of color in it, just like his work, which is everywhere — on your Apple watch right now, in screen graphics for films like Her and Where the Wild Things Are, and in collabs with Nike, Hermès, and more. When his friends in the creative industry were asked to describe him for the new documentary, Geoff McFetridge: Drawing A Life, they all happened to say the very same thing: Geoff’s the guy who reinvented how we communicate in modern day.
He grew up in a Chinese-Canadian family in Calgary, Canada, and spent his days skateboarding and drawing into the night. Now he lives in L.A., creating the type of work he’ll never tire of making because of something inside him that won’t let him rest.
Here, atop this pinnacle, Geoff shares how he redefined how he works to create a lasting and successful career; the creative process he uses to refine his thinking; and why he’s always striving for an invisible thing.
Geoff’s art style recasts how we communicate in the 21st century, from his iconic face designs on the Apple watch to movie titles for popular films, such as The Virgin Suicides.
A few weeks ago, I looked at my Apple Watch wallpaper and I asked myself, who made this? It turns out that it was you. Most artists don’t just get Apple or Hermès as their clients. How did you become the guy?
In the late 1990s, I had my first show with some of my prints up at George’s gallery. They were drawings of bears doing petty crimes, like shoplifting, stealing bikes, and trespassing. It wasn’t serious art, just stuff I had done in my sketchbook. I had kind of drawn them to look perfect, meaning very mechanical-looking and anonymous, as if they hadn’t been drawings at all. So I had made art that was meant to look like marketing. BUT then I got a call from an ad agency in New York. They had seen my artwork and wanted me to take exactly what I did and do it for the X Games.
It was a difficult decision but I decided to do it, and so I established this sort of duality, announcing to the world that I was open to doing commercial artwork. There’s clearly a place for artwork in the world of consumption; like this complicated, muddy nature of creativity, where things that appear to be mechanized are actually very handmade. Recently, some of Andy Warhol’s shoe drawings came up for auction. They’re from early in his career when he did commercial art. And when I saw them, I wondered, what if he kept on doing shoe drawings for Bloomingdale’s? All the stuff he did after that is obviously so much more important. But what if he did this unimportant stuff simultaneously?
Geoff uses art and design to get underneath everything and explain it. Sometimes, it’s a bit painful.
How do art and consumerism intersect?
There are creative people everywhere, but the value we put on their creativity is defined by external forces. When artists are fabricating sculpture, for instance, they’re using techniques from the automotive industry and the set-building industry, that is, they’re using existing technologies to make art. Isn’t that ironic, that you have these laborers sanding bronze to a mirror finish, but the finish or quality of the art has little to do with its value. No finish or labor can create $30 million in value. If I am working for brands or on my artwork, there are all these thoughts in my head with regard to value and, most importantly, desire.
Your Apple Watch face designs seem to be a good example of that feeling. Tell us about creating those.
With the Apple Watch faces, each face seems so simple but there are all these things about them that I really believe in. Like, none of the skin tones are normal, they’re all unusual. None of the hair is shaped like people’s hair. And in that sense, each face is sort of dissolving our understanding and starting fresh. It’s like a proposition. No one’s ever asked me what it’s about because you sort of don’t need to. It’s all in there, and every time you look at it, the face changes, because we all know what it’s like to be at a sports stadium or in a crowded space and look at everyone’s faces and see how they’re all different. So in that way, my art does have a thesis about our understanding of how we see humans and how we understand a graphic version of ourselves.
Since his early childhood, Geoff has used drawing as a way to understand what he is thinking. It’s like he’s Drawing A Life.
What do you think about when you draw? Or do you not think at all?
There’s this feeling of disappearing, like you totally lose your sense of self. When I was young, I remember thinking, what am I gonna draw? And now, I don’t even know the last time I thought that. I’ve come up with ways to avoid overthinking that “first thing.” Sometimes I just draw my thoughts. The creative process is a mix of divergent thinking (everything), or convergent (one idea refined). That’s what’s going on in my sketchbook. So I create a rhythm, a system, and my process is the heart of what I make, like refining things reveals new truths in my thinking.
I’ve made it easy for myself, because it’s not as if, when I draw 100 things, each thing is a different thing. One thing leads to the next, and the next is a version of another thing. And that way, I don’t hold any value to each of these 100 things. They could be total garbage. But it doesn't matter, because, if between A and B, there’s a little bit of garbage, that’s okay. And then between B and C, there’s a lot of garbage, and that’s okay too. The key is getting to C. So drawing is the opposite of precious. It’s just notes. It’s just to remind myself that I had that first thought, even though I’m already having a mix-up. It’s all about reducing the stakes and increasing the production, right? And then stepping back.
Then I’ll go through the drawings and I’ll put little check marks next to things, and I’ll be like, that one, that one, and that one. And then suddenly you go from 100 things to 10 things that have value. The whole idea behind it is that writer’s block is just a part of the process. It’s like, of course you can’t think of anything at first, writer’s block is how you start. You start with nothing. You start in a void.
You described that in the process of drawing, it’s like going down the “the white well” because you travel downward but it gets lighter the deeper you go. Have you ever gone too far? Do limits exist in art?
When I thought of the white well, it was because I was drawing things and it was like my head was disappearing in the process. When we think about diving deep into something, we relate it to darkness, like going deep into darkness. But with meditation, I think it’s easy to understand that it doesn’t have to be dark. It’s not like you empty your mind and then the darkness rushes in. It’s more about things feeling lighter, in this space that is absent of any conscious thinking.
You can definitely wonder, what are the limits to meditative life? But I don’t think I’ve ever been drawing so much where it’s like, oh, that’s way too far. It’s more like, oh I’m late for dinner, you know. But then at the same time, I haven’t sat down at my desk and done what we’re describing in weeks. There are days where I sit down and basically make a year’s worth of work in one afternoon. But that doesn’t mean I should do it every day. It’s important to leave room for that to happen some days, without having an expectation that it will. I still live my life, I’ll still paint my fence. I never think, my time would be better spent painting on a canvas.
In “The Rescue,” Geoff sees his daughter and feels what it means to be a parent.
What are the stories behind your paintings?
I find it strange that the thinking behind the paintings — the stories — are basically secret. Nobody asks, there is no place really for me to share them. Sometimes in the gallery, I’ll have a conversation with someone about a piece and I’ll tell them what it meant for me when I was drawing it. And I can see how it changes their feeling about it because they saw it completely differently. That’s what my wife Sarah talks about a lot; it’s the importance of bringing emotion into your work. I made one of a young girl holding this dog, and it’s titled “The Rescue.” It’s supposed to be my daughter rescuing a dog, and it’s kind of funny because it’s this big scary-looking animal. But deep down, as a parent, it’s kind of scary. The dog is limp, but it’s as big as she is. For me, that represents being a parent and worrying about your kids, or the compassion a parent sees in their children — my daughter Phoebe loves animals, and she would totally reach into a vicious dog’s cage to help it. Almost every painting has a sort of story like that, but the goal as an artist is that you don’t need to know any of that. What I love is that when someone views this piece, and they don't know Phoebe, they still connect to the piece in their own way.
Cycling and running outdoors is Geoff’s way of getting high without feeling hungover afterwards.
It’s not easy to do what you like, be good at it, and get paid for it. What have you learned about combining these three things in a career?
Well, that’s the thing you learn later. And isn’t that surprising? It’s like, no, that’s not surprising. It’s because we have these narrow channels that you shove yourself in. And effective people can be good at anything. You’ve got to be careful with what you get exposed to, because if you get exposed to Microsoft, you’re going to take that job and you're going to do really well, even though you're supposed to be a chef or something. Talent is like a trap. If you're really good at certain things, like math or science, you’re doomed to be doing math and science even if it’s not what you’re passionate about. I was just reading the director Werner Herzog’s book about making Fitzcarraldo. He was talking about what he reads, and he said he reads quantum mechanics as a way to relax. And obviously, he’s really good at math, but he didn’t get caught up in being good at math.
You’re an ultra-marathoner. What are the things that compel you to keep going and pushing yourself, in and outside of your work?
I’ve never had that thing where I lose myself with drinking or drugs, which I think for some people is really, really fun. I think I do that with other things — you totally disappear in challenging sports and endurance sports, for example, and then end up the opposite of hungover. You have this elation. Sometimes people who don’t run ask me, “Do you come up with ideas while running?” And it’s hard to explain, but it’s like running isn’t the pencil, it’s the eraser, right? You’re erasing and making room in your mind for new things.
Everyone has their own worlds that they enter, and the things that I am into all have their own culture — running culture, cycling culture, skateboard culture, or surf culture. There are these cultural rewards that come with being able to participate and push yourself to be a part of them. In the end this all is one thing, the string is linear. We are dancing or hanging, tangled in it and even if we differentiate between these activities, their most defining aspect is that they are linear. They are how we spend our time.
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