Authentically Human: A conversation with artist Marc Hemeon 

This interview was conducted on February 19, 2024, while a mural by professional artist Mark Hemeon’s original work was being installed at our Crossover location in San Clemente, CA. Mark is one of the most thoughtful, creative, and interesting people I know and has always been animated by the emotions of creativity. In this interview, we capture a little bit of how he thinks about painting, the creative process, and what art allows him to access. There is always so much depth to everyone’s story and the many layers of Mark Hemeon create a rich tapestry of color, emotion, and nuance. I think you will enjoy the conversation. 

Listen to the entire interview:

Scott Shreeve, MD: I always love to understand from the artist’s perspective where their work comes from. For this particular painting do you mind describing the idea or concept behind this work?

Marc Hemeon: This painting is the only painting that I’ve done of San Clemente, CA. I have a collector who lives in town and asked me for a commissioned painting. They wanted to capture the view that they are fortunate to see every single day. My creative process started by gathering a bunch of photos. The collector took some, I took more, and we tried to collectively capture a bunch of sunsets and a bunch of sunrises. As we went along we realized we didn’t want to depict either a sunset or a sunrise but instead, we kinda wanted to do both. So that’s why the lighting is the way it is, you can’t really tell if it’s sunrise or sunset if it’s the beginning of the day or the end of the day. It’s just kind of a combined moment. In fact, it is actually many moments wrapped into one.

What I wanted to do is really emphasize, and the reason I paint the ocean is because to me it is the best metaphor for the human condition. It’s the best teacher. It’s the best mirror to represent humanity. My reflection of it is an attempt to capture what is most prevalent of what you see in our work life, in the companies we start, in the challenges we face, and in the many projects we take on.

It’s also related to our relationships, our spouses, and our children. There’s such a natural ebb and flow to how we experience life. Sometimes it’s really hard, very challenging, and very difficult. It may almost feel like we can’t go on or we just can’t manage it. I have been out in the ocean with some really big waves, and occasionally, in some very critical situations. What you learn is that there isn’t really much you can do in those situations but just kind of let go and have a little faith that you’ll be okay.

Now, what’s interesting is the ocean doesn’t know you’re even in it. It is no respecter of persons. Same thing with life. You know, it’s kind of like bad things happen, challenges happen, and similar to life, if you’re out in the ocean and you really panic you are at risk of losing your mind. You won’t be able to fight it, you won’t survive, you’ll drown if you tense up, you suck in water, and freak out. However, if you do the opposite, and you let go and you really relax, you are typically going to eventually come up for air, get pushed ashore, and ultimately you’re going to be okay.

And so every one of my ocean paintings has a lot of tumultuousness, a lot of dimensions, a lot of intensity; and, it always has light.  There’s always a beacon of hope. There’s always an idea like, “Hey, just hold on”. Keep your eye on the horizon. Just do NOT quit. In a lot of my work, there’s a storm that’s either coming or going or is just left or is about to arrive – you can’t tell. Because the reality is, even when things are really good, they’re going to get bad again. And, that is okay. 

One of the hardest things about being human is this idea of learning to forgive yourself, to have compassion, loving-kindness, and gratitude for yourself. It’s kind of like how you learn to eventually change your emotional state which you can do in a lot of different ways,

Scott Shreeve, MD:  So, is there always a message or intent or purpose you are trying to convey in your work?

Marc Hemeon: The purpose of these paintings is to help the observer to meditate and to kind of feel the enormity of the ocean. To feel the crazy probability that you’re even on earth. How amazing is it? Like out of 8 billion people, you’re you and you’re here out of all the things. Out of all the infinite possibilities in the world and of the universe, you happen to be alive. And how crazy cool is that? And again, I think the ocean is just so vast and so epic and so massive that it’s just another reminder that there are no accidents and that we are all collectively here.

I think that’s important is so that people can be grateful for being alive, you know, and no matter how hard their life is or how challenging things happen, I mean even when people die, business deals don’t work out, and we misprint the wrong mural size sometimes (which actually happened). It turns out it’s not about making the right decision so much as it is about making your decisions right.  And there’s a lot of things we think we know, but we just don’t know. Most people think 1 plus 1 equals 2. And that’s often true for the most part and that’s what we’re taught in school. But turns out in real life, that’s not really true. One cloud plus one cloud is one cloud. One pile of laundry plus one pile of laundry is just a bigger pile of laundry. You know, one pile of leaves is one pile of leaves is one pile of leaves. 

I think as people look at these ocean paintings–and as they sit in front of it, they reflect upon their own value systems, and on their own sense of humanity–my hope is that they just show up a little bit kinder. They have a little bit more gratitude; a little bit more compassion; a little more empathy. Even when someone confronts them in the grocery store, when someone is rude driving around, and people are like not nice my hope is that their heart wells up and they might be able to acknowledge that the person is having a hard day. I hope they can like move along with that because it’s not an easy thing to be human so you just need to learn to love all of it. 

Scott Shreeve, MD: You talked about some of the choices you make on colors for each painting, what you show as well as what you hide. What are you trying to do with the colors in this particular painting?  

Marc Hemeon:  So in this particular painting, which you can’t see initially, is there’s a whole underpainting of this that’s basically in the color orange – it’s a burnt sienna actually. I can like send you some photos of this to see what was the color before the color.  So the saturation, the blues, and the brightness, and the vibrancy that you see, the reason they’re so vibrant is because there’s another color underneath the color you actually see. This complimentary color, the burnt sienna, is a compliment to blue and that compliment creates an illusion of vibrancy that makes the colors look so rich and so dominant. Another interesting thing is that water doesn’t have a color–it only reflects whatever is around it. Actually, its really hard to paint water because it just reflects everything around it in terms of what colors are happening. 

Turns out, the other hard thing to paint is light. The way our eyes interpret light makes it very hard to paint light.  So we have to play with the value and the tone and the warmth of things. For example, this particular painting was initially a lot darker. I initially painted the sky first and then I took the sky and I just painted it into the water. And it felt weird at first because I was like, “Oh, this looks weird as these colors are too crazy”. But, it turned out that’s what we see. 

Next time you go to the ocean, just look really closely because it is actually reflecting the sky. And so and I think again, not to go on and on about the metaphor of the human condition, but you are a reflection of the people and the things that you put into your body and that you surround yourself with. If you surround yourself with bullshit media and terrible humans, you are going to see that reflected in your attitude, your countenance, and your complexion. It also impacts the vibrancy of your eyes, the glow of your skin, and all that kind of stuff. I mean, you literally reflect the things around you and the things you take into yourself. And, so, you can see why I believe the ocean is just full of wonderful lessons. 

Scott Shreeve, MD: Let me ask you this about the style of painting you do here. So, it’s heavy strokes, it’s thick, it’s got depth. How do you create that effect? How did you arrive at that style? What was your journey to kind of be able to be at a place where you could paint something like this? 

Marc Hemeon: Someone sent me a book to show me the style I was just naturally painting in. It’s called American Tonalism and it was something that started in the late 1800s. It often is a depiction of the atmosphere; the subtle greens, blues, and grays. The style stresses mood and movement more than actually painting realistic shapes. It has a lot of soft edges, you create a bit of mystery by basically embedding different kinds of decorative patterns. All of this creates a feeling that this is a natural environment. 

So, for example, I try to paint the motion of the ocean. But if you go up to this painting and look, these strokes are very abstract. The purpose of American tonalism is immediate emotional response, especially at a distance. This style is to be taken in at a distance. They kind of fall apart when you get up close, but that is American Tonalism. It both stresses and embodies emotion. Basically, it wants to mimic life with the emotion that you feel when you look out at the sea or the atmosphere. This is very different than other painting styles which are often very refined, very tight and very like a tree that looks exactly like a tree. 

And it’s almost like taking this mystical, organic relationship between the perceiver and what is perceived. A lot of times you will see people stare out at the ocean or stare up at the sky, they tend to kind of gloss their eyes and kind of blur their eyes a little bit. It’s all about the feeling, man. It’s about the mood more than the action being captured in paint. Notice how I don’t render the clouds exactly. I didn’t render the water exactly either because recreating a photo-realistic representational depiction is not what I’m interested in. I’m more interested in evoking a sense of “visual poetry”. 

The basic idea is how do I communicate to you 30 years of what I’ve experienced in my life of living in the ocean? The joy I have of surfing, the joy I have of the countless years of being in the ocean with my kids, and all that. How do I represent that? And so this idea is like a mystery, and while this painting happens to represent San Clemente, it could actually be anywhere. Part of American tonalism is ambiguity, a strong sense of ambiguity so that anyone who stands in front of it might say, “Oh yeah, I’ve seen that ocean in Maine”. Or, I have seen that ocean in the Atlantic or whatever. We can accomplish that by losing the edges, they just kind of blend into each other which helps you to reduce the form so that you can further increase the sense of ambiguity. You want ambiguity.

You also want vibration between the colors. That’s why the yellows, the pinks, and the blues. This palette has a vibrating quality. The sky is almost moving, right? And so, and that’s reflected in kind of the color choices. Very expressive gestures as you will see in the little video clips that I send over. 

Again, American Tonalism was popularized around 1885 or 1900s. I can send you a whole website on it. Again, it’s like realism but also with touches of abstraction, if that makes sense. By the way, Mark Rothko came around in the 50s and 60s and had his greatest inspiration from American tonalist painters. Yeah, interesting, actually, kind of fascinating that I didn’t even know that the style I naturally evolved into was a thing. 

Scott Shreeve, MD: How long does a painting like this take you? Give me a little bit of the breakdown, like the conception of it, talking through it, and then the actual work to do it. What’s involved?

Marc Hemeon: Yeah, this painting probably took me about three weeks. The concept isn’t too challenging because, you know, there’s a lot of imagery of the ocean. It’s about finding the right moment. I went through probably 500 photos of various scenes just like this. And, then I print them out, lay them out, and then cut them up. Cut-up skies. Cut up water. The sky and the water are that I am showing were not originally together as they are depicted.  That’s different water in a different sky from a different time of day. But you know, you can blend them all together to create something really interesting. From this collage, I then make a pencil sketch which I keep working on through 10 or 12 different sketches. And, then we go to canvas, and then I am actually painting. 

It is always a representation, it’s an amalgamation, and it is something that is continually built up. There was a great artist named J.W. Turner who was famous for the atmospheric-like quality of his work. His technique was very tedious as he painted one layer at a time.  You have to let that dry and then paint another layer very thin. It’s like layer glaze and different parts of the painting get different layers and some even get more layers. And, that is how you create those gradual shifts in color and whatnot. 

Scott Shreeve, MD: When you are painting, do you think about the person who’s going to be viewing this? Is there a hope that you have what they’ll see? Or is it just totally everyone’s own story and it reflects back to them?

Marc Hemeon:  I have a really hard time telling people what to think about my paintings. One of the reasons I gravitate toward abstract painting is that every person views it differently. If that painting was a photograph of the ocean, your brain very quickly assembles the image in your mind and you say, okay, ocean and horizon. I get it – done! And, it doesn’t hold that much interest in your mind. When there’s an abstraction, and your mind has to work to piece the imagery, shapes, and colors together you actually get a bigger dopamine hit as well as a sense of chemical satisfaction saying, “Hey, good job!.” You just solved the puzzle that you put together in your mind. 

If I tell people what they are supposed to see, then I rob them of that process. I rob them of the potential to create their own story. I rob them of the pleasure of discovering what it means to them. I would never want to do that as an artist. I want to force somebody to spend a little time and earn that very personal outcome, earn that pleasurable feeling of solving a really hard problem and being like, “Oh, I get it now”. And, that feels good. 

This explains why people are drawn to abstract art. Because at first they don’t really get it and they spend time with it and they think about it. And, as soon as they have that aha moment, it’s such a wonderful feeling. It’s the expressiveness of being a sovereign unto yourself and you are rewarded by finding hidden meaning in this abstract splotch of colors, strokes, and emotions. It’s also interesting to hear people try to articulate what they feel, but expressing these ideas requires a different language. You speak three languages. You speak the English language. You “speak” a visual language. And you also learn through the hearing language. 

We are often so limited just by English words. Just think about when someone is talking to you how much of their body language is actually speaking. That is communicating something else. And it’s more than words. And in fact, the visual information is so dense that we make snap judgments, within a second, and we do the same thing with art. The density of the visual language is an encyclopedic amount of data being transferred. And, then the third language we all speak is the auditory, with music and sounds and things that we hear. Auditory communications is also on a totally different wavelength (literally). Our English words just fail us because we can’t talk fast enough. I’ve been talking to you for 18 minutes, but I feel like when you look at a painting it’s almost like 20 hours of conversation being crammed into your experience because all at once you’re reflecting on your own life, your memories, your friends, or whatever. The visual language is just a different thing. 

As a result, I think when people look at art they have a responsibility. They need to put in a little work and try to solve the visual puzzles themselves. That’s a very long way of saying I don’t like to tell people what it means. 

Scott Shreeve, MD: Let me ask you this, if you don’t want to tell them what to “think”, do you want to guide them in what they “feel”?

Marc Hemeon: Interestingly enough I do. I absolutely want them to feel peace and happiness. That’s it. I just want them to feel a moment of peace, a moment of happiness because those moments of true joy are really difficult to grasp. And I hope that people who purchase my paintings when they look at them will just take a breather. It’s like what Victor Frankl said, “Between stimulus and response, there’s a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom”.

My purpose is to help people increase that space. When something happens, I want them to be able to increase the distance before they react. You know, you hear some bad news or something doesn’t go well in your life–pause to take a breath. Now, respond with civility peace, and kindness. You know, your kid drops and breaks something, they hit their sibling, or some other thing upsets you–just create some space to take a moment, and then respond with kindness.  

Because if you don’t do that, you’re just going to both perpetuate and reflect more intensity and add more violence to the situation. Right? Don’t exaggerate the problem through your actions, don’t make it worse. Buddhism makes a really big deal about this – it’s okay to be in your anger, to be in your hurt, but don’t magnify it or make it bigger. Do not make proverbial mountains out of minor molehills. I think this is wise counsel. 

Scott Shreeve, MD:  Are each one of these paintings like a child to you and then you watch it grow up and it goes away? Or does it become a part of you? What happens when you gift these to someone? Do you still think about it? What is the impact on you after having created these paintings?

Marc Hemeon:  So there are no paintings in my house. I actually have no art in my house. When I am finished with a painting I literally can’t look at it anymore. I literally have to turn it around so I don’t look at it anymore because if I keep looking at it, I’ll keep changing it. It’s really hard for me to accept it for what it is.  If I leave it on the easel,  I will just keep painting it. It’s never finished. It’s only ever finished when I turn it around. 

Scott Shreeve, MD: Wow. Can you explain that more? Why is that? 

Marc Hemeon: Because I still see more potential. I see more opportunities, more colors, more shapes, more transitions, more layers. I can see so many things that are wrong with it. What’s funny is that say they are wrong, but I know that they aren’t really wrong, but I still think that. These are all just opinions. So, as I am getting to the place where I think is kinda done, I’ll turn it around. I do this carefully so as to not mess up the paint and allow it to properly dry. After about a week I will come back to turn it around. I’ll look at it. And, I will be tempted. 

However, as I have learned over time, I had to start telling whoever bought it that I am finished and it is ready for delivery so I cannot change it. take a picture and I send it to them to lock myself in or else I would never give anyone any of my paintings. I would keep them and keep painting them because it’s uncomfortable. It’s very uncomfortable. And, I always get very emotional when I paint. It’s funny because my kids will come into the studio sometimes and I’m just in there crying. I’m immersed in my work, my body is painting, I am all alone in the studio but my mind is feeling so many different things and sometimes it just all comes out. When you are in the studio alone for 10 hours there is a lot of emotion that gets processed which naturally imbues these paintings. 

Scott Shreeve, MD: You’ve been a very successful businessperson, creative, writer, and entrepreneur, and have had all kinds of life experiences. You’re so good with your hands, with your mind, and so many talents. Of all the paths you could have followed, how did you end up becoming a full time artist? Why has the road you’ve walked led you to who you are and what you do today?

Marc Hemeon: I don’t know, man. That’s a good question. I have painted my whole life. I painted when I was a kid.

Scott Shreeve, MD: Mark, are you still there? We’re going deep, man. We’re going a couple layers in.

Marc Hemeon: Yeah, I’m just thinking. Sorry–you got me. I would say that for me, you’ve heard this mythology that you should follow your passion, right? You should find the thing that you love to do and you should do it. Make it your job. It’s the Japanese word Ikigai, the Indian word dharma and every culture has this concept. And so, I naturally gravitated toward the startup mentality. What does it feel like to go all in on something? It’s been three years now that I have been a full-time artist and it’s very difficult. It’s just as hard as doing a startup. It’s just as hard as raising money. It’s not any easier in any dimension. It might look better, maybe easier, maybe more freeing, but it’s fascinatingly challenging and it’s emotionally and physically taxing. 

And so, I think I naturally gravitated in this direction as almost a personal test to see what this part of being a human feels like. What does it feel like to pick what you are passionate about and try to make go of it and not wimp out? To have the courage to say – “I’m going to write the book. I’m going to paint the picture. I’m going to open the coffee shop.” Whatever silly dream people have, whatever is inside you, will you give it the time and space to succeed? I don’t want to die without trying to be an artist.

I’ve never been motivated by money. To be candid, I wish I was a lot more motivated than I am. I’ve just always followed my interest in different things. Like, if something sounds interesting to me, I just think, “Okay, let’s give it a shot”. Let’s see what that feels like and try it. And I also got really obsessed with how to make water look like water. Like, how do you paint the ocean? I love it so much. I’m like, how do you make this? And so, it’s been a 15-year journey of trying to sell my paintings. So you can say I’ve been a professional artist for 15 years, but full-time without any other job for the last three years.

And, now as I reflect on it and talk to you about it, I don’t really know how it’s been.  It’s been highly rewarding and also very challenging. It’s a hard question – I have to think more about that, Scott. 

Scott Shreeve, MD: Let me switch it up on you a bit. So, in a world where everything creative is going digital or AI you are still grinding in the studio for 10 hours a day with paint, and texture, and working in a tactile world. Why do you still do that when you can also work in the digital medium? What are the opportunities and challenges you see with all the new methods of “creating” art? 

Marc Hemeon: I would say that the premium on handcrafted materials made by humans is going to be way more valuable than anything made by a computer. In a world where everyone can reproduce the Mona Lisa with a prompt, then the actual Mona Lisa increases its value exponentially. The new AI tools are just incredible they are literally mind-blowing. But because they can be produced so effortlessly, I would argue that there will be a lot of fatigue, there’s a lot of fades, and you are already seeing the “rapidity” of that now. 

What I mean by that term is that we don’t spend time with it. When you are standing in front of a physical object, whether a painting or a person, I am not going to be able to use AI to speak. If I’ve been using chat GPT to write my tweets and to write my blog posts and all this kind of stuff, if I’m standing right in front of you face to face, I can’t use chat GPT. So, you’re just going to get human-to-human technology. So my view of painting is that it is a human-to-human technology. It’s an expression. It’s a form of expression that’s been going on since the dawn of time. And it’s not ever going to die. Handmade painting will never die. It will always be worth something because it is authentically human. 

Scott Shreeve, MD: That’s pretty interesting about human-to-human authenticity. One thing that I think is going to be really interesting in the future is how will you be able to know the difference between real and digital? What will be the authentication? Are there cryptographic signatures of real human art versus other types of art? You mentioned the “premium on real”. How do you see all of this playing out as an artist? Are you excited? Are you worried? 

Marc Hemeon: Wow, we are really going down the rabbit hole now, man. I think if you’re using a computer, if you’re looking at a surface of any type, whatever that looks like, whether it’s in the Vision Pro or a screen or whatnot, I think it will become impossible to tell if an image was generated by a human or not. 

It’s a bit more interesting as you look back on the history of art, because when the canvas first came out as a new “technology” for painting, it was flatly rejected. I think it took a hundred years for artists to agree to start painting on canvas. Why? Because before that time, real artists painted on stone, and they painted on walls, and it was permanent, and it didn’t go anywhere. I think the thought was, “Why would I ever paint on this stupid thing called canvas?” It can tear, it can burn in a fire, it’s crap. And then when the camera came along, there was this great revolt from artists who couldn’t believe how cheap and easy the photographs were. I see it as analogous to AI. 

Why do you need a painting of the ocean? If I can use AI and generate the ocean that way, why do I need a Hemeon painting of the ocean? And the answer comes back to “What do you want?”. What inputs do you want to give to your human software? How do you want to show, what you want to experience in the world?

And I would, and I think most people feel the same way, there’s going to be this yearning for real handmade things that you see with your eyeballs that you physically are in the same room with, and their tangible presence connects with you in a familiar human way it will become part of the tethering human experience that keeps us connected to reality. This will become increasingly important as we are increasingly going to be plugged into our headsets for work for 8-10 hours per day. 

The Vision Pro right now can give me five or six screens to simultaneously work from. Then why am I not working in that all day long? That’s pretty wild as a designer, I would love to be able to access all those screens. But man, I can’t wait to take that thing off my head and be out in the real world and feel sculpture, and walk down into a stream, or go on a bike ride. And that little human interaction that I just described is going to be so precious, so special, and so rare that I think it will also become highly valuable to actually unplug. The way it’s trending we will be living more of our lives in the digital world than the physical, right? I mean I have read where people are predicting that up to 80 percent of our time will be spent digitally. And so, when we do get a chance to see something with our own eyes and touch it with our own hands and smell it with our own nose, or whatever. I just think as we are pulled into the digital world that I am hopeful the real, natural world will become more beautiful to us. 

Scott Shreeve, MD: There really is so much beauty in all these different mediums, but I think there’s something uniquely special about the real world. So what is it about the “real” world that makes it special to you?  Which brings us all the way back to your paintings. When I look at your paintings, it feels like I am sitting next to you on your board, in between sets, enjoying the sunset, taking a moment to enjoy the waves, the wind, and the smells. I just want to know what is the “realest” thing for you? 

Marc Hemeon: You know, Scott, I mean, personally, art to me is the highest form of hope that exists. It’s the highest, man. It’s like the cheat code to access God. It’s a quick shortcut to hijacking your mind. For me personally, when I go to an art museum or I see a piece of work that moves me, I instantly feel overwhelmed with love and gratitude and connection to the universe, the source, infinite intelligence, to God or however you want to describe that. And I definitely believe that all the great ideas are channeled from this higher source. And it’s not just with paintings. It’s with inventions, its with science, its with technology, and things like psychiatry, even in things like parenting. I believe you see it in all forms of human achievement.  

I feel that as humans, we are uniquely organized to have these ideas given to us, they land on us, they’re living, they’re alive, and we have an opportunity to take those ideas and do something with them. And if we don’t, they leave us and they go to someone else. That’s why you see things, ideas out there that you see and you’re like, Oh, that’s cool. Like, I didn’t even think about that. Or you’re like, I did think about but I didn’t do anything with it and then another person does it and you feel like you lost out on something. Ideas are living things looking for a host to help them come out. 

So if I didn’t paint these oceans, someone else would have painted them. You know, if you have an idea for a company and you don’t do it, then someone else is going to do it because the idea has to get out there. Maybe one of my paintings really inspired someone to do something – or maybe – to not do something.  And by the way, you go crazy as an artist trying to make something you think other people want. I don’t ask, I don’t show people my sketches or my drawings. I just paint it and then I show it to them when it’s done. I don’t even ask them. I paint the thing that I think I want, that I think will look good and will look cool and that is how I get my best work. 

And then when I share the art with them, I find that if it was an honest effort that was true to my intent, it tends to resonate with the person as well. I think when people can be true to themselves, say what they mean, what they really mean, like really open up and just be like, this is how I’m feeling, this is what I am really thinking about, then their truth comes through and people can see that honesty. Nine times out of 10, that’s going to be taken with such sincerity and such honesty, that it resonates. 

Which circles me all the way back to my main issue with AI digital art. It just doesn’t feel sincere to me. It feels manufactured. It’s lacking humanity and as a human I can feel that something is not quite right. 

Scott Shreeve, MD: One of the quotes I always think about is “who motivates the motivator?” In the context we’re talking about, who inspires the artist? What inspires you personally? Where do you go to find what you need to paint? All this emotion that comes out, all this movement, all this thought, all this texture that comes out of your painting. Where do you go to find it? What do you do to harness it? here What is your process?  

Marc Hemeon: I’m laughing because it’s like, where do I not go? Because there’s too much in this big, wide world of ours. 

Scott Shreeve, MD: Maybe it’s all around you. Maybe that’s the point. You don’t need to go to some holy mountain to get inspiration. 

Marc Hemeon: I don’t. The inspiration is all around you if you look. Painting for me is processing difficult things that I’ve gone through in life. I keep painting this light on the horizon to tell myself that things will get better. Things will always get better. 

For example, my son went to Big Bear with a bunch of his friends. He piled into a truck with four other boys and they just drove off for a fun day in the mountains. The driver is like 17. I was a nervous wreck for two hours while he was driving up to Big Bear. And then as I reflected and remembered when I was that age, I did all sorts of things that just like that. But, I was worried for my son. I was worried they would roll off the road, get hurt, or do something stupid. And, while this is a small example, it is representative of bigger things. 

I have two daughters and one is a senior at UC Santa Barbara and the other is 19 who is still trying to launch on her path. I worry about both of them and start to “future trip”.  I have enough experience to know and I am consciously aware that shouldn’t but I still do it. Who are they going to marry? Are they going to have kids? What kind of moms will they be? What kind of grandfather will I be? How will I show up for them? What tradition will we have? Should we do a Lake Powell trip or not? How do I figure that out? How do I afford that? And then I start spinning things of my own family. My father has passed away. My stepfather has passed away. 

I didn’t really know my biological father very well. Then I think about my mom, and how she had me at 21, and what on earth was she thinking? And, I have so much compassion for her. Like, “Mom, how are you?” Then I think about my relationship to God, and how that’s changed over the years, and what that’s like now. And, then I think about old work I’ve done and people I’ve known. I just let my mind go and feel all the emotions of every aspect of all of these things. And, it’s just wild.  I can remember distinctly being at Staples or Kinko or wherever it was at midnight with your brother trying to make business cards and trying to like stay patient because he’s my boss and to be kind but at the same time I am pulling out my hair because the situation was so intense. 

But it’s all fascinating because what a beautiful experience all of this is in an odd kind of way. I mean, when you ask where I get my inspiration – it is in the 100,000 little moments just like this that you can pull from that are just sitting there waiting to move you. 

Scott Shreeve, MD: We are going to do this entire company conference in front of this massive mural of your painting.  I can’t think of a better setting with this backdrop of infinite possibilities to hold this conference. What do you hope our leaders feel, see, and experience when this backdrop gets “revealed” during the meeting?

Marc Hemeon: Wow. Let me think about that. The only reason people fail is because they give up. That’s it. There’s no other reason. So, I want people to feel perseverance, resilience, courage, and passion. The word that best summarizes what I am trying to convey is the word “grit”. Grit is a trait that has direction, commitment, there’s diligence, there’s self-regulation over a period of time. Unfortunately, I think sometimes grit can be construed as a negative word, but to a waterman, people who pursue surfing, a life in the ocean, people that pursue anything really they’ve learned to never yield to the difficulty. It’s always around them, and they just maintain this attitude of seeking and striving with an underlying but fundamental faith that it will work out. They have an optimism and that is best described as a type of mindfulness. 

When you realize the essentialness of being mindful, being aware, and being grateful, you start to see this perspective in everything. Mindfulness isn’t necessarily like sitting quietly under a tree on a hill like Buddha with your hands on your knees. Being mindful is one plus one doesn’t always equal two. It’s looking at things as they really are, and then questioning the truth of those things.  I’m sorry that these thoughts don’t all like come together in a nice little PowerPoint but they are spoken from my personal experience. This is a lot to consider and I can’t believe we have been speaking for 44 minutes about my art. Thanks for going deep with me. 

Scott Shreeve, MD: You’re an artist, man. What should we expect?

Hope you enjoyed seeing the “behind the scenes” of how a set of circumstances (leadership conference, old friendship with an artist, and a blank wall) became the catalyst for some creative flourish (Design Everything! Inspire People!). Appreciate those who helped put this together in <5 days (Fearless! Drive Results!) including Mike Kornoff (our Creative Director), Lyn Najafinia (our Exec Admin), and Joe Ennesser (COO and technical handyman to pull off the unveiling!). And, of course, I appreciate my nearly 20 year friendship with Marc Hemeon (Be Authentic) for his creative genius and inspiring the title of this post.