Today we’d like to introduce you to Justin Sigel.
Hi Justin, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I have always been interested in the visual arts. I danced competitively when I was in grade school, loved performing in church dramas, and I was constantly drawing, sculpting, and painting in my free time. I just never saw art as being a viable career path because of the “starving artist” stigma. That led me to take a couple of years of culinary and hate my life because of the lack of creative freedom I would have while I “paid my dues” in the industry. I discovered David Garibaldi on YouTube and the art of performance painting and was instantly obsessed with that style of art. I transferred to Lee University for Art and Theology, and during that time, I received multiple opportunities to perform and create, in a matter of minutes, paintings LIVE. I graduated in 2018 and moved to the Nashville area for a job in church communications while working toward becoming a full-time artist. In November of 2021, I was finally able to quit my job and work on painting and content creation full-time.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I’ve been on this artist journey for 10 years now, and I would have to say for every moment of bliss, there are 10 rounds of going through hell to get there. But as cliche, as it sounds, the trying times are what brought me the most value. They taught me new skills and helped me to develop resiliency. One of the biggest struggles for me was the pandemic (shocking). At the start of 2020, I was traveling a ton, performing for churches, charity events, and school assemblies. Then when the pandemic hit, all of that was put on hold, and then ultimately canceled. Everything in me wanted to just quit working on art because I had worked so hard to get to the point where I was traveling constantly and I was very discouraged. But I knew I wasn’t meant for church communications. My heart was aching to make art. So I started posting videos of my paintings to TikTok after being inspired by Gary Vee making multiple videos about it. That switch to performing on a stage vs making short-form content was one of the most difficult hurdles. I had to figure out how to make a 5-10 minute painting consumable in 30-second videos, all in the midst of creating and posting all the content for our church at the time.
I ended up getting COVID in May of 2020, which meant I had 10 days to focus on my art and not on church stuff. So, I buckled down, made art, made some videos, and posted them. On my last day in quarantine, I posted a video of a painting I had done so many times before—a painting of Jesus upside down. I posted that video before running out and doing some errands, and when I got home it had around 400k views. That video now has around 7M views, which is insane to me. That was the starting point for where I am now, I’d say.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I do a lot. I do some photography, videography, graphic design, and digital illustration. However, what I enjoy most is painting. Specifically, I love painting large-scale canvases. Painting on a large scale started with me getting into performance painting, or “speed-painting” as some call it, which dealt with me creating huge portraits in a matter of minutes. That, combined with my love for street art and graffiti, caused me to start making larger pieces on canvas since I didn’t have any walls to legally paint on.
On TikTok, I am known for my portraits of famous people like Robin Williams and Chadwick Boseman, paintings of anime characters as skeletons, and most recent videos of me completing the “Wreck This Journal” by Keri Smith, which gives you an artistic prompt of action on every page.
What I am most proud of however is the paintings that I have done where I listen to a song and, from the music and lyrics, visualize a painting that I bring to life through latex paint and spray paint on canvas. I think my favorite so far is a set of 3 canvases that I painted based on 3 different songs that told the story of two individuals that found love in one another. The one is “LOST” by Frank Ocean and the other is “Lonely” by Justin Bieber. On the third canvas, I painted the two together finding life in their relationship, and based the painting on “Lonely” by Illenium. I love art like this because where I feel like my words and paintings alone can’t properly tell this story of lost and lonely individuals finding life in love, pairing my art with music seems to “paint” the full picture.
This combo of art and music is nothing new, but using the music to drive the story and pairing it with my very expressive, unhinged style of painting portraits I feel sets me apart.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I don’t know if I would describe it as luck, because I think you have to put yourself in the position to receive the things that come your way, whether good or bad. However, there are so many instances of things working out in such weird ways along the way. One of the most notable is that I decided to leave the church in September of last year but stayed through October. At the time, business on the art side of things was awful. I wasn’t picking up commissions or selling any art. Nonetheless, I knew this was the decision I made, and I was willing to eat dirt for my dream of being a full-time artist. In the middle of October, I painted one of my favorite Naruto characters (Kakashi) as a skeleton. I posted a video to TikTok, and over the next 24 hrs, it was the worst-performing video I had that month. So, I painted over the painting and made something else. About 3 days after I posted the original video, it started to gain views and quickly blew up. I ended up making anime into skeletons a series. I ended up being able to sell most of the originals and tons of prints of these skeletons, and in my last month working a 9-5, I made more money through art than I had ever made on art in my life. It was so overwhelmed, but it was the confirmation I needed to know I was making the right decision and that people saw value in my art.
Pricing:
- Painting Commissions – starting at $1,000
- LIVE Painting Performances – starting at $1,500
Contact Info:
- Email: justin@sigelarts.com
- Website: sigelarts.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sigelarts
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/sigelarts
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SigelArts
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@sigelarts
