Interview with Jason Behnke

Jason Behnke is a new recruit here in Hillsboro, having moved a few months ago in May from Southeast Portland, and a year before that, from the northeast part of the country.

HCA – So where are you actually from, when you say “back east”?

JB – Well, I was born and grew up in Camden, NJ, and around that area. Eventually I went to college at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia then moved to Schenectady, NY. From there I moved to Baltimore, MD, then came back to Pennsylvania, in the suburbs around Philly. I lived in the Brandywine River Valley before I pulled up the tent stakes and drove across country to Portland.

HCA –Were you pursuing your art back east?

JB – I’ve been an artist for my entire life, since memory, mostly as a source of therapeutic escape, which is not uncommon with artsy folks. When I attended U of A, that’s when I put my foot to the floor and decided that maybe I’ll try to make some money out of this thing, considering it’s what I seem to always be doing. I visited here on a lark a couple years ago, loved the terrain, the weather, but mostly the people, and decided that I didn’t want to be a tourist here. I moved out here from being utterly seduced by the northwest.

HCA – Artists are so afflicted with a free spirit! How did this affect your career? Do you practice your art in your career, as you say, “making a little money from it”?

JB – Right out of college I ventured into the world of freelance illustration, and began work in the science fiction and fantasy markets. While painting for Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: the Gathering and the like, I was waiting on tables, delivering pizzas, and working in a frame shop. Money has never been a motivator for me.   I’ve never really had it and wouldn’t know what to do with it if I suddenly had a lot of it. Later on in my career, however, money became a priority, as I was frustrated by limitations of being without.  At some point I changed gears and went into corporate design work, and got a job designing presentations for a small financial services company. After six years of sharpening my teeth on that, I resigned and got on with an agency doing contract design work, which I enjoyed very much (varied locations, people, projects, etc). I found the agency had an office here in Portland, and so that sealed the deal for me. But just before moving I was hired by my present employer to work full time in their creative media services division, and that’s where I’ve been ever since. So when looking across my career, I’ve done a lot of different things, from fine art to illustration, I art directed for a company when I lived briefly in Baltimore, graphic design, presentations, and now I’m in “Special Projects” for my present company, which allows me to work on many different and interesting things.

HCA – Where are you today in balancing your time between fulfilling your artistic expression and making a living?

JB – I feel like for the first time in 30+ years I’m figuring things out. It’s so easy to get caught up in the maelstrom and lose yourself in your priorities. You lose yourself in the demands of career, love, money, you start living for your goals, trying to survive, and you can forget some fundamentals about yourself, and who you really are. You know you’ve reached a nice place in life when you feel like you can breathe a little, you can take a look around and come to terms. I’ve lived enough years wondering if I can keep the lights on another month that when all of a sudden those pressures are lifted, when I don’t have to worry about that anymore, it’s this weird kind of vertigo feeling. It’s wonderful, but it’s also a little scary, because I’m a little paranoid at this point in life, bracing for “the next horrible thing” around the corner. It’s a place I’ve always been striving for, and it’s going to take me a while to get used to it.

HCA – Do you still paint and pursue fine art?

JB – My day job is in multimedia and presentation design.  However, I never really put the brush down. I’ve been painting and drawing on my own terms.  I’ve found a number of outlets for this, especially the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), in which I bring my materials to events and either paint the scenes right there, or take photos and paint from the photo reference. My fiancée is another major inspiration for me,  because we both share in the same interests and activities. So if I ever need model reference of a woman in Elizabethan garb for an illustration, I can have her throw on one of her SCA outfits (she makes all of her gowns by hand) and pose for some shots. We have lots of fun with this stuff.

HCA –So in some sense, it seems that things have gone full circle for you?

JB – Full circle, that’s probably eerily true.  This is one of the most basic questions that artists ask themselves. How do I make a living? Do I use my art, or do I not use my art? If I ever go back to illustration as a career move, it’s going to be a very methodical move, and I won’t be doing everything myself: I’ll pursue an agent. But right now, I’m happy. I feel like life is unfolding like origami. It seems a little silly, maybe, but truly I’m opening my eyes and seeing that there is more to life than my ambitions. I drove myself so hard for so many years that now I go through periods when I don’t even want to think about art. I’d rather go for a drive to the coast, or go on a hike or visit the city, or just experience something from of my own senses. When you spend years hyper-focused on something, it’s easy to miss a lot of things around you.

HCA – What kind of advice would you give to a young artist, or someone who is thinking along similar lines as you have, as an artist?

JB –Stay true to yourself. You’ll encounter a lot of different people who do things in a lot of different ways that work for them. That doesn’t mean it’ll work for you.  Soak in all of the information around you and apply it to how you process things, and come up with your own way. This applies to the young artist and to the veteran; wherever you are in your walk in life, don’t lose sight of yourself. Understand what is important to you.  You have a wealth of material to draw on for art and creative expression. For some people, this is politics, war, society, anthropology, and for others, maybe it’s the flight of the imagination, science fiction and fantasy. Some enjoy capturing life in their art, through still life and landscape, or translating their world and ideas into abstract forms. But in all cases through life, always know yourself, and there will always be a point, a reason, to what you’re doing. This means you’re no longer afraid of making mistakes. Life is all about putting one foot in front of the other, and we all do it in our own unique, strange ways. If you’re not walking, you’re not living, so sometimes you have to just make the step, then analyze the results. Hindsight is 20/20 for a reason: It’s the only time we’re ever really certain about what we’re doing.

HCA – Jason, we want to thank you for sharing a glimpse of your life and ideas with us.  Are there any last words you’d like to share with our readers?

JB – My words would be just to thank everyone for their interest, and for supporting the arts. Art is such a deeply important cultural component, even today when the lines are so blurred between art and advertising. It can be so easy to get lost in the complications, but when you take a long step backwards, you’ll see that really nothing has ever changed, the same things that have always motivated artists continue to do so in our times. We can thank the human instinct of innovation for creating such a sophisticated and multi-faceted world.  But keep things in simple shapes, and it’s easier to see.  Thank you Hillsboro for being such a cool place to live. I don’t plan on going anywhere soon.

HCA – Jason Behnke’s website is www.behnkestudio.com, where you can get a taste of the different things he’s been into along his artistic journey.