Revealing Light From Darkness with Artist Mark Evans Episode #163

Aaron :
Friends welcome to work life play. I'm your host, and I'm here to help you find work. You love learn to play live. Adventurously become curious and live your life with joy and purpose. Ready, set, go

Friends. Welcome to another episode of work life play, where I get to bring you further evidence and proof that we can do work that we love. Sometimes that means we earn a living at it. Sometimes it means it's a side hustle. Sometimes it means it's a hobby. Sometimes it means it's just a passion and a dream. We keep alive and hold out hope for and about play and adventure in approaching our life with a curiosity and a belief that life is actually supposed to be fun. We're actually supposed to enjoy what we do. And so much of that is just by approaching it with the spirit of believing that adventure is out there, that there's something cool around the corner and about life, about how we engage our life with purpose and with passion being intentional about relationships, about the decisions that we make about plotting the trajectory that we're currently on and paying attention to the dashboard lights that come on right now.

But for today, my guest is Mark Evans. You can look him up at Mark Evans, studio.com and he's based out of London. He is a friend that I met about three or four years ago.

He creates some amazing, amazing mind boggling art. And how he creates it is with a surgeon's scalpel on wall size slabs of Rob bull, hide tanned leather, and he scratches out and etches these amazing details, Muhammad Ali tigers horses, he's working on a cowboy project that he talks about during this podcast. So he was in town on his way up to Wyoming, and we were able to grab our bus a little mobile joy bus studio, cruise over and find a dirt road, pull in and fire up the microphones and record this conversation a few weeks ago. It is amazing. One of the things that I love about doing this podcast is I get to have these personal interactions with these amazing people across the planet. And this is their they're all my favorite. And Mark Evans is my favorite Mark Evans. So I hope you really enjoyed this one today.

Worth checking out the show notes that go with this podcast. You got to see the images that go along with the story or just plain, and simply won't make sense the magnitude of what he's doing. Mark, are you really going to spend a week with Cowboys this week?

Mark Evans :
Maybe 10 days. I'm going to be on the Plains of Wyoming. So yeah, punching cattle, probably laying in the grass with the camera, trying to capture the moment in Canada, hopefully find something mythic. That's what I'd like to do, but I have no idea what to expect.

It goes back about 10 years, I did a piece after the piece of art after the financial crisis of 2008, the piece was called hunted. It was the wall street bull being surrounded by essentially pygmy warriors or with spears and bows and arrows. And they were all wearing Rolex and Patek Philippe. And these little hunters were trying to capture this impossible bronze meal. And it was kind of a comment on the financial system back in 2008, 2009, when I made the piece, my desire really was to go to New York and do a photo shoot with real Cowboys in wall street. Igot a couple of actors from, from New York and I hired a load of cowboy gear and I filled out with it and we dressed them up and they were in New York. We weren't allowed rifles obviously on the streets in New York. So they were just holding, almost play rifles. And it was me to try and capture imagery of Cowboys attacking the wall street bull. And that was in maybe 2008, maybe 2009. So nearly a decade ago, but the symbol of the cowboy in the West hasn't gone away. And I had an invitation a year ago to come out to Wyoming and spend some time with real Cowboys, not activists, but just to see what it's like to live in that kind of ancient mythic culture of, you know, men's men and the Cowboys will all come in for this week and they're going to be roping and branding.

I’ve been invited to just come in and be part of that and try and capture it. So there was, then there was another piece of the story, a New York artist called Richard Prince. The term theft in the art world, isn't called theft, it's called appropriation. So Picasso said that a bad artists will copy, but good artists will steal. So this Richard Prince in the 1980s, maybe nineties, he found all of the Marlboro Marlboro man cigarette adverts with all the kind of mythic shots of the Cowboys. And he found them all in magazines. And he was so connected to them. Malboro adverts that he actually took the magazines and he photographed the Marlboro man and stolen appropriated them and showed them in galleries as if they were his own photos as like a 14 minute documentary about it.

But these Marlboro photographers went the New York exhibition and they were like, that's my photo. And the security guard was like, please get away from that work. And he said, well, you can't get away from it. That's my photo is that? No, no. It was Richard Prince’s. And Prince now sells these for millions. And one thing that really struck me was one of the photographers in this documentary. He said that this, that these stolen, it he's taken it. I was paid by Marlboro, but he said the real thing that really grates on me is that this cost Richard Prince, nothing. And the cleanliness of his studio took a nice clean photo. And he said, we had to get down and dirty in Marlboro country to get these photos. And that resonated with me.

So I thought, you know what? Last that's what's missing. I need to come and speak to these Cowboys myself and spend time with them and breakfast and lunch and dinner and get to know them. And I've just made a big investment in a camera. And I bought myself a medium format camera. I'm not a photographer, I'm an image maker, but I'm not a photographer when I make art, I'll use photography, but I'll always bring along a world class photographer with me. And I'll be the director of visuals. I'll know what I want. And I'll have him there to capture because he's the technical guru and I'm the visionary. But on this trip, there's no backup. There's no parachute. It's just me and my camera.

So here I am ready to drive up in a couple of hours and meet these guys and to go get dirty.
Aaron :
That's a great story. So Richard Prince, it costs them nothing. And yet these individual photographers, that was the, the grit, which created the soul of the imagery of the imagery, which enabled for those images to be so…

Mark Evans :
Timeless, powerful, and you know, to Richard Prince, his credit, he, as an artist saw it and it spoke to his soul and he loved it. And he said, I'm not going to better that. I'm going to just take that and put it on the gallery wall. And maybe there was that kind of innocent, crazy artist, part of him that said, I need to show the world this, not in a magazine, but on the wall of a gallery,

But that's not my story. I needed to get back upstream into the mud and find the story for myself.

Aaron :
Even back to the wall street bull, the real cowboy said the depiction that you created in New York, did that scratch some of the itch or was that not how satisfying was that?

Mark Evans :
I think I was on a journey. So it was satisfying in that I made a piece that I felt had some sort of social commentary and I carved it in leather and it had this sort of resonance, but I didn't feel it was fully authentically mine because I wasn't the guy out photographing those Pygmies. I knew the image I wanted and I went and found images of those Pygmies and of the wall street bull. And I, my vision was to, was to juxtapose things that shouldn't be together. So that's what I did. You know, the Pygmies were, were photographed in some jungle somewhere and, and I took them and, and carved this colliding world. It was, it was a collision of worlds. So there was one element of, of that was satisfying in that I wanted to make worlds collide, which I did, but as I mature and as I developed with my, with my own art, I want to make sure that the, you know, the imagery is mine and it's, it's cost me something. And yeah, so that's a decade ago and it was, it was a step on the ladder, you know?

Aaron :
So decade ago this mythic story was something in you. And now you're about to four or five hours from now begin living into a vision that you had 10 years ago. And so the collision of worlds for you in Wyoming, what will the collision be? What are what's colliding now?

Mark Evans :
Truthfully? I'm not sure until I get laid in that dirt, in that grass. I'm off piece. I'm having to not just be the visionary, but be the guy be the fee of photographer. And I'm not trained as a photographer. I have an eye for an image in a composition. So I think part of the collision is, is me out of my comfort zone. And I think in many ways I'm laying the track as the trains running up behind me. I don't really know what I'm going to find or what I'm going to encounter. So yeah. It's very much a journey of discovery rather than I don't have a prescribed plan of what I'm going to find. And you just kind of get, I guess it's a little bit like war photographer, you know, you put yourself out there and you see that the, the story will unfold around you and hopefully I'll be able to capture those magic moments.

Aaron :
You said last night about laying the track in front of the train. So elaborate on that for the listener. What does that mean to you?

Mark Evans :
Ah, people talk about, you know, so what's your 10 year plan. What's your five year plan. What's your three year plan and you laugh or cry. I mean, there's many types of, you know, artists, people who paint for pleasure and people who do as a hobby. And, but when you're an artist who has to make a living and look after your wife and kids, and you have a staff and you, you know, you have big monthly bills, you're kind of on the edge. And it has to, it's not enough to just make work that you believe in. Somehow there has to be that piece where other people believe in it and are willing to write a check. And so you, I find myself following my instinct a lot and probably infuriating those around me because I feel very much, I'm like a sailor trying to adjust my sail to the gust of wind and I could be taken with an idea.

And I'm just off. Some of my guys back in the studio, I think they feel like working with me, I've got a pioneer thing and I get bored of settling quite quickly. So I would mythically kind of speaking, be the guy in the woods, chopping down trees. I've heard there's water here. I'm going through the woods. I'm cutting trees. The trees are falling behind me and I'm not quite sure of the kind of carnage or the way cam leaving my bag. You know, I know I'm off, kind of got this following my true North. And I don't, I just don't seem to be able to have a plan. I don't have a steady, secure, robust savings. I'm living in many ways on my instincts and wits and from job to job. And in many ways, it's a complete thrill ride.

And I think it's about margin. I think maybe that's the way to answer it. You know, in an ideal world, you would have laid the track, tested the track safety people have come in and say, yeah, this track is good. Somebody signed off on it. This is okay to travel upon. Yeah, this is, yeah. It has all been ticked. And red tapes been all past. It's just not like that. The pressure and the wolves are at the door and you're just now quick.

Aaron :
It's really beautiful. The imagery that you're using to come, just picturing the, the sailor, who's adjusting his course for the invisible gust of wind that his instinct tells him is there.

Mark Evans :
For me, that's the joy. So a year ago, I won't say too much about him just to protect his privacy, but I brought on a really powerful, big businessman in the UK. He'd handled huge companies. And in many ways he was a business genius and we didn't last a year together because from my point of view, he didn't understand that crazy elemental waiting for that next gust. And I think a part of me had asked him, I said, I need you to build this kind of security around me, but in order for him to do that, he would have had to make me a person I'm not, and it was actually killing me. So he was trying to protect me. And I'm guessing, you know, his agenda. I think it was good, but essentially he wanted to put me in Saul's armor. I could, it just didn't fit. And I just had to just strip it off and say, this isn't working.

I wasn't used to it is that the famous story of Davis, I'm not used to this. I can't go in this. You know, you imagine the kind of young shepherd boy jumping from rock to rock and daft and light and loose and free, and suddenly he's conforming. And that for me very much felt, you know, me trying to build a healthiest stability around myself in a business setting, as an artist just was death to me,

Aaron :
Interesting. The soul full alignment is on the edge. It has to cost you something. I need to get down and dirty. I'll have to lay the track without any safety checks ahead of the train that I believe will come. Cause I believe there's a gust of wind that might come up in this direction as my instincts, as a pioneer in me. And I have to be careful not to put anything heavy or ill-fitting upon me. Which leaves me out on the edge on the edge of comfort and discomfort.

Mark Evans :
Exactly. I think part of my story is that I've not known myself enough to know what is healthy comfort and discomfort. And where is the point where you're going to break yourself? I wasn’t to be that one in 12, the guy that steps out into something impossible. It's worked. And I feel many times as well, I've been the guy that's, that's not just kind of had moments of unbelief and sank, but had to be pulled up, not just pulled up wet and cold, but pulled up with like shark lacerations.

But there's part of you, this bleeding from the shark wounds, you know what I mean? There's like an octopus and squid and you know, your jellyfish things and stuff and, and it's it really hers and, and it's learning to know, wait a minute, where's the margin for rest here. Especially as I know in some of my forties, I don't have the bounce back capacity I did in my twenties and thirties, you know, the sleepless nights, they really erode you. And I want to build something I would like to work like great artists do into their sixties and seventies, maybe eighties and get better, like a fine wine, you know, like Picasso did. And I'm only about to do that if I can maintain some sense of discomfort, but measured with times of, okay, I need some time to replenish and recharge refuel the jets.

Aaron :
How do you do that? What, what recharges you?

Mark Evans :
I'm a Welsh Welshman from the, the beauty of North Wales living in London. So I have the, kind of the chaos of the city and the gray and the rain. So for me to, I need the wild, I need to get outside. So this is spectacular. I guess you guys can hear the birds tweet in and we're just overlooking Pike's peak in it's just so that that's a big deal for me water. And there's a little Greek Island that Jane my wife and I go see, made famous by that mama Mia film. That was our honeymoon Island. I need beauty and leave my phone at home unplugging from the matrix and just time to a swim and snorkel and, or just walk and I need, I need wild.

Aaron :
So week with Cowboys out on the frontier might do that.

Mark Evans :
Yeah. Although that's yes, definitely. I'm hoping. I'm going to be out in some, you know, big skies and some elevate places. And that's, that's what recharges me.

Aaron :
Bring us back to the beginning, the story of the leather jacket and some blood that dripped on it. And he pulled out your pocket knife to start, see if you clean it.

Mark Evans :
I'm backing up a little before that I was grew up in North Wales and had two great loves as a boy in the eighties. One was I love drawing. I love to draw pencils felt sips, you know, anything. And my dad bless him. He rebuilt our kitchen and clotted it in pine all the walls in pine. And he very proud of his carpentry. And probably within the space of six months to a year, I had pinned up my drawings all over his pine walls, which they'd sat there for a couple of years. And when they were taken down, you know, that the son had bleached areas and his pine was ruined. So that was my boy hood just drawing.

The other part of my boyhood was my grandfather was an outdoorsman. He was a water bailiff, and my dad also loved the outdoors as fishermen. So when I was seven, I was given a pocket knife by the age of 12, I had this kind of collection of knives. I had a secret compartments in my sock drawer. If you took the bottom out of my drawer, that was this or this, my pen knives and Swiss army knives. I love knives. So that was my boy boyhood. And I spent some of it carving trees, just, you know, kids on the, on the farm, marking the territory. When you carve into the bark of a tree, the wood, the bark you carve through the essentially the, the, the trees water system. You cut through a dark color. And then you get through maybe to a lime green and you'd cough deeper, and it might be a creamy color. You cough, deepest still. And there's these white kind of subconsciously there was making marks the love of drawing and also carving into something dark to reveal something light. So that's all there in my backstory.

Then I moved to London in the mid-nineties with this kind of dream of becoming a painter. And I had a very romantic young idealized dream, really that I'd come to London and I'd be discovered by the Obi wan Kenobi of the art world. And I'd be broadened his wing and trained, you know, like Luke Skywalker. And that, that would be my story, but it was not to be, I arrived into London. And the first thing I was told is that paintings dead and the conceptual art world had taken over and the rug was pulled out from under me.

And I didn't know who I was. Why was there for years. So it was 95 to 98. I met a girl at art school and we fell in love. And by 2000 we were married and she bought me a leather jacket. And so at the time I was painting and kind of doing graphic design and anything I could just to stay in London. But so we got this other jacket's Christmas present and had it one day. And we were around at my grandma's place in Wales, very small, little condo, little apartment, and all the kids with our, all her whole, her grandkids, my cousins were there, but she wasn't embracing the family moments. She was freaking out about the cat, the cat, the cat is going to get run over. Don't let the cat out. You know, she, there was too many people and it was noisy.

And so she, my grandma's holding onto the cat. It's you not let it run out the door. And something happened, you know, party, popper buying or something loud. And the cat freaked out trying to escape from her clutches and scratched her and run off. And there's my grandma on the 26th of December boxing day, we call it in London, in the UK she's bleeding. So I walk into the sink and get her a Band-Aid. She's fine. As I look on the floor, the drips of her blood all over the kitchen floor, all at my jeans and all up this one day old jacket. So my Christmas presents ruined one day in. So it's drips, you know what, at the front of the sleeve. So, ah, crap. So what do you do? You just go well, more, you get some soap and a cloth and you try and rub the blood, dissolve it, but it didn't go. It had absorbed into the leather.

So not wanting the first leather jacket I'd ever had to be ruined, I thought, Oh, and if I go back to my boyhood knives and I go to the garage and dig out the knives, maybe I could scratch the blood off. And in doing so remove the kind of the red stain and it was like God's, Thunderball Archimedes, Eureka moment waiting to happen. And as I call through the blood actually went too deep and carved into the nap, the suede and this golden patch leaped through the dark Brown of the jacket. As I realize I'm carving this way. And I just had this moment of, Hey, I'm creating this era, you know, right back to my boyhood of calling tree bark and I'm carving light out of darkness. And so I locked myself away and spent time carving this Jimi Hendrix portrait in the back. That was nearly two decades ago. And it's been it's been trying to perfect that process as part artists, part alchemists, part mud scientists, trying to figure this thing out.

Aaron :
Part instinctual pioneer for our friends listening. It would be great if you could tell us about what, what do you do today? The reason that you're going to Wyoming for instance, is to go get in the muck and the dirt. So you're gonna go do that, but it's so that you can create an image, a still photography image, so that that image then can become the basis of what you will then take to then etch. Let's maybe start with the, the beauty of what you create and then back us into how you actually do that. That started from this leather jacket story.

Mark Evans :
So to create a piece will ultimately take, so there's a little bit maybe it's a grandiose example, but when Michelangelo created the Sistine chapel he didn't do that alone. There was reportedly 14 people up there on the scaffolding with him. So he had the vision, he had to deal with the Pope and the bishops and the priests and whatnot, and he had the vision of it. He would have finished some of the detail, the hands and the faces. And but ultimately there was a team and Italia studio. So for me to create one of my big pieces is not a solo act. I have a small team in London from upholsterers and carpenters to people who have to wax the leather and prepare the leather and dye the leather. And there's lots of stages. So for me to come up with something that I believe is, is a mythic resonant and a timeless image of Cowboys.

I've got a couple of things that I, the pieces that I need to fall into place. Firstly, I think it's, it's right for me to find a bull or cow hide here in the States. So that I'm actually going to watch the piece on a piece of American hide, you know, so there's this kind of authenticity to it and then sort of backing up the process. So I always worked with medium format cameras which will be the Ferrari of cameras. You know, the rolls Royce of cameras. You could easily drop a hundred grand on, you know, a camera body and a lens easy because the quality of image. So when you laid in the dirt with the a hundred thousand pound camera in your hand, you kind of nervous which we done with the lions and tigers and that kind of stuff.

I fell in love with this Fuji. So I say all that to say, the camera has the capability of capturing the most insane detail, which is what I need for creating an etching. My objective is to come get close to the Cowboys and the horses and the bulls and try to capture something in camera. So I would never say I'm a photographer. I'm an image maker. I'm an artist. I I'll use a, camera's a tool. And I will go back to London in a week, 10 days. Hopefully with probably a couple of thousand images, which I then have to painstakingly go through to find moments. So I may or may not capture the perfect photo, but I might part of a photo may be perfect.

F example, the lion piece that's on my website is a big lion piece called Intrepid. That was not one photo. It was taken with 700 photos. I boil it down to six. Come back, hopefully with maybe thousands of photos, boil it down to a couple of dozen and then use those to start to carve pieces of Cowboys, carved into the flesh of a bull and the beautiful irony of that.

Aaron :
I love the story in the beginning of exposing light out of darkness. That's another mythic, right? That's like the soulful piece. What I hear you saying is through the images that you'll capture the 700,000, then will create a storyboard from elements of the images to then create basically maybe a moment that happened, but it may not be a singular moment.

Mark Evans :
Yeah. So I'm interested in mythic truth, not verisimilitude. I want it to be more soulfully true. So it's true on an emotional kind of subconscious level. So you're looking for these, these moments. And if you can have an alignment of moments where things work together, the stars align, then that's when you can start to make a composition as artists that has a potency, you can't quite understand, but you know, it, you know, it in your gut when you feel it.

Aaron :
So that's the residency look to in your own soul is as you live the moment and you're dirty in the moment you're looking for resonance, you're looking for that instinctual, knowing deeper knowing of that, the gust of wind, which is interesting that we've got the bus door open, we've got some gusts of wind coming in, even now the invisible, so mythically, and then you can curate the mythic frames exactly into a greater mythical essence of what was true about what you'll see over 10 days.

Mark Evans :
So a painter will have the ability to rub out and go again or paint over if they don't like it. I don't have that ability. When you carve into flesh there's no undo.

That’s the aim zero mistakes, right? That's the, that's the high bar, but you're dealing with surgeon scalpels or incredibly sharp knives. And you could be working on a piece for three, 400 hours. And sometimes you'll be, you know, the end of a 10 hour stint exhausted. And there's, there's always margin for error. There's always that’s human error, but still that's, that's the point of being alive because you know, pun intended, it is made on a knife edge. We are making it on that sharp point. And when you come to execute into the final the final leather, there's so much, that's gone into that. There's so much respect, you know, I will choose the finest hides in the world and the tanneries hate me cause I'm a nightmare because I I'm fussy. I'm really fussy. So if you found a flawless animal, that's been really treated well, and hasn't been marked with Barb wire or thorns, and it's been looked after you don't want to screw that up.

So you have to make sure that in the photo process, before the blades come out, you have really figured out the concept and the composition prior, because you want to make all your mistakes there when you're kind of cutting out the photos. So it's in many ways, it's kind of filmic because I'm sure many of the listeners would have watched some of the making of, of the enough Star Wars avatar and the great directors, Lord of the rings and he'll have a team of people and he'll kind of rock up to the studios and they'll all these different ideas. It will be on the wall and, and here's the director say, yeah, that, that, or not that kind of a little bit like that. The photos are in ingredients for a recipe, which we've got to boil down to a final piece.

Aaron :
I'm curious about your, I envision you showing up to work in the studio for a 10 hour stint. And if all of this is predicated based on your own heart's alignment with the resonance that you have with this work, with the bowl, with what you saw, the images you capture. So there's all this super heart centric, mythic connection. And then you said you live in the chaos of the city of London. So how do you actually get yourself centered in prepared and aligned?

Mark Evans :
It's different day to day, my mind is going to your, your triangle sticker. Where is that here? One is that, yeah. So the work life play triangle. So we drew up a equal actual triangle on my studio wall. The three points of tension on that triangle was concept which would be arts with a capital, A, and then another point would be commerce and the need for, for the work to sell ultimately, and then on the other corner would be creativity. And that would be the kind of the playful experimental figuring out, trying new colors, trying different types of blades. It often I've landed in different parts of that triangle. How You’re the healthiest when, when those are in a healthy balance, often I've been through seasons of real farming and it's been all of my energies down the commercial end of that triangle, just trying to make pieces to sell your heart's not necessarily very alive in that moment, but you gotta keep the lights on and keep the kids fed and keep the staff paid.

They are some of the grind days where you just got grinded on. They're hard, but coming here now is for me to come back to that conceptual triangle corner where I'm, I'm here thinking about the West, what does it mean to live in a world of sanitized nation. There are kids in London that don't even know that meat in a shrink-wrapped supermarket has come from an animal.

These Cowboys live with these animals. They look after them have to rear them. I’m very aware that I work on leather and it's so sanitized it's so there's no gore and blood and stench in death. It's all been removed. It's been polished. I'm trying to back up, let's go back upstream and really think about what the source of this is. What does it mean? These Cowboys are tough guys. I'm asking some big questions and I'm on that journey of discovery and all the answers yet. I'm hoping to, if we were to do another conversation in two weeks, maybe I'd have different things to say.

Mark Evans :
I just drew your triangle. So arts concepts, the commerce and the creativity. You're in your frontier right now on this trip. It's been 10 years in the making is about the soulful concept of this piece. And even thinking through, if I'm going to do this piece for this, this family in Wyoming, then it needs to come from an American. So that's part of the vision. That's part of the gust of wind, the sailors, you're tilting your sail towards a, a suspicion instinct.

I was out to dinner with Brother Luck that was the best piece of steak I've hired ever. It was just melt in your mouth. And he, he said it, I can't say credit. I might take a bit of credit. He's a great chef. But he says, he's really down to the, the farm. They look after their animals. I thought, wow, he gets it. He's he understands the story. And he says, I'll take my kitchen. And I'll take them out to where the animals are and make them understand the value of what it took to get that piece of meat in the door of the kitchen. And he says, so they care much more than they're less likely to burn it.

Aaron :
My heart is drawn to a distinction. On the one hand, it’s the soulful piece of actually believing that the world that we live in that the connections matter and that you and I share belief that soulfully we're all connected. And so to me, that includes the animals that we're connected to soulfully spiritually, that this creation that we live in, everything, the fabric of life is all knitted together.

So it actually matters the more we can approach our life in our world that way and your art that way versus not thinking that chickens lay eggs, which makes sense. Absolutely. I mean, my kids the same way have no. And in my life, I realize how insulated I am from the world that I live in and how plastic and package and dressed up and nice it is and how our apples have a Polish, a wax over them at the grocery store. So they look better. There's a disconnect in the world I live in from the world is actually true and exists and I've insulated myself from it. So I love how, even in the mythic, you're going deeper into how can you get to a truest place in brother luck? How can I get to a truer place? So this isn't just a slab of beef. We got brought into the back door, but this is an animal that was cared for so that we can do this.

Mark Evans :
I think that brings me right back to what I said at the beginning about Richard Prince and his connection to the Malboro photos in a magazine, the image obviously spoke to Richard, but the Cowboys couldn't because he didn't have the time to sit with him. And I think for me, yes, I'll be going on my camera, but I'm also going to go in my journal and my voice recorder. I want to sit with these guys and just ask some big questions and let them let their story, you know, it's, I think, you know, a piece of art should be able to, to tell a story in a narrative and it's going to be really fascinating, those connections, you know?

Aaron :
Do you have a lead on any of the questions that you want to ask them or you hope or think to ask them?

Mark Evans :
It will be situational. Something will happen in a question will come and hopefully it will be sat around a fire or I'm in breakfast or something. And it will be there. I kind of in many ways, try not to plan it too much cause it needs to feel instinctive and mythic.

Aaron :
So what do you think they're going to think about this Welshman turning up to ask Cowboys questions that you're probably not the norm for them either. Right?

Mark Evans :
I've never done this before with Cowboys. And I was asked had a little lunch with Morgan and Alex and I was asked, you know, have I ever done anything like this before? Or in the UK, what do we have that similar to the cowboy and what are they gonna think? I've never met a cowboy. My dad had a huge love for John Wayne. So John Wayne, I did a piece of John Wayne for my dad as a birthday gift hostess thing I've done to this five years ago, it was working with London boxers, underground fighters and spending time with boxes and being, you know, when you go into that situation, they are fight ready backstage or, you know, getting their hands wrapped and their gloves on. And thankfully I was able to show my work, just, just show more on an iPad or on my phone.

And for them to connect that I've carved leather like that. Suddenly they saw something they never seen before and from being closed off and who is this guy with a camera, get out, get him out. I'm, I'm focused on the fight. They saw what I'd done on the leather. And it became an open door. Now I come in and there was this, I guess, a mutual respect that they they're in their world. I'm hoping that this kind of city slicker a little bit from London's gonna turn up and we'll be like, guys, this is what I do with leather. I'm hoping they'll kind of invite me in .

Aaron :
And that's back to the collision of worlds, right? That is the collision, the collision of worlds to find the place of mutual resonance and respect to say how you, you have a story, you live a story, you are a story I'm here to observe the specific while looking for the mythically deeper truth. Would you allow me to be like an embedded reporter? And so you're asking like, can I kind of come along? Can you just do what you do? And I'll be with you in a part, but hopefully as a respected, as a contributor, not to being a cowboy, but to this mythic absolutely deeper truth, yet that you're looking for something, but you don't even really know what you're looking for exactly until you see it. So that's why I'm so excited you to love it.

You've been listening to work life play. If you like what you've heard, please do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It really does help. You can get more information about this and other episodes@aaronmchugh.com. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being part of this adventure for being part of braving, the pioneering work of discovering sustainable work life, play rhythms, love your work, live your life and play a whole lot more. I'm Aaron McHugh. Keep going.

*We’ve done our best for this transcription to accurately reflect the conversation. Errors are possible. Thank you for your patience and grace if you find errors that our team missed.