- [Narrator] "Making" is presented by the Coal Yard Cafe in Ithaca, New York.

(mellow music) (gentle music) - I had a piece that started from a photo that I took in Banff that was sort of one of the first ones that I broke down into geometrics.

And that was a really, I think, really successful piece.

And I think some of it was because of the realism of actually having a photo reference.

I think I'm finding that that combination of the realism and abstraction is like me working out these two different types of painting that I wanna do and trying to do them in the same, in the same piece.

I'm Gabe Morton-Cook and I'm an artist.

I remember doing tempera paints with my grandma when I was very, very little.

I mean, I loved all kinds of mediums, but I feel like painting always was kind of the one that maybe attracted me most.

Just something that I felt came kind of naturally to me.

I actually didn't paint for 15 years.

I studied some art in college, wound up dropping out, didn't finish my art degree, and had a career that was doing digital design work.

Kind of scratching my itch for creative work.

And then five years ago, I just started painting again.

So it's really been a lot of experimentation since then and just kind of keep having techniques and thinking I'm gonna try this and discovering new things.

And it's really been sort of letting the work, letting the work lead the way for the most part.

(gentle music) Art's always just been really kind of a part of my life and I think the environment growing up in New Mexico has kind of informed some of the, maybe some of the shapes and open landscape type things that I sometimes work into my paintings.

My work is feeling like you are in multiple places at once.

There are recognizable shapes and spaces, but not necessarily defined forms.

Sometimes I wanna do landscape and I'll start working it into an abstract piece, and other times I'll just start fully abstract and kind of see what appears.

A lot of times, I think these geometric grids that I make sort of start to define the space that I'm working with and I can put realism on top of that.

I'll start with a piece of tape across the canvas and just make a line, and it's all kind of intuitive and I'll look at it and see it needs more here, it needs less here.

It's, I mean, it's basically like a one or two point perspective and it's just picking up these vanishing points and I just kind of move 'em around the canvas and see what happens if we have a vanishing point here and a vanishing point here and where the lines start to to meet up, and then I add a lot of vertical lines to sort of, I think it adds this depth of space.

I'll often find little pockets that I really want really get focused on.

And then I think depending on whether they work with the rest of the piece, I'll have to get rid of them or I'll have to adjust the rest of the piece.

So, it's all very organic in that sense.

Killing the ideas you like is a huge part of the process too.

And it's interesting, I have noticed that I worry so much less about that in my art than I do anywhere else in my life.

And it's kind of a freeing experience to be like, "It's okay.

That's gone.

We'll see what comes next."

(gentle music) There is kind of a moment I feel like I'll say, you know, "I think it needs a little bit more something in this little spot."

And I'll, I'll do that and then I'll step back and look at it and say, "I think we're good."

And just feel like I'm ready to wrap it up and move on to something new.

I feel like my art career is growing and taking off, so it feels like right now I'm in a place where every next thing is something to really be proud of and that's a nice place to be.

I think being not afraid to be myself is something that's come to me fairly recently.

As artists, we all sort of push this boundary between who we're kind of expected to be and I guess how we would truly express ourselves if there were no limitations.

Maybe my biggest challenge is always to sort of trust myself in saying and expressing my truth, even when it's scary.

The value in art as a way of thinking and a way of seeing is seeing the possibilities in everything.

And I think we often sort of, as humans, get stuck into these way of thinking that the world sort of happens to us.

But I think if you can take the idea of art, of being able to create whatever you want within an art piece, you can really expand that way of thinking.

Nothing's one thing.

We can create the world we want.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] "Making" is made possible with support from the Coal Yard Cafe in Ithaca, New York, from Beer Properties, and from viewers like you.