Dare to not know what you are - Rik Oostenbroek

The way he always approached live or work. He was very much a believer of like once he was too comfortable with something he moved on, he did something totally else and money was never his motivation to do that. And that's something he always preached for. Make it fun, make your own life, live one life and make sure it's fun. And direct yourself into repeating yourself too much for clients or like just stick close to your core. And that's what he did. He started with graffiti. That was his first personal creative expression and he went back to it. Like his last two years of spent doing that and he got to release a book. Pieces of his that he photographed himself, he also took that very serious. Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast. A show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Radim Maninic. I'm a designer, author and eternally curious human being. I'm talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that spy lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with a question. Are you ready to discover what happens when you dare to create? Today I'm speaking with Rick Ostenbroek, a Dutch visual artist and a lifelong creative explorer who has spent over two decades building a singular body of work. Rick has always been guided by the curiosity of his 14-year-old self. His career spans major brand commissions and gallery exhibitions, a celebrated place in the early internet art community and a pivotal chapter in the NFT movement. Yet through every shift, Rick has remained stubbornly, beautifully himself. In this conversation we explore what it means to protect your creative identity over a long career while mystery in art matters more than ever and how the loss of a dear friend became the push to finally get his hands dirty. It's my pleasure to share with you my conversation with Rick Ostenbroek. Hey Rick, it's great to see you today. How are you doing? Hey Radim, thank you so much for having me. I'm good, surviving two small kids, brand new studio, exciting times, new year and new energy, experimenting with tons of new mediums as we shoot in this time, I think. So yeah, excited. I like the dissonance, like surviving two young kids but a lot of energy. Rick, you and I would like to dedicate this episode to our friend Rudd Palooza who sadly left this planet way too early, way too talented, way too an amazing person. I just appreciate this opportunity that you and I can briefly talk about him later about who he was and how amazing and how important he was to us. But I want to dedicate the episode to him because it's a tragedy what happened too young, too early, too everything because his talent was bigger than life. It's great to have you here and obviously we'll talk about him in a second. But for those who may have not heard of you or what you do, how would you introduce yourself? Ooh, that's always a challenging thing. People always put different stams on me like Rick is an illustrator, Rick is a graphic designer, Rick is an artist even. I always find it a bit hard so I try to keep it as broad as possible these days where I'm always working with visuals so visual artists might sound quite posh, maybe a little bit too posh for me. I think it sort of makes sense these days as I'm traveling through different mediums exploring form and color and that could be from animation to simple branding things. So whatever is visual, I love it and I love to work with it. I've known your journey for the last, I'm trying to count because you and I met in 2012 in person but I've been aware of you for many years prior and you're one of the people who has not only weathered the changes in the industry for the last let's say 20 years but you're also one of the people who stood his own ground and lived your singular way of creativity because you do as I call it, Rick does Rick things. You do your own explorations because I know that just like many other digital artists in the late 2000s and early 2010s there was the push and pull of commercial work and kind of being a digital illustrator and creating campaigns for anyone and everyone but that's what you did for a while but then you decided to be like this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to do my own things in my own way and that's valuable because you've shown so many people that being you, being the person that you're meant to be it is that expression of daring creativity because I'm always happy and always celebrating in a way when I see your next piece I was like okay Rick is still doing Rick things and that's what really matters so how would you describe your journey from that early young digital designer, digital illustrator all the way to where you are now? It all started as a 40 year old, inspired by people like you actually, sitting on Devint Darnet I never know how to pronounce it and the energy I got there from like seeing something I was curious about I didn't know what I was looking at, looking at your work, looking at Chuck Anderson, Judge Davis I know it was something I couldn't grasp like what it was and I was inspired by it and that sort of curiosity exploring through the digital softwares and trying to figure out my own language I really tried to maintain that energy and of course there have been tons of moments where I was tired of it where I wanted to give up but I always kept on looking for those new ways of staying curious basically and putting myself somewhere I had to learn and I had to force myself into new ways of expressing myself and that kept me hungry in a way, it's also been scary at points where either like the financial reward wasn't that big that's always a juggle, you need to make some money but you also need to keep yourself happy in most of the times those things don't really align, you've probably been through that yourself as well it's been a constant juggle but I always tried to maintain that energy from the 40 year old Rick where I was simply being curious and wanted to explore new ways of expressing myself I love it, 40 year old Rick is still guiding a Rick with two kids and survival today Oh man Yeah I love it and thanks for the name check I think we were so lucky that what was happening in that sort of 2000s put this whole decade on it it was time like no other because not only like we were inspiring one another we also became friends, we became a community like we had almost at this corner of the internet and it felt so connected and so passionate because we were doing a similar thing we felt like we've got our own horse in the race doing our things in parallel to one another and even though they were overlapsed, no one felt too frightened or too too present in a way by anyone else's work, I think those friendships never go away because we've been in it together and we are still together in this, I've really valued this because now wherever you go in the world you're always somebody somewhere from that time and you go hey the things have moved on right? Those times were valuable, super intimate, it was also quite a compact scene I think and it was beautiful, it was cozy, we tend to meet at festivals like our festivals FITC you had, those were the gatherings and I always remember that I returned home so inspired by finding those like-minded idiots that had the same passion and this felt quite alone in my small little town and those events and especially also the online friendships you've made along the way became very valuable friendships and as valuable as your real life friendships at times It's interesting when you say the feeling alone in my town in a way that the global community online is kind of the window to the world, is that one way of keeping the 14 year old Rick energy blacked in into the world and keeping you going, would you say that? Yeah, my real life friends always make fun of me that I tend to do more with my internet friends that I always try to avoid the front weekends with my real life friends and whenever there's an internet friend doing your wedding like I could travel the whole world for it and yeah, valuable friendships have been made that way and I still think you're quite vulnerable being an artist and not everybody understands you at times what you're going through, what your thinking is, what your process is like people looking at me like Rick is making easy money, blah blah blah working for those big clients but I just needed somebody to balance ideas with and I always found that online with my online homies a little bit easier than here I'm in a smaller town close to Amsterdam and there are simply not someone here doing whatever I do and not alone like understanding it and every time like every birthday or whatever gathering I had to explain hey I do this, I create images for living, things like a little bit of looking and saying you create memes and like that kind of vibe that was especially when I went to my first off and I met from the friends of Defcore I don't know if she know that like community run by Justin Mallor and Mallor Moller you know what I'm talking about, meeting those guys for the first time in real life was like magical it was so cool I think when you describe it I think the medium of the creativity that expression that output of like how to express yourself because I think we were at the beautiful nexus that what we were doing digitally is what people were doing almost physically creatively let's say a decade prior but we had this beautiful alignment in time where the technology was in the right place, the curiosity was in the right place the resources, the stock imagery, everything like it was coming together that we can do things a lot and quickly you can turbo charge the career so quickly I remember doing not only client work but I was doing like a piece a day for myself I was like I need to do this, I need to push myself because we were in a league of our own together like hey what is possible, what can we do and of course you see an idea from somebody else you're like I'm gonna borrow that but I'm gonna make it my own, I'm gonna twist it I'm gonna make it in a way that actually it can go back into the cycle and inspire other people because when you say the word understanding it's interesting that you have that problem explaining yourself to your friends but to the world online it almost isn't necessary at all is it because you can do especially in your case you can get the work to talk for itself yeah it's weird, it's quite convenient as well to wind down from work I do it on a purpose, I don't discuss any work related things with my real life friends and my real life is quite separate apart from cute photos from my kids I love to share that because I'm simply so proud of them but my personal life is quite not visible online I tend to separate those things and somehow it works for me especially before Covid it also reworks for me that I live in a small town and clients just flew me over the world I got to speak in conferences so that was all like it's always fighting a balance for me this still works and sometimes I just find it convenient to just play video games and not talk about art for a second because I'm indulged in it especially because I'm still as passionate as this 40 year old was but then it could be so nice to drink a beer, play some Rocket League with a friend and like one television together and just talk shit and not have to work with poker What do you describe it? I think it's a proper work-life balance because some people personally I don't think I ever stopped thinking about it, I mean other I discuss too much with many people about you showing up in conversation, events and stuff and you're almost going to plug into it and you can't ever tell your brain not to think about something, you can't control our thoughts we just need to let them pass through What do you describe it? I think it's an interesting way because some people might be thinking like hey I wish I had friends that are more in tune with what I do and they care and whatever but you don't need that validation because as you just said you know what it's actually nice to just talk about it because what I believe what we've created in the last 20 or years created so much noise in the world that the online space wasn't as busy and I sound like a grandad telling this on my podcast or so often because there's so many places to meet there's so many subsets, too many sub-platforms and all those places where people were lucky there was fewer of them and that's actually that the connection was strong but with the way obviously like where it is now you can have your little pockets you can have your micro communities it just might be that sometimes we find it harder to meet new people just to say this is who I am, this is what I do because you can't be in older places all the time We'll be back after a quick break This episode is brought to you by Lux Coffee Co. The first creative speciality coffee company building a platform to shine the light on emerging global talent with a mission to make a positive impact on a creative industry and beyond Lux Coffee Co. offers exceptional coffee sourced from around the world through ethical and sustainable practices and you can discover the current range of signature blends and single origins, coffee hardware and accessories along with exceptional apparel at luxcoffee.co.uk You can use the code podcast to get 15% off your first order How did you feel about the fact that there were no tutorials back then online that we actually needed to have a conversation to actually ask hey bro I love what you did there how did she do it I still remember asking I think it was Pete Harrison the wire style guy and I don't know if you remember him hey bro this effect is dope and he was like yeah this displacement layer your photoshop there were not many resources and way worse space for a conversation a proper connection being made and right now there is almost no conversation needed online I feel like everything can be found either on YouTube if you want to do a tutorial or you asked chat GPT like hey how has this been achieved and I sometimes miss that especially what I just mentioned about my online friends and my offline friends I have to say I still meet new offline friends because that happens in real life but online friends getting less and less and it's not that I spend less time online there's just way less people looking for a conversation these days I feel That's a really interesting observation because answering your first part of the question the tutorials that was the magic that was the magic of like what did you do because you know those people are using the same tools like what did you do how did you do this and it did feel a little bit like this sort of gentle race in a way of like I need to find out I need to do this I need to surprise people we put so much care into this and I guess we were not busy checking in every platform every 15 minutes because anyone like this has this thing we were more focused on the work and I think there was an aura of mystery a little bit because I think the things we were creating took a lot of time and work to create recreate not only are trying to get technically better but you are also trying to get conceptually better like you were trying to progress like what you do with this and I think there was this element of like how can I do this it was quite a time in a way that whatever you wanted to do you need to find out and then we started creating tutorials creating stuff for other people I think that was a good way of learning I think because it's even though I remember writing tutorials for print and they were like they were important because you can find it it's printed and it's got longevity to it and I think now the options have grown so vast that you can be anything and anyone so quickly that you almost don't belong to certain category of people like I think I would find it potentially harder to find my expression if I was 20 years old now because the world is a Disneyland and it can be anything and anyone and actually to really double down on what you feel like you should be I potentially might be harder I mean I've got nearly a 10 year old girl in the house and a 6 year old boy will find out in 5 or 6 years time who they want to be but it's like wait it pulls them because you can be anything so yeah what you described I think was that camaraderie because the person you reached out to for that tutorial team or that hack was in exactly the same place it was like hey I can tell you my secret and you can only tell me yours and I think that was the part when I'm sure you remember like trading PSD files and like oh you use this and you use that and I was like how do you do this because we were learning in real time and I think that's what strengthened the community because we were actually just happy to share right? Yeah but through that I actually learned that people named their layers I was like holy shit. Away with Hello Color. Oh and I remember we did a collaboration I've learned so many things like how we did like a color adjustments and that kind of stuff but I was a butcher I was literally like tapping a keyboard like a pianist like doing things fast and doing it sort of intuitively and he was like sending the file back and he was like what did you do it like I was like yeah I'm sorry you know not only I did it really quickly but maybe I have been also half drunk because he was the best. But do those things still happen where like two artists channel one PSD I haven't seen it in quite a while also I haven't done it in quite a bit but it was quite common back then where it was like yeah let's do a collaboration together and it was always clumsy it never worked out because the way others worked was just so hard for me to understand like how they build up their files. Yeah I think it just brings up really lots of good memories. You know what it happened and you can't deny it and it made us feel something. But let's talk about your career progression because through these tutorials you carry in your 14 year old rig energy into everything you tried your hand in so many different ways and styles always being beautifully colorful but what was that discovery for you when you realized that doing I think you were like 17 when you did one of your first commercial projects right? That's young and early. How did you navigate that space before you found who you wanted to be? Oh man. There was also no social media back then so you had to be quite lucky to be found by clients right? I have no clue how they found me. It was all like you needed your personal portfolios or your own URL and that was your showcase of what you were capable of. I think I was like a deviant guard but deviant guard was war like an alternative shithole. You could find whatever there. I don't know. I was young. I was never too ambitious. I never intended to be my profession right? I just started to do it because I liked doing it and it all went so organically from there where I never had to force myself into like hitting people up or whatever. The emails always came my way by whatever I've been expressing online. So whatever I posted somehow connected with someone who decided to send me an email and the first gig was for Volkswagen. I've done party flyers before for like a half key parties where I got like three booths all night in exchange and stuff like that. My first real gig was for Volkswagen at the age of 17. And then an agent in Amsterdam contacted me and brought me more gigs like Mazda, Denisonic, Puma and those kind of brands. And I thought I grew into that and I got too comfortable too soon I think. I also worked at Sidley. That's when we met actually when I was living in Montreal and it was what was very stock imagery focused work. I don't even know how to call it. It started special effects, masking your way through Photoshop with some pixie dust. They used to call it something magic gloves. It was very Photoshoppy and in Montreal was quite the moment where I was like, okay, this is not what I want to do. I was really ambitious like, hey, I want to be the con lion blah, blah, blah, like that was my ambition when entering the advertising world. But sooner or later I didn't really like executing art director's briefs. You basically got a sketch back in those days and you had to find corresponding photographs and on iStock photos, showers, stock or whatever stock website was there. Sometimes the client had a nice budget so they did a sheet for you. So you kind of could direct that which was cool. But it was always never felt me enough. And it was also quite far out of that 40 year old kid and somehow realize that I always wanted to maintain that energy around those days. I was like, okay, this is so far out. Why I started to do this. So that's when I started to when social media came up and behind started to. And behind started to come up and I really started to focus more on my own stuff instead of making money. I was still living at my parents place. So that was quite convenient back then. So my cost of living was basically not much. I was going to to pop and buy a split and come shop. But that was it. And so I got to explore in more of my abstract ways back in the day still without tutorials, trying to find my own language and started to co-set online. And I think it took two years until some clients really fight with it because it was too abstract at first. And I was like, okay, I really like doing this, but there's no way to monetize it because they don't understand it. Like sometimes you need to put stuff or perspective for people to understand it. And especially to sit my real friends to understand it, whatever I do, they need to see it and so sort of context they're familiar with. If I showed them like an after gradient, they're like, yeah, Rick, this is just a grain. If I turn it to a landscape with a horizon, they're like, oh my God, Rick, this is a beautiful landscape. So you really mean, and that's what I did with my abstract work where I try to give it more like an illustrative twist. I tried to discover 3D and blended like my answer sheet with topography. And that was the moment where I was like, hey, this is cool. And people started to hit me up for something that still felt me and where I could make money with. So that was juggling the balance. How does it work out? And how am I being happy? There's so much we just said, but it reminds me of when you say, okay, I don't know where people came from. Again, the timing was so perfect. The mood and the art direction was so great for what we were creating because the brand stopped into what we had on offer, the skill, the talent. And got us to be part of the campaigns because when you fast forward it 20 years on, we get artists attached to a campaign. But more than often now the landscape has changed when you go influences with certain amount of following and that because they've created following. So the brands are happy to put their name to the campaign. Whereas we would be creating these mad things. You would never have like, hey, Mazda versus Rick Gostenberg. Like we were just the talent, no hidden behind the scenes. And now the things have changed. And I think it's just a natural evolution of how things are happening. But I remember when you said we had a website versus I think secret showcase. Is that right? Yeah, you had a website. That's the truth. Sounds so weird. The beauty of this was that was the only point of call. Like you were online and people would go to Google and say, I'm looking for an illustrator. I'm looking for digital artists. The sequence of events was much shorter because the work would show up in small fewer places. And to find someone, you know, you would go and actually Google and find their website. And what was really interesting, looking at it back like I had a website which was getting like one to two million hits a year because that was the only place you think in. This is incredible. And you were checking people's websites almost on a daily basis in case they bring something new. But then I have a media showed up and it's like, okay, let's put stuff there. Let's put stuff there and the traffic diluted. And now we check your website traffic and it's obviously AI boards crawling for information. It's just I get million hits every month, but it's from AI boards. And I don't like they just dig in for the same information. So things have changed. Obviously we have to accept the change because it's also a vehicle for us to change our ways of creativity, like how we can earn money, how we can do it. Because with the style that you described, like in a way of having the ability to do what you felt like doing, actually express yourself, not from the comfort of let's say your parents' house. That's the opportunity you will not get any time again. You know, like this is the development years and as I said, it's up to conversation. Do why you stack with it, what you've done with it and being true and honest to yourself. It's a testament that you can be the person you want to be because I'm sure when you look back is liberating, right? Did you imagine yourself doing anything different? I mean, like I'm looking back at things a lot, especially reflecting a lot in this time, like this age and this time, like where we're at and the conditions to roll us in, the conditions advertising and order in and reflecting back. I think I done quite well. The only thing that I keep on thinking is having been in the bubble. That's sort of like what I've been thinking about a lot like you. Was it a bubble because we were so celebrate as digital creators and we were rewarded so bigly. And I wouldn't say like we didn't deserve it because we do great stuff, but whenever I reflect right now, I'm like, oh my gosh, there's opportunities for quite a real like at the pace that we're following each other up. Like I had blind, I had to apply. I was invited to go here and then a week later I was invited to go there to work on this campaign. I was featured in every sunglass hot worldwide and to me that was all normal, right? And right now it slows down a little bit for all of us are guests and I'm like, that was actually quite cool. So the only thing, whenever I look back at whatever was happening and whatever I'm critical awful to work towards myself is that I couldn't enjoy it more that it was too normal to me. You know what I mean? I do actually. And it's very interesting. I do know what you mean because I had a similar sentiment just the other day. Going through archives what I did with my studio with when I used to employ people when we still literally produce so much work and not only like work with the studio with myself. The things were moving fast. You doing things on the fly. You work in our things and you're solving problems in real time. And it took me like four or five years to realize what we were doing four or five years prior was actually good and we created amazing things. The experience is amazing, but I think there is one advice. I don't volunteer advice on this podcast, but slow down and look back at what you've created before because, oh my God, we have this difference in number of clients that you would be taking on a number of clients I used to take on. Because I remember you're talking Montreal where I think it was Montreal when you say, look, I say no to 19 out of 20 opportunities. And I was like, I say yes to 19 out of 20 opportunities because I was saying yes to everything because I was trying to work out who I was. I didn't I didn't know as much as you did. Like what do you want it to do? And through that melley, it's a survival. It's not, it doesn't thrive. You survive. Obviously you thrive professionally, but as a person, you just survive. So I think in that way, it's like looking back. It seems sometimes so therapeutic and we're like, you know what? That was a good time. And I hoped it'd been you. It was a good time because it was just the North that boiling frog. You put him in a pan. It's not, you know, boiling. The frog doesn't know it's getting hotter. I mean, not that it makes any sense in this comparison, but yeah, I'm sure you agree. We were just doing too much too quickly too often. Yeah. I don't know if that was even your question, by the way, when you'd be up for the podcast, I was like, okay, what should I cover? But there are so many weird moments these days where I either reflect or look into the future. I'm like, what's to come, which is exciting. I'm quite excited. I don't know if you're scared or whatever, but it's such an interesting times. And I feel it's the same kind of time as before. To me personally, I was grinding, finding my own style, my parents' bedroom. Like that's the moment where I met right now. I just wonder like how it's going to roll out the years to come. There's always a way of unknown in the current situation, but I found that the best way to deal with it is just to be two steps ahead of what might be or what's coming. And I kind of missed those days of creating elaborate pieces and pushing to brands and trying to reinvent the next style. But my world has moved on from picking up all of those pieces of experiences and actually bringing them together in different forms. I wouldn't think of doing this 20 years ago, having a conversation with people or kind of growing on this or starting communities or writing books and doing that kind of stuff. But it all came from that time when we were promoting ourselves, we were trying to find a way to kind of make sense of the world. But in my case, it's like, I am thinking what could be. I'm not waiting for what might come my way, but I think it could be because there is a world out there that's invented by everyone. Some people take part in active way of shaping that world and some people just are the passengers being driven. And it's usually the passengers who are being driven who are complaining about a lack of opportunities. You have to step out and just put yourself out there. I think you have never had easier access to tools. You have never had access to being seen and promoted. But would you agree is potentially diminished the way people can express themselves? Because as opposed to working out a tutorial how to become themselves, it's easy to tap in into what's existing and use that as the expression first. I think that was the beauty of the back in the days where everybody sort of had to educate themselves and found their unique path towards greatness. But yeah, I think it has something beautiful and that sort of stuff became saturated, especially with the 3D tutorials, I feel, where slick renders were so easy to bust out, especially once Octane and Redshift became industry standards, immediate feedback. Grace Newbrillo was putting out amazing tools. I learned a lot from those guys as well, but it came so easy. But yes, I often miss the times where I'm looking around or looking at a piece of art and I'm like, wow, how did you do that? For instance, I have that when stumbling about Ruben Woot has worked the first time. It was like, what is this digital, what am I looking at? And that feeling I always had when browsing like the even door back in the days are like, oh my god, what trick did she do there? What kind of software did she use? And I'm always looking for those pieces that triggered those with a little bit of mystery, so to say. And there's a little less mystery or dash just a lot of content that it's harder to find those mystery gems in there. It's just maybe a little bit harder to filter. But yeah, those moments, I still have them from time to time or never. I do scroll whatever social media app. Wow, this person is talented as fuck. And it's so weird that sometimes those persons have like hundreds, hundreds of followers and I only stumble upon them like months later. And that's a little bit maybe also the downside of the internet where back in the days we had like deviant art, then we had e-hands. Dribble was a little bit of a thing as well. Although I always found it a little bit weird that you only upload in a very small, specific ratio or resolution. And then we had Instagram, so those were the visual diaries everybody was uploading their work to and it was pretty easy to find. And right now there are so many platforms and I'm not on TikTok, but probably they're magical artists on TikTok as well. Yeah, you got these bookies where as we've established, it's so fragmented. So you need to kind of double down on one place and see like who you might find because you find ourselves in this social media landscape that why are we posting? Are we hoping that someone will find us? Are we there for community? Are we there for promotional marketing? Because the question is who's actually looking like how do we know the behavior and the pathways of people who are commissioning this stuff? And is it even being commissioned because as we both know, it's actually much more beneficial to get ahead of the curve and actually build your own spaces and build your own opportunities and your visibility because that's where the different happens. But I have never even though I'm talking about opportunities, I want to talk about something that I haven't asked anyone in the last 100 plus episodes. You were part of the NFT scene. I would call it a scene or NFT movement. And I kind of want to know a little bit about it because I haven't had a chance to talk to anyone about it. And it was this shake up in the world where anyone all of a sudden became a crypto artist. And I'm thinking, wow, how quickly will anyone abandon their values and morals in the way of cryptocurrency and being a crypto artist. And again, I'm not trying to be a derogatory to anyone in a way, but it was this shift that kind of proven to everyone really quickly that unless you are established and you have something like you had though being established artists having your style and being singular, you can find successes in this and lots of people find themselves within sort of six weeks talking about AI and everything else. So what was it like for you when you discovered NFT and how did it work for you? And if you can actually disclose, what was it as they was lucrative? How would you describe it? It was at the weirdest time, given we were expecting our first kid, which was January 2021. We got our first kid. He has the initials BSD, by the way, referring to a Photoshop document. That's how much I love digital art. That was the time when people sold his piece for a 60,000,000 or something like that. And I was supposed to take a sabbatical. I had my first migraine some months before. Like I was really doing four jobs at a time because like I wanted to provide for a family, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, I totally destroyed myself and I was supposed to take sabbatical and it was like, okay, everybody starts to hit me up. Like even my neighbors like, Rick, you digital art, shouldn't you do NFTs? I didn't have a coinbase account and stuff like that. So I had to ask an online friend of mine, Nicholas Lundberg, goes by the online name of DiffType. He took over my screen through any desk to help me navigate through the crypto madness to get my first Ethereum to mince something. Fast forward, I didn't have much expectation, but it was again one of those moments where anything sort of was timed right for me. And I'm not talking from the financial POV, although it was lucrative, but it also taught me that there's a different market as well for digital art in this pace, which is mean we were celebrating as artists and I never really had that moment before. Like I always felt more like a tool, especially when working for brands. Guy was a tool to make their product stand out or to look fancy or whatever. If I collaborated with Ray-Ban, for instance, like I would never approach it as an artist collaboration. I would always approach as a commission myself, right? Like I would never see like, hey, they're looking for an artist. They see me like an artist and Web3 or the NFT space kind of changed that perspective for me for the better. Although what was that period? It was definitely stressful, especially 21-22. I was celebrated quite well in that space. Being at the right moment at the right time, I hosted some even in real life events in Amsterdam where people came to and we connected. It was artists and crypto bros and even my parents came out and they would say, good vibes and stuff like that. And they were like, oh my God, this is Rick Olsen, he's a legit artist. I needed to be in the photo with folks. That was quite weird. As a delucrative, yes. In the end, yes, though the cryptocurrency going up and down could be quite nerve-wracking, especially if you're not an expiry in that field and you don't know what to do. Also there I've made friends for life, which is also an amazing thing. And it was really, because it was again, quite a small bubble with the events across the globe, it really felt like those old digital art days where we were just exchanging knowledge online. And it was more like an exchange of crypto bro educating crypto to this geeky artist from the Netherlands and this artist from the Netherlands advising this crypto bro like on what artists is legit, what they should consider to buy. And it was a wild time. I very much enjoyed it. It landed me on crazy places, crazy collaborations. I was even in an Amsterdam museum like my work was featured there thanks to the NFT space, which is cool and still right now like I'm building on onto that and not like, I also figured one way, by the way, without any anesthesia, showcasing them that there's no good way or proper way of showcasing digital art, I really feel that there is no television or screen that does justice to digital art. Yeah, if you do an installation or a real life installation or like a G-Monk kind of like robots and more creation laser shit, like that's cool. But displaying art on the television, even if it's a museum, it's still not it. So that's why I tend to move on to the physical world right now, but the entire guy like hanging in a gallery, hanging in a museum, like that kind of stuff opened my eyes to different kind of exposure you're getting. It's also a different pair of eyes and it's not really the eyes that like I don't want those eyes to buy my work, but I want those eyes to love digital art and see its potential like what it could be. Yeah, I found that quite interesting that the entire artist perspective. What you said it was about we wanted to be celebrated as artists, all of a sudden we had a chance to be seen as artists and I was really curious. Where is the appreciation coming from? Because it was, as you say, it was known at the regulatory again, but it was crypto bros, you know, invested into this stuff. It was kind of their way of exchanging currency for creativity. And I was skeptical about this because where was the whole crowd before the cryptocurrency? I'm so happy it happened because having spoke to people like George Davis in person, it's changed his life, Justin Mahler's life's changed because of that. Like some people have done incredibly well, but those people were ready to do incredibly well, of course. Our friend Michael Winkleman, okay, people did obviously incredibly, incredibly well out of it. And I think they still stayed the same and I kind of carried on because those people have brand equity, they had visual equity, they had something that was the reason to be celebrated. And it felt like a bit of like a fairy tale. Like, oh, okay, shit, obviously this is all of the money coming from somewhere. And everyone felt like this is the time and you're thinking as quickly as it comes, I'm sure it's going to quickly go because it's like it's unsustainable. Like who's got, let's say 25 grand to buy your Instagram post and another 25 grand tomorrow to buy Instagram post because there is a way to support ourselves and that has also been hopeful. And I just felt like it potentially brought some of the bad traits in people because people came across quite greedy and quite naive and quite unfortunately rude. This is the new money experience. And I was like, oh my God, okay, you want to be celebrated as an artist, but you come across like a bit of a dick because you think that this is the decision of money and all of a sudden you feel like this is like an exclusive thing. So I just wanted to ask you about this because yeah, it's seen it from both sides and have spoken to people like Chuck. I think we should celebrate that it's happened. We got to see quite a lot of like on a societal experiment, we got to see how people behave and everything that's good to be true, obviously it's not really true. So I think it's that way of understanding like how we operate. I sold three NFTs last week by the way. It wasn't for as much as in 2021, but it's still just to say like it still happens. And the fun thing now is though that this collector wanted, he sees for Armenia, he wanted like three prints with it as well. So there it comes, but there comes a different kind. Like it's not just like a financial asset. He showed me a picture of his bedroom. We're like, hey, I want to hang in here. And he like, so yeah, I sent those files to the printer and I'm going to send them to him. So that's that there are there are good folks in there and yes, most of them are self-proclaimed collectors. On the other hand, like it landed me crazy places and especially my work got seen. I was on the barifold, though, I don't know if you know the event, but it's the biggest photo fair in Europe and I don't know how many visitors there come, like 300,000 or so, to do that. And my work was featured as a featured piece there, which is weird because it wasn't digital gradient. There was no photo at all. I'm still not sure if the organization was aware, but thanks to like web three folks, they got connections with galleries that somehow stumbled upon my work and were like, hey, this is cool shit. Let's do that together. And so yes, I'm still very grateful for whatever happened there. But yeah, it's things here and there as well. And it's always valuable to see all sides because I think when I was talking about it, it quickly became it quickly when like that there was NFT before the boom of NFTs and there's NFT still now. It's just that sort of that boom and bust of that experience. But I know from your social media posts that you're never happy with how social media renders your work. Like there's always sort of a loss of quality and you're never happy. But what you mentioned earlier is that you've moved into physical and you did work with our friends in Burno, in Czech Republic on your exhibition about color. You created your own two kilo book with how many hundreds of pages. What's it like to transfer this into physical tangible when you start as a digital designer, digital creator or digital illustrator and now pushing yourself into things that you can hold with your hands. It's the most frustrating process ever. You probably know it. You've been printing your work at times as well, especially if it's like a book and you need to do everything you see in YK. Linear gradients are like the worst thing to print correctly, color profiles. There are so many things at play, but I once did this collaboration with this guy with a rug and I got so many cool responses because it was a visible object. That was the moment where I was like, okay, my work is only visible on screens and apparently whenever it's not on screens, more people tend to understand it. Again, like it's putting it in a whole different perspective and all of a sudden you reach a different crowd. And again, like it's not just to monetize your craft, which is interesting, which you can also inspire a whole new crowd. To do that is quite a process and I have to say that at times I'm still not fully happy with it because I want to mock it up. Actually, every time I'm mocked up, I'm like, okay, let's get it. It's perfect. It's very hard to have that control over it. You're so involved in the end product. Right now you hand it off to a printer and that's kind of what I missed, but to get such opportunities and to be able to show my work in different places is just like crazy. And I'm still trying to figure out what the best way is to present my work. I've done multiple locations right now where I printed J-Bag, so to say, so digital files, unlike a fine-art paper, like the Hanamula, whatever, tons of grams. But I've also been screen printing a lot and that's something I started with my friend, Rutger, back in the day. He was always vouching for me getting off that screen and then get my hands dirty. I'd be less of the spoiled kid waiting for an email for a client to pay me big bucks for a little effort. I feel like that's where he was sometimes annoyed. Look by that I didn't put energy into the physical execution of things and to see how it could work, how it could translate. Only since the last couple of months. I mean, some sort of satisfaction with it as well, where I'm as confident to present it like something on the screen. And that transition has been quite hard. I still don't know what kind of frame is best with what kind of body of work. You know what I mean? I see some beautiful frames behind you and it's cool. It works. But it works. But for me to frame it, I never saw any brain. I never had an online store or stuff like that. I've always been so cautious about the fact that I'm a control freak and whenever I see something on the screen, I like I want it to be exactly the same or a piece of paper. And that's just hard. It's still something I'm trying to figure out, but something I want you to figure out. I think it's the art of letting go really. I mean, you can control what you can and let go of what you can't control because you learn the tips and tricks of what's possible within RGB space and then try to convert it to CMYK because you sometimes have to surrender. There's no possible and on the covers of my next three books, I've got this beautiful sort of glass render type that we've created with Timar Balow. It looks kick ass on the screen and you're like, OK, we have to find a method of how to print a bottom layer of silver ink and then put spot UV on top just to get closer to this because, yeah, sadly, CMYK is a bit limiting, but what I liked when you said you mentioned Rutger and his legacy, like how much of an impact he had on what you created now because I've seen the photos of you doing screen print and the kind of almost feels like you're taking on from him where he left off because I love that he never stopped searching. He was always on the lookout. I loved his work before I met him or met him. We did some work together. Just like yourself. He had a visual style with the type of colors and materials he was using in his work and then he took it into the physical space. Now, rediscovering some of his older pieces and I'm like, Holy shit, the guy was so ahead of the time creating things. I'm like, how did you do it? And I'm glad I had time to speak to him before he passed, like, to just to share the appreciation and kind of reiterate it again because what he's created was such a body of work that he went too soon. But what he left behind is just so incredible. So tell me more about him. What do you think that he had on you? I've known him for, I think, 15 years. We were buried by our former agent in Amsterdam. It was a gig for our director's club, the Netherlands for a book release. Back then he was the calligraphy guy. He was doing type only and as you mentioned, he was quite restless. I also met him while he was bald, which was weird. We connected and yeah, it was first on Skype and a lot of like beers and Amsterdam beers in my hometown, which is nearby. I was fortunate enough that I lived in, he started to live in my town as well for about eight years. And then he went back to his roots to Eindhoven because he missed his family a little bit. And that makes sense. And it's just like one year after he moved to Eindhoven and everything was perfect. And he was texting me how much he loved being back and with all this old school graffiti homies and stuff like that, the news came that he was sick. That was wild. That was also a moment where we realized like, fuck dude, that's wild. After that moment, I think he still kept strong for quite a bit until like his last birthday. But many beautiful things happened and there was a fundraiser for him. So he was financially like, he was self employed and as a self employed person, getting sick was just a while. Especially from the digital art community, many donations came like from the last like six and five. I think he donated like an insane amount of money to Woodgir as well. And it was cool to see and you also tend to reflect on what he meant. And still, I still do that every now and then. And my girlfriend and I, she obviously knew him as well. I was like, yeah, what would you say about this? One of us is complaining about nothing. He was always right. He was very opinionated. Ahead of his time, yes. Sometimes a little bit extreme. But yeah, inspiring person and a warm person and somebody who also was very much invested on the community field and tried to host events and answer them to get artists together. And he even did that. But like, there's still a typography community that's very active that he founded like 10 years ago. There are plenty of people hitting me up like how much he meant to them. And to me, he was always like, yeah, you have the angel on death hole on your shoulder. He was always either criticizing or celebrating me, but always putting me with both feet on the ground and trying to inspire me also to get off the screen a little bit more. He very much had that background of physical like badass tagging or trainwrecks or shit like that where I'm just the digital guy that never made his hands dirty. Yeah, we got along super well. And the main thing I'm missing about him besides personality is the fact that he was very much, he wasn't a director of what I was doing. But the one of the few people in this scene, I took him very serious. So whatever he approved something, whatever he was like, oh yeah, that's legit. I went home like, yeah, we lost it. And the other way around like, stop doing this flying bullshit and just get your hands dirty. And like a day later, I called the screen print studio to make an appointment to just do a day of screen printing. And that's actually since the moment it was safe. I screen print like every month and it's all screen printed studio. And I still maintain to do that until there's a moment that I can write the gallery. And actually there's a beautiful show in Denbos. I don't know if you know Denbos, but it's down south in the Netherlands. Celebrating his work. And it also includes work from 22 creative friends and also contributed work to his solo exhibition, which is beautiful. What a beautiful tribute because he was like no other. I met him in person at off and we were chatting and I couldn't put the work in the person together at first. But we called him a bag of beers because he was working around off with a carry a bag full of beers. And I was like, he was also clever because it took forever to get served. And breaks between talks and it was like, I've got a bag of beer. So I was like, you're a clever man. And guess what I do every time in Barcelona? I just get a drink from around a corner from like the Vietnamese bar or whatever that is because it takes no, takes no time. Right. But I loved his spirit. I love his artistry. What he created at that time I knew him and I had the impact that had on you is remarkable. And when you talked about the fundraiser, this is what we talked at the beginning of our conversation about the community spirit. It is the old community that came together and sadly he posted the news on his Instagram about the need that he needs to raise some money. The people that came out in the comments and the likes and everything, I was like, oh, I haven't seen these people in like 20 years or 15 years. And it was just like hundreds and hundreds of people that just came from our respective lives to actually celebrate one of us in a way that was so important and so essential to show how community building, we were lucky to be part of it. You know, it made his life much easier. Like his life was hell, of course, the last two years, but it made his life way less stressful because otherwise he had to arrange money as well. And right now he got a gift, a plane ticket to Utah to go to some friends there and he even spent two weeks there. He didn't have much stress about money, which was great. The last year he was with us. I mean, it's actually a shame that he's gone because if it's just fun just to see him, rudder things in a way. But all we can do is to celebrate his bravery, his life, the way he was honest about his horrendous fucking disease. Yeah. And also the way he always approached live or work. He was very much a believer of like once he was too comfortable with something he moved on, he did something totally else and money was never his motivation to do that. And that's something he always preached for. Make it fun. Like you only live one life and make sure it's fun. Don't drag yourself into repeating yourself too much for clients or like just just stick close to your core. And that's what he did. He's actually still going to release a book. They're working on it. He started with graffiti. Like that was his first personal creative expression and he went back to it. Like his last two years he spent doing that and they're going to release a book. Pieces of hair. So he photographed himself. He also took that very serious with his camera and stuff like that. Yeah, it's great. Ten days from now I'm going to hang with all his friends again and just celebrate his life, which is wild. But yeah, very cool. I'm going to die and so many people celebrate me. You can die peacefully. It's crazy. It's so cool and sad at the same time. I mean, it's brutal, but as they say, you die twice. You die on the day when you die and then you die last time when people say your name. All we can do just say is them and every situation. So, hey, Rick, I'm glad I got to see you again. I'm glad we got to chat. I'm glad we got to celebrate Rick's life because I feel like you channel his energy from what you do and I'm so excited about what's coming next from you because it always surprises because Rick does Rick things. Oh man, I'm working on the huge ass sculptures with a company in London right now. But you do meters, right? Like one and a half meters tall and wide actual sculptures. It's going to be epic. I look forward to seeing it. Rick would be so proud of that. Absolutely, absolutely. And I'm so happy for that. Hey, dude, it's been a pleasure seeing you. Yes, pleasure man. Good chatting. Nice one. Thank you. Bye-bye. So please get in touch via the email in the show notes or social channels. This episode was produced and presented by me, Radim Maninage. The audio production was done by Nier Makai from 7 Million Banks Podcast. Thank you and I hope to see you on the next episode. A very physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle including an e-book and audio book to make the content accessible whatever you are and whatever you do. To get 10% of your order, visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the code podcast. Have a look around and start living daringly.