Meet Jacob Riddling | Fine Arts Painter & Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jacob Riddling and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jacob, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
I feel as if following your dreams is and will always be a pretty big risk. Any creative pathway is looked at as abstract or unattainable in today’s society. It’s something that you want and yearn for in your youth, but the older you get it seems more and more like a fantasy. The way that social media is set up and is so prominent in our society, you can see that there are millions of other people out trying to accomplish the same goal as you. The world seems so saturated with artists and musicians, it’s hard to make your work stand out or to find the right people. Immersing yourself into the art world is no easy task. You are having to involve yourself into any and every art event that will let you, trying to connect with other artists and any collectors who will listen to you, figure out where and what you can sell so that you can pay all your bills on time, while devoting any other bit of time you have to actually creating and building your product. And I love every bit of it. All of art has risk, it is risk. I believe risk and confidence and emotional attachments are the building blocks to any great piece of art, no matter the medium.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I am an expressionist painter and I almost always work with acrylic paint and oil pastel on canvas. I really enjoy creating people or figures with elongated or unproportional body parts. Its taken many years for me to find my style in painting and to truly feel like what I’m creating is new and 100 percent mine. I purposely put similar details in all of my pieces with the goal that many many years down the line, someone will see one of my pieces and be able to distinguish it as mine with a quick glance. Some of these details are too many fingers or toes, the rounded eye lids I do, etc.
Getting to the position I am at today took a long time and a lot of trial and error. I had to face a lot of no and rejection before my art was taken seriously. I feel like most others in the art world had to deal with this so I tried to not let it discourage me. I just kept tweaking my craft and trying to create as much as possible and it slowly started to stick. I’m just going to keep doing what I love to the best of my ability and let the rest of it come as it does.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I would take them to zz and Simones for a nice dinner and some cocktails, then I’d take them to the GA Theater to see a concert ( or if there is no shows or its sold out, we’d go to the 40 Watt ). After that, probably just bar hop for a little bit before calling it a night.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My whole family has always been a huge support for my art career. They come out to almost all of my events and shows and have been encouraging me for as long as I can remember. I love them all and can’t thank them enough. The art scene in Athens is also fantastic. Ever since I moved back here from college, I’ve been able to really become apart of it all and I’m so grateful for all my friends and the businesses that have let me be apart of their shows and markets.

Website: www.jacobriddling.art

Instagram: jacobriddling.art

Linkedin: Jacob Riddling