1. What made you want to become an artist?

I’ve always done art since I was very small.  There was a PTA meeting at my school when I was young and the parents and teachers there decided to have an art contest.  I entered it, but when my mom went to see who won the contest, she saw that all the children of the people involved in the PTA won.  She said it was political.  I didn’t think that was right and I proclaimed at that time that I was going to be a famous artist one day.  I was 8 years old.  It was a strange motivation, but really the art was just motivated from inside of me.  I can’t remember ever not drawing.  It was my sanity.  I grew up in a household that was pretty messed up, just very dysfunctional.  I could go to my room and draw and find peace and centeredness in a crazy world.

2. When did you start sculpting?

I was 19 when I picked up my first piece of wood.  My wife-to-be had a piece of construction fir she had found that was a 4x4 square and she gave it to me.  I was going to make a candlestick stand for her.  It ended up being much more elaborate than I thought it would be.  I took a screwdriver and sharpened it for a chisel.  I had no carving tools at that time.  We were leaving Missouri in the winter and heading for the warmth of Florida.  Judi did the driving of the Volkswagen bus and I sat on the other side and carved.  That was my first piece of sculpture.

3. When did you first make the leap of faith that you weren’t going to go the traditional “9 to 5, go to college, make money” route and jump into art with both feet and dedicate yourself full time to your work?  Weren’t you worried you’d end up broke and materially behind?

Oh absolutely!  I starved for about 5 years.  There was a picture of me after I married Judi where we were emaciated.  We had broken down on the side of the road.  Because we were out of money, we took turns crying.  I’d be strong and she’d go cry and then she would be the strong one and I would cry.  Finally some people from this traveling art group that we were with lent us some money and we got the motor fixed.  A lot of times we didn’t have food. 

As far as college goes, I was kicked out of my house when I was 16 years old, so I have a 9th grade education.  A lot of times life will lead you in a way you need to go, and at first you may not see it as a positive thing but later find out that it was.  I would not be the type for art school, and the few times I’ve been around teachers I’ve sniffed them out very quickly and learned that what they’re actually teaching people a lot of times is boundaries.  They teach rules and regulations.  I know no rules, I know no regulations, I have no boundaries.  For me, I’ll go grab an old piece of wood that someone else had thrown in a fire pit and turn it into a $25,000 sculpture and sell it.  So I took a totally different route, and it’s not like I chose it.  Life lead me one step after another in that direction.  The kind of wood that I worked with was free.  It didn’t cost me anything to start that way. 

4. Did it ever come to a point where you thought you’d go out and get a “real” job and leave art as a hobby, or did that never even enter your mind?

I did have to do that.  After I did the starving thing for a while, I was just ravaged by it.  A friend of mine who was an artist said he’d lend me a credit card to get me down to Miami and then he’d get me going.  So we got down there and pulled into the parking lot of where he was living, and the school bus we had converted into a motor home just died right there on the spot.  So my friend helped my wife and I to get an apartment.  We got jobs and did art shows on the weekends.  At this point I was reading “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale and “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, these kinds of books, and I start growing my self-esteem.  Having a day job was good in the sense that we didn’t have to be hungry-looking at our art shows because we were making money during the week.  It freed us up so we could make choices without having to starve.  That lasted about a year with me working a job all day then staying up almost all night carving so I’d have enough stock for the art shows on the weekends.  By the time the year was up, I could go out and make a solid living just from my art. 

5. The general themes of your work are mostly wildlife, nature and fantasy.  What is it about these subjects that intrigues you so much?

You could say that there could be a lot of subject possibilities for one piece of wood, I don’t know.  But I tend to go on tangents, and sometimes it will be fantasy and I’ll see a dragon in a piece of wood and start sculpting it.  Sometimes I’ll work on 6 or 7 different sculptures at a time.  Not for the purpose of production, but because my mind – no not my mind but my creativity – is moving with such force, like a river.  I have to express several different things at one time just to open the portal of creativity, which is like a tube or something running out of the center of my body.  I have to release that energy, because it’s an uncomfortable feeling to allow that energy to become stagnant inside of myself.  So I’d go out there and see another dragon.  And sometimes these tangents could run 6 months.  Once I was inspired by the movie “Dances with Wolves” with Kevin Costner, who actually ended up with one of my wolf pieces, which was really cool.  So after seeing that movie I went out and looked through my wood pile and saw pieces of wood I had never been able to touch before and there they were – wolves.  So that wolf tangent went on for about a year and a half. 

6. How do you decide what a piece of wood is going to be?  Is it the shape that inspires you or is it something completely different?

The shape is important.  And so is the texture.  The texture can sometimes tell me whether the piece will be male or female, because of the ruggedness or the soft streamlined smoothness of it.  The wood really does speak to me.  The wood is incredible to me.  It’s like a river - it flows.  Sometimes people will bring me wood that’s been chopped off on both ends by a chainsaw and I really just can’t see anything in that.  It’s like somebody taking a body and cutting the head and legs off and saying, “Look how beautiful it is.”  Well it was before it was chopped up like that.  I like wood that is natural and ripped apart by the elements.  Wood that’s been thrown into the ocean by a hurricane and has been out there for a hundred years then washed back in, with the sand working to smooth it.  There’s a place where the wood starts and ends, and they both taper off and vanish back into the nothingness from where they came from.  That’s the wood I like, and that’s the type of wood I can see things in. 

7. You have a very specific style where you blend very detailed, intricate sculpture with the natural look of the unfinished wood.  How did you come up with that, and was it a conscious decision?

I did a couple of pieces when I was first starting, like my very first piece, the candlestick I made, which was an oriental man standing there holding a box on his head.  It was very realistic and fully carved all over.  Then I did a couple of almost “Ozark Mountainy” kind of pieces - a little man playing a ukulele and another man playing an accordion standing in front of a log cabin.  I enjoyed doing that, but then I found my first piece of driftwood when I first got down to Florida.  We went down to the Everglades national park, and in the campgrounds there was a vacant cabin in the woods out there.  The guy that had lived there used to collect the driftwood.  That was my first run-in with driftwood, where there were shapes worked by nature and washed by the ocean.  So I asked the people at the front office if I could take it and they said, “Yeah that guy doesn’t live there anymore, go out and take whatever you want.” 

The first piece I found I could see an old man’s beard in it, so I got my handmade carving tools and started working, and this old man’s face started coming out, looking at me.  It was so beautiful and natural that I just kept going back for the natural wood and stayed away from block shapes.  What happens with the wood is that some parts of it are so sweet that there’s nothing I could do to make it look better than God’s carving, if you want to call it that, or nature’s own self-expression.  So I try to work in unison and balance with that part.  And in doing so, I have grown so much inside myself.  My relationship to nature has sparked and grown.  The same way a record has grooves on it that are very important vibrationally to the sound, the grooves in a piece of wood are equally as powerful to me.  And for me to sometimes mimic that in order to make something blend from one area to another, I’m copying nature and those grooves.  Which is really groovy (laughs). 

8. Some of your work is buoyant and happy while others, particularly your fantasy pieces, have a dark tone to them.  How do you reconcile this?  Do you sculpt according to your mood?

I’m in a meditative state whenever I’m working.  I can’t let my mind get involved and say “I don’t like this, I don’t like that, I think people will be impressed with this” – that has to die.  If the sculpture is going to be good, that has got to go.  When the mind calms down, then the beauty of being with a piece of wood comes out.  It’s not talking, I’m not talking –we’re flowing together.  It’s like catching a wave in surfing. I’m working with that balance on the edge. 

So it’s not a decision of the mind.  What I realized whenever I was working on a piece that had a castle, a dragon or a maiden in it – I believe we all have those attributes in ourselves.  A lot of times our nature is in struggle or contrast with the lighter side of ourselves.  That darker side may open up areas where anger might be, where some of the darker emotions might be.  So the light needs to contrast that, and then we can follow the light.  The maiden looks to the warrior to slay the dragon, but all this goes on inside of us.  There’s that feminine nature whether you’re a man or a woman, which is Eastern philosophy, and then there’s the “go out and get it” passion of the knight.  The dragon represents the darker side of nature.  It’s so beautiful to find that whatever I’m working on is somehow a reflection of something that’s going on inside of myself. 

9. What role does spirituality play in your art, and how would you define that spirituality?

A long time ago I saw Kung Fu, the TV series, and it was my first run-in with anything of a spiritual nature, and I’m not talking about my Southern Baptist background.  By spirituality I mean there’s something going on inside of me that has always drawn me inwards.  In my earlier years I went for a very long time without any notion of spirituality.  When I came into the wood though, I learned so much. I’m almost in a trance, a meditation, whenever I’m working, and just smelling the wood, just hearing the sound of the sandpaper scraping back and forth, hearing the birds chirping outside – it’s so conducive to introspection.  Just being there by yourself in a calm way, that to me is spirituality.  I have learned so much about what’s going on inside myself by working in the stillness.  The stillness speaks, the flow comes out from inside of me.  The creativity opens up and dances with me on a piece of wood. 

It’s not a “thinking” kind of thing.  Thinking gets in the way.  I do read.  I’m attracted to certain literature and teachers.  I don’t get stuck on any one of them, but some of the books I’ve studied very deeply.  The direction I’m very strongly into now and I’m seeing so much in the teachings is that it’s not about the mind, it’s about feeling.  It’s about going inside of the body.  One particular set of teachings is about feeling the energy body.  I feel the energy body move very strongly inside of me.  These things are subtle in comparison with the way the world is - the neon lights and things screaming at us on the television.  “Pow, zap, bang!” All these things are so intense and a small voice or feeling inside of us is very subtle and very easily missed.  You have to tune yourself in, and a piece of wood helps me to tune myself to that subtle world.  Walks in the woods, listening to an eagle cry, looking up at a sunset – these things are subtle yet beautiful.  When I’m really with a sunset it’s very easy for me to cry and be totally overwhelmed by it. 

10. Do you meditate before you sculpt, or is there some kind of ritual you do to begin?

Well, going back to feelings, it’s like I’m hungry.  Like someone would walk into the kitchen to get something to eat.  There’s a feeling of “I want something.”  It’s like that - I get a strong feeling to go out into my shop. So no, there’s not some special ritual I go through to begin.  The wood has prepared me to go and work with it.  It is my lover, and it has taught me the way to approach it.  It has taught me the delicateness and the subtly and the openness that is necessary to dance.  To make love to a piece of wood if you will.  And the mind does not help you in lovemaking.  The mind is not good for the type of art I do.  I can’t say for other people, but the less that my mind is involved, the better.  And it’s that way with meditation as well.  The mind can’t be fought, but it has to be released and relaxed. An excited mind is not a good thing for creating art.  It is the spirit that’s excited, the spiritual energy in my body. 

11. You once told me “God works through me, I just get out of the way.”  Could you explain that?

Any time you’re first starting any kind of art, your mind has to be involved because you have to learn the technical ability to do it.  I also do computer artwork, and when I was first doing it I had to use my mind to learn the technical aspect of Adobe Photoshop.  But once you learn the technical aspects of it, you throw it away as quickly as possible and forget about the techniques.  Your hands and your body know how to handle it.  Dancers have body memory for the different types of moves they do, so whenever they are at their best they let go of the idea of how to do it and just perform.  So those technical ideas have to go in order for you to dance with God.  What that means is spirit – the nature of things that is beyond what we can see with our normal senses – it is out and in.  Whenever both of those can merge and the surfaces of things dissolve, then it is all one.  That is the dancing, whether it’s with a piece of wood or on a computer or canvas.  Sometimes I’ll just splash some paint on a canvas to begin with and as I watch it run I’ll start to see an eye of a dolphin starting to come out.  Whatever it might be.  It’s a flow – and it’s very relaxed.  It has to be. 

Once the mind is tamed, it’s almost like I’m not doing the art and that I’m just a witness to what’s going on.  I’m observing.  There are times when my hands move and I’m not doing it.  I’m watching my hands move but I’m not in control.  I’m just letting it happen.  Mozart would just let go and the music would come out of him.  It’s just like that actually.  With him it was music but all artists are connected.

12. What are some new life lessons that you are trying to incorporate into your art these days?

I’m trying not to doubt myself.  Whenever you have doubt, it freezes you from being able to move forward.  Like if you’re a samurai warrior and you doubt your ability when you swing your sword, it’s not going to go well.  This is a new lesson for me these days – whatever you do in this life, there is no room for doubt.  There must be a place where we make our stand.  Whether it’s with a piece of wood or with being an artist or whatever, even though many people will not understand us, we must make our stand and not doubt what it is that we are.  Find what you are, don’t doubt it, don’t blink, and do this life.  This is not a rehearsal, this is the play.  This is it.  I’m doing everything I can to sculpt.  Whenever I’m talking, just like I am now, I’m giving everything I have so people can understand my passion for the art, because I don’t see enough of this in the world.  It’s love, being in love with nature, like with me being in love with a piece of wood.  Just have a love affair with your situation.  Be in this moment directly.  Do the dance of life. 

13. Is there a general theme or philosophy that you’re trying to convey throughout all your work?

Yes, there is.  My philosophy is to try to work in balance with nature.  That’s a realization, it’s not a decision.  It’s not that I think “everything I do must fall under this certain philosophy” - it just does.  Whenever I look at a piece of wood and think how beautiful it is, seeing how the grain swirls or the beauty of a knot - I can’t go carving into there any more than if on my property there was a beautiful sinkhole, I couldn’t take a bulldozer and fill it so I could fit another house over it. That’s rape, and it is for me to do the same thing to a piece of wood.  It doesn’t feel right inside of me.  It’s not a conscious decision or a judgment.

When people are looking at my art, I’m showing off the natural beauty of the wood as much as I’m showing off my carving.  And that makes people look at a piece of wood like they never have before.  They’re getting to see what I saw.  And they’ll pick up pieces of wood and go “wow, look at that over there” because they learn.  It’s a childlike quality.  People write me emails and tell me they look in the sky and see dragons in the clouds now.  They look at the wood grain of a door and see things in it, and they get excited because they see things too in the same way.  It’s a creative thing, and they’re growing in that direction.  They are realizing an aspect of themselves they didn’t know before. 

14. So that’s what you want people to take away from your art?

Yes, I’d like to see people’s hearts open up.  And it happens!  A storeowner called me from one of the shops that sells my art and told me that a man came in and looked at one of my sculptures, then came back later, brought the sculpture up to the register and said, “I have to get this.  I’m kind of embarrassed but I feel I have to tell you this.  I walked out of here and down to the beach with tears in my eyes.  I’m not quite sure what’s going on but I have to respond to this and buy this sculpture.” So he went through this experience.  One time a woman told me she came out of a coma and one of my sculptures was in the room and she felt like it really spoke to her even though half of her body was paralyzed.  She emailed me and said that now even though she can walk to some extent she still brings the sculptures from one room to another with her.  I got another email from a person who wrote, “I keep a sculpture on the nightstand by the bed because when I wake up in the in the morning, no matter how crazy the world is I can look at it and it gives me a sense of peace.”  Now the peace is inside the person, it’s not over there on the nightstand, but they are recognizing the beauty and congratulations to them because the beauty is inside.  The art is just a reflection, it’s helping them make a statement about themselves. 

15. Last question - what is in the future for Rick Cain?

I know less about that than I ever have before.  And I’m trying to move through a period of being afraid of that.  What I’m noticing right now… (at this point Rick clears his throat rather forcefully).  Hmm, please don’t cut out of the interview that my throat is acting up right now because if you study certain avenues of spirituality you’ll find information on the throat chakra.  I started talking to you about having a certain fear and my throat immediately started acting up. This is classic example.  If you look in certain books, you’ll find that if a person’s throat closes up they are having a certain nervousness.  So where I’m going, I really don’t know.  And I’m trying to move past that fear and accept the unknown.

These days, every time I’m sculpting, I’m asking myself, “Is this the last one?”  I don’t know what’s next for me.  I enjoy living here but I don’t know if I always will.  I might end up somewhere else, who knows?  And I feel less and less attached.  Even though this is one of the most beautiful places I could ever imagine living, and even though I really enjoy doing artwork, I’m ready if anything needs to be different.  Maybe I need to become a wanderer, I have no idea.  But I’d like to be in the state where I could accept anything that life gives me. 

I realize I’m aging.  Many artists work until they die.  There’s one beautiful story, a true story about an artist who was 80-something years old and having dinner with his wife.  He had been working on a gigantic painting out in his shop and he told his wife, “Honey, I need to go out there and sign it.”  And he signed it and fell over dead right there in front of the canvas.  That’s an artist’s dream, I’d imagine, to go out that way.

More and more my life itself becomes the art.  Whenever I am looking at a sunset and I’m at one with that sunset to the extent that tears are pouring out of my eyes, my heart is so open that it is like an open sky.  Like my heart itself is a sunset inside of me.  To me, that’s art.  What’s important to me at this point is to live the rest of my life in such a manner that my life itself will be the last piece of art I sculpt before I die.