Who is Andre Alsup?

I don't really know when you're allowed to start calling yourself an artist.

For most of my life, I never thought I was good enough to be one. I didn't go into this with some big plan to become an artist, build a collection, or have people look at my work. I just started making things.

And then I kept making things.

I create because creating makes me happy.

I paint. I make candles. I build things. I come up with characters and stories. I take something that already exists and figure out how I would make it differently. Sometimes I spend hours making something for absolutely no reason other than I decided I wanted it to exist.

I've always been attracted to things that feel different. I love finding something I've never seen before. I love designer pieces, unusual objects, art, clothes, and things that only a small number of people have. Not necessarily because they're expensive, but because they're different.

There's something exciting about someone seeing something you have and saying, “Whoa. What is that? Where did you get that? Can I have one?”

Creating gives me that feeling in its purest form because sometimes the answer is:

You can't get it anywhere. I made it.

That's one of my favorite feelings in the world.

BUT CREATING ALSO GAVE ME SOMEWHERE TO GO.

I've always shown people the positive side of myself. I'm usually the happy one. I'm friendly. I joke around. I talk to people. I like making people laugh, and I genuinely love making the people around me happy.

But being a happy person doesn't mean I've always been happy.

I've gone through periods of my life where I've struggled deeply with suicidal thoughts. I've also lost people I loved to suicide. Those experiences changed the way I understand people and made me realize how little we sometimes know about what someone else is carrying.

I've learned through my own life that the person smiling the biggest can still go home and struggle. The person making everybody else laugh can still feel completely alone. Kindness and positivity don't necessarily tell you what's happening underneath.

I think part of the reason I've always shown so much positivity is because I understand what the opposite feels like.

And eventually, creating gave that side of me somewhere to exist too.

SOMETIMES I CAN SAY IT BETTER WITH A PAINTBRUSH.

My art can be ridiculous.

There are aliens, skateboarders, dogs, strange creatures, wizards, cartoon characters, stupid jokes and ideas that probably make more sense inside my head than they ever will to anybody else.

Then sitting right beside them might be a painting about suicide, loneliness, love, death, fear, relationships, or losing someone.

That isn't a contradiction to me.

That's life.

I can be incredibly happy and still have terrible days. I can love someone and be hurt by them. I can love my life and still have moments when I want to escape it. I can make something completely stupid because it makes me laugh and then create something the next day that represents one of the most painful thoughts I've ever had.

Creating lets all of those versions of me exist in the same place.

LIFE GOES UP. LIFE GOES DOWN.

Losing people to suicide changed the way I think about my own darkest moments. I've come to understand that an unbearable moment can feel permanent while you're inside of it, even though life itself is constantly changing.

Life has taught me that there will be incredible periods and horrible ones. There will be people I think will stay forever who leave. There will be things I think I can't survive that eventually become memories. There will also be people, experiences, animals, places, jokes, paintings, and random Tuesday afternoons that remind me why I'm glad I'm still here.

That's part of what I try to put into my work.

I don't want to pretend sadness doesn't exist just because I'm normally a positive person. I'd rather acknowledge both.

I'M STILL FIGURING IT OUT.

I still don't know if I'll ever look at myself and think, I'm an artist.

Maybe I don't need to.

I don't create because I need the title.

I don't create because everything needs to be sold.

I don't create because everything needs to be profound.

And I definitely don't create because I think everything I make is perfect.

I create because I love the feeling of turning nothing into something.

Sometimes that something is a painting about one of the hardest moments of my life. Sometimes it's a candle. Sometimes it's a character I thought was funny. Sometimes it's something for my home that I couldn't find anywhere else.

Whatever it is, there's a little piece of me in it.

There will only ever be one version of me, and when I create something from my own imagination, there will only ever be that version of it too.

That's what makes it special to me.

I'm still learning. I'm still changing. I'm still figuring out what I love and who I want to become.

And as long as I'm here, I want to keep making things.

I'm Andre Alsup.

I create to create.

I JUST Create TO Create.

NOTHING IS REALLY TRASH.

I'm cheap to a degree.

But honestly, I think that's become part of how I create.

I have a hard time throwing something away when I can look at it and imagine what else it could become. A used canvas isn't a ruined canvas. An old frame isn't garbage. An empty bottle doesn't necessarily belong in the recycling bin. Furniture doesn't automatically become worthless because somebody doesn't want it anymore.

Sometimes it just needs another life.

A lot of the frames surrounding my artwork were things other people threw away. I'll find them, clean them up, repair them, repaint them, or simply accept all the scratches and imperfections that came from wherever they were before me.

I do the same thing with canvases. If I find an old painting or canvas someone doesn't want anymore, I can paint directly over it and turn it into something completely different. Whatever existed underneath doesn't disappear entirely. It becomes part of the history of the new piece.

And it goes far beyond my paintings.

I've reused alcohol bottles and containers. I've collected discarded furniture and rebuilt or redesigned it. I've taken random objects that most people wouldn't think twice about throwing away and found a completely different purpose for them.

I don't necessarily do it because I'm trying to make some grand statement about recycling.

I just genuinely enjoy taking something nobody wants and making it into something I want.

There's something satisfying about knowing an object could have ended its life in a dumpster, but instead it ended up in my apartment, underneath one of my paintings, turned into furniture, or transformed into something that didn't exist before.

It also means that even the materials surrounding my art can have their own stories.

A brand-new frame is just a frame.

The beat-up frame somebody threw away, that I found and decided was worth keeping, has already lived a life before it ever touched my artwork. Now it gets to become part of mine.

I think that's another reason creating means so much to me. I don't always need something new to make something new.

Sometimes I just need to look at something everyone else has finished with and think:

I can do something with that.

IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT.

I used to think I wasn't good enough to call myself an artist.

Sometimes my lines aren't straight. Sometimes the proportions are weird. Sometimes I change my mind halfway through. Sometimes I paint over the entire thing and start again.

That's part of creating.

If I waited until I thought I was good enough, I probably wouldn't make anything at all.

I'd rather make something imperfect that could only have come from me than make nothing because I was afraid it wouldn't be good enough.

The same goes for life. I'm still learning. I'm still changing. I'm still figuring out who I am and what I want to create next.

Perfect doesn't interest me nearly as much as original does.

MAKE SOMETHING.

You don't have to be an artist.
You don't have to be good at it.
You don't have to sell it.
You don't even have to show anybody.

Find something you love and make it yours.