For a long time, I thought changing direction meant starting over. It doesn’t.
When I began spending more time painting and less time thinking of myself purely as a designer, I assumed I was moving into completely different territory. Fine art had its own language, its own rules, its own world. But I wasn’t arriving empty-handed.
I brought decades of looking. Composition. Color. Typography. Scale. Restraint. Knowing when something is finished, and, maybe more importantly, knowing when it isn’t.
I brought relationships, curiosity, confidence, mistakes, successes, and a pretty good understanding of how ideas become real. The same thing happened with GenHouse.
I had never built a brand quite like it before. But when I looked around, I realized I already had most of the raw materials. Years of building brands. Living in different cities. Working with creative people. Being part of communities like NeueHouse. Teaching. Painting. Getting older. And becoming increasingly curious about what this next part of life could look like.
GenHouse didn’t come out of nowhere. Neither did my painting. They came out of everything that came before.
I think we put too much pressure on the idea of reinvention, particularly as we get older. The word itself suggests tearing everything down and becoming somebody new.
I’m not particularly interested in becoming somebody new.
I’m interested in seeing what I can do with everything I’ve already got.
Maybe changing course isn’t about starting over.
Maybe it’s finally understanding the value of what you’ve been carrying with you all along.