“For as long as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster.” Ok scratch the Goodfellas reference, but for as long as Garrett Eaton can remember he always wanted to be an artist. Garrett is not your glass of wine in one hand brush in the other type of human, but more or less cut from the same cloth as us here at Lower Branch “beer with a whiskey chaser.” With life experience and art taking Garrett from coast to coast he has finally made the trip back home to sunny California. Where we were more than happy to catch up with him and pick his brain. 
“For as long as I can remember I’ve liked to draw or construct things. I consider those activities to be part of the same impulse: the desire to recreate things you see or imagine. In school I would spend way more time drawing the illustration for the book report or making the diorama than actually studying the material. I always knew that I wanted to make things for a living, but I never thought it was a realistic career pursuit. So it wasn’t until college that I decided to go for it and forsake any likelihood of ever making a living.”
And the parents?
“My parents have always supported my choice to throw my life away to make silly pictures of odd things. They’re the best, all three of them.”
College was the official green light into the mediocre paint to make the rent style of life that all artists dream of as children. From his days of completing undergrad at UCSC in beautiful but odd Santa Cruz (the birthplace and upbringing of yours truly) and obtaining his masters in the bright lights of New York City, Garrett was fully committed.
“Yes: undergrad at UCSC and Masters at The New York Academy of Art. UCSC was a typical post-modern art program, while the NYAA is a classical training academy.”
Garrett has a strong approach to the realism and everyday images of life in his work. Don’t be fooled though it’s never just a painting of a toaster you are looking at, actually it’s quite the opposite as he describes his work as “Hopelessly anachronistic, In a good way.”
“I can’t help it. Those of us who have a predilection for faithfully recording the visual world are forever attempting to escape the bondage our eyeballs place us in. We are simultaneously infatuated with technical detail of observation and repulsed by its tendency to dull our emotional experience. Hopefully one day I will break this cursed affliction. Most of my work I would describe as “Illusionism,” referring to a trend in the 2D arts since the Renaissance that attempts to create an illusion of human visual perception on a flat plane. I’m not a “realist” because I am not necessarily trying to make a social statement about the world beyond that of our visual perceptions, though some of my paintings borrow from the realist impulse towards pedestrian subject matter… This is a small, but critical difference. The illusion is just a tool for story-telling, not a claim to a literal truth.”
Though Garrett is a self proclaimed oil painter by nature he has been more than able to make the transition to the digital realm through Digital Matte Painting.
“Digital Matte Painting is about 20 years old and is the continuation of a visual effects tradition of Matte Painting on glass that’s something like 100 years old. You basically paint backgrounds for films that mimic what a camera would see, but would be too costly or impractical to actually build and shoot. Think of the final shot in Raiders of the Lost Ark. That’s where I learned what it was, and since then I’ve always wanted to make those illusions for films. It’s a tough racket and I’ve only managed to work on two movies so far.”
Not to mention a few nominations at the VES awards?
”Synecdoche, NY was the first film that I worked on and it was an absolute thrill to be a part of a Charlie Kaufman picture, since I consider him to be the best screenwriter working today. I was a part of the 3 person team nominated for an few awards that nobody normal really cares about called the VES awards, and we didn’t win. But it was a complete honor to have my work shown in front of the best in the industry and to see some minor celebs present awards. Tia Carrere was there!”
Yo, be on the lookout for Garrett Eaton! Big things in the future and welcome home my friend!
“I’m not as old-fashioned as I seem.”
We know.
Lower Branch
Matte Painting Reel 2010 from T. Garrett Eaton on Vimeo.
