Meet Patrick Kane McGregor of Esoteric Art in Globeville

Today we’d like to introduce you to Patrick Kane McGregor.

Patrick, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I’ve been an artist as long as I can remember growing up in Colorado, but my first real job as an artist was at Tower Records as the store artist when I moved with my mother to Northern California in 1989, which was the same time I discovered graffiti. My son was born in 1992 so looking for extra income, I started painting houses and commercial work. I had a few jobs at some sign shops and decided to move up north to Portland Oregon. It was here in 1994 when I landed a job as an apprentice painting advertisement on the sides of buildings. I learned how to paint with traditional brushes and oils from a veteran of the trade, Art Pastusak. He taught me color theory, anatomy, composition, and so much more. I was very lucky to have gotten this job as I was a young father with no real income to go to college at the time. For the next four years I honed these skills and became what they call a lead artist, and did these walls with my own helpers, climbing the ladder of the hand painted billboard industry. We travelled all over for companies like Nike, Disney, and Apple to name a few, still having a foot in graffiti and doing that whenever I had the chance, mostly on freight trains. I decided to move to NYC in 2006 for my career and worked with a company called Colossal media doing the same thing but more ground level painting in Brooklyn and Manhattan. I started to build on my own art here, painting portraits of my dog “Boug” in the same technique on large canvases. When I decided to move back home to Denver in 2011 after exhausting myself with a “work hard, play hard” mentality in NYC, I developed more of a name in the Denver art world, mashing graffiti style with my training from painting billboards and embracing my true passion of portraits, mostly dogs.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There were definitely struggles, being a young parent with my sons mother, it took a strain on our relationship when I had started to travel more, we eventually split when he was only three and she moved to a different state. It was hard for me when I was alone in New York but it made me a better person and artist to go through that and come out on the other side. Now my son, Tristan, is 27 and he paints too, he is my right-hand man at Esoteric Art.

Please tell us about your business.
We paint murals with brushes and oil paints, which not many artists do in this game. Most use spray paint, which I do still use every now and again as well, but mostly for graffiti. I am better with brushes and I am known for my dog portraits and I think that sets us apart from the rest. I mostly paint my Bulldog Boug, who passed away three years ago. I took a lot of pictures of him in my travels and living in NYC I took him to work with me a lot, so I have some good reference to work with still. I’m kind of known as the bulldog guy, I use his image for my stickers and shirts. In my murals I like to use bright colors and realism mashed together. I’m proud to have a business with my son and paint with him on some of these projects. We still travel together and do jobs for Colossal media here and there, but I try to stay planted here in Denver.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
My work ethic and knowledge that I’ve gained over the years painting with some old timers in the billboard game and the graffiti game helped me out, meeting deadlines and knowing how to apply different kinds of paints on different substrates. I can do any job start to finish with quality and in a timely manner. Once I get going, I paint very fast and it proves to be an efficient trait in my success as an artist.

Pricing:

• $20-$30 per square foot depending on complexity and size

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.patrickkanemcgregor.com
• Email: patrickane1971@hotmail.com
• Instagram: @patrickkanemcgregor or @esotericartdenver
• Facebook: Esoteric Art Denver

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