I Reside in a Ditch Between Realism and Conceptual Art

I tell people I live in a ditch. They laugh, and I let them, because it’s true. Against my better judgment, I chose this ditch for myself. It’s narrow, muddy, uncomfortable, and I’ve stayed here on purpose.

A trench between two worlds that rarely speak to each other without misunderstanding. On one side stand the realist painters: disciplined, technical, loyal to craft as language. On the other side sits the conceptual world: fluent in theory, restless with form, driven by ideas as experience. It’s a crude divide, but a useful one. Each side looks across the divide and insists the other has it wrong. Of course, each can claim elements of the other; the borders blur, but the argument still holds.

I live in the middle of that argument. The ditch is where I work. It isn’t empty down here; plenty of painters are digging in similar ground, testing how realism and thought coexist. It’s far more crowded—and far more vital—than most people think. The mud is metaphor, not misery.

The Space No One Markets

Any good marketing course would tell you this is a terrible place to position yourself. Do not plant your flag in the no-man’s-land between two established markets. Do not risk alienating your peers on both sides. Do not build a studio and a practice in a ditch.

But honesty demanded it. I couldn’t pretend that painting is just technique, nor could I pretend that ideas alone are enough. The ditch is where those two realities scrape against each other, and that friction is where the work begins to mean something.

The Double Exile

It isn’t just art. I stand in another ditch too. It’s the one between business and art itself. The business world values clarity, results, scalability. The art world pretends business doesn’t exist, as if commerce contaminates purity.

I know both languages. I ran companies, managed budgets, built teams. Now I paint and write about experience, perception, and knowing.

Both sides sometimes eye me with suspicion. Some of my old business colleagues think I went feral. Some artists think I’m still contaminated by efficiency and profit motive. I find this last bit comical. They don’t realize no one chooses this path for those reasons. Least of all in a country where commercial pressure quietly determines who even gets to keep working. In much of Europe, public frameworks exist to sustain art with no market intent. Here, this kind of work survives only by stubbornness and will. But that’s fine. I have no control over other people’s assumptions or cultural systems. Ditches aren’t built for comfort; they’re built for perspective.

Writing From the Mud

There’s another split: the painter who writes from lived experience versus the academic philosopher who theorizes from the outside. I am neither and both. I built a framework—Structural Omission—not from a dissertation but from years of putting paint on canvas and questioning why completion felt dishonest.

So I write like someone who smells of solvent and linseed oil. My authority comes from life and physical contact with paint, not credentials. It doesn’t sound institutional because it isn’t.

Almost Finding a Tribe

The closest I’ve come to a tribe is Disrupted Realism. When I first encountered John Seed’s term, I thought, finally—there are words for what I do. I believed I’d found a home. I credit Disrupted Realism for opening that door; it gave me language for what I was already building.

Then I realized disruption takes many forms, and there are others working this fault line in their own ways. The ditch is crowded with painters who never stopped asking what realism still means. My stretch is only one among many.

Why Stay Here

Every few months I imagine leaving. Picking a side. Simplifying the story. I could join the realists and be admired for technical mastery. I could move into the conceptual camp and let theory speak louder than paint. Either move would buy comfort. Neither would be true to me.

The ditch keeps me honest. It reminds me that art worth making often lives between categories, not inside them. Truth rarely sits at the center of the room; it clings to the edges.

And still, the question remains: what does it cost to stay here?

The Geography of Integrity

If you look closely, the ditch isn’t barren. It’s lined with painters and thinkers who never fully belonged anywhere: Bacon, Saville, Irwin, Martin—artists who worked where perception and philosophy collided. The more biographies I read, the more I realize almost every artist, at some point, worked in their own kind of ditch.

I’m in good company here. The ditch isn’t isolation; it’s shared ground that connects those who refuse easy categories. It’s the geography of integrity, where belonging ends and authenticity begins.

The Cost

When you occupy the in-between, you rarely have an audience large enough to protect you. Institutions don’t know where to place you; markets can’t brand you cleanly. Your work is always at risk of misinterpretation.

But clarity lives here too. I’m not alone. I’m surrounded by artists asking different versions of the same question. When you stop performing allegiance to one world or another, you start hearing your own questions more clearly. You start building something that couldn’t exist anywhere else.

The Choice

So yes, I reside in a ditch—not because I fell here, but because this is the only honest address.

The view from the middle keeps me grounded. I can see both hills, both illusions, both languages. I can watch the light shift and the shadows trade places. From here, the contradictions make sense.

And when people ask how to find me, I tell them: follow the sound of two worlds arguing. You’ll find a crowd down here, painting in the mud between them.