Eric Rhoads, painter, publisher, interviewer, instructor, entrepreneur
His view on artistic talent, becoming one of the most painted people of our time, art marketing mistakes, and more
In an uncanny, digital sense, I hang out with B. Eric Rhoads frequently. Perhaps you do too. But in real life, Eric and I met for the first time over Zoom in late February. Our meeting seemed more like a friendly chat than an interview, in part because Eric is an amiable and charismatic conversationalist, but also due to my parasocial relationship with him. Nope, there’s no need for the Palate & Palette staff photographer (my husband) to be jealous; this phenomenon occurs when viewers feel like they know and perhaps form friendships with a media personality. Eric says this happens often, given that he’s the most public face of art media empire Streamline Publishing.
Perhaps you are like me and tune in to Art School Live with Eric Rhoads, which airs every weekday on YouTube. And perhaps you receive Eric’s frequent emails with art tips and invitations to fun-sounding art activities. Maybe you also listen to his Plein Air podcast (more than 260 episodes so far), or attend Streamline Publishing’s virtual or in-person events often hosted by…Eric Rhoads, of course.
PleinAir magazine, Fine Art Connoisseur magazine, and the many other Streamline Publishing media and events inspire collectors and help artists build skills, market themselves, and achieve their creative potential. But while researching this story, I was surprised to discover that the existence of these publications and events almost didn’t happen. Eric’s path to art was due to several random events.
He grew up with an entrepreneurial father who frequently brought his young son into business meetings and sought his opinions. Many years later, after working as a DJ, Eric parlayed his experience into managing and owning radio stations as well as building companies specializing in radio broadcasting, programming, and syndication. Along the way he hung out backstage with Mariah Carey, the Bee Gees, and the stars of many more bands. He founded Streamline Publishing, which initially focused on the radio broadcasting industry.
On a whim, Eric purchased some painting supplies. “A disaster” is how he describes his first effort to reproduce a National Geographic image on canvas. Subsequently, his wife bought him painting lessons for his 40th birthday. The instructor encouraged Eric and the other students to “express themselves” and just “throw paint on the canvas.” When Eric expressed that he wanted to learn to paint real objects, the instructor emphatically replied that nobody did that anymore. Eric took his brushes and went home.
That could have been the end of Eric’s foray in the art world, but a taxi ride chat led the artist-driver to connect Eric with an instructor eager and able to teach him representational art. A pivotal moment on Eric’s painting journey was when his wife, pregnant with triplets, couldn’t tolerate the smell of paint in their house. So, he took his art materials outdoors to do some painting, largely unaware that plein air painting was a thing. He loved the experience and subsequently investigated the work of innumerable plein air painters. Realizing the outdoors approach to painting needed its own publication, Eric launched PleinAir magazine. Like many artist stories that don’t progress in a straight line, the magazine morphed into Fine Art Connoisseur and then, due to subscriber demand, PleinAir magazine was reintroduced.
Fortunately, Eric and the Streamline Publishing team went on to develop numerous other educational offerings and art experiences to support professional and aspiring artists and nurture their creative abilities and businesses. The organization distributes a great amount of free content, including hours of online video lessons, artist chats, and substantial art tips, as well as offering numerous purchasable courses and events. Throughout his journey, Eric has continued to paint plein air and from life —with work in galleries such as Folly Cove Fine Art—while offering daily art lessons, interviewing artists, and leading events.
Now, on to my interview with a bona fide art industrialist, which I mean in the positive sense. In the spirit of not burying the lead, I’m presenting my last question first, as Eric responds with his raison d'être.
What haven’t we talked about that you think is important?
I believe anybody can become an artist and that everybody has artistic instincts within them that they're not taking advantage of because life gets in the way.
Everybody has some form of art within them; it may be music, writing, or something else. One of the reasons I'm so driven is that I have watched people's lives completely change when they realize, "You know what? I can learn to paint, and I can express myself creatively.” And they become more interesting people. That’s one of the reasons I do what I do.
I've trained 16 million people on my YouTube show. People have come to me in tears and said, "My parents told me I couldn't become an artist. I became a bookkeeper and did that my whole life, hated it, and because of this show, now I am an artist." That gives me chills, helping people become who they are.
I don't consider myself somebody who's going to be one of the world's great artists. My art is helping other people find their art.
You've said that you don't think that natural artistic talent is required to paint.
I can remember back as far as the fourth grade, seeing another kid who could draw Disney characters, and I couldn't. My assumption, even back then, was that artists are born, not developed. Now that I've been an artist for quite a while and I have worked with artists for the past 20 years, I realize that’s complete BS.
Many artists I’ve met were obsessed with drawing as children. They drew constantly, and because they were so obsessed and passionate about it, they got better and better. Most artists I know produced a lot of bad drawings and paintings and experienced frustration, but they persisted, and they eventually got it. Maybe they had some degree of natural talent, but their proficiency arose due to their persistence.
Those of us who teach art have a responsibility to understand that anybody who is taking this on—developing into an artist—is insecure and doubtful that they can do it. But if they are having fun while they're doing it, and if they persist, they’ll get through it and eventually have their breakthrough.
Did you achieve a breakthrough with a specific painting?
When I was talking to Richard Schmid one day, he said, "I had to make a choice in my life. I was accomplished at painting and as a concert pianist. There came a crossroads where I knew that I had to pick one of the two because I could not become a master at both." He said he chose painting because paintings will live on.
I faced a similar decision. I realized that my superpower was helping other people overcome the stuff that I had to go through [to learn to paint]. I was better off spending my time as a publisher and marketer than pursuing my own painting as my principal career focus.
I've had moments when I've thought maybe I should stop all of this and focus on painting for the next 20 years, but I can't do it. I do paint almost every day, but I'm painting during nights and weekends. It’s often after a full day of work, usually after dinner, when I'd rather paint than watch television. That’s why it's taken me 20 years to get to my level of proficiency.
You recognized at one point that your painting skills weren’t evolving. What did you do?
I thought about how I could improve my painting ability substantially, given my time restrictions. I also asked myself, "Who do I want to paint most like?" I identified a specific landscape painter and a portrait painter.
[Eric arranged a painting intensive week, working alongside a landscape painter to receive coaching and observe demonstrations of specific techniques. His instructor recognized that because Eric was trying out many different painting techniques he observed at his video shoots and workshops, that his approach lacked focus.]
He told me, “Don't change the colors on your palette for one year. And I don't want you to become me, but I want you to focus on what I've taught you for one year.” It didn’t happen immediately, but within that year, something magical happened; I started getting unsolicited compliments on my work. I took the same approach with the portrait painter I identified, and I had similar results.
You are exposed to a tremendous amount of art instruction, and I wondered how it affects the way you paint.
I have a schizophrenic nature in that I fall in love with every kind of painting and every painter, and I respect what they do and what they've learned.
I’ve been doing YouTube shows every weekday since COVID, so every single day viewers see something new. At first, I assumed that after 10 artists in a row, every artist would seem the same. But the reality is that they're all different. In every single show, [painters demonstrate] one or two different variations or approaches.
My advice is to find someone you can learn from and then develop your own thing. Study with them as much as you can. Go to their workshops, buy their videos, watch them online—whatever you must do. Stick with something and your style will find you.
What attracts you to a specific subject for plein air painting?
Light. When I started painting outside, I noticed that shadows, form, and light on my paintings were different than my studio work that I produced from photographs.
Nikolai Dubovik, an instructor from the Surikov Institute, came to visit. He walked into my studio, looked at the paintings on my wall, and he said, "That one, that one, that one, that one." I said, "What?" He said, "You did those outdoors." He was right.
What have you learned from your Portrait Project?
[To promote portraiture, over many years, Eric commissioned a number of leading portrait painters to paint him and featured the paintings in his Fine Art Connoisseur magazine column.]
I love portraiture and I love realism. When I started the magazines, I wanted to push the idea of portraiture and landscape painting from life. Painting from photos isn't bad, but I wanted to stimulate a resurgence in portraiture.
I think I only asked one person to do my portrait, and that was the first one. After that, people saw the portraits in the magazine and they started calling [and offering to paint him]. The rule was the portraits had to be done from life, so I would need to do a sitting. That was a lot easier when I first started because I wasn't as busy. Now it's a lot more difficult. Some of them have taken four days.
What I learned is that no one captures an exact likeness. Everyone tends to make a likeness that is similar to their own.
Wow, really? Tell me more.
It’s kind of like the saying that people pick dogs who look like themselves. I shouldn't be saying this because people will hate me for this, but there are elements that certain painters put into their paintings that are reflective of what they look like. For instance, there are a couple of artists who have really big noses. I have a big nose, but I noticed that they exaggerate the noses [in their portraits].
How many portraits of you have been created to date?
I don't have an exact count. There were 26 or 30 [commissioned]. Then because of COVID and my doing the YouTube show, I started receiving a lot of unsolicited portraits, so there might be 40 or 50 of them.
[In a 2018 Facebook Live event, three Studio Incamminati (a prestigious contemporary realist art school) instructors—Kerry Dunn, Nell O’Leary, and JaFang Lu, produced portraits of Eric in front of live and online audiences.]
I'm trying to put together a show, but it's a little weird because I feel self-conscious calling somebody to say, "Hey, do you want to do a show with these portraits about me?" But a fine art appraiser once said that other than Medici, I’m probably one of the most frequently painted people in history. That doesn't count [art] models who have been painted more times. [The portraits] show the progression of a lot of different forms of me: the fat me, the skinny me, the mustache me, the bearded me, the gray hair.
You wear a lot of different hats at Streamline. What aspect of your work do you love most?
I love being with people. I do three retreats a year. I can get to a high level of intimacy with people spending a week with them. We paint together every day. And I discover a lot of people at these retreats that I've invited onto our stages and to make videos. But that's not why people should come [to the events].
Participants make friends. I love the Plein Air Convention. It's one of my favorite weeks. It's exciting to see this movement that was kind of small and that’s blossomed into more than 1,000 people painting together for a week and learning from one another.
You've interviewed hundreds of painters. I know this is like asking, "who's your favorite child," but are there one or two that stand out as being particularly memorable, surprising, or unexpected?
The best moments for me were not when I was interviewing painters. It's when I was being painted by them. [Portrait painter] Nelson Shanks and I became pretty good friends in our four days together.
I remember him telling me the stories of his life and the stories of his struggles meeting with and becoming best friends with Princess Diana. That was memorable, as was my time with David Leffel and Richard Schmid. They all have lived such lives.
One of the reasons I started the video business is that I would have loved to observe Sargent and Sorolla and Zorn paint and get to know them. Many of the artists that I got to know in the past 20 years are gone. A lot of them are legends. Some of them will go down as some of the greatest artists in history.
What do you want to do that you haven’t done yet?
I’d like to create a modern version of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists. [Sixteenth century Italian painter and architect Giorgio Vasari compiled extensive biographies of artists of the Renaissance.] I'm in a unique position, having interviewed, gotten to know, and painted with literally hundreds of artists. To document this time in our history would be a cool thing to do.
Think about the realism movement that began about the time we started Fine Art Connoisseur, and the plein air movement, which started about the same time we introduced PleinAir magazine—both coincidences, by the way. There are more great living realist artists alive today than there ever have been in history. In terms of the quality of painting that's going on today, there's never been anything like it, both in the realism world and in the landscape world. [I found this perspective refreshing and intriguing.]
You help artists learn to market themselves. What’s the biggest mistake you see people make and what is a marketing game-changer?
Social media has been a blessing and a curse. If we have a bunch of followers on social media, we start performing for social media, and we're not necessarily performing for ourselves. As a result, it's stunting our growth.
One of the biggest mistakes is posting in-progress paintings; when people are scrolling by at 300 miles an hour, they are not reading the “in progress” note, and they think "Bad painting by so and so." The greatest artists of all time never let paintings that shouldn't see the light of day ever see the light of day. They burned them or cut them up.
The most important thing an artist can do is build their reputation, their brand. You can never ride for long periods of time on your laurels. Branding raises your prices. It raises your stature. [Streamline offers lots of art marketing resources.] The biggest tragedy is to learn about painters who are really good, but who will never be seen.
Lightening round
What's your most memorable art viewing experience?
When I was 24 years old, I walked into a gallery and saw this six- or seven-foot painting of a gypsy girl, which looked like what I would now imagine a Bouguereau. My jaw dropped, and I couldn't believe somebody could accomplish that. I didn’t know anything about art at that point. The painting was $25,000, which I couldn’t afford. To this day, I wish I had it.
Another memorable experience was at the Frick, seeing a room-sized painting of swashbucklers and pirates sword fighting on a ship. I was probably 10 years old. I was mesmerized by it. That was the moment when I realized that art can communicate something.
What's your most memorable meal?
My mother's beef stroganoff.
Do you like to cook?
I hate to cook.
I've got to ask, since I learned that your first job was working at a pop radio station: If you had a guest DJ spot today, what is one song that would be in your playlist?
Just My Imagination by The Temptations. It’s my favorite song of all time. Rhythmically it feeds my soul.
What's your favorite piece of art that you own?
The first one that comes to mind is a painting that David Leffel made in 1968. He was a relatively young man at the time. It's a painting of eggs and grapes in a handmade frame. David is such an important part of art history. Also, I have a painting my mother made of me when I was 13
Palate & Palette menu
Here’s what I would cook if Eric and his wife came to dinner, which they are invited to do:
Turmeric cashews
Crispy tofu avocado tacos
Summer corn salad
Vegan chocolate mousse
Where to find Eric Rhoads
Art School Live with Eric Rhoads
@ericrhoads
Eric Rhoads
facebook.com/eric.rhoads
Coffee with Eric
Streamline Publishing
Folly Cove Fine Art, 41 Main St., Rockport, MA
If you liked this story, check out Palate & Palette interviews with…
George Van Hook
Kyle Ma
C.W. Mundy
Dale Ratcliff
Cynthia Rosen
Lon Brauer
Meghan Weeks
Also…
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Thanks, Amy. I guess I should spend more time on YouTube! Fascinating about the portrait project.
Interesting, I had an image of him as a great marketer and his Magazine not much different than Outdoor life or some other how to publication aimed at if you only spend x amount and take my course I will show you the way. I now see him in a different light and I thank you for it. Looking forward to the next one.