Spotlight On Briden Cole Schueren

Spotlight On BRIDEN COLE SCHUEREN

Get to know this trans artist who is making waves with color!

By Kaylee Duff

Briden with his mural.

Name: Briden Cole Schueren

Age: 30

Medium: I am a little bit ADD with my artwork, but I love it. I do photography, painting, metal, and mixed media. I’m also working on wax, with encaustic. I’m working with oils and acrylic. I also do metal work and carving into metal. Anything I can get my hands on.

Hearts.

Kaylee: Why is creating art meaningful to you?

Briden: Creating art is meaningful to me because it has helped me get through a lot of struggles. I never really thought of it as a good outlet until I was working on a couple pieces when I was going through a darker time in my life. After I completed them, I had such a weight lifted off my shoulders. I felt like I had graduated. I was able to let those emotions free and attach them to that piece, and then sell it or give it away. It’s something I have to do to keep myself happy.

Kaylee: Who and what inspires your art?

Briden: Salvador Dalí. As far as visual artists, he is somebody that I look up to as inspiration. He’s also very ADD and queer. He has made artwork as far as film, sculpture, drawing, and paintings; he does it all. His artwork is very abstract, surrealist. Where you know what the object is, but it’s not a real thing. Sometimes my artwork can come off like that, where it is not possible for that to be real, but I made it look like a tree of some sort. Also Dr. Suess. Him and his color palette. I’m very much into color, and testing the limits of what I can do with color.

Kaylee: How did you start? What was your beginning?

Briden: My grandmother is an artist. From a very, very young age, I would paint with her. It would be things like fruit and still-life. Her aesthetic is… You would look at it and think it would be sold at a Cracker Barrel. It’s still very cutesy, and she is very talented and very beautiful. She works with oils and acrylics, and does flowers and animals. I also do flowers and do nature, but I do my own twist to make it a little bit more me. My parents do not have any artistic abilities; that’s what they say, that it skipped them and went into me. I went to school at University of Dayton, for graphic design. I’m mainly self-taught when it comes to my art.

Fluffy Balloons.

Kaylee: Do you have a favorite piece or collection?

Briden: It’s hard because as I’m continuously working, I’m growing and developing myself as an artist and [developing] different strengths. I just completed a couple pieces yesterday, and I’m like, I love this!!

There’s one that is called Fluffy Balloons. It looks like really skinny, long trees, kind of abstract and you know they’re trees. Very Dr. Suess-y. The colors are very emotional. I was going through a very turmoil part of my life, just being very depressed and in a very negative relationship. I was trying to do self-discovery and find my happiness. That piece was about the growth and getting out of the negativity. With these dark clouds that were surrounding the growth, and there were these really light clouds that were welcoming me into the happiness.

My second piece was one that I worked on like, six years ago. I didn’t sign it; I didn’t feel like it was finished. I just kind of put it off to the side, maybe I’ll get back to it. About two years ago, I picked it back up and completely re-did it. That one was also talking about life struggles. I identify myself as poly, so I’m open to multiple partners and that experience. I was in a struggle through that, and this was me finding that source. Talking about how I always have my heart out first, no matter how much I’ve been hurt. That piece was really striking.

The thing that I’m actually hoping to write a book on, and create a series with, is Josie and the Traveling Balloons. I’m actually just now re-working the character. It’s a character I made that is gender non-conforming, that goes on a quest to find themselves and to find happiness. They have these balloons — that are actually recycled lightbulbs that I found, that I turned into her little balloons that they hold up. They’re just this happy little person, that’s just kind of figuring out who they are. But they don’t go by any [specific] pronouns; if you call them he, she, them or they — they’re just happy to be existing and finding out journeys in life. That’s been kind of a work in progress. Trying to make a whole series of Josie, and then making it into a children’s book. And then going on tour, because I bought a school bus.

Kaylee: If you had to choose one meal to eat for the rest of your life, what would you choose?

Briden: I mean, I love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They’re just simple, and I can always be like you know what, I gotta go and eat real fast, I can make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Check out Briden’s solo art exhibition, Not Lost, But Found, at John Glenn International Airport through January 2019, via the Ohio Art League. Visit him online at thatguysart.com and follow his Instagram @briden_schueren.