Ryan McDonough

Founder, Sometime Artist

CFO and co-founder @Accompany, acquired by @Cisco. Turnaround CFO @Ning, sold to Glam Media. Former seed VC. McKinsey trained. @Wharton School and @Haas School of Business.

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The Art of Business: Dialogic Podcast Season 2 Episode 3

August 21, 2019
DESIGN

Earlier this month, I had a chance to sit down with Jake Thomas of Dialogic to talk about my experience balancing business and art in my life. Given that it has been over 25 years since we last caught up, Jake and I covered everything from our time in high school together in the Santa Cruz mountains to thoughts on what it means to be creative.

We covered a lot of ground over 90 minutes. Below are a few of the things that I referenced in our discussion.

Workspace

I am a huge fan of working with acrylics – it is an extremely forgiving medium that can be easily cleaned up with water. When I’m feeling creative, I back out the car & lay down one of the large sheets of cardboard I keep folded up next to the cabinets. When it comes time to finish a piece, I have a pile of wooden blocks to float the piece and allow for run-off.

Fun with Mistakes

We touched briefly on a mistake I made that turned into a piece I love. I had already used drywall spackle to build up some of the texture the canvas before applying a wash to the canvas. I then proceeded to paint a small, highly detailed bird. I couldn’t get is as sharp and as detailed as I wanted. Instead, I cut that top coat – bird and all – from the canvas. I then printed an image I liked onto piece of paper with shipping tape on it in. The inkjet ink can’t dry on plastic so I could then transfer it directly to the spackle. The first few attempts didn’t come out as crisp as I had hoped, so I just sanded them off as started again. Third time was the charm.

First Painting After a Decade-Long Haitus

I hadn’t painted since high school – and even then it wasn’t a primary medium. In the 90s, I mostly used pastels, pencils & inks. This painting marked my decision to get back into art, even if I was only able to do a piece every 6 months.

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