everybody i'm an ex architect turned artist and my work spans a wide spectrum of creativity from painting to sculpture to game invention and  storytelling i teach swimming as well as art and i really enjoy exploring my creativity and sharing it with people and empowering people that's a lot different talents let us take them one by one tell us a little bit about you actually i saw in your bio that you were you were born in canada polish parents and that you pen a pencil grand in your hand right yeah i was about that yeah i'm getting i was actually born with a pencil crown in my hand but my mother was an architect and she was quite accomplished and a very creative woman she was encouraged me to draw in sketch and when i was a little boy i slept in a bunk bed on the lower bunk and my sister would sleep above and my father would draw sketches of little characters on the underside of my sister's bunk bed upon my request so i was you know my imagination was already going and i only knew it when i was very young young boy and and on my report cards my teachers would say oh martin is you know a good student except he often gets sidetracked and what i would do is just sort of lose focus but be focusing on my own drawings and sketches and i would do a lot of those in class i love it and you know sometimes people who actually recognize that let him get away with it it's really they were supposed to be you know you have to learn everything else that and they thought you were able to do that in a way so like talk about the creativity you know how do you have time to do all of these different things you know tell us about that that's a really good question i kind of think of myself as a juggler  you know i think it's great it's great to have that skill to be able to juggle you can enjoy a little bit of everything but at the same time if you take on too many balls you can drop one so i'm still learning to juggle as well as possible  i enjoy that variety but i also recognize as my sister would say it's important to have focus so i'm learning to prioritize a little more my my approach is really to make sure i'm sort of juggling a little bit of each ball enough so that i can keep them all in the air that's the strategy doesn't always work but that's how it goes about what about tell us about your clients as far as like a typical day goes for you because not only sure your own inventions and your own work that people actually contact dealin you certain work for them so what kind of work do you do well the work right now ranges from painting commissions portraits children's book illustration and architectural rendering and some private lessons for those homers and aspiring artists so obviously scheduling is very calendar i just started using a digital calendar a little more it's very helpful or exactly without it exactly and you know i'm constantly seeking new clients as well so i have to balance  between working on projects i have been looking for new clients at the moment i don't have an agent i still try to wear that hat as well enjoy that aspect of the business but of course i don't want to take too much away from my time and creativity so i have to be resourceful that's how i approach things tell us about how you are related to that and how we ended up here and over here sure yeah well i think one thing a lot of freelancers can relate to is there are times when you have a lot of free time hence the word free i join that free time i often think of you know ways of creating residual income for example by inventing  something i was flying to europe a few years ago and i started to think wow you know wouldn't it be fun to invent a game and for many reasons obviously creating a game could be fun sharing it could be fun making lots of money could be f and so i i thought of the subject of the census which i felt i had been and wonderful topic and under exploited in my opinion and i started to think of and it would be great to have a game obviously there's certain  practical concerns when you think of the senses you know you can't really have perishable you know things in a game food and you know what would you sniff but i start to think about it more creatively and came up with the concept of  game that was inspired by the senses and creating sense challenges and when you think of it there are more than just five senses there's the sixth sense we talk about the sense of direction sense of balance and so on and i thought wow this could be a great game so that manifested itself in a game called perfect sense i started to network and as it turns out my father's ex girlfriends egg boyfriend was friends with the inventor of balderdash which is a famous eighty's hit  there yeah and so i thought well it would be great to strategically partner with somebody who's done it you know a piece of the pie is better than no pie so sharing that with somebody and gaining that experience is what i was about to do writing in my sleep and that game was a lot of fun and that and that spun off into this game sensibility which is a game which has ten cents categories and it's a family game and every there's something for everybody in the game  ages and it's it's ten and up really and there are a lot of fun sense challenges you know touch challenges listening challenges sense of timing direction balance sense of humor and yeah in the sixth sense as well thanks perfect that makes when you're in your journey and just to wrap that up so paul two and i have become partners on a variety of games i usually go to him when i have an idea and he helps refine it and we take it to the next level and the current game i'm working on is to bucco which is right here it's a new word game and i'm very excited to launch it in the couple months to tell us a little bit about it yeah sure to buka is eleven names you have done my my aspiration was to make a game a word game that was unique and that made people think out of the box and was original you know everyone knows the existing were games out there but i thought there there was room for more creativity and so my answer was to create a game a random the game piece a little more interesting and so it's a random word making in taking game you can actually steal your opponent's words you can physically take them so that's a lot of fun who doesn't like taking something from somebody absolutely and winning yeah and there's there's a very unique alphabet that i've designed that hasn't been done before and i'm really excited to share it with everybody yeah and the how long until you think it's going to be out should be about two months until we start story and to imagine it and to sort of get inside the head of the author and to bring it to life and to add something of myself to it as well and hopefully you know conveying something that you know a powerful message that inspires people in some way so creating that and seeing it manifest into a book is a wonderful process and it's a shared experience too i get to share it with the author and then share it with with everybody out there i know i'm going to share with everybody out there that we actually met martin because one of our clients he was writing about that he is in the illustrations for shared with us you know his illustrations and we there were any words involved that you had laid out and we could actually tell that story by looking at your designs do your your work and it's just absolutely beautiful so thank you every now that is something and it's kind of interesting the way that to me and then to find out all this other stuff that you're doing and i have done so it's really a pleasure to have you here today yeah so tell us about like what about  is being so talented ever a hindrance to you well first of all i don't always think of myself as being so talented so thank you for saying that just a little i think it can certainly be a hindrance you know if a person knows they have talent and it's somehow it takes a little motivation away it's almost like you can sit and rest on your laurels and i'm certainly aware of that and that you know potential the potential for that and so i don't it's not that i put myself down but i certainly put things in perspective and i realize that having some facility with something is great and i'm grateful for it but at the same time i'm fully aware that one needs to work very hard in order to achieve one's goals and so i look at it that way what about traveling it doesn't fire you i do travel a lot yeah i mean traveling is i think the something in a way you've never seen it before so when i travel that's what happens and i always get great ideas when i travel which is why i came here also today from new york a different probably came up with a few ideas on the bus on the way here we've had a lot of people come and tell us that because it is kind of here when you get outside of your own place that's where the creativity yeah so also when you were talking about like you know being in new york and you know when you were talking about painting painting outside and the reason is because i love nature and i love interacting with people and sharing my artwork and hearing what people think and how they see it it's a conversation also i think getting exposure in oh it's a wonderful opportunity new york city is is such a dense place thriving you know very bustling in and dynamic and full of people from all over the world so it's a great opportunity to have my work seen by people and potentially bought as well  i don't have a sign up that says for sale i simply do my thing and if somebody is interested they you know they talk to me and we take it from there what is the best way that someone could get in touch with you they're watching and you know maybe it's recess what about like let's talk about some suggestions that you might have for some people out there who want to be creative that may not feel great like what do you what would your words of wisdom be well actually you know it's funny when i talk to people and share some of what i'm up to a lot of people say oh i wish i was creative you know i don't i'm a creative and actually i think everybody is creative and the way i would express that or explain that is that in  everyday actions there's creativity always you know as as human beings i think we need to have to be creative to simply function so even in tasks require creative thinking on some level now obviously the degree to which a person is creative depends on what they do and i think so i would say you know if a person wants to become more creative you know push your boundaries get yourself out of your comfort zone experiment and then also i think being  aware or making the distinction that there is nothing wrong or bad in let's say doing something that others me tell you is incorrect for example the distinction is that it perhaps works for the task at hand or doesn't but i think when we put a value judgement on what we do we limit ourselves and we and then we decide we're no good so i think if you are able to make the distinction look it's just now working and that's a necessary step to progressing the relationship to failure i think is really important because a lot of people when they fail at something they think oh i'm done i suck it's no good right but if you say no it simply didn't work and what can i learn from that and let's move on wow like that's the way to really progress so i think getting past your own sort of yourself and how your relationship to failure but also being and lastly i would say to curious i think curiosity is really opens all the doors of creativity i think that's so interesting i totally agree with you on all of that and i think that in a way i find you inspiring and interesting because the fact that like you went out and even though you're an artist which is huge and now you're like oh i'm going to create a game i'm going to take it to the marketplace and i'm not afraid of going into that it's not your thing then you end up over here in children's books you know so there's there's a limit to what you're what you decide you want to go for when you want to go for is that right yeah that's that's a great way of putting a chain i just find it fun to watch i remind myself of that fact all the time i think really there are no limits for any of us and what i've learned is that we impose our own limits on ourselves so  i think the more we're able to realize that there are no limits and that we're standing often in our own way that when we get out of our own way anything is really possible you know absolutely what about where do you see yourself in five years wow five years that's a long time but i do know that i think i had it is it is going by very quickly in five years well i would certainly like to see a worldwide success i would love to have had a few  shows you know that are both inspiring and empowering for people that are sending i've had an art show i've typically done commissioned art work and private commissions and i haven't chosen to go into that arena  does that work just curious well i think the way an artist would get started if they're going into the world of being represented by a gallery would be to create a body of work on a on a theme or a topic and then approach the gallery with that body of work which requires a certain amount of time set aside in a certain number of paintings and no one can start with less paintings and be in a group show for example just think i don't know i think about this yeah learning along with our viewers here yeah so at vehicle for telling the story of how we can feel unrestrained in some way to express ourselves and so it's really only a metaphor and the fact that i painted the grass white is a suggestion that it's like a blank slate that really depending on how we choose to see things anything can be possible and now so that was my approach to to that painting how do you when you i guess are kind of calling on the gallery  presenting your ideas in how flattering when they actually can realize what he were doing right well i haven't done that yet and the goal is really to create a series of paintings along this these lines and to approach a gallery so i'm very excited to have begun that process yeah it's very different than doing commissioned art work you know there's a lot more freedom of creativity to some degree in something like this really there's no one saying you know martin and we'd like you to do this or that it's really i'm asking myself what would i like to do what would i like to share so it's very exciting to be doing that doing other paying on the subway at the moment and it's just so much fun to  stand on the platform with a big painting and see people's expressions as they come off the train and they are like wow you know nobody imagines to see an artist's you know working with a large scale piece in public like that and i think a lot of people are shocked so it's it's inspiring for me to see people's reactions and they're very encouraging in general oh i'm sure yeah tell about that one ok this this is the painting i did in central park it's at the lake and i did it in the summer as you can see i was inspired by the beauty of the scene nature and the fact that a lot of people really love this little secluded bay and this is ebo and in fact a lot of weddings take place under the  come back every day for a few days to do this painting until one day i arrived in the is gone you know and i was shocked apparently it had been vandalized and so i'm very happy that i captured this because i think it meant so much to a lot of people hard to see after the big but my next big project really super excited about is storytelling and i've been creating a story an epic story a narrative inspired by some of the characters from sensibility if  a message of of how powerful it is really to be to be present you know today considering all the challenges we have that faces yeah and so in the storytelling world tells a little bit about that where does that come from e u and where do you share your stories yeah well i have to say that my father's been the greatest source of inspiration for me in storytelling he's a grand master storyteller through art it is it is you know it's a and he's cultivated it to such a degree it's just incredible he's never taken into the commercial round but anyone who meets him can see in silly that and here and be enrolled in what he's saying  rap because you know he doesn't have the style that comes with rap but it's more old school but he has an amazing writer and he's very creative so i've taken a lot of inspiration from from him and his ability not only to recognize what makes a good story but also to embellish it sometimes so we have a joke and we put up a hand when he's talking and say ok well five fingers means is it's you know not really the truth before bigger is more likely and so on and so i think that's really where my storytelling instincts come from and so i've been cultivating them and i just think storytelling is a wonderful medium for sharing for inspiring and  for bringing people's stories to light and i can't even agree with the war i just made that all the different things that you're doing and i'm so glad you're here on talented people is there anything else you want to leave everybody with lorne well if i had a few balls i would try to juggle but let appreciate you give me the time to be here to to share and i'd love to hear from anybody out there you know who's inspired or has an idea or who knows maybe we'll end up clobbering that's an invitation to you