Doug Giles is an avid hunter, minister, the popular host of the Warriors and Wildmen Podcast, owner and editor of the political website Clashdaily.com, and the author of such bestselling books as Pussification: The Effeminization of the American Male, Raising Righteous and Rowdy Girls, and Rise, Kill and Eat: A Theology of Hunting from Genesis to Revelation. He is also a respected and highly collected artist whose work highlights the savagery and power of both man and beast. I sat down with Doug to talk about his art and his inspirations.
Which came first, the art or the writing?
Art. I could definitely draw way before I could write my name, which completely explains all my life.
Starting that early, does that mean your self-taught?
I did go to art school, I graduated Texas Tech, my undergrad with a Bachelor of Fine Art. I gotta tell you man, art school at Tech and also the high school art classes that I had – complete garbage. I mean, they didn’t teach me anything about painting. My drawing teachers were decent [but] art [for them] was that kind of stuff like, ‘Whatever you feel, Doug. You wanna crap on a canvas, smear it over, put a frame on it, we’ll just call it abstract expressionism. You wanna do a plaster cast of your nut sack or something, we’ll just call that whatever.’ That’s the kind of stuff that they were doing. So yeah, there was a little self-teaching. What I did is I would find masters and I’d try to pull off their works and deduce what kind of paints they were using, what kind of tools they were doing for application and how they got to where they got. But yeah, so I have a natural talent. When I was young, I’d just copy Mad magazines, and when I was older, I would find works that I think are laudable in other people and then I’d try to copy them. Then finally try to find my own groove and my own place in the art field.
What mediums do you prefer?
I’m mostly an oil painter. I mean, I love drawing but like if I do draw it’s usually charcoal instead of graphite. My old paintings are selling really well, so the demand is for oil and that’s where the money’s going. So like Andrew Breitbart says, follow the dough. You know?
Who are your major influences, the artists that you emulated?
My favorite artist [is] Nicolai Fechin. He’s a Russian artist. He was trained by Ilya Repin who’s just, I mean, these guys are otherworldly. It’s weird, because a lot of American artists, they don’t even know who they are. I love all the…anybody who takes their craft seriously. All the old masters, Rembrandt, Vermeer, I like, even though Goya’s stuff is kind’a macabre and caricaturist in his rendering of his subjects, there’s something about his stuff that I find very appealing. Obviously, Van Gogh and his deep depression and what emitted from his soul and psyche in his paintbrush. To me, that kind of stuff’s fascinating just from a psychological standpoint as well.
You work sells very well but I haven’t seen any critical reviews of your work. Have you had any major reviews? Do you get praise, or do you get, ‘Oh, this guy just does animals,’ or ‘This guy does masculine pulp characters of biblical images,’ or …?
Yeah, well, they’re selling extremely well. I don’t wanna throw a figure out there, but I think you’d be impressed. So that’s my main thing. First of all, I only paint stuff I like, you know. Second, my customers, I just want my customer to say, you know, ‘Holy shit, man, that’s a great painting. Thank you so much.” Instead of, ‘Ew,’ and you know, ‘Send it back.’ So, I haven’t even really see anybody critique my artwork, I really don’t have time to Google myself, but nobody’s really taken a pot shot over and said, “Hey Giles, you know your stuff is pedantic,’ or ‘It’s a pathetic rip-off of …’ whomever. So yeah. Maybe this magazine interview will draw out the enemies of my art.
Most of your work is sold online, through Social Media, through word-of-mouth, and via commissions. Why is your work not in galleries?
I’ve been approached by one gallery in particular in Texas, and another one’s kind’a semi-shopping me right now. I don’t mind working through them, but you know, they’re like, ‘Well, we have Social Media reach, we have our client base,’ like, ‘Tell me your social media reach,’ like, ‘Oh, we have 5,000 people on our art side.’ It’s like, ‘Really. I’ve got two million on social media.’ So … and then they want, you know, 50 to 60 percent. I’m like, screw off, man. I’d rather try on my own to make it happen.
I’ve got enough internet pull, Social Media type stuff that if I collected my works and we planned it and pushed it a little bit, between me and my hunting buddies down here in the Austin, San Antonia area, and international we could probably throw a pretty cool little weekend show and maybe sell some pieces. But you know, the online gallery, in the advent of selling that way and just completely circumventing these other people that made you feel like you had to bow and kiss their ring just to get into their graces, and, ‘Please, hang my painting on your wall,’ man, I don’t roll like that.
Because of, again, Instagram, Facebook, email blasts, all that stuff. The word spreads so quickly. What I’ve found [is]…people like going straight to the creator and I like it too, man. I like knowing my customers instead of having this ghost come to the gallery, but I don’t get to talk to or deal with. So, I like it that way, and it’s working, man. You know the old adage, man, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on two [books]. One of them is for the Christian audience specifically, and it’s a powerful book on hope and hopelessness. I’m starting another book, like, directly take on the radical feminist and all the smegma they’re spewing about men being toxic. We’ve so documented their bullshit over at Clashdaily.com that I’m tired of hearing about it. I’m tired of hearing these lardy hagfish just continually berate men and try to pitch us all as Harvey Weinstein or some of these other gross, homunculus ham fisted leftists that have truly abused women, where the majority of men have not done that. But we’re all being pitched as devils. So if they wanna fight, I’m gonna give ’em one. I was thinking about the title, If Masculinity is Toxic, Call Jesus Radioactive. That’ll get them in, and then I’ll slay them once they come in, you know.
Speaking of ‘slaying them,’ you’re very outspoken and make no apologies about your social and political views. Have you seen that affect your art in anyway?
No. You know, on Instagram and stuff I just put my art stuff out there and maybe some lifestyle stuff. I don’t put any of the political type things because it’s more of a … but you gotta know that … first of all, the art community by and large is pretty left of center, and so yeah, again, because I’m so entrenched and somewhat known as a conservative libertarian person type of guy, you know. I’m not really impacted by the left and we don’t really push it on Facebook. It’s all Instagram and it’s starting to become more of a word of mouth type thing.
Learn more about Doug Giles’ artwork at Douggiles.art
