Jan 23rd, 2026
We interviewed Carlton Davis about his book, An Artist’s Life, and his Bipolar 1 diagnosis.
We notice a distinct difference in your self-portraits. Do they accurately reflect your growing and changing personality? Or are they a reflection of your changing artistic style? Or a fusion of both?
The drawings are a fusion of both my changing self over the years and my growth as an artist.
When did you find your voice as an artist? You write early on in the book, “… I had yet to find a unique and recognizable style.”
My voice as an artist happened in the early 2000’s, when I mastered my use of oil stick crayons. I found a way of building up a surface that appears to be like painting but was made of the strokes of a stick or a pencil.
You were trained at Yale as an architect and later taught architecture, yet you’ve written that the profession never truly satisfied you. Looking back, what do you think architecture gave you as an artist, or what did it take away from your life as an artist?
Architecture as a profession is a team endeavor, while being an artist can be a solitary practice. I still love architecture and the space it can create, but it is a demanding profession that took away the time I could use to make art. I made my living as an architect and had to fit in making art as an aside, which I couldn’t do until I had a loft in downtown Los Angeles. The Art Dockuments-Tales of the Art Dock, The Drive-By Gallery (my second book), chronicles that period of intense involvement in the art world.
Your self-portraits from the 1970s carry an” uneasy intensity,” while recent works feel playful, colorful, even humorous. Was there a moment when you consciously decided to stop taking yourself so seriously—or did that shift happen gradually as your life changed?
As I got older, I took myself less seriously and I realized that the idea of making self-portraits could be a playful experience. A buddha with a clown nose could represent a condition of enlightenment while seeing the clown in all experience.
In the book, you describe turning to crack cocaine at age 50 as choosing “the quickest, most destructive path to hell.” What do you understand now about the emotional or psychological hunger behind that decision, especially in light of your later bipolar I diagnosis?
Cocaine gives the person a great high when first taken, but as the years pass the high dies a slow death. I came to understand that I fluctuated between self-destructive periods that lasted approximately 30 days then I would begin a period of energy, but the original high could never be reclaimed. I was high, but never again did I break out of the hell I created for myself. My first book, Bipolar Bare, chronicles that phase of my life.
You weren’t diagnosed with bipolar I disorder until age 59. How did receiving that diagnosis reframe your understanding of your past: your relationships, your creativity, and the periods of self-destruction?
I never understood the mood swings. When I was finally diagnosed as bipolar, my past behavior of drifting from job to job, relationship to relationship, and periods of immense energy followed by times of torpor and self-hatred became the lens through which I saw my life. Living clean and sober, my life became happier and more balanced. I still have to be on the look out for the life stressors that could make me actively unhappy. I got married for a second time. My wife is an architect and she hired me in spite of my reputation.
After surviving a pulmonary crisis at 65 and later undergoing bariatric surgery in your late 60s, your body, and your relationship to it, seems to have changed dramatically. Have those physical transformations influenced your art and your sense of identity?
Yes they have. Weighing over 300 pounds was the last vestige of the old Carlton. Casting it aside freed me. The thin me is able to see the precarious nature of all life. I could use that sense like someone enlightened and lightened to create an art where I can laugh at myself. I had myself photographed when I was really heavy and when I lost over 130 pounds. The thin me screams with delight. The heavy could barely jump inches off the ground. Of course these photographs were also a playful response to the artist Ai Wei Wei. I was totally naked, and didn’t have a Chinese pot covering my genitals.
Today, you write books, make art, and describe yourself as more good-natured and compassionate than in earlier decades. If you could speak directly to the man in that 1973 self-portrait, what would you want him to understand about where his life and his art would eventually lead?
I would say to that angry young man lighten up. You don’t have to be so serious. Live your life and take the arrows that strike all humans with a sense of calm and delight in simple survival.
Buy the book at Amazon.