March 19, 2024 Ashley Thalman

Behind the Scenes at Ultraviolet Backdrops Studio

matthew peterson stands in the middle of ultraviolet backdrops studios

For a long time, we felt like this space was best kept private; it’s messy, it’s part of our family home with a trampoline and compost pit just outside. We thought, 'Maybe they don’t need to see where the sausage is made,' but then again, maybe you do.

Our backdrops are made in our 2 car garage studio. Each canvas is infused with our life: the music we listen to, with our wrestling and surrendering to life, to parenthood, to what these paintings want to become.

We know this place: we know its slopes and water pressure, the light, the pesky places, and placement of tools and paint. Our intimacy with this space, and the experience of working here, is as big a part of these backdrops as we are, as you are, as the cotton mills that make the canvas, as the music that vibrates over them as we work, as the paint in the can, as the names we give them.

The truth about creativity and making a creative business is that the work you make is made where you make it. If you wait for your space, ideas, body, bank account, tools, etc., to be glamorous, safe, or make sense: you’ll always be waiting.

Could it be that life gives us what we need to create right now? Perhaps there is no 'over there,' no later, no perfect scenario or space or light or camera or client. Maybe there’s just the terror and beauty of the blank canvas and what you do with it. Maybe there’s nothing but the idea and what it offers the world when you show up as exactly what, how, and where you are.