Sage Vaughn’s work has always lived between worlds: between beauty and chaos, the wild and the civilized, the fragile and the untamed. Recently, that boundary has begun to fray. This short film stays with him there, as he reflects on the pull between comfort and expectation, and the need to keep moving toward something less certain, but more true: a path that demands leaving the familiar behind, and returning with something harder, stranger, and necessary to share.



Ghost Story: It’s spilled over quite a bit now, but when we first visited you for this video, you had this separate, other room in your studio that you were exploring new ideas in.
Sage Vaughn: I liked having both spaces. I like going outside and coming back inside. I think that throughout history we look to these people to leave the society that we have and come back with some kind of insight. I do feel like that is part of an artist's job description: to explore past concise realms of logic and come back and share and expand our experience.

What sparked the need to have this separate space to explore new ideas?
I was really terrified of it because I thought it doesn't make sense with the work that I had made before. I think part of it is that part of me had atrophied. I had been talking about things in this nice, beautiful way for so long. These other paintings I’ve been doing are beautiful too, but they're darker… or maybe just more mature.

What was it like to try and explore these other parts of yourself?
Hard. It's hard, it's frustrating. It's really defeating to stumble while you're exploring, because it's just such an effort to go forward into something you don't really understand. It's a different type of contentment to when there is any progress made.

And this other space gave you a place to do that more freely?
It's almost this hack to just trick myself into understanding something by not overanalyzing. I'm able to make connections that apply mainly because I think so much of the work has to be intuitive and done subconsciously. It’s this idea of just being able to talk about stuff without having to pretend that there's answers.

Did you feel like you had always searched for answers?
There's art that an artist makes for themselves and there's art that artists make for others. I've always been in the second category of making art for others. And both are great. Both categories produce incredible works and both have their pitfalls. For me, it's never been an exploration of self. It's always been an exploration of what I find.

And sharing that?
You know, I may look back at this in 50 years and realize it's all just been about me this whole time, but I do really feel like it is. I like the communication, the exchange. That feels more validating than “I'm working something out about myself.”

How do you look back on it now?
I think everybody has a certain path that they've been assigned to, or that they've assigned themselves. And at certain points, you realize you're hitting these crossroads. And I think for me as an artist, I've realized that it's just all crossroads. The choice isn't necessarily “go left, right. Do this, do that.” It's how much to engage in all of it.

Credits:
Directors: Justin Paviolo-Knowles + Alex Nicholson
Director of Photography: Justin Paviolo-Knowles
Music: Mount Eerie
Editor: Justin Paviolo-Knowles
Colorist: Andrew Francis
VFX: Mike Gaynor