When a person is born, Aristotle said, their mind is like a white sheet of paper ready to be written on. Plato, his teacher and chief intellectual rival, rejected the concept of tabula rasa, Latin for “blank slate.”
“It can be tempting to imagine our skulls like the walls of a gallery—blank canvases to house our autonomous creations,” says multidisciplinary artist Quinn Keck, weighing in on the centuries-old debate. But just as a gallery frames what viewers see, or shadows in Plato’s allegorical cave become warped in the firelight, our minds are shaped by unseen forces that distort our perceptions and obscure the questions we never think to ask. As Quinn puts it, “We are what we perceive, how we pay attention, and who we remember.”
Working across books, printmaking, creative coding, and installation, Quinn questions the hidden frameworks undergirding the complex organizing systems of math, physics, economics, technology, and philosophy—structures that seem logical, even inevitable. Like maps, these systems help us navigate the world by smoothing, simplifying, and combining elements of reality. Yet, in doing so, they inevitably introduce fresh distortions. As British statistician George E. P. Box said, “All models are wrong; some are useful.”
The most dangerous models, Quinn argues, are those that slip by unnoticed: “How can you amend a model you refuse to see?” This idea animates pieces like “Words Are Spells, Spells Are Words,” “W.I.T.C.H,” and “Don’t Play the Role Capitalism Assigned You,” Quinn’s entry into our September exhibition, The Art of Resistance. In it, cascading skulls and rib cages tumble diagonally across the oat-colored letterpress, a visceral reminder of bodies caught in the systemic machinery and relentless accumulation of capital.
Growing up in what they call “the heart of the empire”—the United States—Quinn says, “I’ve been consumed by alienation, despair, and nihilism, which…[have] left me alternating between mental health crises and getting ‘better’ enough to get out of bed and go to work the next day. In many ways, an ideal state for a capitalist: well enough to produce value but not revolt.”
Scroll through to read our interview with Quinn Keck, or tap the button below to see their work in The Art of Resistance.
In Today’s Q+Art Interview…
Quinn Keck discusses the contradictions of art-making under capitalism, explains why artists with “regular” day jobs aren’t failed creatives, and shares a “measured response” from Schrödinger’s cat.
Which books, art-related or otherwise, belong on every artist’s shelf?
Quinn Keck: Stories of Art by James Elkins; Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher; 78 Acts of Liberation by Lane Smith; The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein; Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities by Nick Walker.
What do you wish you learned in art school but weren’t taught?
QK: Making art is something I care deeply about and is riddled with contradictions under capitalism.
You are not a failed artist if you have a day job—there’s way more than merit that goes into who gets to work in a studio full time. One statistic that has stuck with me around this is that “every $10,000 in total family income makes a person around 2% more likely to pursue a creative occupation—meaning that someone who comes from a family worth $1 million is ten times more likely to become an artist than someone whose family is worth $100,000. (This doesn’t mean, of course, that most artists are themselves rich—the study also notes that the incomes of creative workers tend to be lower than average.)
What is the best advice you’ve ever received? What’s the worst?
QK: The best advice I’ve gotten is that there’s no one correct way to make art, and you are not a bad artist if you don’t do one drawing every day (or any other rule). If a rule works for you, great, but many of the methods in books like The Artist’s Way are not universal. For more on that, see Fenn Priest’s post on Substack.
The worst advice I’ve ever gotten was to pick your medium based on what is popular on the art market.
What's your biggest barrier to being an artist?
QK: Time and figuring out how to manage an influx of ideas with the demands of capitalism.
What do you do to maintain your mental health?
QK: I try to remember that things take the time they take, which is a close second candidate for the second-best art advice I’ve ever received. I have both art and non-art friends and go to exercise classes (this is not accessible to everyone, and honestly I’m also not sure how I became a gym-bro). Though I have a lot of qualms with the mental health system, getting an ADHD diagnosis and access to medications did help a lot.
What do you dislike about the art world? How would you change it if you could?
QK: There are many unspoken rules that are hard to navigate, though I appreciate books like Art/Work that are writing those rules down so they can be shared. Making art is not the meritocracy I was led to believe growing up. There are also very real money, class, and privilege aspects that are unpopular conversation points when trying to sell more expensive work to people who can afford it. I don't come from a family that can fund my life while I figure out how to be a profitable artist, and a lot of other creative people are in that boat. I've felt a lot of shame around having a day job or not living in NYC because it feels like that means I'm a failed artist.
What are you listening to in the studio right now?
QK: I’m listening to the Upstream Podcast and “WTF is Sleep” by Worriers.
What are you working on that you’re excited about right now?
QK: Schrödinger’s Box: A Measured Response from the Cat—coming to a book fair near you soon!
Quinn Keck: Website | Instagram
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. All images published with permission of Quinn Keck; feature image: “Irrational Symbolic Thinking” installation at Artist Television Access, 2026.