What Is This All About?

Art Stars are few and far between, and many of them seem a bit ..oh, I don’t know, artificial (to put it nicely). I am NOT a star; I am a working-class artist…

I work in anonymity for the most part. Art is what I need to do with my life, it is not a get rich quick scheme. But that has been true of almost everyone we revere today: In their time, they were NOTHING. If you can get past the fact that art doesn’t really pay very well and that nobody values the artist, one can always say that it beats working for a living. If you can handle it…

This is something I’ve come to accept in recent years. I had higher hopes and expectations when I was younger, but now I know it won’t happen. I can’t really work at McDonalds or Wal-Mart, though, so I’m stuck at the low end of commercial art with about a million other people.

Sure, there are a few LIVE art superstars around who make a good living through their art. There are two general types who become “big” while they are alive:
The first type uses what I lovingly call the “BRASS BALLS” approach to art. This involves things like putting a single dot on a canvas and titling it “The Triumph of Christ” or painting a lone red square and calling it “A Dozen Roses.” I suppose this approach could also be called “The Emperor’s New Clothes” school of art. You go out of your way to do stuff that doesn’t make any sense, brazenly call it something inscrutable, and dare anyone to contradict you. “If you can’t understand what the hell it is, it must be art.”
The second type could either be called Super Salesman Marketers, or Scam Artists. You pick… they aren’t really all that good at art but they have at least a mediocre talent for painting combined with the obsessive controlling drive (and ethics) of used car salesman. People like Thomas Kinkade use a marketing machine, brute force sales and religion to sell pseudo-art like laundry soap. But then he’s a multi-millionaire and I’m not, so what do I know? Ethics and traditional concepts definitely get in the way of art stardom.

Right now, I’m doing a lot of portrait/caricature sketching work - or trying to. In the past I was known for pretty landscapes, especially scenery of Oregon, and some large scale abstracts. I even sold a few paintings to corporations and had a handful of avid collectors. But if you can’t throw everything out the window and start over in a new direction, what good is life? Nothing is ever permanent. That’s blue collar…

It seems like I’ve all but given up painting because it’s expensive compared to the selling price, and paintings (at least MINE) sell slowly. So as of this writing, I mostly draw people; it’s good for art fairs and various events. A few bucks here and there. It doesn’t take a lot for me to be happy. I do this even though I’m not a great portrait artist. I just started, after all. But I’m getting better. It’s like learning any new trade. And that, too, is part of the reality of being a working-class artist.
I create portraits of people, but I am no DaVinci (nor will I ever be).
I also paint abstracts, but I’m no Willem DeKooning or Pablo Picasso … or even Jackson Pollock.
In the past, I painted a lot of impressionist landscapes and wildlife, especially seabirds, but I’m no Winslow Homer. Those paintings were selling pretty good a couple of years ago but then things kind of dropped off, so I started learning to do pencil portraits and ink caricatures. I’ll even paint a sign to pick up a few bucks from time to time: I’m working class. I’m blue collar. I’m the artist you’ll never hear about in New York art circles, or maybe anywhere else. I will do events and parties, though. But that’s not what being a great artist is all about, that’s being a professional circus clown. But I guess I’m okay with that.

So in the world of art, I am - and will be for the rest of my life - a nobody. If my work makes anyone rich, it will be someone else, and long after I’m gone. So I won’t care… Is that the way I want it? I don’t know, but I do know that it’s the way it is.