Twenty two artists share their stories in this book, questions they have asked themselves, the problems they've faced and overcome.
Gerry Metz
- Why do you think some artists make it, while others never quite succeed?
- It's that extra something that, for lack of a better word, I call "heart". I've tried to analyze that quality over the years. You see it in some paintings. It makes them stand a foot off the wall. It goes well beyond what;s on the canvas. Impossible to define, it's what can make a painting a fascinating, vital entity that will always hold interest for the viewer. And it's what makes that painting sell. Often, you, the artist, can;t even tell whether it's there. I do believe, though, that if you're creating art only for the money, that elusive quality will never quite develop.
Frank Webb
...Beginners watching a demo...will be pretty much absorbed in technical matters, and there's nothing wrong with that. They need that information until they are able to express themselves in paint. Later they will be concerned with developing their conceptual powers, because what ultimately separates one artist from another is the power to formulate concept...a unique aesthetic concept that will make this artist's work something that has never been seen or felt before.
-Do you think it's possible for the artist to do that? Hasn't everything been said, to some extent, before?
- Every work of art ought to be new. All the books have not yet been written, nor all the plays.And all the pictures have not been painted. It seems to me the world is crying out more than ever now for the quality of uniqueness. We live in an age when our culture tend to routinize, almost brutilize our everyday lives. The sameness of mass communication ( we all get the same messages every day), of products, have left it to art to lift us, give us a vision, a glimpse of what might be, more than mass communication and pass production can.
- How should the artist of today make him...ready to be a professional?
-The answer is very simple. You learn to draw by drawing. You learn to draw and paint by drawing and painting. In "the Shape of Content" , Ben Shann, the artist, wrote on the education of a painter:" To become an artist, you get a job on a farm and draw and paint and draw and paint.You get a job in a factory and draw and paint and draw and paint.....Art is not so much "knowledge about." It's hand-on knowledge.
Austin Deuel
-What does make a painting sell?
- There things have to be in every painting:
One: Tell a story. Like that Andrew Wyeth painting. A water pump, a board, and an old bucket. That bucket is a story. Because that puts the human touch to it. They'd been there, left something. Smoke out of a chimney, light in a window. That kind of things.
Two: Create a dramatic mood. Fog. Snow. Rain. Sunset. Even the heat of the day with all the shadows burned out.
Three: Dramatic composition. Every painting has to have a strong vertical in it. It's what draws you across the room, and it has nothing to do with style or subject.
On value of promotion
- Every artists says:" I've got to be promoted!" So when he goes into a gallery, he does not ask what they sell. He asks:"How are you going to promote me?" He wants an ad. He wants to be in the art magazines. And that;s nonsense! He should be asking, how many paintings the gallery sells. If they are paying you for 12 paintings they sell for you every month, that means a lot more than having a big ad, while they only sell three. I had tons of publicity. I hired one of the best media artists in the business. ...And there were absolutely no results! What supported my gallery was my painting. A painting on a wall in somebody's house does you more sales good than a ton of promotion or an ad in Southwest Art.That's your best advertisement. Word of mouth.
-What would you say is most important for a beginning professional?- Express your own experience. Take Poe and Hemingway. Poe was a sickly person, and wrote of the experience in his mind. Hemingway lived his art.
