Over a Pepsi light
 

Yesterday I had occasion to talk to a friend of mine over a Pepsi light. Bill would love to have a portrait of either his wife or his kid or both but is astounded at what I charge (a comparative pittance). And so I prod and I cajole and try to educate as to the value of my product.

As we approach the bottom of our second Pepsi light we are joined by Bill's brother Bob. As it turns out, Bob is a connoisseur of art. Bob offers that he has several art pieces by Thomas Kinkade which he acquired at the mall. Bob goes on to say that he could get four times what he paid for each of his

Art on its head....
 

Mike,

I completely agree with you! I saw a special on Kinkade, which featured a couple who had purchased over $100,000 of his "prints". They are really worth nothing! Beanie Babies and Thomas Kinkade - two sides of the same coin. IMO, it is the largest scam perpetrated on the public since modern art.

It's a sham, it's a scam, and it's a real shame that it's hurting real artists.

Mike,

The proportion of art purchasers remains constant at all levels, be it traditional, plein aire or other. Don't worry about it. Instead get yourself a broader system for being advertised.

:thumbsup: I too applaud you, Mike, for bringing up this subject. I am not by far a nationally known artist (sometimes hardly known within the family) but I work really hard at what I do and particularly at marketing as I haven't an agent. I see exactly what you are talking about and do not claim to know too much about all of it but I certainly can relate to your delimma regardless of how small.

I also have trouble within some areas (geographic) in convincing others of the difference in what I do and explaining why I do not complete an oil within the half hour "just like Bob Ross".

Please, I am not bad mouthing Ross at all, but that is not what I am about. I have been told I am wasting my time even trying to convince others at times, but part of who I am and what I do is attemping to educate to the best of my ability. I choose to live in a small rural community and realize that some things never change. Please out there give me some quick advice or comment, something I can come back with to at least touch on what we do.

Sometimes discouraged,
Patt

I live in a small town, too. I can spot a Bob Ross landscape from 100 yards! I walk into the local art supply store and look at the paintings displayed, I say nothing, but smile as I walk out with my supplies. I smile because I have chosen to try to establish myself in the closest large town.

It is sad though that the general public believes they are buying original art when they purchase the Thomas Kinkade prints. Those "collectors items" will go down in history beside the paintings of "poker playing dogs."

Maybe we can alter the make-up of the West Nile virus to include an appreciation of fine art along with the general flu like symptoms. Work on that for us will you Mike ;)!

Renee Price

I'm trying Mike, heehehhe
 

Hi Mike and all,

I'm trying my best to educate my little corner of the elementary universe (all 950 of them that I see once a week).

Yes, along with being a painter during all my "free" time (chuckle chuckle) I am a full-time elementary art teacher. One of my pet peeves is exactly what you have brought up - although I do tolerate the G.P. attitude that "prints are original works of art" a little better than I used to. Maybe age has something to do with it!

My students are taught from kindergarten the difference between a "real" oil painting and a poster and "real" art vs. "sorta real" art. I'm sure you get my drift. Some come back the next year without remembering that the picture that is always on the back door of my room isn't the "real" Mona Lisa and they must be reminded and retaught. But by the end of their 6 years with me, they know that the "real" Mona Lisa is priceless and hanging behind bulletproof (hehe) glass in the Louvre in Paris.

Like I said, I am trying!

Cheers,

On a recent trip to the Northeast, my daughter and I visited Rockport, MA. A quintessential, artsy village on the picturesque sea coast. Narrow pedestrian streets lined with art galleries, loaded with fine and almost fine original art. Some with artists in the windows painting away. And there in the midst of all this splendor was a just arrived, brand new, Kinkade gallery. Looking much like all that surrounded it. And in its "sameness" with the surroundings, there is the suggestion of legitimacy. There is the subtle suggestion that: we are here like they, we are all the same. Later in the trip we visited Newport RI, almost the identical circumstance.

When the chance arose I would ask a local what they thought of their new neighbor. It was more the look on their face than what they actually said. At the time it just seemed like an interesting dynamic that would surely play itself out over the millennia. I am more annoyed now having stared it straight in the eye over my fake Pepsi.

I'm even starting to annoy myself with this rant. Maybe I'll go back on the decaf.

It is impossible for me to read this thread and not comment. Seeing Thomas K. on 60 Minutes got my ranting attention. (Cynthia, call Ted Koppel for a specialty piece!)

However, I have to say that I actually saw a plein aire painting of his, a mission in California, (maybe Carmel?), and it was just beautiful. I thought, wow, he can also really paint.

Thomas Kinkade is in the category of Martha Stewart, an incredible marketing machine. He also thinks bigger than many of us ever will. So I think that it is not sensible to consider Mr. Kinkade's work as an apple in a field of oranges.

Evaluate it in its own context, and stop thinking that somehow "we" should be the arbiters of that context.

Original portrait art is a different animal entirely from the Kinkade print market. A thousand years of conversation will not convert a Kinkade print collector to go for original traditional portraiture any more than it would convince a passionate collector of original art to buy a Kinkade print. Stop trying, because it doesn't make sense.

Do you think I would love a spot on 60 Minutes? Of course! But competing with the Kinkade art print market, on its bases, will never get me there.

I'm in another not-quite-Pepsi-generation motel tonight along a somewhat tortuous way. There are slot machines in here somewhere and the reception desk bore a sign when I checked in, advising of a "loud band" (and so of course I immediately said, "Sure, okay, and where will I be able to find that band later?") - but Kinkade keeps coming up like one of those floating answers in that old "8 ball" ouija-type game ("Will I ever make it as an artist?" "Maybe, but don't quit playing blackjack.")

I don't happen to like the more commercially popular Kinkade pieces. I don't think they're bad, I just find them somewhat uninteresting, unengaging and (and I'll echo what Chris Saper just said, without trying to put words in her mouth) beneath what he's capable of doing. I've seen Kinkade's original plein air oil sketches, and I stood there slack-jawed and almost sad that someone who could do THAT was doing (as I point to the prints up in the front part of the gallery) THAT. This isn't a guy who can't do better, he's a brilliant marketeer who has discovered what sells, and now he's rich. In that same breath, I have to say that I don't regard the Kinkades of the art world to be "competition", I don't think they're taking money away from me, because the folks who want his prints probably wouldn't be interested in my style of landscape. So be it.

I worked in an extremely intensive atelier in which one of the students had to (surprise!) pay the rent back at the apartment, and he did it by being what in the Kinkade empire is known as a Master Highlighter. For those who aren't aware of the process, Kinkade giclee prints are usually "highlighted," or touched up after printing, generally at the "factory" but occasionally at special Kinkade Gallery events at which a "Master Highlighter" sits with paints ready to listen to and then execute a purchaser's request for additional highlighting of various parts of the painting. This takes place in the "lights", and so the flowers' patina or the fire's glow gets that certain something that is what makes you look twice at the Kinkades, even if you've already decided you don't like them. I found it quite fascinating, especially as I watched the expressions on the very happy purchasers' faces. I would be the very last to suggest that those folks were being conned. They were getting exactly what they wanted.

One of the best-known popular artists in Australia is a fellow named Ken Done, who does rather primitive, some might say infantile, renderings in brilliant minimal palettes of much-recognized cultural icons such as the Sydney Opera House and the like. The capital-A artists of Australia (I'm generalizing now) treat him with contempt, and in a recent compilation of the 2 or 3 thousand notable Aussie artists, he was left out. And he makes an absolute ton of dough from his work and his wife, a fashion designer, prints his stuff on blouses and skirts and tea towels and hats and she makes a ton of dough too, and everyone goes away happy, except the capital-A, black-shirted Artistes in the community. Good on Kinkade, I say, and good on Ken Done. They found a niche, they mastered it, they capitalized upon it, and what great fun they've had.

My kids are sick to death of my dragging them through art galleries, but when I took my son to a Kinkade gallery at Minneapolis's Mall of America a few years ago, he was absolutely enamored of the paintings (not the "good" ones I mentioned earlier, the "popular" ones). And you know, I was so pleasantly surprised that this then-12-year-old was actually excited about a painting and was telling ME about the way the darks and lights contrasted and that's what made that firelight setting interesting, I realized that I had my own pettiness to expiate. He only got a refrigerator magnet out of the visit, but he was most pleased with it.

I just bought a beautiful giclee Montana landscape print on canvas from a impossibly successful fellow in my hometown, and during a discussion about why he was marketing so much of his work as relatively inexpensive prints, he told me that he'd decided 25 years ago to let people have access to his paintings even if they couldn't afford the originals, and so he vowed to himself never to overprice or get too precious about his reproduction market. God bless him. I didn't show that giclee to one single person in two weeks without having to explain that it wasn't an original, yet I bought it for about 1/15 of the price of the original. A brilliant artist (Mark Ogle, see www.markogle.com) and a brillaint marketeer, and I don't begrudge him any of it. In fact, I'm keenly re-energized in my own pursuit of landscape work, by his attitude, as well as his competence.

We all have to develop our competence in the studio and then further develop our competence in sharing with the world what we've done (or what we can do for prospective clients). But I can't find any room at all in my outlook for jealousy of those who have acquired mastery in both arenas before I did. It just means I have more work to do.

Cheers to all, after (and before) a hiatus,

Last year I spent the better part of the day photographing my brother-in-law's twin 8 year-old daughters. I traveled 100 miles round trip, brought props with me including a heavy antique chair and a piano bench. I shot inside and outside and did about 7 rolls of 36 pictures. I paid to have them developed and mailed him the pictures. One of the girls refused to smile and likes to make :bewildere funny faces. I tried to get a good picture of her, but I have never seen a good picture of her. Well...he pays me a visit and tells me which pictures he likes and then proceeds to tell me he would like a portrait to hang over the mantle of the two of them, but Oh By The Way, he won't pay me one penny more than $300.00 for it, because he says he can get a really nice photo for about that. I very politely told him that maybe it was better to get the photo and left it at that. His wife is a partner in a very successful, prestigious law firm and they could well afford to pay triple my price, but here's the kicker, they do not know nor do they appreciate art and never will. At first I was insulted, but I got over it and no harm done.

The nurse who took my job when I left has a Thomas Kinkade scene on her computer screen, one of the cottages. It nauseates me. I had a full screen picture of Bouguereau's portrait of Gabrielle Cot that I thought was sublime. It was replaced by the Kinkade. I have seen some of Kinkade's real paintings, the impressionistic street scenes and some watercolors that I do like. He is a fine painter, he has just hit upon a market ie: my brother-in-law and the nurse, that is bringing him tons of money. I knew the owner and the manager of one of his galleries in Baton Rouge and they spoke of his work in hushed, reverent tones. He is a PR juggernaut.

I work very hard at what I do and I do not apologize for my prices (which are probably too low). I don't waste time over Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke trying to convince someone of the value of an original work and the time, love and angst that go into its creation. It will never work and they will never appreciate it. I have clients waiting and willing to pay for a portrait and just disregard the others.

Alicia,

I envy your backlog. You must be doing a lot of things right. There are times, in the ups and downs of my career, that I would gladly dine on an RC Cola and a Moon Pie to gain a commission. I do take your point though. Not everyone can be convinced of the merits of what we do. I will try to give people the benefit of what I have learned. I will do this if I perceive that they are simply ignorant and seek knowledge. We are all ignorant in some subject. There are others however, who go way beyond the [correctable] state of ignorance. These I try to recognize early and depart their company.

I think it is in this vein that I approach this subject. I don

Mike,

Nice to hear from you. A couple of things, it's not a big backlog, its 5 commissions and about 5 more that I am trying to pin down. One of them, I have been trying to photograph all summer. His mother is, well shall we say, a little disorganized. I have done one for her already, which she loved and she wants the other two sons done. So, I blame myself for not pushing the matter and getting those photos. Now shcool has started and his time is limited. A good business woman I am not.

I think another reason I have gotten these commissions is because I am around the clientele with the spendable income for portraits. Doctors and lawyers and I am in the Deep South. I live in a small town and haven't gotten one commission from here. They all come from the larger cities and the small affluent bedroom communities.

One mistake I've made that I won't do again involves the @#$%^%^ photographs. I let the mother of my next commission take about five of the best to help her decide which one she likes best. BIG MISTAKE! She likes them all and can't decide and has shown them to EVERYONE she knows to get their opinion. Of course, everyone has a different opinion and she is even more confused now then she was before. I have given her my opinion on which I want to paint. I will and let me repeat, I will never let those photos leave my hot little hands again. I have been waiting now for three weeks for a decision from her. The linen is stretched and primed and I wait and I wait. I will have to move on to yet another client if she doesn't come around. So you see, I make a lot of mistakes but I am learning.

As for the Kinkade types, I think they fall into two categories. Those that honestly love him and his work (I gave one of them a coffee table book of his last Christmas and she cried!) and those that buy the prints because they are popular and think, well, he is so popular and so many people buy them, I should get on the wagon. There is an artist in New Orleans who is painting red cats, ala the blue dog and cashing in and I don't begrudge him a penny of it. It is putting his kids through college (or whatever) his kids do.

You are right, there are some people who do want to learn and I can bore them to tears talking about art. We, as the sensitive people that we are, have to be clever enough to know the difference between the ones who are truly interested and the ones who are just being polite.

Alicia,

I'm going to put to rest my diatribe regarding you know who. I not sure what gets these bees so stirred up in my Southern bonnet. I oftentimes get a little too impressed with the sound of my own voice.

About those photos. Sounds like you turned the corner on a good lesson. Maybe you noticed John de la Vega's remarks regarding photos in the other room. It's hard not to give his comments a great deal of weight.

You gotta love this place. Where else can we receive so much and give so little.

Mike,
I am seriously thinking about what John de la Vega wrote and I can now appreciate his point. "Pictures, what pictures?" I am not in the photography business and yes, the clients will keep the photographs and compare it to the portrait. Mari are you listening?

As regards this "place", I met with Rebecca Willougby (another Forum buddy)last night at a little ToDo in town. She was showing some of her lovely work. She is charming and sweet and I am sure I have found a kindred spirit. If it had not been for this Forum, we probably would never have met. I also have another dear friend I met through this website. I was searching and I found her. What a gift. We are lucky to have it.

...of course I am listening, I have SO MUCH to learn that I have to think of it as a new language. Like learning Spanish, it requires a lot of rote memorization, a lot of practicing the basics, numbers, verb conjugations. I think we all love that stuff, though--we love the basics, we love the medium, we love the tactile.

I hope one day to be as fluent in paint as the artists who are listed on this site, and those who participate by posting their opinions on this Forum.

There are so many different voices on this site, and so many different levels of expertise/experience, it's an INCREDIBLE resource.

As for the photographs, I am not as talented a photographer as you, Alicia, so I'm not as tempted to show clients the shots, it's just not that big of an issue.

As for Kincade, this country has a certain infatuation with "consistency", which is a nice way of labeling the "homogenous" or the "predictable". People demand it. In the suburbs, everyone shops at Sams, and therefore everyone has the same clutter in their houses/yards. Consumers are like kids--we see Jane has a spotted dog, therefore we have to have a spotted dog. Capitalism almost demands the "generic."

But I am not an economist. Artists comprise a very small percentage of the workforce. Realist artists comprise an even smaller percent of that group. You're very lucky, Alicia, to be able to meet colleagues through this site! I don't think any of us shrinks away from being the isolated opinion.

In a week we get to take a road trip, a drive to remote northern Oklahoma for summer vacation, to visit my retired parents, and the drive will take us through the deepest south, Atlanta, Memphis. I really miss the south and look forward to the drive through real southern heritage (as opposed to my Florida of scrub palmettos and Cadillacs).

Anyways, I'll miss visiting this great site but I'll really enjoy the change of scenery, the southern mansions, the real oak and maple trees, the 80-degree weather, the hills, and whatever version of Cafe Guerbois I find near Ponca City, among cattle and dairy farmers, and their wives and children.

Mari,

I was intrigued to learn that you are a chef. I also have a Personal Chef business that I started a few months ago. Besides painting, I love to cook. I have found that I do better when I don't follow the recipe exactly. I am trying to be the same with painting, that is striving to be looser and more creative.

Thanks, but I don't consider myself to be a talented photographer. I am glad when I do get a great shot, but I consider it to be luck more than talent. Glad you like the South. There are four live oaks in my front yard, along with Magnolias, roses and scads of other plants. One hour away is New Orleans and fifteen minutes away are the dairy farms on rolling green hills. I keep wanting to paint those spotted COWS!

I find the more I learn about painting, the more there is to learn. A friend of mine who is a professional artist told me a story she read about a famous artist. Can't remember who it was, but he was delivering a painting in his station wagon and he kept looking at it and worrying over it. Claiming how he should have done this or that to make it better and how he tormented himself over it. She has a quote in her studio that says "Each painting is like a disease that I must suffer through and overcome". How true it is.

Have a relaxing and safe trip and enjoy the cows. Check in when you return.

In my humble opinion, mass market "art" is just that. It's the visual equivalent of cotton candy or a Big Mac and shouldn't be compared to a meal at a five-star restaurant. Far more people like and can afford a Big Mac than the exquisite and exotic foods at the best restaurants. That's just how the world is.

(I'm not sure where on the continuum of "fast food/five star" my work falls, but at least I hope I'm aiming in the direction of the five-star restaurant meal!)

That said, I've been devoting as much time lately learning P.R. and art marketing as I have to learning how to paint better.

Michele, I agree with you. The real imbalance comes when people are paying more than $2K for a Big Mac. It does hurt us as artists as our credibility can be somewhat skewed in the wrong direction. :)

;) About those spotted cows - Holstein or Hereford? We have both here along with Jersey, Ayrshires, Short Horn, Guernsey, etc.. Spotted mostly being the Holstein or Hereford dependng of colors of spots, etc.

I have lived near and viewed the Grand Canyon, the Golden Gate Bridge, New York's Statue of Liberty, and Germany's pubs and castles; but give me my rolling hills, cattle spotted fields, a new snow fall and glistining icicles from a rooftop, children not afraid to play in their green grasses and catching fireflies on a cool summer night. I live 1 hour from the great Snowshoe Ski Resort, 10 min. from the 5-Star Greenbrier Resort, golfing place of Sam Snead and the secret underground bunker for our President of the US.
Not all true here. Of course, we are quite rural and my dog of choice is my purebred Boxer named Sasquatch Gingersnaps Samantha. (otherwise known as Sami).

About the Kincade theory, I tend to agree with what Michele states; nor do I know where my art falls in that category. Unfortunately for the majority of art here, it is the old "champagne taste and a beer budget" with tastes often of the Big Mac and cotton candy, both of which I have consumed. Hence my dilemma. I love where I am and paint my heart out, and I am constantly tossing around any possibilities out there to best market my work.The Kincades sell well here. No, I have none personally. I do fair with commissions but even those have become a little scarce. I attribute that to several possibilities, one being of my own doing as I seem to have let life and its happenings kind of halt my creativeness therefore not doing my usual assertiveness.

Well, enough here of my thought processes and I bid you a good night. Love this site!

Patt

Patt,

The cows are white with black spots. Or could be black with white spots.

:thumbsup: Alicia,
Which goes to show us, I suppose, that like the spots on cows, art is still in the eye of the beholder - all depending on one's perception. Bravo!

In painting them, that is quite the decision too.

Cheers!

Yes, I know about Ken Done. He has a large store in Cairns (where I live). I have seen documentaries about him where he laments his lack of recognition as a 'fine artist' because he is commercialized.

Australians seems to appreciate messy paintings, which I can't do. Whip out a painting in a couple of hours and you can be sure to sell quickly and to win art prizes. If I even look like painting something which I think might sell, my son very smartly tells me I am "selling out".

I am reasured that I am on the right track every time I log on to this site. I love this site!
I have managed to raise three art snobs who absolutely refuse to have a reproduction anything in their homes. Originals or nothing! My daughter was quite insulted when a relative arrived at her new home with some framed prints. Fortunately all three are accomplished artists so they aren't restricted to empty walls. :)

I lived in Sydney for three years and worked quite hard to discover exactly what the Aussie sensibilities toward visual arts were. The Art Gallery of New South Wales, with its very substantial collection of the sort of art that would be appreciated by anyone who visits and enjoys SOG, was always jam-packed with people, and deservedly so, whereas across the quay, the museum of contemporary art was generally full of echoes and a collection of "pieces" that pretty much explained the echoes and the precarious financial picture of the museum. So there was hope -- at least until the Archibald exhibition (for those unfamiliar, an annual portraiture contest with substantial prize and notoriety) was hung and the "winner" selected, almost always a piece that perhaps we might here just charitably characterize as "messy". (But the People's Choice was almost always, again, of the caliber of the work of SOG artists.)

It was my discovery of the "unmessy" Australian Heidelberg School (late 19th Century impressionists) that perhaps more than anything else stimulated an interest strong enough to convince me that I should quit doing what I had been doing, and begin serious study of painting. And indeed, when I returned to the U.S., I published an article (Spring 2001) in the Classical Realism Journal on the Heidelberg artists and, particularly, Sir Arthur Streeton. (The Journal is available through the American Society Classical Realism, see www.classicalrealism.com )

Unfortunately, Streeton's originals are unavailable to me, so I settled for reproductions (though for reasons unknown to me, considering Streeton's stature in Australian art history, I never found any that did any sort of justice to the originals, which I viewed in Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne.) On the other hand, I had access to the original work of the fantastic Australian plein air painter Warwick Fuller, and one of his paintings hangs on the wall of my much-missed house back in the U.S. I feel privileged to have both the Streeton reproduction and the original Fuller.

Perhaps, Margaret, you'd be willing to give an Aussie's viewpoint on the allure of Pro Hart's work. His P.R. hype machine would give Kinkade quite a run for his money, and though Hart's works are original (by which I mean merely that they're not reproductions), they are unconscionably overpriced, despite the fact that he's surely done virtually the same simple little knife painting a thousand times. I even encountered gallery employees who were at a loss to understand it, but of course they weren't complaining. I'd be quite more satisfied with a Streeton or Tom Roberts reproduction than a Hart original, any day.

I did rather enjoy some of Ken Done's work, but I don't have any originals, simply because -- and perhaps this comes full circle and "proves" the majority position in this thread -- I couldn't possibly afford them. But I do think that his incredible commercial success, not unlike Kinkade's, is part of the bone that seems to get stuck in the throats of detractors. I don't get that part.

My wife does, however, have a Ken Done golf polo shirt, and it's quite lovely(!).

Cheers,
Steven

I'm sure I'll regret saying anything about this, but sometimes we can't resist living dangerously. I've been reading this and seen my own sentiments echoed and felt that rather than be redundant I'd just stay out of it. If Mike wants to drink Pepsi Lite, it's his business!

However, my objection to what Kinkade is doing is not that his paintings are not technically good (although too swooney for me), not that he is unbelievably successful and I'm not, but that he is leading unsuspecting people down his primrose path and some day when those people who spent over $100,000 on their "collection" find out their "investment" didn't appreciate, they will be out all that money when they could have used the money to wisely invest (with some help) in some original work. Now he's bringing religion into it too, I saw him say "My wife & I pray over each painting." Must be his next marketing segment.

So try drinking seltzer with a slice of lemon or lime in it next time. :)

Steven, I was struck by your remark, "the museum of contemporary art was generally full of echoes."

My husband and I were fortunate enough to take our first trip to Paris last year and of course we visited the Louvre and Musee D'Orsay with its magnificent collection of impressionists and the like. The Orsay was packed and the Louvre had hours long lines to get in.

Across town, in a grubby little commercial neighborhood stands a huge monstrosity of a building housing the contemporary art - and it was MUCH less crowded. Not quite echoes, but a lot of almost empty rooms. Hmmm...

I sold a house in '95 and ran into that same problem. I wasn't misled, I just gambled that the value of something I liked and, so, purchased, would increase, but the dice rolled a different way. There are folks around right now who are gambling fortunes in confidence that traditional realism is "back". It's been suggested more than once that some of the more prominent (and wealthy) of those people aren't so much afficionados of realism as they are shrewd (or at least, hopeful) investors. It's risky, but more power to them. I hope they take a shine to my realistic paintings (or even my reproductions) before the market crashes. (Just some inside information between us, my paintings are absolutely guaranteed to increase in value by over 800% in no time at all.)

Gone again, see you after the next 3,000 miles.

Cheers,

I never get the last word. Living with a seventeen year-old daughter gives me little opportunity. Even my dog, a female minpin, won't let me have the last word. I say "Get out of the laundry basket" she gets out and then gives me a barkish groan. I say "And don't let me catch you in there again". She looks back and gives a barkish groan. "Don't say another word", I say. She gets to the end of the hall and, you guessed it, a barkish groan.

Having some knowledge of how corporate America thinks, I'm going to come out with a prediction. The CEO's, CFO's and all the other O's which make up the multi-departmental organization which is T.K. Inc. may be feeling a little vulnerable. They might think "We are all making a good living riding this single horse. What if our horse breaks his leg?"

I think what will come next is a protege, a young phenom. A discovered, anointed person who will become part of a very small T.K. stable of inspirational artists.

Regarding Pro Hart, perhaps, Steve, you saw the carpet ad he made where he squirted sauces and stuff all over an axminster. I don't think they published prints of it, although his work is on plenty of things like collector plates, I think. I don't have so much a problem with him as he belonged to a group of painters who worked out of Broken Hill (mining town right in the middle of Australia in the desert). They were all naive type artists who did manage to depict something of their area.

He had a protoge(?) called Dean Vella (you can search him on the net) who paints very colourful studies of flora and fauna, and who has a gallery in Cairns. He uses some kind of thickening agent to apply great thick globs (up to 1 inch thick) of acrylic paint to his canvas. He recently sued another artist and a fifteen year old girl, in Cairns, for breach of copyright. He claimed the globule of white which he daubed on his vases as a highlight was his invention, (among other stuff which I can't remember offhand). He stated his income as around $1.5 million in 2000. He won the case. The other artist handed over about 75 paintings which were destroyed. The other artist then appealed to the High Court and the original decision was squashed. Now I hear that there are several people suing him for loss of 2 years earnings.

I find the whole conflict between "modern" and "traditional" very frustrating. Particularly in portraiture, it is easy to pass off lack of skill as "modern", whereas if you attempt realistic and get it right, every person who has a face is an instant expert and looks for perfection in every eyelash.

We had another competition set up in Australia called the Doug Moran Portrait Competition - $100,000 prize. The original idea was to encourage traditional portraiture. This idea worked for the first few but recently the prizewinners look the same as the Archibalds. Hmmm, messy pays, off with the glasses and out with the sauce bottles and brooms, I think!

Margaret,

I spent time at Broken Hill, and Silverton and White Cliffs (my kids and I flew with the postman, to over 30 stations in one day, and the kids got to walk out onto and across the wing, props spinning, with a mailbag and put it the the box, or cupboard, or old refrigerator, at the end of the red-sand runway, assuming the sheep all ran away and none of the kangaroos ran toward the plane (the way deer do in the U.S.); and I visited an artist whose studio is in one of the mines below surface at White Cliffs.) And the original Warwick Fuller painting I purchased was of Silverton. Though I purchased it near my home in Turramurra, it was of cockatoos in Silverton, and I just had to have it. I consider it precious to me, and I was somewhat embarrassed to purchase it for a pittance. (Perhaps instructively, here, a reproduction of that painting would have been of no interest at all to me.) I'll mention in passing that I consider returning to Australia in retirement. What utterly endless fun, and incredible material for paintings!

Concerning your copyright story, I remember that I forgot one, and as "luck" would have it, it involves Kinkade. The article I wrote about Arthur Streeton originally had a title that evoked his century-old Australian moniker, "Painter of Light", and so naturally I used that in the title for my article. I was told by the editor that the publisher had requested a change to my title, because we might get into trouble with this "Thomas Kinkade" guy, who has actually trademarked the phrase "Painter of Light". That was the first time I ever held anything against Kinkade, because as between him and Streeton in painting light, there is a grand canyon.

Cheers from stateside. I intend to Christmas in Sydney. Would you kindly arrange good weather?

Steven

I have been pouring over copyright law recently and found this excerpt on www.jjkaufman.com, an excellent resource for the laws regarding art and the sale of such.

"What does copyright protect?
Copyright is a form of intellectual property law that protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed."

Seems like a very gray area to me. There is another topic on his site that is titled "How different is different Enough?" Worth a read.

Steven,

I grew up in Sydney and remember my old grandfather sitting on the veranda at Ramsgate on Christmas day, after our traditional lunch with all the "rellies" waiting for the "southerly" (wind) to blow at four pm to cool off. In those days it never failed. For your holiday weather you might have to settle for interesting, rather than good, and be ready to beat a hasty retreat to air conditioning.

Did you come across Eric & Roxanne Minchin's work at Broken Hill? I love her landscapes. Huge, perfectly blended and graduated brilliant blue skies, tiny amount of land at the bottom of the canvas, with perfectly detailed rocks and plants in ochres and oranges. I've been out that way twice but I must admit I'm a coast person, have to be near water.

I'd love to read that article "How Different is Different Enough" but the link didn't work. It looked like you typed the name with 2 letter J's and I tried typing it with only one J, just in case. No luck. Do you have any more information on how to get to that site, by any chance?

Thanks!

Michele,

There were some formatting problems in the link. It's now corrected.

um hummm
 

Friends,

I really think that really good work will find buyers. I think (and would expect) none of the people that have bought my work also own a Bob Ross or a Kinkade in any form. I would be sad to know so.

There are over 950,000 buyers of art in America alone that recognize "high art" for lack of a better term. They can keep most all of us busy. We do not need those other guys' collectors and would be wise not to spend any energy even thinking about them. Let's paint very well. That is enough a challenge for me. I really do think people will beat a path to our respective doors even if we live deep in the woods.

Tim, I sure hope the above quote is true, as I truly am one of those who live deep in the woods. Well, not so deep, as they are building all around our little 3 acres here; we used to have 70 between us and them. But as far as wasting time speaking of the "other" type artists, I agree, we are wasting precious time and there is a place and room for us all.

Cheers,

Ralph
 

That was, of course, a loose paraphase of Ralph Waldo Emerson and he was nearly always right.

Tim says: I agree that good work will find buyers whether you live in the Yukon Territory or paint in the limits of Chelsea or Soho in NY City, but I wouldn't be too sad or discriminating if the buyer owned a Ross or a Kinkade!

L

p.s. Explain high art? I agree with Pat on wasting precious time on judgements!

[By light of day, I've decided that my diatribe previously posted here was misguided and unnecessary, a product more of fatigue than thoughtfulness, and I'm electing to remove it.]

canard:

1 : a false or unfounded report or story; especially : a fabricated report

:o Ok, I've been found. I care a great deal of what buyers feel if they meet me personally. Artists have received a bad rap for ages and I like putting a kind and human face with that dollar sign. I really do not mind them knowing that this is real work also. And, that I pay bills like the rest of them. I just happen to love what I do very much and feel very fortunate to be able to do what I love.

END OF STORY
Patt