Interview Question 1# Sell Out, with me tonight.
June 21, 2005 11:08 p.m.

1. If you want to participate in the fun, too, Leave me a note and I will contact you with the questions.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions.
3. An entire journal entry must be devoted to answering the questions I ask you - and you have to answer each and every one of them honestly.
4. In your question answering entry, you have to include an explanation of the rules, much like this, and offer to interview others.
5. When others ask to be interviewed, you need to ask them five original questions.

Interviewer: Yeah, I'm a Dork!

I might be breaking the rules alittle. I think I want to devote an entire entry to answering each question. I believe I'm keeping with the spirit of the game. I believe the point is that the interviewe takes the time to write a really thought out response to each question, as opposed to a one word response. by doing it this way I and can devote the deserved attention to each response. Also, I like to keep my entries from getting too long, this way it is short and to the point.

1. As an artist, would you rather have commercial success, or critical success?

The answer to this question is extremely simple. Critical Success.

Unlike media such as Music and Film, as a Fine Artist it is difficult to achieve commercial success without catering to the market. Green Day, for example can release music which is critically successful (I've been told that their new album is a perfect example of what is going on in Punk these days) as well as commerically successful. Great Actresses can as well be movie stars. (Angelina Jolie). Film and music can be massed produced and therefore turn a profit for all those involved. When I make a painting, it is a one of a kind original. Yes, prints can be made, though they might not have the same power as the painting. Photos and Prints can be replacated and sold at a price lower than a painting. Paintings are very hard to sell. They take a lot of time and effort to make....the might be priceless.....but it is worthless if no one wants it but me, ...or are un willing to pay for it. Most painters never turn a profit during their lifetime. And are deemed to be Great, and a Critical Success after their death.

However, I recall one painter,...note I do not use the world artist ..by the name of Thomas Kinkade. The Painer of Light......kiss my dick.

This man is the anti Christ! he is not an Artist. he does not make Art, he creates mass produced kitsch . ...Yet this man has convinced damn near everyone in the country that he is one. He is, I believe, the most successful living painter. ...and I'll be damned if I ever whore myself out in the manner of his doing.

I read somewhere that galleries were having these Kinkade shows which would feature Prints that were printed upon canvase. ...that's right, printed, as in NOT A PAINTING! and people could come and pick through and find their favorite Kinkade pictures. Then if the are unsatisfied with an aspected of the image they could take it over to the Offical Kinkade Touch-up Artists.....where that person could alter the image. ....Say you want you sky to be a little more blue **POOF** more blue-ness. ....What, you want the flowers more pink? **POOF** More Pinkness,.....and then you can take home your One of a Kind Kinkade Original!. that is the most disgusting thing I've ever heard. ....Now if Warhol had done it, it might have been interesting, ...it would have been an intersting artistic statement...coincideding with his ideas of the Factory and of everyone's 15 minutes. BUT Kinkade is not thinking of an interesting way to change the view of Art. He just wants to make money. he is making kitsch. "Pretty" pictures that don't challenge the viewer or show us something new and exciting about the world. His paintings are merely decorative, something suburban house wives can hang on their walls and collect and share with their friends.

As an artist I acknowledge that it is very rare to be a commerical success. I know that going in, all I can ever hope to be is appreciated by those who understand.