Today too many are famous for just being famous. Their fame is hollow and without substance and rewarded only by those whose lives are as empty, they raise the “famous” to idol status. The famous become surrogates for our seemingly miserable lives.
Lest we forget the true purpose of fame, we miss the whole point entirely – notoriety. Being noticed. Fame equates into money for those who are famous and for those who attach themselves to the famous. It’s the trickle-down effect. Most in the world are destined to lead very ordinary lives by famous standards. Now this may not be politically correct to say, but it’s a fact. Instead of filling our children’s heads with thought of being president or being millionaires, we should teach them to be aware of who they are and that what they do is more important than being famous because of it. Fame is also no panacea. As with lots of money, fame comes with more responsibility than anyone realizes. Fame also limits some from achieving full potential due to the new pressures that arise. Pressures many new famous are unprepared to handle. History is filled with tragic stories of those who achieved fame and crashed and burned and the book on these people is still being written. Being famous forces one to be something others want you to be. Living up to that takes much out of who you were supposed to be.
We all look to those with more than what we have and want to be like them. It doesn’t have to be a Rock Star or American idol. It could be a scientist, classical musician, teacher, and our parents in many cases. We all want more for our children than we had. The problem is fame distorts reality. Super fame separates you from reality and who you are and who you could be is lost in the translation.
Fame can be good if you have a genuine gift or message.
John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, John Lennon. Mother Therese, to mention a few. But true fame has a price. Fame takes away our right to privacy. Fame pigeonholes us. Stifles individual growth. We are forced into being what it is we are famous for. Change becomes difficult. We could lose our fame, which is inevitable after some time. Without true substance we have little to fall back on.

Galleries are like a pair of shoes. Some fit very well, some don't. Galleries are in business to make money. If blue is the flavor of the month, they sell blue. If, by some unfortunate chance, you're painting is green your out of luck...until green is the flavor of the month. I've honestly come to believe there are good galleries just bad owners.
What gets me in any discussion with gallery owners is their open mistrust they think we have for them. They really believe artists are out to cheat them at every opportunity. I say here and now and openly I'm looking for an honest relationship with a gallery that I can trust and who trusts me to do the right thing by them. I believe most artists feel the same way.
There are too many beginners mixed in with experienced quality artists out there and too many local galleries willing to show work of little or low quality from these inexperienced artists. Unfortunately art isn't based on a master’s degree or an art education. Even with little or no entry school level education on art history, some can still identify quality art because it feels right and moves them, while others only like what they like without any rhyme or reason. Add to the fact that no one can clearly identify what art is, only adds to this confusion. Some can see quality, technique and masterful coloring and composition and call this art, but generally art today can be a paper cup or wad of gum if the intellegencia says its art, further muddying the waters. What art is; apart from the obvious techniques, placement, color harmony, or discord; is impossible to pin down. The work of Monet, Picasso, Sargent or Bouguereau is brilliant to one while trash to another.
Galleries at one time were at the forefront of art and I believe interested in quality artists and work. They had a pedigree of sorts. Art was in their blood. They believed in it. But art in general has been relegated to the back seat of society. Many gallery owners have little or no art training or knowledge. Many galleries, in order to survive, now exhibit non art items just to make ends meet, confusing the public even more. Because art is so ethereal and hard to nail down takes an experienced eye, someone who can recognize art and have the courage to display it and not pander to the money machine that fuels sales. Galleries need to reinvest in artists again and nurture the good ones, the ones who exhibit talent and have something to contribute to the world of art. Until that happens anyone with a lease can open a gallery.

Every painting is a process of becoming for all artists. I've always believed art is autobiographical. We use it to speak, to convey our message. Some artists have little to say, some volumns. I think we connect with the level of art, for lack of a better term, with a like response or equivelant level. I know when as a child I could not appreiciate much of what I love in art today. There are still "styles", "schools" and methods I still can't get my thoughts around but that doesn't necessarily mean the artist or work doesn't speak to someone on some level. This is why there is little agreement when artists pontificate or try and condense our thoughts into slogans like becoming or being. For me the only important thing in painting is to be as honest with my attempt. Some paintings hit a cord with the public and some miss. Maybe my thought could be better said when I find better words later. Maybe I'm the only one listening to what I say. No matter. It's the journey, not the destination.

Lately there is much talk and validation for using a projector in fine art.

Let’s set the record straight about "gridding" vs. "tracing" with a projector. When you grid a work, it's an original drawing transposed in a larger format, but it still is an original DRAWING. Likewise, if you take an original drawing and use a projector to enlarge it, it is still and original DRAWING. No one takes issue with the use of a projector for the above purpose because it's a transposition of an original work. What many, myself included, are saying is using a projector for any other reason undermines the principals of what good art is supposed to be. That is, a personal voice, creativity from the heart, spirit and ability of the individual artist.

Norman Rockwell’s name comes up as one who used a projector extensively as did N.C. Wyeth. These man was under the gun to produce work for a weekly deadline and probably did use whatever means necessary to get the job done. Few of us fall into that category and have no excuse for relying on artificial means to create our work. It's lazy, uninspired, misinformed and just plain wrong to use one for fine art. I believe buyers still want an original creation done from the heart with mistakes and errors included as long as they see the truth in the work. 

It’s interesting to note how there are devices to help an artist see things more clearly, to determine proper proportion or color. Many of these devices are certainly useful. I use a large mirror placed behind me with my studio work and a small hand mirror in the field. I’m beginning to find I need a small monocular device in workshops to get up close and person due to my eyes tiring as the hours wear on. Grids are an excellent way to move an image from paper to canvas. In principle, I’m not opposed to using whatever works, but I draw the line at relying on these devices exclusively or in place of old fashioned drawing skills, measuring with your pencil and your eye or using variables of shape from the source model. I see many using these devices not as aids but as regular tools. I see projectors being used more and more, photography in lieu of a live model.

There is much to be said with drawing or painting aids but I feel the results are “too perfect”. What is missing in art today for me are the slight mistakes or miscalculations, the imperfections, the wonderful mistakes that are visible in much great art in museums today created without aids. The looseness of a single painted stroke left untouched or unblended, the hand of the artist as it were. We are presently caught up in a revival of photo realism, or actualism and I feel we are losing our sense of artistry of creating spontaneously, freely with expression. Artists are now being made to make everything as it is and not an expression of what we see it is, of how we feel it is.

There is little soul in much work done today. True there is great technical skill, wonderful facility but little heart.

With less and less art being taught, fewer people know how to recognize it when they see it. Fewer still are creating it. Art today has to be spelled out in every detail, nothing left to an imagination dulled or silenced or ignorant of nuance

It would be foolish and arrogant to assert that any artist today is so because he or she figured it out all on their own. Even an art form/ style that may not be in vogue or viewed as worthwhile is derived from what has come before in my estimation. The simple fact that the tools we use are the same is more proof that we learn from the others who have come before.  I can state with certainty I’ve picked up my share of “tricks” from many other artists living and dead. If you live on this planet, you will be influenced by what has come before. Even if you are secluded away without mass media or newspapers, I believe your art would reflect the world you live in and resemble some form we’ve seen before.

One underlying fact here is that we take information, sift it, absorb what works then use what God given ability we were given and try like heck to use these techniques to say something worthwhile. Even art that is not intended to be informative and is just playful says something. Art is a way to communicate. It’s one fundamental way humans have tried to outlive their existence and become immortal from the cavemen and women who left behind their impressions of their world. We are doing nothing more that they. This should be at the very heart of all art.

When you factor into the equation commerce then everything changes. Selling is important on many levels today but the underlying issue for most artists is fundamentally to communicate an idea of what they see and/or believe. This is what I try and do every day of my life while creating “original” art.  

Genuine eccentricity is a hard thing to nail down. If you remain obscure and are only famous to the locals in your circle, are you truly eccentric or just an oddball?  If you become famous say like Picasso, Dali or Whistler, are you still eccentric or an oddball, or are you just a clever person of some intelligence who happened to capitalize on this “uniqueness”?  

Who is to say they and others like them are not genuine eccentrics when still obscure?

I personally act and feel like a normal person but there are those in my family who think me eccentric. The only reason for this that I can see is I have lived a life unfamiliar to my family and to them I was in the extreme. My lifestyle didn’t’ conform to their ideas so I was viewed as eccentric. I also think we don’t become aware of true eccentricity until it gains a level of notoriety. Then society falls into line and says that person did what he/she did due to their eccentricities and not because of their unique abilities at shutting out everything. Eccentricity needs to be noticed by a larger group to come into its own.

We are all eccentric to some degree. The painter and the process are innately imbued with this quality. We artists have to be a wee bit odd to devote so much time to applying paint onto a canvas to show what many already think they know or have seen before. And we believe what we do is interesting to others, so much so as to have them part with their money to attain it.

Was Einstein eccentric? Or was he so involved in his own world and thoughts as to seem distracted from the “normal” world. I think it is the outside world that misunderstands or misinterprets those who seem eccentric when they are only completely devoted and taken up with what it is they do. Whether you paint in the nude or dressed in a clown suit doesn’t make you eccentric if it gets the job done. It’s when we see a thousand other artists with cloths on, that we assume you to be eccentric.

For the first time in a long time I feel I am ahead of the curve. When I started out as a painter, I used readymade canvases or canvas boards a great deal. For any new artist this is very cost effective especially since much of what you created was going to turn out lousy anyway and be thrown away or simply chalked up as experimental, student or a learning process.

After some time and many years, I realized that the manufactured canvases weren’t holding up to time and were not considered “professional” in the trade. They showed signs of rot and deterioration. The canvas boards were doing okay but were not professional by any means in my eyes. So I started buying primed canvas in rolls along with the stretchers in more exacting sizes I was working in and started preparing my own canvases to my specifications. I jessoed them twice anyway over the edges to give them the support I wanted dur to the fact the roll was only factory primed lightly once, toned them to match my pallet to give an overal undertone to the surface.

Now with the economy in shambles and money very tight, I feel what started out as trying to be more professional ( in my opinion) now turns out to be very economical to say the least because prices in art stores for readymade canvas has skyrocketed. I not only prepare my own canvas, I also re-use them, sanding if necessary and re-jessoing and re-toning sometimes doing this process several times. This has not only turned out to be very economical because you can get many more canvases from a seven foot roll as compared to prepared canvas. And the surface is exactly as I would like every time. Not to mention the therapeutic value of keeping busy on non-productive paint days. I prep fifteen or so canvases every month or as needed.

Also for years now I also have been buying paint on line in very large caulk gun size tubes and don’t but from the local art stores in those exorbitantly priced four ounce tubes, which I would go through in two to three paintings because I work in an impasto technique. These larger tubes hold the equivalent of six small tubes I find very economical to use.  So these are several innovative way of staying ahead in a down economy.

There is still much to be said on conspicuous consumption even today in a depressed economy and especially here in Southern California, where I live. Wealth is always on display and consumption is conspicuous and at the forefront of society.
It’s a badge of honor to be wasteful especially today. I believe conspicuous consumption will always happen even in bad times only to a lesser degree.
I find it curious that Veblen ( he coined the phrase- conspicuous consumption) died in California and no doubt his research was based on the waste seen here everyday notably in the movie and music industries though in his time the movie industry was the visibly main source of consumption in this country.
In Veblen’s time, America was experiencing a renaissance of wealth with the J.P.Morgans and the Rockefellers. The country was expanding exponentially and many were getting in on the ground floor in steel, with railroads, and in building. We also have to remember there was no income tax then. Every penny made went into personal accounts. Spending was the word of the day. No one expected it to end until the 1929 crash. The kind of wealth created then without doubt attributed to the growth and expansion of conspicuous consumption. In fact, it became a way of life to see who could outdo the other.
Look at the Hearst Newspaper empire. The now famous Castle he built could never be build today. Talk about frivolous! But to anyone who has been there, what a creation.
Sure buyers of art are cautious but art can never be equated with a Hummer. The rich may also be looking for bargains but what they conceive as a bargain may be the difference between one million as opposed to two million for a painting by Picasso or Dali.
The common person, in America at least, still doesn’t see art of any kind as an investment valuable, but his Hummer, now that’s a different story.

Conspicuous consumption is a part of human nature. This is the case since man rose to walk upright. The quest for the best started with food, then shelter and even for a mate. Humans are competitive and it extends to possessions necessary (frivolous) or not. If my neighbor has one, I need one better, maybe two. This crosses all social lines and all nationalities. The more you make, the more you want. This is especially true in Southern California.With times being what they are there seems to be a tightening of the purse strings, even those with money to spend. Everyone is looking for bargains.
Though art isn’t necessarily an intrinsic part of this equation.    

Because art is very difficult to put a price on, so called “experts”created a (false) value system for art to have monetary value.What makes art valuable is made up of circumstances created in order to sell it. It we were to say the cost of materials was it’s value, most works of art would be no more than twenty to fifty dollars if that. But we add Quality whatever that means, Difficulty, Size, Scarcity, Greed, and Myth, plus a host of other factors and voile, worth!
Art, technically, is worthless. Most things are worthless until a value is placed on it. Value is gauged on who wants it and how much they are willing to pay for it.
Dali was right when he said he (sic) “doesn’t create art, he creates wealth”.
So getting back to conspicuous consumption, if you are willing to pay the price, no matter the cost, that item is worth that much. Those who can afford to flaunt it, don’t worry that cost. If money is no object, who is to blame the buyer for paying too much.  An Old Chinese phrase goes " a fool and his money are soon parted".