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.