In February, my post entitled “WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE A WORKING ARTIST” marked the beginning of my attempt to write about my experiences as an artist here in France.

I don’t know if there are any artists reading the blog but I wanted to take a moment and reflect on the past six months and add new thoughts to the topic.

These have been trying times for all. Financially and politically, we have witnessed extreme fluctuations worldwide. And I have myself at times questioned my path. It has been a long journey for me and there were times when I was so close to the end, I couldn’t see beyond my immediate future. So close it seemed, that I was floating by my teeth.

But the random acts of kindness have materialized at the times I needed it most. With my partner putting a huge amount of effort into seeing me succeed and getting the word out with my work and thinking in a clear concise way, it has helped me immensely. She has found my buyers for me and has always been by my side to participate and champion me to others. Other friends of hers brought people towards us who eventually bought my art. Or they spoke about me, us and the paintings. They have come out to support me and her at our little showings and have been generous in their willingness to help spread the word and to get more exposure for me as an artist.

Everything that has come to us has come through meeting people personally and establish a rapport with them. Allowing them to see you as a person and not just a face. Sharing my passion for what I do with them and seeing them react to the paintings in a positive way. Seeing how happy they are when they buy one and put it in their home or office. All these things come from being available and open to people.

I don’t know of many artists who sell directly from their website without first meeting their clients. If someone does buy, it is usually after having seen the painting in person at their atelier and having met the artist personally. Also, I’ve noted that people need to get a sense of who you are as a person as your work always reflects ones energy. They want to bring positive energy into their home, not negative.

But art is a personal thing and I guess I  need to understand that it takes time to accumulate exposure and an awareness to your product. I have at times been frustrated because of what I thought to be too slow of a process of getting some exposure. I have repeatedly reached out to various print media only to be ignored. I don’t know what their agenda comprises of  for exposing artists here. It seems at times that for a country like France that is known for their inclusion of culture and arts in everyday life, here in the south the focus is only on tourism revenue. It can break you down and make you feel like no one cares. But you keep on keeping on. Like the monologue in Rocky Balboa, “it’s not about how hard you can hit, but how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done. Because if your willing to go thru all the battling you gotta get through to get to where you wanna get, who’s got the right to stop you? If you know what your worth, then bloody get what your worth!”

If you are an artist going thru the same thing, what has been your experience so far? Who have been the angels that have helped you out? How have you been resourceful with limited resources? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Last week, I spoke of a Ponzi scheme in the high art world. Maybe that was harsh but I wanted to get your attention.Because the public has been told by the art media, experts and art trend commentators that this conceptual art movement and the art from it is not only a real value because of it’s significance in the context of modern and post war art, but that these artists are themselves as significant as Monet, Picasso, Pollack, Warhol and de Kooning.

I think the investors bought these ‘assets’ with the idea of flipping them in the course of a few years but did they really believe these works were as important as the works of  the previous stated artists? With so many new millionaire and billionaires being minted weekly, it seemed there was no end in sight to  people knocking at the door of elitism asking for entree and willing to spend crazy money  just to look they belonged, had culture and were significant themselves.

They ended up investing in the art worlds version of the financial derivative. It seemed that each one that came along was the sucker, paying the sucker price and finding other suckers to offload onto after they made a profit. Everyone was making money. The critics, the galleries, the media, the investors that museums got to put up funds for huge, exquisite parties and exhibitions.

Even the reputable auctions houses got into it for a taste. ( I use ‘reputable’ loosely based upon known issues of provenance of various works auctioned off in the past twenty years.)

And let’s not even get into how most of these new millionaires made their money. The fact remains that the same instrument that crashed the world economy seems to have enjoyed a parallel life in the art world.

So whats going to happen? No one knows. Will it be propped up or left to deflate? Your answer is as good as mine. But I know this. People who really enjoy traditional art are having a field day. They have the best of both worlds now. Young, hungry artists who want a chance to sell and showcase their work and reasonable prices for emerging artist’s work that doesn’t break your bank. It would appear  that now is the time for the rebirth of art in it’s more traditional forms: painting, sculpture, photography, sketching, drawing, even graffiti.

In the end, the real work that is sweated out by the artisans themselves always ends up being discovered by real people. And that is where the true value lies; in it’s discovery.

Last week I wrote about the potential collapse in the high art markets of London and New York. The art world’s obsession over the conceptual art movement and in turn the works of designers like Koons and Hirst and the subsequent failure of their work to earn a decent return in the second hand trade auctions have led some to quietly look the other way and ponder ‘what just happened ?’.

Though some who observe the market may declare the market for these artist’s work and conceptual art itself is experiencing a revamping, there still is the question of whether high concept art has hit the peak and if  it was truly  valued realistically. If  so, why are high end buyers rejecting the new works and looking elsewhere to invest in what is undoubtedly a turnabout from the conceptual art superstars?

Artists like Gerhard Richter, Adriana Varejao, Almed Alsoudani and Chinese portrait artist Yan Pei-Ming are enjoying splendid if not somewhat more terrestrial auction prices and their work is definitely in the direction of abstraction and expressionism. But abstract painting was declared dead years ago, so why the sudden movement of money and interest in these artists?

I believe the ‘art of the banal’; as it’s sometimes been referred to; and the perverted egoistic personalities that came with it, has overstayed it’s own welcome. And in the desperate attempt to be the ‘brand’ or the ‘product’, these designers and the ‘work’ got shelved. Much like the consumer who gets bored of the device that; once gleaming and smooth; is now faded and scratched,the inevitable thought occurs in the mind: ‘Did I throw money away at a passing fancy, or is it truly a value to me?’

And so it is with conceptual art of the last years. I believe that in the end there is something much more tactile  and real about these new artist’s works. They represent  the strain and toil of reaching within oneself in order to find the next level in themselves and the reflection of their human experiences in the world around them. They reflect the soul that is able to create organically instead of the mind that can just analyze. They prove the idea does not take precedence over the material and that the aesthetic elements are as important. In fact, all elements are of equal value.

While one could argue that this direction was inevitable, what about all the huge profits made by those whose responsibility was to make sure hype and over inflated works didn’t flood the market?

What happened to all the investors who got left with a bag of swag it  now seems no one wants? And what is the impact on the new  emerging artists producing fine art but having to wait for the markets to unload their own stock before they take on new talents?

While the investment trend seems to be returning to the classic medium of paintings, some have withdrawn from the market entirely because of the stink that is now emanating from the last movement. Can you smell a Ponzi scheme here?

The other day someone came into my gallery and took some time to look at the work that I have been doing recently. He took his time and we talked a little bit about art.

Then he looked at the portfolio  where I have large format pictures of the work I had done early in my start of my painting. He remarked “hmmm hmmm…that looks exactly like a Jackson Pollock painting”.  I laughed and said if he wanted to pay me the money one of his paintings go for, he could write the check now and I’d wait 10 days to cash it.

But I  also got the sense he was saying it as a denunciation of the work as if he thought that I was copying someone else and thus not being original.

I mentioned that he wasn’t the first to make the Pollock reference and in fact my early stuff indeed had a particular affectation to the style Pollock is most known for. After, we said goodbye and I continued doing my work.

It got me thinking and I came to a realization. Yes, he was in fact one of many who had made the same “very Pollock” statement. And he said it in a way that most people had said it; as if I was stealing his ‘style’. That’s when I realized that in the mind of some people, Jackson Pollock ‘owns’ the drip style he used in his most famous works of art, and that no one really can use it and call themselves original.

If you don’t know who Jackson Pollock is, don’t worry. Thanks to the film ‘Pollock”, directed by the actor Ed Harris in 2000, most people who weren’t aware of him at the time now had this film as their first exposure to the man. It was a nuanced portrayal of a complicated individual struggling with his demons in his effort to create his art, his space in the universe if you will, and finding the next level of his art. It was  critically well received and nominated for several awards and ended up winning an Oscar for Marcia Gay Harden in her  portrayal of Lee Krasner, Pollock’s partner. So if you haven’t seen it, rent it. You won’t regret it.

In the film, there is one scene that takes place in the converted barn turned studio on the Long Island property where he and Krasner have moved to from the city. It’s winter, he’s cold and achy. He gets up, has his coffee and cigarette and goes out to the studio. He’s going to work and you can tell he’s in a rut. He arrives and starts his work. There is a moment when Jackson Pollock (Ed Harris) is contemplating the huge blank canvas laid out on the floor and some paint drips from the brush down onto it. It catches his attention, he is enamored with the resulting effect, and slowly starts to repeat the same action all over the canvas. Thus, the process he used to create his most famous paintings was born.

I don’t know if the film took dramatic license to recreate that moment with Pollock and the canvas. I hadn’t read any books on him at that point.(Still haven’t) But he later expressed that his style and the materials he used came organically from a need. It was a necessity for him.

Pollock is associated with the New York School, the group of artists in New York in the 50’s, who would eventually become known as the kings of the American Post War movement in modern art. Or New York abstract expressionists. Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner and even Robert De Niro’s father were some of the people in this group.

At this time, many of the artists were using physical action as part of the their process in putting their work on canvas. It was something that few had seen until certain journalist’s and the art circle in New York started following these budding personalities.Pollack at the time was deep into the drip technique and the rest is history.

The interesting thing is many do not know he abruptly abandoned this style in his later years. Why? Maybe for him it was no longer a means in which to express himself.

The result, I think , is that people get the impression that a style most associated with an artist is ‘theirs’.

Not so. Da Vinci was a master of the portrait style. Just look at the Mona Lisa. Millions know of it and have seen it either in print or in person. But that doesn’t mean no one else can paint a portrait and not be original in their own right. Monet was a master of flowers and gardens paintings. That doesn’t mean no one else can paint the same and not call themselves original.

That’s the great thing about art. It springs to life because of the interpretation by the artist of what he sees, feels and what he’s trying to convey on the surface of his choice.

For me, when I started painting, it was out of necessity that I used the drip approach. I had no formal training, a small space in my apartment  to work and the need to express myself on to the canvas. I didn’t even have brushes. Just some paint and some canvas. I used a plastic spoon to apply my paint. I was busting at the seams to do something creative. If I hadn’t,I have no doubt I would have lost my mind.

The resulting works were very interesting from a visual standpoint. I was beginning see what colors worked together, which ones didn’t, which shades were appealing and which ones were muddy. I saw shapes and depth. I saw ‘things’ in the paintings that were probably subconscious revelations.I began to develop my art.

All in all, I began to learn what painting was for me. And like Pollock, I moved away from it when I wanted to try something new that my growing confidence now allowed.

I could have stayed doing it. I could have just stuck with that and tried to be content with it. But I had to evolve. And I think I have.

There’s a part two to this coming soon but I want to say “thank you Jackson Pollock”. And thanks to all the other artists who toiled in the 50‘s and maybe didn’t get as famous as he did. You paved the way for the rest of us.

And it showed me three things: that the collective unconscious exists and all art stems from this pool, that having someone draw a comparison or mention to a prior artist like him is always a compliment, and the thing that an artist truly owns is his desire to get what he needs to get out of him and onto the canvas in what ever method he sees fit.