Being an artist is probably one of the dumbest things an individual can choose to do in today's America.  The hours are literally endless, the pay is pretty much non existent, the battle to pay rent and buy scraps of food is seemingly insurmountable some days.  Add to that being taken for granted, constantly being chewed down on the price of paintings and work (murals, illustrations), and a running line of jokes about how you'll be rich and famous when you're dead, and you've got quite a bright future there.

And of course, the pessimist doesn't stop there.  Combined with budget cuts to schools, the arts are the first department cut by our loving, compassionate Republican Overlords.  Not only does this deprive the world of tomorrow from making art, which develops patience, skill and problem solving abilities, but it also takes away the the audience of the next generation astute in the arts who would buy my paintings if I live long enough to see them grow up. 

And those are thoughts written on one of my bright, shiny, good days. 

So all the time I am left alone in my studio, working on problem canvases, thinking up the next great idea, I feel a certain detachment to the two worlds around me: the world of pop culture and the art world.  I hate television, movies and the pop culture entertainment world around me.  Horribly trite details of what Hollywood starlet is screwing which Hollywood stud bore me to tears while half the world is threatened to being blown up by the small thinking numbskulls the word is currently run  by.  Folks wander through life as thoughtless consumers, eating Wal-Mart food at Wal-Mart prices while going on about personal responsibility while driving SUVs and buying the latest X-Box that will baby sit their children. 

Of course, the art world holds no better solutions: a mildly corrupt, soulless and self-possessed place devoid of any meaning for well over fifty years.  I have no appreciation for galleries or curators of the day.  Craft and meaning were thrown to the curbside a long time ago for the world of political genital sucking and knowing all the right people and what kind words to say to all the right people.  Of course, great art, like justice, should be blind, but its curators aren't - Austin alone has galleries devoted to the blacks, Mexicans and women, and as long as you are willing to submit to their whims, you too can be a player. 

So where does that leave me as an artist today?  I'd probably say I'm looking for redemption and enough success in the future to continue what I do.  I've long thought there would be a giant correction in art books, when, not in my lifetime, the past 60 years of art making written about so profusely and obtusely will be boiled down to a page or two as an aberration of the human spirit.  I guess there is the romantic and somewhat naive dream of being recognized at some point in the future for all your toiling that builds into some success. 

To continue reading and see some small sense of artistic redemption, continue on to my writings on the Album of the Year