As an aspiring artist I have recently come to realize that what I lack is a gimmick. I have truly neglected this aspect of my professional development and now find myself, as usual, casting around at the last minute. I saw this fella in India on the Reuters Oddly Enough news that beat me to the punch and paints entirely with one fingernail on his left hand. Now I’ll have to scratch that one off my list of potential gimmicks.
I confess that I was a little misled by the title of the story "Disabled Artist Still Painting". I was expecting perhaps a story of a gallant quadriplegic who struggles with a brush held in the teeth, or an artist with Cerebral Palsy who has to wrestle over every detail. You can understand that I was a bit let down when it turned out to be a guy with a bad right arm who, therefore, paints with his left and who’s main aspiration is to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. He’s not even that good.
But being good or not is irrelevant when you don’t even have a gimmick (in song writing they call it the "hook") to distinguish yourself from the crowd. And so many obvious gimmicks have been taken. I’ll really have to work on this, and I already have so much to do this week!
Sorry, this story is in video format only, as far as I know.
Please tell me you are kidding.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell when someone’s pulling others legs, and this is one of those times.
You’ve got my sympathy, Tim. Frankly, as much as I love painting, I hate the artworld (maybe that word should be in scare quotes — “artworld”). There’s just way too much snobbery and silliness there.
OK, I will let you off the hook, Theresa. I was kidding. K-I-D-D-I-N-G.
I was being sarcastic and poking fun at the absurdity of what passes for great art these days.
I like the idea that there are certain perennial types of images in art. People have been painting still lifes for hundreds of years, but we never seem to get tired of it. What I would like to do someday is to paint an ordinary pear on a tabletop and do it so well that people viewing it would burst into tears. Originality be hanged.
lol! Thank goodness. Sorry I haven’t gotten back here and let me stand in the line of those who are patting you on the back. We don’t tire of still life because we all have different things that evoke something in us.
That’s why commission work for any decent artist is a fine thing. You can tell them what you want within certain parameters. I know what I like, and the colors I want.
On the other hand, if I’m going to burst into tears, or, far more likely, have my jaw drop open, it’s going to have to speak to my heart loudly.
I’m glad to know that Jimmy has good taste in friends! Very classy.