Bill Carman is an artist, a very fine Fine Artist. He is an illustrator, too, a very unique one. He is different, strange, sometimes a little weird, he is funny, but at the same time he can be deadly serious. No matter whether he is creating pictures for a gallery show, or for a children’s book, he is always the same, whole, recognizable, himself and brilliant.
As far as I am concerned, his work stands for honesty and being yourself, for daring to openly and publically dream your dreams through your pictures. And although these “visual dreams” are reflecting Bill’s personal mental and emotional landscape, they are in their essence yet another emanation of the same, hard to express symbolic language of the subconscious that we all share. This, perhaps more than any other quality of his work (and they are many) makes him a true artist.
I
secretly (apparently not anymore) hope that this post, that contains a significant
dose of Bill Carman’s imagery, will help people, especially commercial
illustrators among them, to awake to
their own unique creative personality, instead of endlessly running after other
people’s ideas and depicting them…This “awakening”, after all, might be bad for your finances, but on the
longer run this will bring the always sought after internal satisfaction and
contentment, for no money or any other kind of external material compensation
can (permanently) fill the gap, the hole, in the troubled artist’s soul.
Enjoy!
Gallery
Stuff
by Bill CarmanI have been in galleries pretty much since I graduated 8,124 years ago. After school, the recurring theme with my work seemed to be, “Oh, I love it but how can I use it.” Hence galleries became the immediate default route. Because I had some ability I continued to do illustration but the gallery world always sucked me back in. The latest version of that sucking is the result of what I believe to be a natural development in the art world; the recognition of image based work (again) as a marketable commodity for wall space.
In
the past 10-15 years there has been a major shift in the gallery world
resulting in an exciting playground for not only the serious (no humor in art),
all black wearing, philosopher quoters but for image-makers who like to tell
stories and make things people like.
 |
| Could have used a painting example much cooler than mine but this is my post after all |
There
are many reasons for this shift, including pop surrealist/low brow art and the
digital explosion in entertainment, I won’t go into because it would take a
book sized post.
And
there is certainly no way to cover all the possibilities of the gallery world
in a single post, so thankfully I’ll limit this post to one man’s recent
experience. I’ll leave the exhaustive how to get into galleries list to someone
good at such lists like Greg Manchess. (See how I did that whole shift of responsibility
thing)
I
was one of those kind of old school guys who plugged along doing illustration
and the local gallery thing. With some reluctance I started to build an online
presence. Getting in to certain annuals like Spectrum and Society of
Illustrators helped my cause and scoring awards didn’t hurt either. Now with
the magic of the internet (still not quite sure how this happens), the result
of this plugging away was that my stuff got passed around a little. When I was first contacted to be in a “theme
show” I thought it was a scam.
My
memory is a little foggy, I grew up in the 60s and 70s, so my memory is a
little foggy but I believe the fist theme based show to which I was invited was
“Rom”. I had no idea what a Rom was. Turns out he’s a comic book character of
some renown in Rom circles. I answered the invitation by informing them that I
am not a comic book artist. To which they replied, “That’s even better we are
looking for different takes.” I was prepared to just ignore things from there
but went to the site and saw work by very good artists whom I admire. When I
saw Renee French’s work, an online friend and acquaintance, I thought OK if
she’s in it I’ll try something new.
 |
| My take on Rom |
After that fairly positive experience things seemed to steamroll. The next show was in LA and it was a comic book character of choice. I chose The Main Man.
The show that really turned up the heat was Terrible Yellow Eyes a Maurice Sendak tribute organized by Cory Godbey. It was held in conjunction with the movie release.
The Sendak show generated a lot of publicity and my work was seen all over. Theme shows started to pile up.
He-Man (How could one say no to this?)
Twilight Zone (Didn’t need to think long about this)
A blockbuster Alice in Wonderland show coinciding with the Burton movie.
There were more, and more I had to turn down but the result was people in big cities and all over the cyber realm saw my work. Seeing my work led to buying my work, which is a good sign that someone will give you a show. They no longer say, “I love your work (well they thankfully still say this), but what do I do with it?” they just put me in a show and let the public decide. So now I get to sit in my wonderful studio, living much like an art hermit and paint things like this:
 |
| "Amended: Albino Narwhal Synchronized Swimming Doping Law" |
 |
| “3 Wishes” |
 |
| "Batgirl and Batsquid Ride Batpug as Batbat Leads the Way" |
Remember,
this is one man’s recent route to gallery fame and fortune. There are many ways
to approach and work with a gallery. I said I would leave the lists to Greg,
and I will, but I wanted to offer a couple of thoughts:
- Be
honest, work hard and your unique voice will find you.
- Be
ready if the opportunity comes.
- Find
where you belong. (Personally my most difficult thing)
- Reward
your viewers. Gallery work is about presence. The image should, of course,
look great in print or on screen but when it arrives at the gallery people
should gasp, swoon, and faint. Surface, presence, craft all work toward
making not simply a picture but an object. So even if your work is digital
how do you make it stand out among all the other prints on the wall as
something that should be on a wall?
No comments:
Post a Comment