Unique in art.

"Very Good Friends on a Rainy Day" by Andras Bartos

When we were in Berlin recently we randomly passed this quirky little shop full of seriously quirky art. We paused and looked in the window, took an info card and moved onwards but I was hooked and about half way down the street we turned back to go to the shop.

This is the art of Berlin artist Andras Bartos.  It's unique and it captured my fancy so we bought a print, nicely done on canvas. This print to be exact. This particular piece made me think of my friends far away for what ever reason ( none of my friends look like a blob or a dog-thing) and I had to have it.  I was glad we went back to the shop , it would have nagged at me otherwise as one of those "we should haves..." that sometimes happen when you are on holiday and fall in love with an object but don't get it.

This little print also makes me, as an artist, think a lot about my own art and where I fit into the whole art world. I'm not a very good artist, really, at least not in terms of actually selling my art. I just make it and then either give it away or store it some place, if I really like it I hang it on my walls.  But I am not a selling artist at all. Yet, partly due to upbringing, I feel that I fail because I don't sell. So what makes an artist an artist? Selling or making or both?

To be honest I don't much care if other people buy my art. I mean it's nice to be wanted and to have a piece sell but in the end it's not my ultimate goal mostly because I am not really so hung up on the financial and material side of things. I think, in plain English, I am not hungry enough.  Apparently art goes better with suffering and poverty. ( Or so I have been told).

So this is the conflict. I create art but I don't tend to sell it. There is a small number of viewers who get to see the art I create because the blog readership is small and I don't show, unless you work at ACER Germany then you get to see a fair amount of it because there are a lot of my paintings hanging there.  They hang in my husband's office, a piece hangs at my desk and there are two pieces in the area where I used to work. There used to be a lot of pieces in the Lugano office as well so I guess this makes me a corporate artist - not that I see it that way. It's just wall space. ( They don't clutter up my house if they hang someplace else.)

So is this unique art? Does it ever inspire anyone else?  I don't know. My own brand of crazy artist was born out of a multitude of things and the end result is a clash of technology and paint. I see progress in the pathway, and the paintings are becoming more complex somehow, but the fun aspect is still there too. It has to be fun, I don't create when I suffer I just suffer. I do create when I am inspired and Andras Bartos inspired me.