Learning to Walk Again

I've been trying to get a certain art product off the ground. It's actually very clever, makes doing quality art fast and easy. The only problem is that it has been so long since I've done what I can actually call art. I got so bogged down in the business of it all that I pretty much walked away from it all. I'll show you what I mean. Here's a brief history as me as an artist.

When I started out all I did was what I wanted to do. I'd paint the people and things that I found interesting on bits of cardboard and scrap wood. I'd leave them places for others to see, because what's the point of art if no one ever sees it? I'd say this was me at my most radical and most creative.


What I left behind started striking a chord with some people. It wasn't long before I made the transition into doing celebrities. It was a quick way to make money because everyone has an idol.



Around that time I also started getting request to paint people's family and friends.



Would you like to know what these last four pictures have in common? The subjects are all dead. Look at those young faces, frozen in time that way. I never sought to paint dead kids. Seems everyone gets the same idea when they see you can paint. I ended up painting so many dead children that I could look in the newspaper and, if I saw someone young had died, I would know I was going to make some money. I can even remember a string of young deaths. Jake, Josh, Jared, and Justin were their names. They died within months of each other. I painted them all. It was no way to live. I kept hearing the words "death merchant" in my brain. I pretty much started shying away from painting by that point. I haven't painted any dead children since.

So now I'm trying to find that radical creative side of myself again. I still seem to get stuck in the commercial celebrity type stuff, but I'm working on getting out of that. Does anyone know how to get the fire really burning again?