Rediscovered: the art of Thomas Payne

[substitute]

http://www.eyeballpress.com/

He's the younger brother of my high school friend Michael Payne. Tom's a mad genius. I really like his art, even more the recent stuff he's done in oils actually.

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[dr-strych9.livejournal.com]

I commissioned him last year to do a series of small oil paintings in the theme of surrealistic advertisements for my homebrewed beer. I've been very happy with the three that he's produced so far. Two more to go. They're unframed, and about 2' x 3'. I've been writing him checks for several hundred dollars at a time. I know some of the larger ones he's done (beautiful ones like Trifurcative and Duality) went for thousands of dollars at his gallery showing.

Oil paintings are expensive because the materials aren't cheap anymore. Airbrush paintings, watercolors, pen and ink, pencil sketches, can be produced for less money. I bought one of his watercolor and ink drawings, Head Trauma, for about half what a comparably sized oil painting would cost.

Buying original art is definitely a rich guy's game, though you don't have to be all that rich, e.g. an investment banker, to be able to afford the small stuff. But it's still expensive.

Since anybody can cover their walls with mass-produced posters that cost pennies each to print in huge factories operated by wage slaves in Poorfuckistan, it's really hard for independent original artists to compete on price. They have to charge a lot because they sell so little, and yeah— it must suck for them that the only people who can afford to keep them in business are soulless lawyers, philistine engineers (like me) and amoral businessmen. Ultimately though, if you don't sell to those people, nobody else will buy it, and it will stack up in your studio. Everybody MUST pay The Man.

If you like his artwork, but you can't afford to buy any— not even his book— then send him some love in the mail. He's a really great guy (so's his housemate), and he can always use the encouragement if you can't spare the cold hard lucre.