Art, especially painting, is part of my life. After I nearly died about 3 times (boat drift, earthquake, drowning) between 1994 and 2017, I now understand better that art is my life mission. During those times, no man in earth could save my life but there was an invisible one who shouted my name so loud, and said ‘wake up! spread the arts wherever I send you. I am the One who guides you spiritually, I am your God.’
Almost 100 years of artistic experimentation define ‘Modern Art’ beginning with French post-Impressionist George Seurat, and his painting techniques including pointillism and conté crayon on rough paper. He was in the same generation as Vincent van Gogh and many other artists at the beginning of the 20th century. My paintings are all about conversations with myself, with the earth, where I am when I am painting, and what’s going on in the world. To me, these conversations are my version of Modern Art.
Art sales from the United States, United Kingdom and China combined make up 84% of the global art market. Modern Art, auction and the money value of art caught my attention a few years ago when Jean Michel Basquiat’s Untitled — a painting of a skull from 1982, sold for over $110.5 million in 2017. In 2018, the global art market was valued at US$67.4 billion, the second-highest year ever. So there is money to be made in art, you just have to be in the right place at the right time and get noticed by the right people. There is a downside to this. Hitler is a very sad example of an artist who did not get noticed by the right people. Rejected twice from the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, his ‘failure’ as an artist led him to his ‘success’ as a beast. Many historians claimed he wasn’t a good artist, but for me some of his pieces were not bad at all. They were simple, perhaps without much imagination… but to my mind, better than fruit and tape as modern art.
