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ARTISTS A DYING BREED:

By DG Wilson Dec. 2007

It is true, we are becoming extinct. Aren't we? Artists MUST be dying out, a lost cause, a dupe simply BECAUSE WE DON'T SEE ART ANY MORE!

Before the artist was heralded as a god. We could do things that others just couldn't conceive or duplicate without our talent. Before we could make money and be rich. Before Galleries would clamor at our door step and beg to show our work.

NOW all the art you see is on the internet. Like a zoo, the exhibits of stunning quality, rich details and fantastic work are set up like little windows into the world of an artist. Thousands upon thousands of people show their work online, but we don't see it any place else. It just doesn't seem to exist. Where did it all go?

To the Big Biz companies. The only working art that we see today is in the form of advertisements. Gone are the days when an artist could put up a mural of their choosing, hang some work on the street corner or put up flyers. Gone are the days of sidewalk painting and artists painting street scenes, sidewalk galleries and portritature on the streets.

Big Biz has fined us, made things illegal and destroyed our world gallery. Big Biz holds the galleries, the laws and the money. The artists need to work for the Big Biz because there is no other place to work.

Then, just to drive out the last whisps of our creativity and talent Big Biz creates cheaper versions of our work in mass production. We can paint a portrait, but a company out there will do something similiar for far less money. The artists can't compete with machined mass production...and they shouldn't have to.

The customers, the people, those that admire, buy and use art from Big Biz need to understand just how terrible this destruction is to our lives. All of us suffer. The more art, color and vision that we encounter and expose ourselves to the greater our education of different view points. Simply put, if we see more art we are better people. If the only art that we do see has an ad attached then the artistic vision will be lost in the future.

Everyone should DEMAND that the artists return to the streets. We ALL should shout and scream at our mayors, politicians and mass production companies and tell them to lay off the artists! Allow the arts to flow back into culture, allow the patrons to pay what they desire, allow the street galleries to return.

But will that work? Probably not. So what can you and I do right now to help save the arts? Buy some original work, buy some prints direct from the artist. Help them by looking for them, seek them out and give them a little tiny bit of your money. If we all did that then the arts would flow once again into our daily lives.