Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel is an artist that I find very interesting. He first gained serious standing in the art world with his plate paintings pictured above. These paintings were very simple paintings painted over a background of broken plates. He has also directed movies nominated for multiple academy awards. He is a man with an impressive career, but to me the most impressive thing is how prolific he is. While creating movies which are notoriously time consuming to create, and with a career that has only spanned about 35 years, one look at his website and the amount of art it has to offer is mindblowing.

My professor told me, upon seeing my early attempts at abstraction, "Just make a ton of these. Make good ones, make bad ones, just make a bunch." I didn't know how difficult that advice was going to be to follow. I at times struggle with thinking something looks like "it took enough work to make." Someone like Julian seems to trust himself completely and have no problem walking away from something. The fact that he has attained the name recognition he has, as well as the success in multiple fields, yet he keeps working seemingly all the time is inspirational to me.

I may also steal some of the simple characters and objects he uses. His work to me is still all about color pallette and composition much like mine, but he uses simple symbolic images which seem to carry an interesting feeling and very direct meaning. A person is a person, a street light is a street light, it doesnt mean you can't still focus on the work as a whole and its effect on the viewer overall.