How to Interview an Artist

A friend and I were given an assignment by a local culture newsletter and we arrived quite unprepared.  Afterwards we considered what kinds of questions we should have asked...

1. When you’re unhappy with a work, which do you prefer?  Discard it?  Torture it?  Attempt a rescue?  Set it aside and obsess over it forever?  Paint over it?  Give it away to a relative?  Donate it to the public TV auction?

2. Would you ever buy a work from another artist in your medium?

3. What’s your beverage of choice while working?  How about music?

4. Ever sell a piece of your own work to a close relative?  How did that work out?

5. Have you ever accepted a commission you regretted?

6. Did you ever have a crush on a high school or college art instructor?

7. What color are the walls in your bedroom?  How about your sheets?

8. What’s your favorite movie about an artist?

9. When did you know you wanted to be an artist?  Was that the same year the horse kicked you in the head?

10. What’s your mother tell her friends about what you do for a living?  Does she tell them about the horse?

11. Do you ever walk around town with dried paint (or clay) on your hands?

12. Have you ever painted nudes?  Have you ever painted nude?  Have you ever painted yourself?  Have you ever painted on yourself?

13. How were your grades in high school art classes?

14. What’s the worst thing you ever did on a high school art field trip?

15. Have you ever tried to sell a work on E-Bay?  How often did you check on the bidding?

16. Did you draw horsies as a child?  Or race cars? 

17. Do you ever use just your first or just your last name as an attribution?

18. Would you want your children to grow up to be professional artists?

19. Does your will provide for the disposition of your unsold works?

20. Have you ever wished an agonizing disease on an agent or gallery owner?  If so, what disease?

21. Ever do something accidentally that worked out better than the original idea?  Did you consider the event a triumph of unconscious genius or just friggin’ lucky?

22. Ever sit outside a Paris bistro and nurse a single serving of Pernod all afternoon?  Did it make you wonder how Picasso got anything done?  Did it make you wonder how the bistro makes any money?

23. Ever read the warning labels on your art supplies?

24. Where’s the most unusual place you’ve ever had a work displayed?

25. What’s your cat’s (or dog’s) name?  Let me guess:  a famous painter.

26. Have you ever been asked to give career advice to a friend’s child?  Did you ask whether they own a horse?

27. Ever been asked to critique a toddler’s artwork?  How far ahead of his/her age group did you say he/she was?

28. Have you ever bounced a check to an art supply store?

29. When you tell strangers you’re a painter, has anyone ever assumed you do bathrooms and garages?

30. As a sculptor, ever have an erotic experience like Demi Moore at her potter’s wheel in “Ghost?”  Would you like to?

31. Ever make a casting of a body part?  Your own?  Someone elses?

32. If you had a house in Tuscany, would you ever get any work done?  Where would you go on vacation?

33. Ever date an artist’s model?  Before or after you first saw him/her naked?

34. Have you ever bought a car or truck especially to transport your work?

35. Do you know from what part of the animal camel-hair brushes come?

36. Have you ever suspected that your paint solvents are making you go insane?  Are you sure you could tell?

37. Have you ever collected natural clay from a local riverbed?

38. Do you ever insert secret occult symbols in your artwork?  Do you believe that Leonardo did?  Is he snickering at us from the grave?