In Need of Lampshades.

"The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; and the great welcome them out of vanity or need."

-Napoleon Bonaparte

Influential People.
Acrylic on masonite 19x22"

  As an artist or designer, it's quite common to be asked to define who in your field has influenced your work to date. Yet in doing so, your work can immediately lose some of the glory it gained by your hand. It may seem easy from that point to find the obvious parallels between the work you do and the work of your named "influences" which, by means of creative paranoia, will leave you to think of your work as unidentifiable, or even worse, in breach of copyright law. This is why many young artists I know have invented their own formulaic responses to these questions, many of whom find it easier to employ an ignorant shrug than commit artistic suicide with a straight answer when it comes to being seen as an original thinker.

  The first few times I had been asked one of these questions, I swiftly but gently shovelled bits of shit into the ears of my supplicants. I have never thought of an influence as something that could be named in the first place. Isn't the point of successful influence to go unnoticed? 

  For a long time I had been drawing and painting in the dark, deprived of illumination from the shining heroes in the art world, and I was blissful in ignorance. The only art that existed was what I could see by candlelight in the distant Renaissance. But artistic illumination was inevitable, and it became harder each year to dim the lights; to muzzle the people outside screaming PLAGIARISM!

  Influence should be a looming shadow. If you can name your influences, you are either unintentionally appropriating, or over-thinking why you do what you do. You will put yourself in danger of developing the need to justify your work to everyone who may see your work and relate it out loud to something they saw on television. If you let your work be what it is and develop your own visual language, then anything that sneaks in by accident can be considered a welcomed guest.