Gus Fink Interview!

Consume Till Death, copyright Gus Fink

After seeing my review in the blog, Gus Fink contacted me and informed me that I was mistaken on certain points of my review. He asked if I would interview him and write a more accurate article and I agreed. We wrote back and forth on MySpace and I asked him some tough questions, which he answered gracefully.

Fink related that he was never going for a gimmick, but that he wanted to praise his deceased grandfather for being his childhood role model. He also made art under his own name, Josh Fields, but creating as Gus Fink helped him to deal with his grandfather's death. Besides Gus Fink, he has used other aliases to paint as well, including Alice Koon, his female character. He booked a show as Alice Koon, engaged in a collaborative project under the guise of Irving Berman, worked with a friend as Ed Beans, and his latest work has sold on eBay under the name Enwood Berger. Gus Fink has been living off his work since 2001, and has pushed his friends to do the same, with great success - his friend Jesse Reno brought in over $50,000 last year, Fink says.

I have always been overwhelmed at the fellow's productivity, and being able to live off one's art would account for some of that. When I questioned the time frame involved in each piece, Fink relayed that it could take anywhere from ten minutes to three hours to complete a work. He says that it's draining and often it's difficult to work for more than 4 straight hours, but that he multitasks as he works, and that he goes through phases alternating large pieces and small ones. He uses the cheapest materials he can find, including cardboard and found objects, as can be seen in his eBay store.

I was mistaken before by insinuating that Gus Fink had formal art training. He corrected me and said that his only related training is in computers, PhotoShop and Flash - meanwhile, most of his art is handmade, and he only uses the computer to scan the finished images into the computer. He lists his influences as Todd MacFarlane, Sam Keith, Jim Henson, George Lucas, and all the "cool horror movies of the 80's". He says that he always pictured himself as becoming more of a Walt Disney sort of figure, rather than a painter/artist. Gus is married with two daughters now, and even his wife calls him Gus Fink. He is looking into changing his name in the future and has cashed many a money order or check under the name.

I recalled that in the eBay listings several years ago, the character of Gus Fink lamented his dead wife and claimed her death to be his reason for his artwork. In reality, Gus' grandmother is still living, and when I asked him what she thought of the claim, he replied that she had a good sense of humor and was glad to see his grandfather's memory with so much recognition and success. I also asked Gus about the reaction of his customers when he was outed on the internet as Josh Fields, and he said that most of them were already aware due to his outrageous bio, and many thought it was genius. He said that maybe two out of 600 collectors were upset and he offered their money back. Fink said that most of the people who were offended were jealous artists who weren't selling their art well. He was actually surprised to see my review, since there hasn't been any negative publicity since 2003 or so. I attribute this to Fink's excellent vigilance and desire for good press, and his impressive track record and damage control proves him nothing short of a brilliant businessman. Speaking of which, he's had quite a few accomplishments, including comic books, magazines, and his latest series of toys, which are linked to from his website, GusFink.com.

Fink concluded our interview with some advice to artists just starting out: "Give it your all, don't give up and you'll find your own way. It's better to find your own way on anything in life then to get too much advice from others. I learned that and its good for others to know it too."

My art will be in a movie!

The motion picture that's being made here in the Glens Falls area filmed a scene at Rock Hill Bakehouse Cafe directly in front of one of my pieces! I heard about it and wrote to the director of the film, Colin Bannon, and he said he loves my art and will credit me and aephemera.net in the movie. Keep an eye out for "Love Conquers Paul," touring independent film festivals and showing at the Glens Falls Centennial Celebration next year!

Art News - Studio!

Well, we're moving into the studio! It needs a good sweep and some paint and extra light fixtures, but we should be up and running soon. We've decided to call our group "The Escape Artists" - I'll update once we have a better idea of what our hours will be, but if you feel like walking by to see if we're in, here's where the studio is:


Click for Google Maps.

It's at the corner of Cooper and Lawrence Streets in Glens Falls, on the third floor. The number is 307 - it's closer to Lawrence Street, in that right-hand leg of the "L" seen above. If you go in via the Lawrence Street entrance (by the Tom Myott Gallery) and take the elevator up to the third floor, you'll walk out of the elevator, take a left, and then take a right down a corridor, and ours is the one that says 309 on the wall and 307 on the door. Soon, I'll be putting up signs all around the building so you can find me when you walk in! Stay tuned...

Art News - Studio

Well, we're moving into the studio! It needs a good sweep and some paint and extra light fixtures, but we should be up and running soon. We've decided to call our group "The Escape Artists" - I'll update once we have a better idea of what our hours will be, but if you feel like walking by to see if we're in, here's where the studio is:


Click for Google Maps.

It's at the corner of Cooper and Lawrence Streets in Glens Falls, on the third floor. The number is 307 - it's closer to Lawrence Street, in that right-hand leg of the "L" seen above. If you go in via the Lawrence Street entrance (by the Tom Myott Gallery) and take the elevator up to the third floor, you'll walk out of the elevator, take a left, and then take a right down a corridor, and ours is the one that says 309 on the wall and 307 on the door. Soon, I'll be putting up signs all around the building so you can find me when you walk in! Stay tuned...

Art Review - Gus Fink

Using a "brush name" comprised of his childhood nickname "Gus" and his grandfather's last name, "Finklestein", twentysomething right-handed artist Josh Fields fabricated a biography of mentally ill middle-aged widower Gus Fink. He used this character to sell offbeat artwork drawn with his left hand at low prices on Ebay, his listings accompanied by the faux life story, selling art like hotcakes. Fink is an Ebay phenomena, having sold thousands of his works supported by the guise, and is considered one of the greatest Ebay hoaxers. His true identity was outed on the internet, and has since dropped the bio of Gus Fink, but kept the name and continues to sell. He's now internationally collected and has shown in galleries across the country, been spotted in major motion pictures, and illustrated several books. His self-branded "outsider art" appeals to horror fans, goth kids, and collectors of strange things.

Some of Fink's work covers the standard "cute horror" art themes: creepy children, cute cartoons, guts, pointed teeth, religious undertones, adorable animals like bunnies, kittens and birds, characters with wide-set low eyes and large heads, splatters, scribbles, stitches, and primitive animals and figures that look as if drawn by a child. Despite his goal to create art on his own in the vein of self-taught "folk art", without the influence of teachers or fellow artists, the style and characters of nightmarish comic book artists Jhonen Vasquez and Roman Dirge are an obvious influence over Fink's work.

However, Fink builds on that base and branches off from the usual themes to develop his style. Much of his work is "altered art", using old photographs, board games, dictionaries, even straw wrappers and multivitamins as a base - pretty much anything that strikes him as being worthy of rebirth as art. He draws his frightening figures using a mixed-media grab bag that might include acrylic paint, pencils, oil sticks, Sharpies, inks, tape, china marker, and/or pen over those base materials to create something new. The mixed media and underlying material lend a fresh spin and unique flavour to the tired cute horror fad.

When it comes to Fink's work, it is less complicated to speak on the works as a whole as opposed to choosing one or two on which to comment, because the pieces are so multitudinous. To view the volume of his pieces, one must conclude that his process is impulsive, and that he must work often, completing more than one piece in a sitting. His composition and line is crude, and his palette limited - but of course, that's the gimmick.

Fink currently has several comic books published, and is releasing a series of Boogilyheads dolls. More news and a gallery of his works can be seen at his website, http://www.gusfink.com.

3 Horrids, Gus Fink

Art Review - "Crossing Borders"

“Crossing Borders” – Laura Neadle’s show at Gardenworks

To arrive at Gardenworks in Salem, New York, one must first drive through farmlands and fields, twisting country roads and sunlit groves. Raspberry fields and friendly staff welcome you to the store and gallery, an old converted barn housing local produce, homemade jams and cheeses, and kitschy home décor, arranged busily. To get to the gallery upstairs, you must first pass rows and rows of dried flowers on pegs, reminiscent of colonial life.

In the gallery, the ceiling is high and the barn doors are open, allowing the sunlight to brighten the gallery. Light streams in through cracks in the big wooden slats of the walls. Laura Neadle’s work hangs on large white panels suspended from the walls and beams in the old barn. Dusty and cobwebbed antique farm tools are placed decoratively in the middle of the floor. Laura’s work pops off the panels at you – framed in gold to catch the sunlight, her colors brighter than the capabilities of paint. There is a unique texture used throughout her paintings – most notably in her work “Pillars of Stone”. This texture, combined with the bright colors and dramatic composition, sets a theme for her show, which is titled “Crossing Borders”.

She uses inks as her base, poured on yupo and inlaid with foreign texture. The texture is created by laying plastic wrap in the ink while it’s wet and then letting it dry. She then peels it off, and paints with watercolor over the interesting ink shapes. The bright oranges and warm yellows used throughout the show pop off the page, while the distinctive textures, and use of dark, heavy paint in her watercolors differentiate her landscapes from the traditional brand so common in the Adirondacks.

Her subject matter is unique, as well. These are not your typical locations for landscape paintings – they are off the beaten path, farmland most people drive by without noticing; bridges, quarries and shops documented on a lazy drive through the country. She concentrates on Rupert and Salem, where the show takes place, and the viewer’s long, languid drive out to Gardenworks sets the mood for the works. Take “Between Salem and Bedlam Corners” for instance – this piece is a landscape, but it’s no typical lake or forest scene. The texture of the foreground is that same ink-and-plastic-wrap technique, and looks like a stained-glass scene, stretching into the distance with extreme perspective. Houses are barely visible in the background – this is a familiar scene to anybody who’s gone for a drive through the country in Upstate New York, but the intensity of the dark-blue mountains and the rough texture of the dark soil makes it almost surreal.

All the houses in Neadle’s work are distant, always dwarfed by mountains or sky, and always outdone by the colors of nature. In “Red Sky at Night”, she uses the paper in a portrait fashion, rather than horizontally as most landscapes, and ¾ of the page is an intense red and blue sky, above what would be a bland watercolor of a house save for the color-storm hovering above it. “Farm Near Rupert” is practically abstract, a farmhouse in the distance, reverse-silhouetted by dark colors, with an enormous foreground of color leaping off the page in that stained-glass texture.

Neadle also had some traditional landscapes for the more conventional taste, admitting that some of it was older, and noting that her newest traditional landscapes are much freer, easier, and looser after her experimental materials and colors. The show blends with the location incredibly well, with a modern and surrealistic spin on the old standbys.
This show can be seen at http://www.lauraneadle.com under “Galleries” and “Gardenworks”.


Between Salem and Bedlam Corners, Laura Neadle

Art Show - Lake George Lakefront Walkway Show

The First Annual Lake George Lakefront Walkway Show was well-attended, but unfortunately not by people seeking art. I'm grateful for the exposure, but I don't think I'll do this show next year unless they decide to advertise it better. I spent most of the day plein air painting (and getting a sunburn!), and created a new piece - Wishes. It's just about finished in the above picture. This piece is on a large piece of yupo, painted blue with acrylic paint, and then overlaid with watercolor drips and spatters. The swirls are places where I wiped away the watercolor to show the blue acrylic paint underneath. I touched everything up with watercolor. With pen, I wrote thoughts, wishes, prayers, and affirmations in the swirls coming out of the figure's mouth.