| Artist Spotlight: Darwin Price with Interviewer Charles Bookman Posted on 27 September 2004 - 9:28pm Darwin Price is a well-known artist in the San Francisco Bay Area art scene. Often present in his work is the reconciliation of such dichotomies as good/evil, anima/animus, orange and green. In this interview, Mr. Price talks candidly about his work. CB: What do you do for inspiration? DP: Ronald Regan movies & Nitrous Oxide. CB: What do you do when you're not creating? DP: I have a day job. CB: What makes someone a successful artist? DP: They don't have a day job? CB: How'd you know you were going to be an artist? DP: Tea Leaves read by wandering Gypsies. CB: What's your primary medium(s)? Why do you choose them as opposed to something else? DP: For the last several years it's been using Oils because they are the preferred medium of nine out of ten dental hygienists.
CB: If you weren't an artist, what would you be? DP: Its moot as everyone is an artist anyway.
CB: What words of advice would you give to up and coming artists? DP: Ignore advice (including this).
CB: What three attributes would you give to a monster in order to destroy Japan? DP: I'd make the monster Godzilla. Why? What can I say? I'm a Traditionalist. CB: Were there any low points in your career? DP:The time one of my bronzes was stolen from a gallery who subsequently chose to hide the fact from me. CB: What did you learn from them? DP: Always remember to make the sculpture too heavy to carry.
CB: Could you have avoided them? DP: If I'd thought to low-jack it. CB: Who's your favorite musicians? DP: Scott Miller of Game Theory, Michael Hedges, Miles Davis, Nick Drake, Darol Anger, REM, Regina Carter, Itzhak Perlman, Yoyo Ma, and Robyn Hitchcock of course.
CB: Artists?
DP: Kent Williams, Lucian Freud, Robert Motherwell, Odd Nerdrum, Roy Lichtenstein, and Joseph Bueys (and that fucker who paints the ?happy little trees?).
CB: Writers?
DP: Rudy Rucker, Richard Dawkins, Robert Wright, Daniel Dennett, Phillip K. Dick, Douglas Adams, and Christopher Moore.
CB: If you could have any super power, what would it be?
DP: The power to affect political change with nothing but the naked power of my single vote.
CB: Why?
DP: Haven't you been reading the papers?
CB: What trends do you see emerging today in art?
DP: A lot of people are doing many things, which are artsy, artistic, artifice, artificial, and just plain art.
CB: What's your thoughts on them? DP: Thinking about art can be like thinking about sex; it's a bit interesting, but at the end of the night you're still alone with mother thumb and her four daughters.
CB: What drug habit would you suggest to an upcoming artist? DP: I'm told that Heroin is very chic. | 