When I was a young guy, I had some stuff submitted to the Pennsylvania Governor’s School For The Arts, in art and writing. I went to the university where it was to be held (Bucknell that year) to meet with selection committees or whatever they were called then, and had a nice time. The writing was decent, they said, but the art not so much.
This made no sense to me. My art was much better. But it was the 1980s and ‘art’ the way people traditionally viewed art was out. Crosses dipped in urine were art and pencils were passe.
Here’s a pic I did in 1985, sitting in my college dorm room looking at a Madonna album cover on the wall. So this was 2 years after the Bucknell thing. Why do I still own it? I have no idea, I drew it for my next door neighbor, who was a big Madonna fan when she hit the music scene. I gave away most everything I drew so maybe I took it to work on some small thing and it got lost in a pile of stuff.
Okay, for someone with no training and clearly hacking it out, but also clearly a drawing. Now look at Paul Cadden’s stuff below.
Apparently all it took to bring pencils back was for someone to truly break the mold and vault over the entrenched art community and just be amazing. Paul Cadden, a Scot my age, has done just that by going pencils one better, going from realism, like I did, to hyperrealism, a play on photorealism, which are paintings based on photographs – and he uses pencils only.
Paul Cadden
Can you tell these are not photographs? Only if you look really close. It’s nothing short of amazing. He sells these for a paltry $7,000 each. Friggin’ Picasso sells for millions and this guy is making peanuts. Until that gets fixed, the art world itself is broken. Now go buy one from a gallery so Cadden can eat.