#scottmfischer

SCOTT M FISCHER

Scott M Fischer

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For those who do not know Scott's work, he is an amazing artist with strong graphic shapes, great design,mixed with skills in realism. I have been following his work in the past years, but he recently blew me away with his experiments in drawing and painting material and surfaces. Also an  avid supporter of Bernie Sanders, there is another part of him I admire.

He was kind enough to spend some time to answer these questions for us all!

Everybody has a social media account these days, how do you feel it affects your art?

Social media has been amazing. Especially Instagram. Beyond the exposure it gives, it also gives me an outlet to show process, and I am a process addict. I don’t feel it shapes what I choose to draw and paint any more than publishing. In fact I am less concerned with trends then ever when posting personal work on SM. And it gives me an outlet to share and post that personal work, that otherwise you would have had to cross you fingers that someone walked into a gallery to see it.  

For a young artist, do you think there is a good and a bad time to start sharing their work online? After all you can not erase anything from the internet.

This is a great point and in many ways I am glad I got established before social media. Beyond that I am glad that when I started talking to say, novel cover art directors, for instance, there was no record of my painful beginnings. They saw me for the first time when I was pretty much ready to go, having worked out many of the kinks in the roll playing game industry, which had a lower entree point back then, and allowed you to grow and get paid enough for Ramen while doing it.

That said, I do believe the cream rises to the top. And though I don’t envy someone starting out in the sea that is the internet of competition, it has also never been easier to be seen. I’ve talked to Art Directors who say they like to watch a person’s growth, and pluck them when ready.  

Personally I am glad most of my crap early art isn’t a google search away. But still, I hope I keep getting better so that the work I am doing now will be an embarrassment to me in 10 years.

In your art education, do you think you were well prepared for working in the art world?

No. Nothing about art-school prepared me for actually making a living as an artist. That is changing with things I am involved in like The Illustration Master Class and online, SmArt School.

In those environments you are learning from pros, who beyond instructing you how to make a better painting, are dropping pearls of wisdom about navigating the art-life.

Do you have any advice to novices about looking for a gallery, or how to find and get through to an art director trying to get work?

I am new to the gallery world myself, having come from illustration. But all gallery contacts I’ve made thus far have either been from galleries seeing my work in social media, and artists who likes my work , are already in a gallery and can introduce me- or walking in the door and starting a conversation. But I can tell you in the gallery world or in the illustration world, (in any world) if you can find a back door, through a peer for instance, it is always better than standing in line at the front door with everyone else.  

My wife is also a successful gallery painter Teresa n Fischer, and she got all of her galleries simply by posting her work in social media. Stuff gets enough likes, it rises, and if someone established comments or likes something you’ve done, people start paying attention.

What is you medium of choice and why? Do you think it has an advantage or disadvantage in the market, and do you think it is right to be so?

As I mentioned I am a process addict. I use many media including oil painting on copper and then engraving that copper in areas. Yes there seems to be a stigma that oil is worth more than graphite or watercolor, no matter what the time invested is. But I can tell you right now, watercolor scares me way more than oil does and I have mad respect for that media.  

The questions of pricing the work is always difficult. How do you get around that? What are your advice's for beginners?

This is one of the TOUGHEST questions, and there is no correct answer. Starting out, it should hurt both the seller and the buyer I think. A little less than you want but a little more than they want to spend, lol. Why is it that I can spend 3 weeks on a 5X7 inch painting, but would have to charge substantially less than and 18X24 painting I spent 3 days on? I mean I get it, size matters, but it is still odd. I struggle with this issue for every painting I do.

I feel though, that in the beginning sales are more important than how much they sold for. It gets attention. It looks good to collectors to look back and see things sold. It looks good to galleries. I literally had a gallery owner tell me out of the blue, that they love my stuff, have noticed that it all sells instantly (A sign that I am not charging enough) and that “You are selling way to cheap.” only to follow up with, “But it is my job to get the prices up.” Point is, you can build on red dots. So long as you don’t starve in the process.  

How long do you consider yourself to be an artist, and how long did it take for you to get where you felt you were in the right place? Or if you are still aiming for something more, what is it?

I am never satisfied where I am at as an artist. Both in recognition and skill. And I hope I never am. No matter where you are at there is always someone ahead of you. I have 28,000 followers on IG as of this interview. Feels pretty great actually. I am sure there are many who would love 28,000 followers. But it is all perspective, because I have friends who have 300,000 followers, who are younger than me.

In the end we compete with ourselves. And I can tell you this, the moment I started caring less what my friends and idols were doing, how many followers they had, was the moment people started paying attention to what I was doing.

What do you consider art? Is there a visual only aspect to it, conceptual, or both?

Who can answer this. No one has been able to answer this in the history of art, they can just guess. Right now we are seeing a resurgence of figurative art. Hell they even have a word for it ‘Figuration’. But in the 90’s when I was starting out, there were very few figurative works in galleries or magazines. Juxtapoz was about it. I was a fine art major in college. Not illustration. But if you wanted to make a living as a figurative artist you taught or went into illustration. I chose the latter because that path trained me to become a better artist, so that when I return to my personal work, which I am doing now after 2 decades of illustration, I had the skills to back up my ideas.

Trends are always there. If I see another big eyed little girl or a painting on exposed wood grain, I may scream. Despite the fact that I think it would be pretty fun to paint on exposed wood grain myself, and there are some EXCELLENT artists doing both of those things. Hell, folks will be saying the same about me painting on exposed copper in due time. And the reality is, artists were painting on copper 200 years ago, it is nothing new. In the end it is the IDEAS that matter. The brain behind what you are painting. And if you have the skills to back it up, bonus.

We all have problems with motivation from time to time. How do you cope with those days?

Fear of starvation is a great motivator. I actually have no problem with motivation. Even starting out if I got a ‘No’ from someone it only drove me harder to prove them wrong. Cause “I’ll fuck’n show them. I may not be good enough today, but it will come.”  

There is no assurance it will be worth it. There isn’t in ANYTHING. Job security? Hell the years of having a safe career and riding it out till retirement are much more rare than they were 20 years ago. So at least you are in the driver seat in an art career. Here is the thing I tell myself and other artists, “Someone gets to do it, why not fucking you? ‘’

Do you have any final words, or something you would like to share with the readers?

Grit is more important that skill or connections. You can get the latter two with grit. There were artist who were way more skilled than me in college. Folks that would be surprised that I’ve ‘made it’ (whatever that means), based on the level of my work in school. But the bottom line is, I never gave up. There was no plan B.