My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I've taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, 'The Hornet's Nest,' I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.
This is a very general understanding of art in China, that being an artist can make you money and turn you into a star.
Unfortunately, the general interest in art among the Japanese is very low compared to that of Western countries. I would love to be able to correct that by bringing many more pieces of interesting artwork to Japan.
There is a small world of people who are very interested in contemporary art and a slightly bigger world of people who look at contemporary art. But then there is a much larger world that doesn't realise how influential art is on things that they actually look at.
Each year, more people want to become artists.
Art is for anyone. It just isn't for everyone. Still, over the past decade, its audience has hugely grown, and that's irked those outside the art world, who get irritated at things like incomprehensibility or money.
There's been million-seller books and million-seller CDs. But there hasn't been, until now, million-seller art.
Some prescient American collectors, including Vicki and Kent Logan and Mera and Donald Rubell, began collecting Chinese art before 2000 with a genuine passion, but as the auction prices exploded everyone was beating a path to the galleries and artist studios in China. It became the 'China thing.'
Kinkade estimated that one of his paintings hung in every twenty homes in America. Yet the art world unanimously ignores or reviles him. Me included.
Those who love him love that he sells the most art; they take it as a point of faith that this proves Kinkade is the best. But his fans don't only rely on this supply-and-demand justification. They go back to values.
It's really hard to know why certain artists become famous and others don't.
