Gift of gab

Reminiscing about art school days in l.a., we inevitably wound up talking about bill T., one of those preternaturally talented art deities who had pieces in all the juried annuals whilst still in school and who seemed poised to take the world by storm. But he always seemed ambivalent about success, or at least the need for self-promotion, and that together with a host of other personal demons has meant that we're all still waiting and hoping for him to find his feet.

The anti-Bill i guess would be this other guy at school, who despite somewhat mediocre talent was so adept at self-promotion he seemed able to fool enough people enough of the time to forge an outlandishly successful career in children's books.

There's small petty jealousy on the part of the rest of us of course, but also i think a valid sense of injustice about the order of things. Encountering a host of comics from Virgin (India) at the bookstore today brought up similar feelings, with the artist for several of their books seemingly chosen more for being indigenous then on merit. Not that it was hopelessly bad; but the kind of stuff you'd expect to find in independent press books rather than a publisher who'd roped in the likes of Garth Ennis and Alex Ross.

Come off it, Bill, save us from charlatans :p