He’s the younger brother of my high school friend Michael Payne. Tom’s a mad genius. I really like his art, even more the recent stuff he’s done in oils actually.
Rediscovered: the art of Thomas Payne
Published
It's the heart's the crazy bus driver
Be My Blog 
Very very nice, kind of a francis bacon meets dali thing, although some of his use of color and figure styles reminds me of frida kahlo, whom I don’t much like.
These probably can’t be bought by humans, right? Even the most obscure artists I’ve seen tend to charge a lot…which is understandable, but there’s no way I could buy art for more than a hundred bucks (a hundred bucks itself is a damn big stretch, I’d have to love the painting).
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I really have no idea how much he charges for an oil painting. I just emailed him asking how much his book costs, though.
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I commissioned him last year to do a series of small oil paintings in the theme of surrealistic advertisements for my homebrewed beer. I’ve been very happy with the three that he’s produced so far. Two more to go. They’re unframed, and about 2′ x 3′. I’ve been writing him checks for several hundred dollars at a time. I know some of the larger ones he’s done (beautiful ones like Trifurcative and Duality) went for thousands of dollars at his gallery showing.
Oil paintings are expensive because the materials aren’t cheap anymore. Airbrush paintings, watercolors, pen and ink, pencil sketches, can be produced for less money. I bought one of his watercolor and ink drawings, Head Trauma, for about half what a comparably sized oil painting would cost.
Buying original art is definitely a rich guy’s game, though you don’t have to be all that rich, e.g. an investment banker, to be able to afford the small stuff. But it’s still expensive.
Since anybody can cover their walls with mass-produced posters that cost pennies each to print in huge factories operated by wage slaves in Poorfuckistan, it’s really hard for independent original artists to compete on price. They have to charge a lot because they sell so little, and yeah— it must suck for them that the only people who can afford to keep them in business are soulless lawyers, philistine engineers (like me) and amoral businessmen. Ultimately though, if you don’t sell to those people, nobody else will buy it, and it will stack up in your studio. Everybody MUST pay The Man.
If you like his artwork, but you can’t afford to buy any— not even his book— then send him some love in the mail. He’s a really great guy (so’s his housemate), and he can always use the encouragement if you can’t spare the cold hard lucre.
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Good Heavens!
As Wallace says when the penguin pulls the rubber glove from his head to reveal that he’s not really a rooster after all:
“It’s you!”
I’ve only had this LiveJournal thing for two days now, and I’m already finding all sorts of people around here. Spooky!
I’ll add you to my “friends’ list,” then, if that’s all right…
Mike
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Re: Good Heavens!
Hey, my nose is on fire too.
It’s weird that we live in the same town and never see each other. Glad to see you “here” also. You may well know too; he’s a library cow-orker.
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Re: Good Heavens!
There are still 8 or 10 books left. They’re only $30 or $40. I’d even send you something else nice along with it. I swear. Think of the fun. Now stop. “My monkey done got broke,” as we say out here on the farm.
Seize the carp!
tom
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