Space Artist's Paintings a Labor of Science, Necessity

PSI Space Artist (12:02 PM): About other artists, I hope our readers will look up the International Association of Astronomical Artists, a group we started around 1982. We have workshops in various interesting places, from Death Valley to Iceland and Tenerife!

Dave on Earth (12:03 PM): Looks like about 100 people -- worldwide?

PSI Space Artist (12:05 PM): IAAA has, or has had, a couple hundred members, and a core of maybe 50 most active. We often get eight to 20 at the workshops in "exotic" locales.

Dave on Earth (12:06 PM): I'd love to go to Iceland sometime. Maybe I should become a space artist...
Ok, so a couple more questions since we're running low on time. I have to ask:
Let's say I want you to illustrate a massive planetary impact with an early Venus, which some scientists think is the reason it spins "backward."
How much might you charge me? :)

PSI Space Artist (12:10 PM): It depends on size, usually.

Dave on Earth (12:10 PM): The size of the canvas? Or the size of the impact body?

PSI Space Artist (12:13 PM): Yes, canvas :) I've been doing some commissions for a fellow who collects my moon origin paintings, at about 17 x 22 inches or so, for $2,000 each, but my prices have been going up gradually (like all good things, such as oil).
Got $500 for a recent travel landscape, and a recent new commission was about $2,500. So that gives you the ballpark.

Dave on Earth (12:14 PM): How long does it take to make a painting (say, that 11x17) from creative inception to completion?

PSI Space Artist (12:17 PM): Days. A small outdoor painting of a site can be done in one sitting of a few hours, but there is also time preparing the board (cutting it, under painting, etc).
But because I'm involved in science and also trying to write books a larger scale studio painting usually takes weeks, an hour here, an hour there.
Right now I'm setting aside the paintings to try to finish a third novel, "Galileo Underground," the sequel to my first novel, the sci-fi story "Mars Underground." But it's fun to exercise the brain by moving among different projects....

Dave on Earth (12:18 PM): So the bottom line: You're a busy, busy person.

PSI Space Artist (12:18 PM): Busy having fun.

Dave on Earth (12:19 PM): I try to achieve that on a daily basis, too. I promise -- last few questions...

PSI Space Artist (12:19 PM): No problem, this interview, too, is fun!
...and I've been sneaking in a little desk tidying between questions.

Dave on Earth (12:20 PM): Have you ever attracted any obsessive fans?

PSI Space Artist (12:21 PM): I'm still waiting for Kim Basinger to call. Naturally, I assume she must be a fan.
But for some reason it hasn't worked out, and I can only assume she's been busy with a lot of things. Movies and such as that.

Dave on Earth (12:24 PM): Maybe she'll ring after reading our chat :)
Now for my last questions: Why is space art important?
And the follow-up: How is the age of computer graphics affecting/changing/mixing things up for you -- does the future look bright? Bleak?

PSI Space Artist (12:31 PM): Good question! Interestingly, since we formed the IAAA in early 80s, most of the pro-artist members have switched from paint to digital graphics.
Magazine art directors have a habit of wanting the work by yesterday at the latest. But that gets back to the "fine art" thing.
For me, I paint what I want -- I think that's part of definition of fine art, if there needs to be one -- and keep the catalog available for art directors and editors. The digitals of my paintings are on my web site.
I love to go into museums and see paintings as physical objects that someone labored over with their own hands. So when IAAA gets together, I'm one of the few last ones who actually bring paints and go out and sit on a rock and do a "real painting"... an object with paint on it!

Dave on Earth (12:33 PM): So space art is still live and well -- and as long as humans are limited by time and distance in the big wide universe, I imagine it'll always have its niche?

PSI Space Artist (12:39 PM): I think so. And I remember that the art work done in our generation will be the only work in history by the people who were seeing those surfaces of those other worlds for the first time!
From Bonestell onward, the paintings of each generation are a valuable record of what humans thought those worlds were like during that decade. Scientists of each decade tend to focus on one type of info, like spectra or geochemistry. But the best artists, like Bonestell, talked to the scientists, and then synthesized all the available info into a view of that given world!
I just hope museum directors hang onto the old paintings and don't throw them out under the delusion that they are "outdated by new discoveries." They are the record of our human dreams about the cosmos around us!

Dave on Earth (12:40 PM): Thanks for chatting with me Bill!

PSI Space Artist (12:40 PM): Roger dodger! Thanks for inviting me.

Dave on Earth (12:40 PM): And I'll be sure to get my request together for that Venus impact painting...

PSI Space Artist (12:41 PM): Sure :) Talk to you another time, and cheers!

Article posted October 1, 2008.

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