WELL DONE! Visual Art by DeWitt Lobrano

WELL DONE! Visual Art by DeWitt Lobrano

DeWitt Lobrano on Becoming An Artist - How does one become an artist when they face a lifetime of zero support from their parents/family and constant verbal and physical abuse from the ‘art public’ for decades?

As an 80 year old art survivor I can tell you exactly how that works. We know what we want to do, and we dig our heels in and we make art. We find those 5 - 10 people on this entire planet we can communicate with, and we make our art to talk with that one individual. We ignore those monkey brains who criticize us and tell us to commit suicide. Yeah. I got that a hell of a lot growing up in Winnsboro, Louisiana in the 1950s.

An artist needs a ‘philosophy,’ simply that feeling he/she has something they want to tell to another person.

As a 5 year old I felt this urge to tell someone else a story. Sometimes I did it with words, at other times I drew on paper or made clay figurines. That feeling, that urge has never gone away. This draws me to experiment with a wide variety of mediums.

Can anything compare with painting the eyes of a dog or cat, who look loving out of the canvas at the person in front of them?