Art Brokerage is proud to exclusively represent the artist Woodstock. The Painted Word. While a picture can be worth a thousand words, a single word may very well sell for a sum larger than the price of a thousand pictures. Woodstock thinks so. His work is driven by a simple question: what is a word worth? Woodstock wants to know. He has direct experience in the valuation of language. For many years he has worked as a writer and author—finding his work celebrated around the world, listed among the best of its kind, touring the country and making appearances designed to reach more readers. He’s seen his passion become a business. Yet, over the past decade, he found, as Garrison Keillor recently put it, that “book publishing is about to slide into the sea.” Beautifully written work fails to get published. Worthless prose—in the old, noble sense of worth—becomes a cash cow, finding a permanent seat on bestseller lists. And the print industry as a whole is being underminded by new, electronic media. The blockbuster mentality that has driven the entertainment industry has infected the business model of book publishing as the serious, thoughtful “midlist” book disappears. In a world where words have become a product sold by entertainment conglomerates, Woodstock decided to write only one word at a time. On canvas. It’s his way of calling attention to the economy of words. Woodstock has been an artist longer than he has been a writer. He began painting in his youth and continued throughout his career as an author. Over the past five years, his art has overtaken his writing as his primary imaginative focus. He continues to write, for himself and his small audience of readers—so he wants to keep his two identifies distinct. Hence the reticence about his identity, the sunglasses, the hat, the tendency, at a public event, to stroll over to his Woodstock typewriter to type an answer to a question rather than speak. For Woodstock, as for the world at large, language has taken a back seat to images. And both have taken a back seat to business. He wants to show that, given the right context, in a world where the value of words gets measured by a profit and loss statement, words can indeed be a new source of wealth: and he’d like to give those in need their share of it. More information to follow shortly. Watch for Woodstock. For Commissions contact Donna Rose artsales@artbrokerage.com.
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