My art education was in a large part influenced by Julian Schnabel's movie Basquiat. The movie-version Basquiat lived in a box and then later his girlfriend's place, didn't seem to have any kind of stable job yet could afford to be on drugs all the time, and just seemed to 'wing it' the whole way through in cool and serendipitous ways, eventually meeting Andy Warhol and becoming a general New York darling.

My Professional Practice class at uni taught us that the key to breaking into the art world was to hang out at galleries a lot and become a familiar face at openings and make friends in that scene, hoping that eventually after a couple of warm red wines the owner says to you "Hey...you paint?? You want a show??" I've always been kind of disappointed by that side of things. I still don't really know how it all works.

The class probably should have been teaching us about how to write invoices, design and commission agreements, licensing, copyright, and how to understand the GST - but alas - the business side of things didn't seem to be as important as breaking into the scene.

I wonder if future artist biopic films will be made up scenes of the artist just sitting at their desk furiously checking their emails and going on facebook and watching youtube. Where is the romance? The serendipity?

Maybe I should become a painter instead.