Q. Can an artist, writer, or other creative individual maintain their artistic integrity and still achieve success and wealth?
A. That depends on what you mean by their artistic integrity. It also depends on what you mean by success and wealth.
As an artist who makes a living drawing at parties and special events, I would say I’m successful. I’m well known in artistic circles but I'm really just another caricature artist. But I do make a comfortable living drawing fun cute flattering caricatures.
A recent wedding I drew at. This is one of my caricatures.
I know many people who draw caricatures. Some of them really are famous. People who draw for magazines like MAD, People and Time, whom I am friends or acquaintances with. This is not due to my own merit but because my late husband, Buddy Rose, started the first and only trade organization for caricaturists. It is now an international organization and it is called the international society of caricature artists.
Because of this, I know many artists. Including ones who love to create monstrosities out of peoples faces.
Susan Boyle by one of the Beast Heads
Theres a group of them out of San Diego who call themselves “the beast heads” and they may make the history books as an avante guard art movement. I know many of them personally and I have even hired several of them to work at my caricature stand. You may have seen some of their work on Tik Tok.
The beast heads
The beast heads in general have what some might call “artistic integrity”. They would rather twist a persons features into grotesque parodies than get a lot of customers or make a lot of money. Several of them are misanthropists and genuinely dislike people and that's why they do it. (I have personally talked to several of them and heard this reply). Others find it challenging or funny. Unfortunately I've been on the butt end of the joke and even I, who am pretty open minded, didn't find it funny. Also to be honest I wasn’t sitting in a chair waiting to be drawn like most of you. I got drawn by surprise and just handed my monstrosity. There are a hundred other drawings of me that I love. I can’t find this one but when I do I’ll post it.
Here’s one of me that I LOVE so you can see I’m not a prude.
I have had conversations with several of these “extreme exaggerators” about this. The ones I have talked to really believe they are suffering and not getting a lot of customers because of their “artiststic integrity.“ I respect them for that, but I don’t ascribe to the same philosophy as the beast heads.
I make my caricatures pleasant. They’re more like cartoon portraits that actually look like my sitters. I don’t ever purposefully insult my clients, unlike the beast heads who thrive on that sort of thing. I love my customers and I want them to be happy because that makes me happy.
Even when my customers ask to be funny and exaggerated I still can’t help but make them cute!
Because I make people look good and I treat people with love and respect, people love my work, and I am able to do what I love for a living and I’m able to make a living at it. To me, that’s success.
To me that’s also my own integrity not
“as an artist” but as a human being. And to me, that's just as if not more important than “artistic integrity”.
Kathy Rose Buskett
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Kathy has been drawing caricatures and managing caricaturists professionally for 25 years, which is a little like herding cats.
She drew them in Las Vegas for a decade at all the big casinos, trade shows and events and owned and managed the caricatures stand at Fremont Street Experience before moving to the gulf coast to be closer to family.
Kathy along with Buddy Rose, her late husband and also a caricaturist, and their caricature crew participated in one of the largest digital caricature events for Samsungs product release of the Galaxy note at CES in Las Vegas.
Some of her clients include Samsung, Cirque du Soleil, Coca Cola, Verizon, AT&T, Top Golf, the USO and many other prestigious companies and organizations.
Her work has been featured in business insider and she is about to do her first guest podcast on Rachel Noom’s “she’s making an impact” podcast.
Kathy is one of the fastest caricaturists in the USA and finished among the finalists for speed at the ISCA speed competition.
She is available for parties, trade shows, corporate events, weddings and more. Please contact her for availability as her art entertainment Is in high demand and books up quickly.
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