Marshall Arisman

Our second interview was with Marshall Arisman. An American Illustrator who originates from a farm and now lives and works in New York City. His ore inspiring almost spiritual paintings have been used in many major publications. He works to commissioned pieces as an illustrator and as an artist on his personal visuals. His mantra seemed to be that to be successful he felt he needed to paint what he had knowledge on and from this visceral images have been born. Marshall is also a lecturer of the graduate Illustration course at The School of Visual Arts in New York and so he was very useful in informing us about the American education system and his opinions on this.

These are just a couple of quotes taken from our interview with Marshall Arisman. Marshall really emphasized the role of the individual in education, which is often over looked by 'systems' and 'curriculum's'.

"In terms of the work, I’m not convinced that any school makes good work. I’ve been to Wyoming, South Dakota, I’ve been to places where the art school is very small and there is very good work being done there. I think what does matter, maybe, is the advantage we have in New York City. That’s a great advantage in the sense of who we have access to, we can reach out and touch all kinds of people who are willing to come in, and are willing to teach – so that energy does make a difference."

"I’ve been teaching for much too long and I think the one thing you can’t teach, is desire. No matter where you are, or who you’re talking to, or who you bring in the class, if there is not an addiction – that’s not a good word it’s a drug word – there has to be an addiction, there has to be people that can’t help but do this, and if you have those people, and they have that, the all of this makes a difference."