Dave Warnke

Dave Warnke used to get his thrills by leaving his drawings on bus seats. In envelopes. Most people tossed them aside, but every once in a while, a passenger would open one, look at the sketch, and pocket it.

Dave remembers the feeling: "That person just got my art! And they're gonna hopefully put it on the refrigerator!" He is as ebullient as a kid in his speech and gestures.

Dave's artwork is a common adornment in his neighborhood -- San Francisco's gritty Mission district. He pastes up his original hand-painted posters after midnight. His goofy creatures are rendered in bright colors with the word "DAVe" printed in big letters across the top. No www. No phone number. Just free art. He also sticks black-and-white doodles on parking-meter poles and other urban easels.

When he began putting up his stickers and posters, he didn't realize it was a key principle of entrepreneurship: self-promotion. In his imagination, it was just getting his paintings seen instead of stacking them under the bed.

Dave's ideas might not seem like the traditional route to success, but they do work.

Keith Haring initially drew his now-famous figures on subway billboards in New York City. Artist Shepard Fairey has been distributing posters and stickers of his Obey/Giant graphic since 1989. He's transformed a pseudo-subversive prank into a nearly $1 million-a-year company.

Because of his street art, QSF magazine named Dave Warnke one of the "Ten Faces Shaping the Future" (July 2001). The San Francisco Chronicle questioned whether his postering constitued vandalism (March 2, 2001). For sure, the public's familiarity with his images has helped to sell his art in galleries - but it almost didn't get hung at all.

For years Dave never considered submitting to galleries. An unmotivated student, he dropped out of two art schools and joined the Merchant Marines. From swabbing decks, he landed in Ireland and stayed for the love of a girl. There he finally set to work and graduated with two degrees: one in fine art and the other in design, from DunLaoghaire College of Art and Design in Dublin.

Even after graduating, Dave didn't consider painting as a career. He returned to San Francisco, making a decent living bartending and painting all the time -- as an escape. Then one day he realized it was either end up a "bitter 36-year-old bartender who never took a chance" or get his act together and be serious about showing his work.

Part of any entrepreneur's job is self-promotion and organization -- in Dave's case, getting together a portfolio, an artist's statement, slides of his work, and sending it out to galleries. But once he figured that out, boom! What happened is in the interview...

Dave left bartending to paint full time two years ago. He says he's "won the lottery" in terms of having the freedom to do what he wants, which is paint. The soft-spoken 30-year-old has now sold 500 paintings in the past two years and has plenty of momentum.

I talked with Dave in December, 2001 about how he got into the HANG gallery, what "being a successful artist" actually means, his "second puberty" and his take on being an artist-entrepreneur.

Do you think your self-promotion with the stickers and posters was a good strategy?

Yes. I'd like to say that "this was all part of my master plan" but it wasn't. It was a guy who had tons of work sitting around, who was painting all the time, and you know what? Nobody was seeing it. It was a waste. At that point the idea of showing in a gallery was so foreign to me. I just wanted something immediate and spontaneous.

Do you agree with that, in order to be a successful artist, you need "talent, luck and a marketable product"? [From Entrepreneur Magazine, "Who says art and business don't mix?" January 1999.]

I think luck is huge. And timing. It's a time right now when this work is popular. But it also is a lot of work. You see this in many different careers in the arts, people who are incredibly talented but they'll never make it.

Why not?

The difference between the people who are successful and not - a lot of it's luck - is these are people who are driven and work to promote themselves, to present themselves. For a long time I lived in that myth of "I'll never make money at this, so why even bother." "People only make money when they die. Old European guys."

What changed your idea?

Just realizing, you know, that's just stupid. A stupid myth.

Did somebody say something to make you realize that was stupid?

I've definitely been discovering artists that are doing it, making not only enough money to get by but a decent living.

So you started opening up to people who were successful already?

Yeah. You need a mentor or some kind of inspiration. Keith Haring is a huge influence. I grew up in New Jersey and New York and I remember seeing his work as a kid. He did chalk drawings on subways.

Do you consider yourself a successful artist, and what is your definition of success?

Yes, I consider myself a successful artist…For the last two years now I haven't been having to work another job. My profession on my tax form is "Painter." That means I get to paint whenever and however long I want. I paint or draw every day. It's like this incredible luxury. It's like a gift. I feel like a lottery winner, just that I can do this every day.

Success is I've been able to sell a lot of paintings to people, and they're affordable. Over the last year and a half I've sold 500 pieces of original art. A lot of them are just small drawings or posters and some of them are really big paintings. And the fact that, 500 people or more own one of your paintings and hang them in your house, is a huge success. The fact that I'm able to make enough money - I mean, I'm scraping by - but I'm able to support myself painting is another huge success.

When you were going to school, your goal wasn't to Be a Painter?

You know, I never thought I'd make a dime at it. All the schools I went to, you never got a course in how to get a portfolio together. No teacher ever told me, "Okay, when you get out of school, this is what you do."

What may have influenced your thinking about success?

I can't think of any other career being dead is actually a career move. Or, you go to school, you get a degree, like a Master's, and you can't make a living at what you've worked and studied for. Your teachers, too, say, "You've got to think of another way to make a living." So, think of it, how many people do you know go to business school and go, "Okay, you're gonna be a business manager of a big company, but you might wanna think about waiting tables, picking up a trade"? It's insanely absurd.

I know that you made your living as a bartender up until 2 years ago. Did you experience a struggle in that transition to being a painter, full time?

It was totally weird and awkward. It was like a second puberty, minus the pimples and the hair. I was getting frustrated with my life, basically. I was 28 and I felt like, "I'm gonna be this 36-year-old, bitter bartender guy who never took that chance."

How did you take that chance?

It was either this or start drinking a lot. I just took a chance. I've been drawing and painting for 10 years. But yet I never took myself seriously or my work seriously. It was my private little weird hobby that I would just do at home, but I always felt like the transvestite, you know, woman in a man's body, only I'm an artist trapped inside a bartender's body.

...I got really frustrated with life, and I was like, I'm gonna give the art a chance. I was able to work hard as a garbageman and as a deckhand and as a guy who delivered pizza and a bartender, and I thought why can't I work as hard, doing something that I love to do that I'm really passionate about. So I spent some money and took some time to really try to present myself. Looking back now, I looked like an amateur guy tryin' to be professional. I got a portfolio together, took the steps, asked questions, read some books about how you get into galleries. … It took me two years of thinking about it to do about five hours of work it to get it together. I sent it out to six galleries, and got three shows back. HANG [Gallery in San Francisco] was the first one. I'm still with them, I signed a contract with them. Base, which is in the Mission [district of San Francisco.] The guy who runs it was one of the big dudes over at Yahoo. And I got a show at a place called Crucible Steel [San Francisco].

How did that identity shift from guy who does odd jobs, bartender, to painter?

I was doing this for a year. I got into HANG, but I really wasn't happy and wanted a change; I even was thinking about moving to L.A. If I'm just gonna be a crappy bartender, I might as well be a crappy bartender and live in Venice Beach, have some nice weather. So I got into this gallery and had a bunch of money saved and thought, "OK, I'm gonna take 2 months off…" But I hadn't bought a ticket yet, and I thought, maybe I should just stick around and see how the opening of this show goes. Well, the opening night I sold six paintings - I had 10 paintings at this opening for the HANG show - and by the next day or the weekend, they had all sold.

How did that make you feel?

Stunned. Totally stunned. This was work that had been sitting in that closet for two years, and that I had been working on for a year and a half. And also freaked out, because it took me a year to make all that work. I didn't have any other work except sketches. And I have been playing catch-up ever since.

Did you feel freaked out because you needed to produce?

It's intimidating to get what you want! I'd fantasized for years about being an artist, and to me they were as wild of fantasies as, "One day I'm gonna be in a jacuzzi with some playmates or be able to fly or have X-ray vision." Being an artist was like, below the hot tub and above the X-ray vision.

So here I am, I'm in a gallery, and I've just sold all my paintings in like, three days. The work was selling like - and I'm not trying to exaggerate, but I would bring it in and it would be gone, sometimes, within the day or by the end of the week. It's like crack on 16th Street, you know what I mean? I got eight shows over the last year and a half. It is very much like puberty. It's like, I was this cute little hairless boy running around playing with Star Wars figures, and now it's like, "What the hell's happened to me? I'm not prepared for this." It took me almost a year to call myself an artist.

I'd say, if someone asked me, "What do you do" at a party, "I'm taking some time off, I'm a bartender; just doing some painting. Just on the side." You feel like you're a fake, you're a fraud, and this is all a mistake or an accident, like they bought the painting next to yours and got the tags wrong. It's all a big practical joke. And it's all gonna end tomorrow and everyone's going to find out how much you suck.

How did you overcome these negative feelings?

This may sound really corny, but all the obstacles I faced were ones that I made. Low self-esteem and doubt and feeling over your head.

"Can I handle this? I hope I don't blow it."

It really felt like I'd been given this amazing gift, this gift that I'd wanted for so long that I thought was really unobtainable. Forgive me if I'm sounding melodramatic, but at first I thought, "Oh I don't really deserve this," and secondly I felt like "Jesus, I hope I don't break it or drop it or screw it up." I was very naïve coming into this… A lot of my obstacles were my own doubts of my talents and abilities as an artist.

What do you use to get over those doubts?

Keep working.

At this point, I feel like I'm over that insecure stage. I feel very confident. I have a lot of ideas that are in the works. Working in illustration. Showing outside of The City. I've had two shows outside of The City so far. New York, maybe even Tokyo. Expand. Get into children's books. What I feel like now that I didn't feel a year ago is the possibilities. I went through all these insecurities like, "I suck, I'm no good, it's all a fluke, I'll never do this, I don't deserve it." I do deserve it, and I work hard for it. Put it this way, some guy is gonna be out there, showing in galleries. It might as well be me. Some guy's gonna make a living with it, why not me. The mystery of how, where do you go, who do you talk to, who do I send my slides to - is becoming a little more clear now.

Is that because you've just been doing it?

Just been doing it. Just the act of doing it, you get better, too. I feel like, in terms of the suck factor, in order to be good at something, you have to suck. I can't think of any other better way to put it. You gotta just suck at something. You want to play trumpet? Fine. All right, you know you're really going to be a horrible trumpet player for a long time, but it's like you gotta go through that awkward phase of getting everything wrong. So basically I spent 10, maybe 15 years, sucking. Like, really sucking. Now I can honestly say, I want to get my coffee mug and a windbreaker that says: "I don't suck anymore."

I think there's myth of the artist as the bohemian, the person that sits in a café all day, smoking clove cigarettes, discussing philosophy, when everybody else is out working. There's an animosity. It's like, "Oh, get a job," or people will say, "real job" - it's like, Kiss my ass, I just spent 10 hours yesterday painting. I work harder doing this than any other job. But yet it's not considered "a job," you know?

Right. So how do you overcome that, is it just from sheer belligerence, saying "Kiss my ass"?

It really kinda is. This is my job. I'm working hard. I'm gonna be successful at it. I want my work to be seen, I want to share it with people, I want people to have it, to own it, to look at it. It's not too much to ask to make a living from it.

This last year or two years, I've been working at this crazy frantic pace. I've had to produce entire shows in a month or two weeks. I've not been able to give them enough work for me to basically go, "Okay, now I can chill out for a little bit." They run out of work. And that's the way I make my living, so it's like, I need to make more, I need to make more - more more, more, more. There have definitely been times where I've been like [snores], sleepwalking. That's a snore sound, by the way.

It's like the pitfalls of success, in a way.

I think it's the pitfalls of a working artist. I guess what I'm finding is a balance now. I had a hard time with that for a while; it got completely flipped over. For a long time painting was like going home and writing in my diary or something, through pictures. And even though they weren't really particularly serious, it was my escape from the world. And I escaped there often. Now it's my living. It's like, where do I escape to now? And if I wanted to make money with something, this is not the place to make money, you know? I mean I'd go back to bartending, get a real- [he corrects himself] a big paying job at some company. I guess my point is, if I'm gonna paint, I gotta somehow be the businessman.

Do you think that artists by nature are poor businessmen?

Yeah.

Do you think you are a poor businessman?

I'm learning. I was, and I'm learning [laughs].

It sounds like you work from a sense of urgency now.

Yeah. There's this opportunity now in my life that probably won't ever happen again. I feel like I really have a chance to not only make some really wonderful art, but make a living and take my work to places I never thought possible before. And that's what's happened in these last two years. I think, "Wow, if I did that in the last two years without having any sense of what I'm doing-" I was like, on a pony, and the pony just took off and I'm trying to hold on to the reins and spazzin' out, and all I want to do is not fall off and die. Now I'm like, "Okay, I want to learn how to ride the pony. I want to be in charge."

What do you think you have to do to achieve that, "riding the pony" skillfully?

I think a lot of it is really just showing up. Perseverance. That's something that comes easy for me because I tend to not be successful at things right off the bat. I've never been a "natural" at anything.

But, you paint these beautiful things! That looks like it comes easy for you!

It does now. But like anything, I've spent a lot of time working at it. Even though it looks like: "God, some five-year-old who drank Kool-Aid made that, [sarcastic] it sure took a lot of effort…" But the perseverance as an artist-meaning like, "You know what, I want to be able to paint this way, or like this guy."

Challenge yourself, really push your abilities and your ideas and your skills. How you do that is very simple. It's every day, you get up, and you sit at your desk, for fuckin' five hours, and you just draw. And you draw. And you draw. And when your girlfriend wants to hang out, sometimes you have to say no, and you don't go out a lot.

How do you get that discipline?

I don't want to sound desperate, but it's like, "What else am I gonna do?" There's always that one person in the library after dark, studying. There's always that one person shooting the baskets after everybody's taken a shower and left. Those are the people, they seem a little bit nuts, or a little extreme at the time, but you know what, come gametime, you're just that much more prepared. Same thing with the business side of it. Keep sending out portfolios. You have to have a certain ballsyness or confidence in yourself, even if sometimes you don't believe it. I just gotta get it out there. You send out enough stuff, something is bound to hit.

You've achieved lift-off. What kind of obstacles of identity or conditioning did you have to overcome in order to achieve lift-off?

The biggest obstacle to getting my foot in the door was my own insecurities. I'm pretty confident as a person, but as an artist that was a different story.

What were the things that you did that got you over the insecurity?

It's a certain amount of just like, "You got nothing to lose." The worst thing that could happen is somebody's gonna say, "I don't like it."

What happens if somebody says "I don't like it" ?

Well, it hurts at first. Even now it hurts to say, "Not everybody loves what you do." But it's the same thing as not every girl finds me attractive, or not every person finds me charming or interesting.

Did you have role models?

There's a lot of artists who, in terms of art stuff, I admire. How they paint. There's this guy, Dubuffet, a French guy, he's probably my favorite painter. And Miro, and Picasso of course. In terms of the business side of things, Keith Haring.

What words of wisdom would you have for younger people?

Kids, stay in school, don't be a fool, stay off the drugs, listen to your parents and take your vitamins and everything's gonna be okay.

I sound like a cheeseball, huh?

Be nice to animals.

What words of wisdom do you have for aspiring artists?

I feel like I'm just as aspiring as anybody.

The idea of postering San Francisco seems integral to your success because it really came from your wanting people to see your stuff.

Writing and painting, the solitary arts, you're alone a lot. What makes the work live is people seeing it. That connection between you making it and somebody experiencing it, hearing it, seeing it, touching it, whatever. Sometimes you gotta kick yourself in the ass. You're like, "I gotta get my work out there. I gotta get my story published, I gotta get my CD made, I gotta get my paintings seen." For lack of a better expression, "by any means necessary, get it out there."

Are you still doing stuff like that?

Oh, totally. I got the stickers and the posters. If anything, I'm looking at getting a grant for the street art. I want to be able to do this more full time. I'd like to bring a thousand posters to New York and poster New York. And there definitely is a certain element of self-promotion because I've got my name on it, but at the end of the day it's free art. This free art that seemed pointless or futile or a like a prank, is now helping me make a living with the painting. It seems like the majority of the interest is, "Oh, I want one of that guy Dave's things." I don't know how other people would do this, but I think you need imagination. You need that first and foremost to be any kind of creative person.

What about not being afraid of being a businessman?

That too. But I think once you have the imagination and the confidence in yourself, the other stuff is a no-brainer. It's like, c'mon, it's easy. Find out where a gallery is. Get the address. Get some slides. Get a cover letter. Get some stamps. Send it to 'em. Boom. You get a rejection? You know what - great. Add it to a list of rejection letters, paste it in your sketchbook, who cares? Put another envelope in the mail and send it out. Keep doing this. Be methodical. That goes with anything. You want a performance space? Make one. Use your garage. Go out and do it in the street. In a donut shop. Make a space.

Do you think your upbringing and your supportive parents helped you have faith in yourself and your imagination?

Yeah, definitely. Art, in some parents' eyes, is a notch above being a porn star or a crack dealer. "You sit around all day and you got your tattoos and your piercings and you're painting the funny pictures, and you're dancing and screaming naked…"

For me, I had a few teachers originally who told me I was terrible, I should stop and I shouldn't go to art school. That was really heavy. But I felt like, "Um, I'm gonna prove them wrong." If anything, that inspired me.

I can imagine your stuff licensed for T-shirts and mugs. Would you consider doing that?

I'm talking with someone about that right now. I have mixed emotions. There's a part of me that doesn't want to just, cash in. Doesn't want to cheapen the work by putting it on a coffee mug or something like that.

But you'd put it on the bus!

On the other hand, there's a lot more money in that [licensing]. This is something Keith Haring did. I know I keep ripping off all his ideas, but they're good ideas. And I don't think he would have minded me if I ripped them off. It's that there's art for the collector, for the museum, the gallery and the big beautiful canvas that costs a couple thousand dollars. And then there are smaller canvases, or prints, for like, you and me. And then, there's like, a T-shirt. I have issues with coffee cups.

What's your issue with coffee cups?

I don't like coffee. But those pens where you shake them up, and there's one of my little drawings inside, and there's like, snow?

Your earlier jobs weren't what you'd call professional jobs, like being a doctor or an investment banker, but it sounds like you were fine with that.

I was to a certain degree. When I was that boy-man, like 26, I had something to prove to myself and my dad. That I could work hard.

He didn't think you could work hard?

And I didn't. When I was in high school I was the biggest loaf. My grades were terrible. C's. Never did homework. Bored with it, didn't have any motivation.

So you wanted to prove to your dad that you could work hard and you took these labor-intensive jobs, garbageman, deckhand…

That was one of my frustrations in art school. I wanted to work hard. I wanted to learn. People wouldn't show up for class, and teachers wouldn't show up sometimes. People spent all their time in the café, and the studios were empty. Or two people were in the studio. I just felt like, "I'm not learning to work here."

Did people work harder at art school in Ireland?

No. There's something about art school. There's about 120 or 200 people in a class, and there's about four people that really work.

That's why "50,000 people a year graduate from art school to become waiters" like you mentioned?

I don't blame them totally, although I feel if you're just gonna dick around and party, then just do that, why waste time in art school with the pretense of "I'm an artist." But it's hard because here you are, studying…and you know that when you graduate, you won't be able to make a living at it. So it's like, "Well, what's the point?"

How did you overcome that, yourself?

The second time I went to school, I'd gotten out of my system this notion that I'm lazy and I can't do hard work. I was like, "What's the hardest job? Construction, working on a deck of a ship in the North Atlantic…" That was really, really hard work. I proved to myself, "OK, great, I can work hard. Now what? Do I want to work hard digging a ditch? Or do I want to work hard by making a painting?"

To obtain Dave Warnke's art, contact HANG Gallery or www.davewarnke.com. HANG is a new type of art gallery that represents emerging artists in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This may sound really corny, but all the obstacles I faced were ones that I made.

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Dave Warnke

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