I got the last of the three artbooks I ordered from Amazon. I now have an artbook that features the work of my favorite artist, Maxfield Parrish. The book I got is called Maxfield Parrish by Laurence and Judy Cutler. I mainly got this book because it was inexpensive. I really wanted the Maxfield Parrish book written by Coy Ludwig that was originally published in 1973, but can not afford to buy it just yet. Oh, one of these days that big beautiful book will be mine!

From what I read in the book thus far Parrish greatly admired the works of the Pre-Raphaelites. It turns out that Parrish admired the works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti(one of my favorite Pre-Raphealites!) and Lord Leighton. So I guess I was not too far off base in my assumptions. I suppose I'll be doing a search on Amazon to see if I can find art books that feature their work. I still want to find a book that features JW Waterhouse's work as well.

I guess I'm one of those oddball artists who doesn't like much of the art produced by my generation. The only recently living artist whose work I admire is Patrick Nagel. Unfortunately Nagel passed away during the 80's at around age 40 due to a massive heart attack. Nagel was an artist after my own heart he did not believe in diets or exercise. He lived off of cheeseburgers and milk shakes. He also would schedule his work around what was on tv. If his favorite soaps, game shows, or comedies were on Nagel would halt everything to watch them. Nagel to me is the patron saint of slacker artists. I want to be successful enough to quit my day job, slack off and watch tv all day and paint in between my favorite shows. Of course unlike Nagel I would hire a professional exercise trainer and keep the cheesburgers and milkshakes to a minimum. Besides, the more I hear about the cattle problems over in Europe, the more I want to become a vegetarian...