TV Star Paints Many Styles / The 4 Attributes Of World-Famous Artists / Today Medium Named Me A Top Writer On Art
Medium sent me an email today stating that I am a top writer in the topic of art. I am very grateful to receive that email year after year because I work hard to promote deserving contemporary artists from 70+ countries — but in this article I am going to share my own art — and also my own 7 step strategy to become a world-famous artist someday, to inspire other artists to formulate similar strategies.
As president of World Art Awards and American Art Awards, it is my job, and pleasure, to send the best galleries in the world new and exciting online art images to score in 50 categories. In colorful articles, I share thousands of phenomenal winning works from around the globe. This link shows those articles: https://www.americanartawards.com/press-on-galleries-museums-artists/
Though most people know me as the actor who played Phillip Chancellor III on The Young & The Restless, and Hank on Melrose Place, and my other guest star roles, art is my true passion.
The tattoo across my chest (mirror image reversed) does not read Young & Restless or Melrose Place or Hollywood, it reads American Art Awards, which I co-founded 15 years ago, because art is my passion, not acting.
As a former soap star I chase beauty, and I left Hollywood to live in a forest cottage with my rescue dogs, surrounded by evergreens and wildlife. It is no accident that my job today is to paint beautiful pictures and to run art awards where I get to send beautiful images from other artists to the most beautiful galleries. This happened because I chase beauty. Beauty is my priority.
If you click on the link above and see the stunning winning images from thousands of artists, you’ll wonder why they aren’t household names, they’re certainly good enough! But the harsh truth is that fame comes to very few artists. Consider Van Gogh who folklore says sold one painting while he was alive. Talent may bring some success to some fine artists today, but world fame, like being a household name, I think requires 4 components:
1: Talent.
2: Original style/stamp of art.
3: Big relatable personal story.
4: Enormous media promotion.
Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol and Picasso had talent, great stories, and painted many styles — until they claimed one original style which was needed for their individual fame to explode, with the much needed help of media promotion.
In the 1980’s Basquiat did brilliant outsider art while painting his story of being a homeless black man in a white-dominated society; raw venting on racism and the power systems that supported its inequity. It was a story that needed attention — and his work was pushed relentlessly by art insiders and PR people, launching him to very rare success and world fame.
I also have a big, personal, relatable story, one that won 10 book awards and it’s now a screenplay: FORGIVING TROY.
“TRUE STORY. Soap opera hunk Thom Bierdz has a paranoid-schizophrenic brother, Troy, a muscular black-belt, who kills their mom with a baseball bat — and is out to kill Thom — but gets arrested, and is the first person in Wisconsin sentenced to “Life Meaning Life.
“Five years later, back in Milwaukee, Thom’s ex-boyfriend, a bar tending psychic cowboy, not only is tipped off to customer Jeffrey Dahmer being a serial killer, but delivers a message from dead Phyllis to Thom over the phone, pleading with Thom to save Troy’s soul in prison. When Thom finally stops resisting the message and visits the prison (risking his life when he sees there is no dividing glass), he discovers Troy is no longer a mean killer but a pitiful schizo child who needs a relative to request inmate medicine (which helps Troy regain half his sanity).
“Troy needs his big brother, and Thom, increasingly anxious in overcrowded Hollywood, needs his paranoid little brother.
“The heart-wrenching but explosive prison visiting room scenes between a gay-closeted broken soap opera has-been, questioning the price of fame and growing paranoid at social events, and his incarcerated schizophrenic brother putting together the pieces of why he killed a wonderful mom, put this on emotional par with Rainman and Dead Man Walking. Compelling, sensitive and peculiar dialogue and action ensue as Thom and Troy rebuild their relationship, and lives. Troy’s guilt and delusions come and go, and he finds illogical reasons why he will go to Hell, and Thom must jump through crazy hoops to keep saving his hurting bro. Thom’s devotion even gets Troy to remorse, very rare for a male committing matricide. Thom must also navigate other family dramas and ego blows as he waits tables for income until his return to international success — this time as a proud gay man in the art business.”
Michael Logan, TV GUIDE: “…gut-punching memoir that chronicles his triumph over an unspeakable family tragedy…Chilling, hopeful, spiritual.”
It seems that an important, relatable story is 1 of the 4 components needed for a painter’s international recognition.
Talent is another component. I am talented enough to paint dozens of styles/series, which I show below, yet none of those shouted “THIS IS TOTALLY ORIGINAL! NO ONE ELSE DOES THIS LIKE ME!!!” So having seen thousands and thousands of artist submissions, I created my own unique style that no one else paints: my 100 BLUE X PAINTINGS. Those are shown at the bottom.
I painted the 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS COTTAGES last year only because I like beautiful houses and wanted these on my walls. Then because I pursue endless creative projects and can’t sit still, I incorporated them into a book, and also a screenplay. Painting info here: https://thombierdz.com/store-2/#!/12-DAYS-OF-CHRISTMAS-COTTAGES/c/135646111
Book info here: https://thombierdz.com/store-2/#!/BOOKS/c/31637012/offset=0&sort=normal
I still paint portraits —
I also painted many celebrity portraits:
I painted straight celebrities in gay marriages for marriage equality: Painting info here: https://thombierdz.com/store-2/#!/FANTASY-MARRIAGE-SERIES-MARRIAGE-EQUALITY/c/2513913
I painted realistic landscapes:
Did a lumberjack series:
A treehouse series:
And a large waterfall series: Painting info here: https://thombierdz.com/store-2/#!/LANDSCAPES/c/4449026
I did about 60 gold nudes:
Male and female:
A more impressionistic B&W series:
And an 8 feet series:
I did many pop nudes:
And like Basquiat, I do art brut / expressionism / survivor art / outsider art:
I have done fantasy nature:
Floral:
Horses:
Sheep:
Warhol style:
Houses:
Energy pieces:
Abstracts:
Drawings:
Trees:
Did many POP-QUADS:
All those styles had my Bierdz stamp, however none were totally new and unique. A new, unique art style is another component for world success, so I strived to create a truly original style that critics could judge as serious art, and hang in museums someday — so I created my 100 BLUE X paintings:
Those can be seen here: https://thombierdz.com/store-2/#!/TOP-100-100-MOST-COLLECTIBLE-PAINTINGS/c/13177078/offset=0&sort=normal
Are these the best of my work? Most people say no, but I say yes because I see the beauty and potentiality in originality. Imagine walking through a museum and seeing one of my realistic portraits of a woman holding a dog and then one of the weird BLUE X paintings. Which draws your attention? Thousands of artists paint realistic portraits of people holding pets, so that doesn’t interest you or get you to stop, but why has Bierdz painted outside the lines over here? It’s unique — I am claiming my own style.
Highlight Hollywood: “These 100 24x18″ Consciousness Paintings employ color and contrast — in impressionism on top of fauvism, expressionism and art brut. Bierdz marries an innate flair for composition with a compulsion for seriality delivering aesthetically engaging patterned art which is at the same time both primitive and complex. The echoing of shapes illustrate how human events derive into one another. In his unique style, he pushes the language of current spiritual exploration forward, spinning form and content, questioning scale and the creation of each moment, offering innovative and inspiring work, on par with Picasso, Van Gogh, Matisse and Warhol.”
I also have a detailed 7 step strategy on how a public relations firm can cross market my 1000 paintings, 12 books and 5 screenplays to bring in a hundred million dollars and make Bierdz the next Basquiat, Dali, Warhol, Picasso. I share that to inspire my fellow artists:
https://thombierdz.com/blue-x-paintings-cross-marketing-plan/
That’s as prepared as I can be. I do not yet have the final component: a big agency to connect the dots and deliver contacts and contracts (movie deal) and enormous media promotion.
While it’s possible my readiness and productivity may someday fruit a major conglomerate catapulting me worldwide fame as an artist, it is also possible that like Van Gogh, I alone see my art’s beauty.
Is that enough for artists to be content — with creating what they believe are beautiful works — works that may not sell or be appreciated outside their own eyes?
Yes, it is enough, because we artists chase beauty and beauty is the biggest prize of all.
Contact me via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thom.bierdzii/
