Back Words

What motivates an individual to dedicate their life to art? How do artists endure careers ruled by a spin of the art market wheel? How well do painters really fit into the modern university? Peter Malone addresses these and other issues of concern to both contemporary artists and to their audience through a narrative of his experiences as an art student, painter, teacher and college gallery director in New York City. Back Words, revisits the author's evolving artistic identity through childhood, art school, graduate study and as both artist and art educator in a community college. Balancing a critique of academia's role in the education of young artists with personal anecdote and a disarming sense of humor, the author calls on artists to reconsider the one-sided dialogue of the post modern avant-garde, and to instead embrace an art that expresses a new respect for the public's essential role in the greater cultural conversation.