Our fifth episode of Not A Hobby is a little different than the previous interviews – our guest is Dirk Rathke, an artist living and working in Berlin, Germany, and he does not have a full time job that he balances with his art career. But I wanted to interview him anyway because I feel like there’s a fascination among the artist community in the U.S. that longingly looks to their European colleagues. There is a sense that the funding and general support from the European governments for their artists is much more generous, so that the artists are able to focus full-time on their art career without having to take second (or even third) jobs.
Dirk is a painter and has lived in Berlin for quite some time. He was in Houston for an exhibition recently and I wanted to ask him some frank questions about what the artist assistance situation is really like in Germany. You’ll be surprised how familiar it all sounds despite, some glaring differences.
“It’s a little bit like a game; you can have good luck or bad luck, and it’s difficult to push your luck.”
See more work by Dirk Rathke on his website.
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