We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Omar Dejesus Quintanilla, Jr. (mr. Omar King). We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Omar below.
Omar, appreciate you joining us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?
I would make a couple of bucks here and there on my art when I am asked by a vendor if I would be interested in selling my art pieces at their events/venues. And I would accept. I would make 50 to 300 dollars in the past. Now, at this very moment, I am not selling art pieces, not by choice, it is that I am not asked or approached about them that often. But, I would like to do it again at some point. Get back in the horse race/game and get going.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
That is a good question. Thank you for asking that.
Let me think. Hmmmmm. Well. I suppose I have a goal or this urgency – if you will – make enough art until I kick the bucket.
If I can make one art or two pieces a day and then another day and then another and then the day after that and the week after that and the month after that and the year after that then I did much work as possible for every one to see the progress I have made through out the days – months – and years. I wouldn’t want to call myself a work-a-holic because to me that sounds like a sickness or illness of some sort. I just love what I do. I hope to live long time to do what I love doing.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
Well let me write to you a list of works that have influenced me (I am letting “influence me” be left for interpretation):
1. ‘Last Exit To Brooklyn’ By: Hubert Selby, Jr.
2. ‘Creation: On Art and Unbecoming’ By: Christopher Zeischegg
3. ‘Confederacy of Dunces’ By: John Kennedy Toole
4. ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ By: Frank L. Baum
5. ‘The Metamorphosis’ By: Franz Kafka
6. ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ By: Hunter S. Thompson
7. ‘Erotism’ By: Georges Bataille
8. ‘The Hellbound Heart’ By; Clive Barker
9. ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ By: James Baldwin
10. ‘Misery’ By: Stephan King
11. ‘Closer’ By: Dennis Cooper
12. ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ By: Flannery O’Conner
13. ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ By: Virginia Woolf
14. ‘1984’ By: George Orwell
15. ‘Sadie’ By: G.L. Parker
16. ‘Angela’s Ashes’ By: Frank McCourt
17. ‘Dragon Day’ By: Matthew Pegas
18. ‘Violent Faculties’ By: Charlene Elsby
19. ‘Sharp Objects’ By: Gillian Flynn
20. ‘Diary of an Oxygen Thief’ By: Anonymous
21. ‘The Men in my Life’ By: Garth Simmons
22. ‘Troll’ By; Dave Fitzgerald
23. ‘METH-DTF’ By: Shane Jesse Christmass
24. ‘Hollywood Babylon’ By: Kenneth Anger
and the list goes on and on and on.
These are works of literature that I am at awe of and still am.
Contact Info:
- Website: My Subs-Tic-Tac : https://mromarking.substack.com/
- Instagram: My Instagra-cracker page: absintheblacklodge
- Twitter: My Twitty twitter bird page is: @omarking0924
- Youtube: My Youtube is: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMr.OmarKingShow
Image Credits
Those four images are By: Mr. Omar King