Norman Eastman 1960

By the time I was starting to produce a sizable number of paintings, my old mentor Norm was already ten years in the business and creating inside illustration for men's magazines of the time. He soon graduated to the more lurid, similarly themed, covers of these pulps and from there went on to do more lucrative Harlequin covers.

Trouble is those astute publishers at Harlequin managed to contract for full reproduction rights from their contractors. When Photoshop came along they were well positioned to re-assemble components of these paintings creating new work, which completely by-passed the artist in terms of employment and royalties. Finally, it was found that paint programs could easily simulate a painting using photographs as the image source.