Attila Richard Lukacs is a modern Canadian Painting Great and Icon . He has influenced many modern Canadian artists and was kind enough to give me the honor of his time and mind. Here is what he had to say. 

1. Have you ever gotten Death Threats for your use of Skinheads or Military personal in your imagery?

 YES, back in '89 when i had my show at the power plant, I got a hate letter from a Toronto fan ,who identified himself as a skin, threatened violence, was disgusted with the sexuality and besmudging the honour of skinheads. still have that letter somewhere.  Other then that one incident, in Canada, I had more skinhead fans then enemies. 

 2. Who influenced you artistically when you stated out? Who influences you now?

Well, hands down CARRAVAGIO, because he was a modernist, and if there were skins in his time he would have used them as well. Well, he did. 

    At the same time I was really influenced by and looking at INDIAN miniature painting. there's a lot of time between now and then, so now my books out (off the shelf) are early renaissance, CIMABUE,  PIERO     DELLA FRANCESCA,  SIGNORELLI,  FRA ANGELICO, DUCCIO,  then....GOYA, MAX ERNST,  BONNARD,  and I loved the PICASSO show at Gaggosian, and BACON at the met.  also  in my recent work, I have a dialogue with some of the painters here in Vancouver, like MICHAEL MORRIS  and  GORDON SMITH.

3. How did you handle success at such a young age?

Perhaps in hind sight not so well. I had only experienced forward momentum in my career, and sales. The good thing was I never had to work a job, so i was free to go and do as I pleased.

    I was warned about mid-career, but I was way to aloof and/or arrogant to pad the ground  I would fall back down to.  It also gave me a lot of confidence in where I was going with my subject matter. The wide audience I was able to engage with paintings was and remains remarkable.

 4. What do you attribute that success to, your imagery was abrasive and shocking, at the time a lot more than what the general public could handle, even more than what Avant-garde could handle. Yet still you managed to have major showings at Major International Museums, What broke the barrier for you?

I think it was the subject matter, the scale and way I handled that subject within a composition as my skills and language as a painter where developing. Even with some of the imagery being so in your face, people got off with what i was doing with painting.

5. Some of you works subject matter is not for the faint of heart, where is the strangest place, or place that surprises your work hangs? Or who is an admirer of you work that surprises you?

 I've been on the front page of one newspaper.  Globe and Mail...didn't save the date, but it's a picture of then Governor General Adrienne Clarkson sitting in her office, above her head is the double green skinhead portrait that is the mate to the wrestling ones you like, and they are lets say.......very tattooed. The caption reads "Governor General Adrienne Clarkson meets with liberal leader Paul Martin at Rideau Hall yesterday and asks him to form a new government."  :) She had that portrait and a not so successful portrait I did of her husband John-Ralston Saul in her office the whole time she was in office, as well as one of the tree paintings that was donated to Rideau Hall by friend and collector Salah Bachir. I was heavily represented and she loves paintings, and had told me of some of the conversations she had with various heads of state about the work. I've been given a fabulous set at a Salah Bachirs Paris Ont. residence with the Attila Richard Lukacs room and overflow..... also my friend Umang Hutheesing's noble house and historic family villa in  Ahmedabad, India, a residence that is part of the cultural and historic heritage of India, 

I'm meeting people now who say they saw my show/work at age seven or something, taken by their parents, and tell me it's the first time they remember painting. I remember that, I was about the same age, it was in the Vatican museum. It's a great people remember that.

6. How did you continue to be creative even with that success? As in how did you continue to push yourself creatively even though you had a public following and with that following certain expectations of what your work was to be?

Right, the mid-career thing. uhhhh..... it was hard, more work then creativity sometimes, I mean it always is, but, some shows hung on a thin thread, and my overhead became so burdened that I really didn't have much time to slow down. Following that with a snowballing drug addiction, I cocooned myself in a meth fuelled existence that opened my mind to paranoid schizophrenia,  voices and suicidal tendencies. 

and find that the expectations of my work are usually based on what people are familiar with, not the unexpected.

7. Do you believe you have attained artistic and financial success?

yes and yes, no and no. um..... like I said I've never had to work, I'm fairly free, there is generation that still comes out of the art schools and says I was an influence,  I raise the bar for success with each painting I hope, so I plod, stumble, and pick myself up again.

 8. Do people recognize you on the street?

You mean when I pick myself up again. YES, it's funny, for a short time back when I had a recognition streak at Canada customs, but since I've been back in Vancouver and Canada, it has happened.

 9. What were some monumental Art books that helped influenced you artistically?

Well I always work from books, like I mentioned earlier the ones I have out now. Museum collections are hard to keep around, so I try to see them and reference the printed matter. I'm not text oriented,  I read very little, I'm not sure how my work would have advanced had I been more theory driven, however, it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and I would wager to say that my work is a visual catalogue of what I take in.

10.  In your creative practice do you have a “set” routine as in I paint from this hour to this hour on these days and concentrate on working on this skill or application? Or is it just free flow?

I'm very disciplined or very obsessive. I work 8-12 hours daily, seven days and break for a trip somewhere. My routine is very set, outside the studio those few hours to feed and sleep I sometimes have a social engagement not far from any immediate circle of friends, and that’s it, it's 90% work. 

 11. I have seen images and video a heavy Bag in your studio is exercise a regular part of your routine?

No no no no.   it takes up less space hanging then lying around.

 12. In the early nineties there was some reference to spiritualism in your work, again in some of you recent works omnipotent spiritual beings appear, even the word god is seen time and time again, Do you believe in god? Do you believe in a god vengeance Armageddon?

Another ummmmm.........yes like I said schizophrenia etc.. Opened doors in my mind that perhaps can't be closed and I have an almost daily dialogue with myself, god or some spirit but that is channelled into the work now, instead of the then mad tirades on the street. I think it has changed my work. no i don't believe in omnipotence, vengeance is mine not gods, or Armageddon, but I would love to be Satan’s boyfriend just like Sadam. Jim Jones son said "religion is for people going to hell, spirituality is for people who have been to hell" yes..., I've been to hell. I do believe in forces nice n' evil, and Castenada's  perception of another reality

 13. I have heard some of your work sells for 15000$.Who set the value of your work was it the buying public, the gallery or you?

That would have been the galleries

14.What was the first thing you did when you got a check bigger than anything you ever imagined? 

I bought art and collected things. Collected collections. Boots, clothes, paints, boyfriends, travel & entourage........i don't have a memory of a first, just many.

 15.  Do you have your own collection of art? If so who hangs in it?

Yes, I trade work, and when I was more flush i bought work, small work, you'd think I'd learn from my own collecting practices not to work always so large.

 Well not alphabetically. My first purchase was in grade 7 of a Warhol soup can, but I have Manuel O'Campo. Raymond Petibon, General Idea,  Michal Morris, Vincent Trasov, Gordon Smith, Graham Gillmore, Doug Coupland, Tiim Garner, Eligh Langer,  Ettiene Zack,Noah Becker, Dan Dueck, Johan Groebner, Ignacio Coral,  Wilhelm von Gloeden, Andre's Fuchs,  Slava Mogutin, Brian Kenny,Domenico Zindato, Patric Abbey,  Bruce of Los Angeles, Bruce La Bruce, Rick Castro, Ed Tempelton, Greg Gorman, Stephan Andrews, Tom of Finland, Adolf Hitler, End Art,   Salome, Reinhard Wilhelmi, Sabina von der Linden, Nicholaus Untermoelen, Piere Molianaire, original Russian constructivism - porcelain plates from the first Documenta, and an Elizitsky tea service. a 16th century gothic-northern German Crucifix sits above a Chippendale writing bureau I found on the street in the village between my apt and studio on 13th street. in the bureau was a book ( forget title that I'm not home right now) from the SING SING prison library, signed by Victor Hugo, an inmate had copied Hugo's signature all through the pages. anyway not far from that spot some year later or so, I meet my friend Jermaine, whose dread locks from that first encounter I have woven into the thorns of the crown of the Christ figure, later for him to end up in SING SING  as well. A framed photograph of my parents and my RIP friend Tyler in front of Lenin's tomb. a Cec LePage sculpture/vase named after me, tilly, it's complicated.  I think Vancouver has a tradition of some great ceramics artist and I have started collecting a bit of that.   I hang salon style wall to wall and floor to ceiling in a tiny 750 sq. ft cubby hole

16.What advice would you give to an artist looking to attain financial success with out sacrificing artistic creativity?

Well the model now is the young artist working with a gallery and building a market for that work. so like in sport the advantage goes to youth. however mid career comes the artistic creativity -melt down. 

 17. What are your plans from here?

I have a show of my Polaroids that I have done over the last 20 years - models photographed for paintings - these where organized and curated by Michael Morris and the show initiated by the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton and Presentation House Gallery in Vancouver, will now travel to the Illingsworh Kerr, at the Alberta College of Art in Calgary, then the NGBK in Berlin. I'm just finishing a major body of paintings, so I'm just at odds, what to do next.

Photo by Frederick Cummings. I would like to thank Mr.Lukacs for his time and effort as well Thank his studio assistan Kevin for helping set this interview up.