![]() “When I see windows of opportunity, I lunge through them,” he says. Before he got home, he’d get a call that he had a buyer. White would drive home, grab all the framed work that he had, then drive back and throw the work on the wall. They thought the biggest sucker had just walked in.” I would walk down Ventura Boulevard and see a trinkety, tschotskety store, but they would have this big blank wall right next to a huge window, and I would walk in, and I had such confidence in my work, I’d say, ‘I’ll give you $500 a month cash for that spot on the wall, but everything I put on it and sell, I get 100 percent of.’ And they thought I was insane. “I became this really great guerilla marketer. “I decided to be more outgoing and started taking my paintings all around town,” he recalls. White’s confidence proved essential as he hit Los Angeles with a small inventory of art and barely enough money to purchase frames and art supplies. Everyone on that show was so great, and Nickelodeon was such a great place to work, that I went out on such a high note…Toward the end of it, I would finish my work so early that I would sit and do my drawings for my paintings all afternoon, then I would paint all night.” “I kind of knew I was done with animation, and that was such a perfect ending career job. “I was the only designer for the first five years of ‘SpongeBob,'” he says. ![]() His career path took him from huge success with “SpongeBob SquarePants” to turning full-time to his personal art. ![]() “Everywhere from movies, to music mostly, to going out at night, to my friends, magazines.” “I find my inspiration in so many places,” he says. “Those are the creative hours when I’m not bothered.” Ideas come from real life, although White explains he uses elements of what he sees, instead of literal representations. He spends his days running his business and paints into the late evening. White, a native Texan who is based in Los Angeles, manages his business, The Art of White, with his wife Megan, with whom he has two young children. “I think they see themselves, they see their mother, they see their sister, they see their best friend, and that is the best way to get someone interested in something.” “I really think people are able to identify with Todd’s creations and the characters within his creations,” Tramonte says. His intriguing, vivid depictions of men and women often in smoky, nightclub type settings, casting meaningful glances at each other, are mesmerizing. White, whose earlier claim to fame was lead character designer for the popular cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants,” is the only American represented by French Art Network. We have the first right of refusal on all the originals in the United States.” Other gallery artists, he says, include French sensationalist Marc Clauzade, landscape and figurative painter Nicole Sebille and master painter Denis Lebecq. “We are the premier original dealer in the country. “We carry an exclusive line of his pieces,” he says. Vice President of Operations Ryan Tramonte, who is based in New Orleans where there are two additional galleries, explains the excitement. A show last year in Carmel hit the $4 million mark. The show drew fans from around the country and did almost $2 million in sales. © 2023 New Orleans Saints.In early September, French Art Network, which operates two Carmel galleries, Galerie Rue Royale and Galerie Rue Toulouse, hosted a show for artist Todd White.
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