Interesting comments in an article about the painter Mark O'Neill.

Mark O'Neill in the Irish Times

He began to scrape a living by teaching art to local schoolchildren and believes he was good, recalling that he “enjoyed teaching and sent a lot students to NCAD the National College of Art and Design ] and different art colleges around the country, where they were totally messed up by the tutors”.
His disdain, incidentally, for the critics and academics of the art establishment, who studiously ignore his work while lauding State-subsidised art, is clearly evident: “Why in painting is it a crime to be commercially successful?” he asks rhetorically; and, “Why is craftsmanship ignored?”