I was on TV!

Oregon Art Beat had a special on collecting art... I remember them filming the show I was in, but I hadn't noticed that I was IN the filming. http://www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/videos/view/269-The-Art-of-Collecting. I'm at 7:47 if you don't feel like watching the whole thing... though I recommend watching the whole thing, it's actually very interesting.

It was an "Artists for the Community" show at the Albina Community Bank during First Thursday... I want to say maybe April? I think I price my stuff a bit high for those shows.... because I feel like my work is worth more than $100 a painting. Actually it's worth talking about pricing. People wonder why paintings "cost so much". I have actually had people ask me this question, people who seemed to think that spending $50 on a painting was a lot!

Lets break it down: One painting is not made out of thin air. It has within it years of training, practice, unsuccessful works, sketches, and lets not forget about school (I owe over 50 grand in student loans. If I sell my paintings at $5o a pop, how fast will I pay that back?)

The next thing to consider is that when an artist is doing relatively well, maybe 1 out of 10 pieces actually sell. So I wouldn't make $50 per painting. I would make $50 per 10 paintings. That's $5 a painting, which is about a third of what the materials cost, and that's only because I know how to get my materials cheap and I stretch my own canvas.

In order to quit one of my 3 day jobs and just focus on my art, let's say the real time waster... I need to make at least $1200 a month. How many paintings at $50 is that? I would have to sell 24 paintings a month. I'm lucky if I even finish half that many. If my paintings sold at $1200 a piece, they would likely be selling in a gallery, which would take half. Which means I have to sell 2 per month. And have a show every single month (which in most galleries, that's not the way it works.) I have been thinking about that actually, if you are in a major gallery, you usually sign papers that say you won't show anywhere else in town. Which means you get to show your work once a year in one city. (Which is why a lot of artists travel, or refuse to sign contracts) So I would have to make about $14,400 in one sale to live meagerly for a year. Only famous artists sell their work in the tens of thousands. (This is only because I have other income. If art is my ONLY income, well we get into a bit of trouble then don't we?)

And last but not least, we are talking about a completely unique object that will last longer than you do. It is something you can pass on to your grandchildren, and may actually be worth quite a bit more some day. You are buying a piece of contemporary history, a part of a whole paradigm. People pay a lot more for a mattress, a pair of shoes, or a nice dinner for two. It's all about what is valued.

The quality of my work suffers because I have to spend my time elsewhere to pay my bills. If I wanted to REALLY focus on my work, I would spend at LEAST 5 hours a day in the studio. But I simply don't have that kind of time. I have been doing good compared to how I usually do, which means I spend about 3 hours every other day in the studio. But what that amounts to is about one finished piece every month and a half, not including small drawings and sketches and stuff ( I may need to do another 100 drawings project, just to feel a sense of accomplishment)

Well, I gotta get off this computer. I have to start getting ready for my day job.... sigh.

Slug Painting... New Layer

Now it's starting to look like something. I still remember a dream from when I was a kid of mountains that seemed impossibly steep, and waking up and thinking: Those were not like real mountains. But I found some mountains that are impossibly steep:

I'm not sure, but I think these might be the Dolomites in Italy, which is part of the Alps. Looking at this picture makes me think the mountains in the painting maybe should be a little steeper - impossibly steep. It is those impossible things that I like, just subtle enough to be plausible but strange enough to evoke mystery and a surreal feeling. Though I could go the other direction and make things in my paintings that are completely implausible, like the classical surrealists often did. I think I should accept that if there is an "ism" that my work continues to come around to, it would be surrealism. Even my abstracts are a little surreal.

I am thinking about putting her in water too, as if in a flood, maybe ankle deep. How strange that would be! It is an accident that I hope to accentuate that her dress echoes the mountain. The shape and the folds, even the intended color (you can't see that yet, but you will when it is done). The square of light is a new thought, and not one I am entirely sure of. It implies that the light is coming from outside, but the quality of the light is different from the outside, so I might need to do some push and pull to get it to harmonize. There are better words for all this but it's almost 2:30 in the morning, so my brain isn't thinking of clever ways to explain things.

A thought I did want to address in this blog though: How much should I use source material and how much should I paint out of my head? It's a hard one to figure out. The girl, believe it or not, was sketched in pencil out of my head. It took many tries, and a lot of looking at vaguely related source photos from the internet, but in the end, I put all the photos away and just drew her as I felt she needed to be. Knowing anatomy a little bit helps. But would the painting be better if I had a model do exactly what I need her to do? I don't know... in some ways learning to actually perfectly paint the interior images bouncing around in my brain is an interesting challenge, on the other hand I am incredibly good at painting from life and from photos (As some of you may know from a few of my portraits). Also, painting from life makes it ten times easier to paint out of my head, so I really have to do both. Maybe I need to do more practice images: Meaningless still lifes, figure studies and landscapes. People like those things too anyway. I just need more time to work. I end up working on my art about 8 hours a week on a good week, and that simply isn't enough! It takes me 4 months to finish a painting, that really only took about 15 hours! Thats less than one weeks work at my law office job! Well, if I can get my work selling, maybe I can quit. In the mean time, I like having money.

If I only use source material, I am only limited to what I can get my hands on. What is in my head is totally unique, so I have to get people to model, and find landscapes to photo, and then guess at the rest. Its a weird process, but I think some day I will find the right balance, and actually get around to getting people to model for me (Ok I'm shy about it, several people had said they would... now I just have to take them up on it.)