It’s been a minute

This year, my artist calendar has been quite busy. A total of 6 shows, 3 solo, a large commissioned piece, and trying to keep up with having enough smaller works in the gallery. We’ve been finding that keeping works at a price point in the “bread and butter” range (as my friend Laura calls it) is necessary to pay the rent. It’s not that people are not purchasing larger art, it’s not as much as an impulse buy as it used to be. Customers are definitely being a little more selective. It’s time to rethink what direction I head towards now.

I’ve noticed the same reactions still happen, when they come through the door. Often, the jaw drops followed by a long, “Oooooooh” or “I LOVE THIS!” when spotting something that catches their eye. Some check out the price which are definitely affordable and haven’t changed much since we opened seven years ago! And then it comes; the hesitation. Sometimes we hear a reason, the most common being I have no wall space. Damn the builders who thinks massive walls of windows are a good idea! It looks cool until the sun actually comes through and blinds everyone or turns it into a sauna. They have to spend much more on window treatments than the most expensive art we have in our gallery! 🙂

So we can only guess that it’s not so much the money as the question, “Do I want to spend the money on a work of art or should I be saving it for something unexpected? Like the rising costs of well – anything.” My bet is on the latter!

With this observation, a question to myself is, “What direction to I go from here? Do I want to continue selling?” At the moment, yes. But if I have to consider a bread and butter items, is that what I really want to do with my time? I generally steer clear of reproduction prints of my artwork, unless the original works are no longer available. The Spirit Tree is one artwork that I do make cards and prints of and recently I’ve taken to making some earrings from the usable parts of failed block prints and cyanotypes. It’s tedious work though and I’m still on a learning curve to be to the quality I want. Those along with greeting cards and small xmas stained glass items are paying the rent. It’s a shift seen the last few years in many galleries and I wonder what trajectory we as gallery owners are on. Honestly, if we didn’t run our gallery like a co-op we would probably have closed the doors by now.

That being said, I feel like I can promote my work as original, no AI components in any part of the process which is a plus, but it still has to be aesthetically pleasing for someone to want to take it off the wall.

The commissioned piece has been a very enjoyable project and my clients are easy going so no issues. I would hope every artist would be as lucky to have clients like this and maybe I could sense that as it is unusual for me to take on a commissioned painting. I don’t do portraits or pet portraits as my interpretation probably would not meet the expectations of the clients or me, for that matter! Commissioned work, generally speaking, is not a favorite of artists because it takes out that freedom to paint with reckless abandon or change midstream but I think mostly because of their vision of what they expect can be drastically different from the end results. I’ve read several accounts of where the client was a nightmare and some of my gallery mates have experienced similar encounters.

It’s been interesting to observe the types of artists that exist in the world and I know I fit into the category of having too many ideas that I would need three more lifetimes to complete them all. So after the “The Blind Mind” gets delivered to the Watermark Gallery in Bemidji, MN, I may focus on honing in on oil painting. I don’t know if I can abandon printmaking altogether, but I want to explore more with the oils.

All in good time.