The Runway

Since my first debut as a painter last June, I have wrestled with this whole idea of being a public artist. It's one thing to paint for fun or to create something beautiful that then lives on the walls of my room, or maybe at the home of a friend or relative and a totally different thing to take that creation public and put a price tag on it. One, how do you assign a financial value to something you created. Do you base it on how much it cost to make it? How many hours you worked on it? How much you love it when its done? And then how can you sell this thing you created to a stranger. It's one thing to sell or gift art to friends, knowing anytime you want to see it again, it'll be at their house and totally different to send it home with a stranger who you won't ever see again and know that some part of you is hanging up on their wall. Do they look at it and love it? Do they end up being bored by it? Does it get put out at a garage sale when they move?

At first I was not really into it, but now for a multitude of practical reasons I am ready to figure it out. For one thing, I have so many paintings I've run out of wall space. Even as I rotate things through, I still have at any given time about 30-40 painting stacked up in my art closet. I need to get rid of it to make room for the new art...which seems kind of weird. It reminds me of something Eddie Watkins said once about what happened when he became a song writer. He said that after he had written his first really good song he was afraid that he would be a one hit wonder, that he wouldn't be able to come up with anything as good. But then he realized that his ideas were like planes lined up on a runway. Once one had taken off, another was right behind it just waiting for the space to be born.

Lately that's how I feel. I have all these paintings and art projects in my head, it's just a question of clearing space and allowing the inspiration to flow through me. In the meantime I am in the process of putting together a proper website and making moves. Two weekends ago I sold 10 paintings in one night. It was the first time I had sold so many in one sitting and moreover it was the first time I had sold to complete and total strangers and it was actually really neat to know that people I'd never met would want a piece of my creative energy living in their space. I think I might be ready now...