Making Marketing Work For You

 This little duo is off to a decent start. Got the background done, collage elements drying, now I'm looking at finessing all those details and elements that bring it fully to life.  I really like the design concept and I can see myself playing with this idea more.  I did an underpainting of iridescent pearl so everything has a wonderful glow to it.  Lots of decisions to make yet I'm afraid.

When I've not been down and out this month I've been reading, working hard at gaining some marketing skills and determining what my best options are.  That's really the key, gaining the knowledge but then taking a hard look at the many variables that will affect you're marketing strategies.  There's the usual things to consider, costs, expertise, best venues, then there are the personal ones, like where you live, the options open to you, what your target audience is and as in my case what will my health issues allow me to do.  (That last one is huge for me, darn it!)

Jack White writes:

"Do your homework. Everyday I see artist frozen solid from the fear

of rejection. They put themselves in un-win-able situations and fret because they got

turned down. I preach as loud as old circuit riding preacher, "Know the gallery

before you make an appointment. Know what the shows want before you try to rent

tent space."   Fear of trying is more egregious than trying and failing. Failure is not

an option.  Never take things personal. I chose to pay no attention to the negative comments

and rush to the next store. I knew the more rejections the closer I was to a sale. I

knew the percentage was getting better with each rejection. Did their words sting?

Does a rooster crow? Of course their cutting words stung, but I couldn't take them

personally, because if I did, I'd toss in the towel. I would give up."

"Fear of losing what you have can either freeze or motivate you to action"

Love this man's writing and attitude!

Intuitive Approach to Art

Prepping canvases this week getting ready to paint, everything seems to be moving in slow motion this month!

On another front, abstract artist, Maxine Masterfield, who's work has inspired me from the beginning, celebrated 6 decades of creating art and will celebrate her 80th birthday this year.  Now that's a legacy worth leaving.  Not only do I love her work, I love her attitude and spirit.  From her book "Painting the Spirit of Nature"

"I've never felt that any artist could improve on nature, but I've always felt compelled to interpret visually how nature has inspired and fascinated me with its beauty. Creating art that reflects the beauty of nature and the feelings it generates within you, is possible without years of study. My method of painting is for those who are not interested in drawing detailed pictures of what they see and can photograph.  And my tools are whatever will create the image of a feeling or experience...

"I always felt resistant to the instructions that preached a strict adherence to traditional methods I did not feel comfortable with...It is only by being inventive and trying unusual tools that I survived as an artist."

And this quote allied me to her spirit more than anything else :-)  She was on a panel with  a famous traditional artist and as she listened to him critique various works...

"But after a while I found myself defending the very works he voiced the strongest objections to. He was fighting to preserve the tight subjectivity that artist were taught for eons all over the world, while I was encouraging a free, intuitive approach to art that exceeded these conservative perimeters to reach out for a more sensuous and exciting reality."

Seeing as I got such a late start in beginning to paint, this is my fourth year, I am hoping that I will be  painting when I'm 80 as Maxine is, what a woman, what an artist!

In Search of A Name

This one has been in the works for weeks now, it's been hard going, maybe it's holiday recovery, or January brain freeze, but whatever the reason I struggled to get this piece to a happy place that is pretty much done!  But I have no idea what to call it.  The blue/green reminds me of opals, but the overall design has the feel of the cosmos to me.  Suggestions welcomed!

24x50" Acrylics & Ink on Gallery Canvas

Had a rough start to the new year as I've talked about in previous posts, but things may be smoothing out a little now.  And as always, I've got my nose into a number of books, one being "The Art Spirit" by Robert Henri.  Henri's words encourage me, perhaps they will you too,

"The work of the art student is no light matter. Few have the courage and stamina to see it through."

"Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them."

"The brush stroke at the moment of contact carries inevitably the exact state of being of the artist at that exact moment..."

And I love this :-)

"For an artist to be interesting to us he must have been interesting to himself."

Makes me chuckle, so note to self, if I'm bored with me, then I expect my art will be boring too!

Hope all you interesting people out there are having a great weekend.

The World of Re-Do's!

Oh my the eternal world of re-do!  From talking to and reading other artist blogs, it seems the world of re-do exists for all of us.  We all land there from time to time, staying longer than we care to. I can't help but ask, what puts me there?  What makes us come back to a painting and know it's just not connecting. So we study and consider and layer in more elements, textures and colour.  Building, building, building.  In the end these are the paintings that make you dig deeper, exert more energy and wind up being truly one of a kinds, because you couldn't repeat the multi layered steps, ever!

Some of the re-do's come months later, you make some changes, find those missing connecting points and you know, this piece will find a home now.  I'm hoping that will be the case for these once I've completed the re-dos!

The first one is a redo of a 24x24 I had done just before Christmas, I didn't like the bottom portion and so set out to see how I could work around the add on elements and change out the bottom portion.  I think it's going to work.  I've done a number of these, similar but different each time, all of them have found good homes.

The other is just a small piece of a much larger two piece work.  The milky film over the blue is crackle, I added the blue and gold paper for contrast, but found it overwhelmed the painting, so I'm working to tone it down, make it less prominent and blend with the rest of the painting more.

"Repeats signal substance rather than dullness." Michele Cassou

2013 Is Kicking!

2013 is kicking my butt! 

I see so many of you off and running into the new year, being very productive and full of goals and inspiration. So inspiring. 

I've run into a road block with my health, price I pay for having a very full calendar and lots of fun. Life with fibromyalgia has to be managed or you wind up, like me, with pain flare ups beyond the usual, cycles of migraines and that wall of fatigue I've never gotten use to.

I've been in recovering mode so things are moving slowly! 

I do have a couple of larger pieces on the go, but nothing new to show for my efforts just yet. Pictured here is a two piece covered in metallic paint as an under painting.  Something new I want to try, we will see how it goes. There's so much I need and want to be working on, but I've yet to find a way to make it all happen when living with fibro and chronic pain. 

We all face challenges. Things that loom large and threaten our progress. I share some of mine because I know that when life knocks you around it's always good to know we are not alone.

 Pressfield has been at it again, in a new book he speaks further about the things that block our creative efforts, calling it Resistance: 

"Resistance has no conscience. It will pledge anything to get a deal, then double cross you...resistance is always lying and always full of shit."  Do the work by Steven pressfield