You Go to My Head
Oil on canvas, 18x18
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I've been heartened lately - in fact, more than heartened... excited, amazed, thrilled! - by the rapid sales of three recent paintings. I posted two on Facebook and sent one out in my most recent newsletter, and they all sold. Two were florals much like the one above, and the third was the floral-focused landscape to the left.
Peter, my dad and my stepmother all have been urging me to paint more florals, but I've resisted. I've loved the florals I'd made, but in a way, I felt I was at the end of the road with them, much like the paintings of food, the underground, birds, palm trees and on and on. I wasn't feeling challenged, wasn't feeling there was much to discover. The rush of adventure and experiment that I love so much, that is at the heart of my painting, seemed to have gone.
That all has changed. And while I don't know specifically why, I think it is just because I've grown as a painter. The paintings I made on the Big Skies Painting Trip, and that sustained immersion into painting and solitude, led me to new places and taught me things I hadn't known I didn't know.
And lo and behold, it's all spilled over into florals, in a happy confluence of what I'm enjoying painting, and what people seem to be wanting.
I've found that if I paint simply hoping to sell, the paintings seem to lack some bit of life, some invitation to buy. They don't engage the viewer because, I think, they didn't truly engage me. I was painting with a purpose that should be secondary but had wiggled its way into being primary, and that tamped down the life of the pieces.
But I need to sell my art. I can't just paint them and keep them, or paint them and give them away. So I need to make paintings that sell. And in these florals, at least for now, I think I've found a strange and exhilarating balance of my delight and yours.
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IF YOU CAN come to the Paradise City show in Marlborough, Mass., March 24-26, you can see these florals in person, and let me know what you think about them. Do they interest and inspire you? What do you like, and what don't you like?
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Stuff I've Seen
Here's Ted, who's shown up in my booth at shows from Michigan to California! He came to the show in Tubac, dressed to the nines, as always, and was as kind and upbeat as ever.
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Dog of the Day
It's Blanco, a huge sweetie, who lives with my friend SaraBeth in Tucson.
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A Final Thought
"A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happsn to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."
- Jorge Luis Borges
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