In Sickness and In Health

In Sickness and in Health

I think one of the reasons I paint and do creative things is because it is my safe place, my own world, my escape from the daily concerns of life. I feel a sense of accomplishment and freedom, provided I do not let perceived market demands influence me, and it is also therapeutic. But, what do you do when problems, be they a world-wide pandemic, or even personal issues are at the forefront of your mind. How does sickness and stress really affect the art that one does? In these stressful times, there has been many a day when I have not felt like working, not felt creative at all, and could not muster the energy to lift a pencil to paper. The lack of motivation or sense of agency in the world has been total. So what do you do?

I remember a year when I was ill with an insidious infection that would not go away. I was flat. I was interested in nothing around me. All I wanted to do was sit on the sofa and knit. Period. Eventually a combination of medications and my own immune system lifted it and I was able to create again and participate in life. I will never have the energy I had when I was a young mother chasing children around, and I have learned to (somewhat) accept that. I have slowly learned how to do what I can do, reduce my expectations and ride the waves of vacillating energy levels. I now arrange my day so that my creative hours, usually in the morning are prioritized. No other tasks or chores get done then because I know that after lunch, around 2:00 my energy and motivation will drop like a rock. So from this experience, I have observed and identified my personal patterns and developed the ability to adapt myself to them and take advantage of the good hours of the day.

This year was different. When the Coronavirus hit and the world was, and still is, in turmoil, once again I could not really work well. There was just too much running on the back burner of my consciousness to let the light, magical genie of creativity out to play. In the beginning, I made it to my studio and took up working on finely detailed floral watercolors. I would enter into the work itself and close myself off from the wider world of turmoil. So my take-away from this experience, was to use art as an escape. There is some form of art that you can practice, though it might not be what you usually do.

Now in the heat of summer, having weathered many a becalmed moment, I am again drawn to the couch to knit or sew. It seams like the heat was one more challenge too many. I had taken up working in the studio in the early morning before the temperature in my attic garret had risen to 90 degrees plus. But, honestly, it seems futile and pointless to even try. So, I am riding out the cloying molasses of summer heat, by holing up in my sewing room, which IS air-conditioned, to work on a variety of projects, some of which date to years ago. There is something soothing about excising basic skills that have a purpose of their own. I am letting go of some of my ambitions to experience being humble, to do simple tasks and to just wait it out. This is not the best solution. Discouragement can easily take over and a few days can turn into years. Don't let that happen.

I read recently that one of our giants of modern art, Chuck Close, once commented on the creative process by saying, “The the advice I like to give to young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs: the rest of us just show up and get to work.” That is something of a “tough love” stance, but it is encouraging. What it says to me personally is that I don't need to feel it to express it, or to work on it, to come up with something good. Meaning seeps out whether we want it to or not. So maybe the feeling of inspiration is not necessary. You can still get to where you want to go, but, you have to have faith in it and Chuck Close, through being the embodiment of this success, gives us that faith. He is the athletic coach who exhorts us to run one more lap around the field because he knows you can do it, even if you don't.

I once came to the realization that it is not what you paint, it is how you paint it, that is key. Can I sit in the family room (air conditioned) and doodle with the pen, add some color and call it art? Can I feel the lightness and joy in it when the world is sooooooo depressing? Or do I draw the depression? I have always been attracted to the inky blackness of etchings and rainy nights, but painting it is another issue. For now, I may not have the energy to drag my french easel out of the corner of my studio and paint rainbows, but I can lift pen to paper and reach into the stillness and make some art.

So, Chuck Close, you are my hero. I will take that extra lap around the field. I don't really want to, but I will.

Winter Gloom Mode Cont

I am still in Winter gloom mode. I suspect that as today is Groundhog Day, it will last another 6 weeks, at least. And no, I cannot see my shadow. So what's an artist to do? I have totally lost my plein aire vibe and have been migrating from window to window looking at the same trees, the same grass, and the same the same bushes totally bored. Obviously, getting out of the house should go on my to do list, but sometimes it is useful to just sit with something and let it settle in. Be with it and see what arises and whether that is deserving of expression. It's a Zen thing. This feeling of boredom may have something to teach you. You may have to dig deeper into response and memory, craft an alternate solution to the way you usually work.

Or not. You can just clean your studio instead or catch up on paperwork. Your choice.

Pricing For the Rest of Us

Pricing For the Rest of Us

Are you in that inbetween world of keeping your prices low so you can sell to your friends and neighbors

but you need them high enough so a gallery will still look at your work? The truth is that if your prices are low enough to sell to friends, a gallery won't look at your stuff. Sigh. What to do?

Solution 1: a tiered approach. Produce printed or quasi printed pieces that you can sell more cheaply and other stuff that is more costly or high end and can be placed in a gallery. You can go the giclee route or print something on a home computer or even at the drugstore. The key is appropriate disclosure. I do pen and ink subjects that I print on artist grade papers, heat set and then add a layer of watercolor. They are in between all the usual definitions of edition numbered prints and original watercolors. They are somewhat mass producible but each one is unique. Like a monoprint. 

The two paintings below have a heat-set computer printed base done on high-end papers and then worked over with watercolor. They are each a little different, but take a little less time as the design and inking process has been repeated. I sometimes add more ink work to each one.

Solution 2: "De-ascension 2nd's and pieces of lesser artistic value. They clutter up the studio. Have a once a year sale and ditch a bunch of stuff. Rational: your friends wouldn't know a good piece of art if it fell on them. That was harsh! Philosophically, Thomas Kinkade and Bob Ross aside, I'm not sure I agree with that. I believe that a good piece of art has a depth of feeling that even the most wooden (or less education or discerning) of observers can sense. There is a downside. Your reputation has value and those lesser works could come back to haunt you. So If you've been hoarding a stash of paintings on velvet done in your student days and now want to quietly sell them off, the rules of Karma demand that your local gallery manager will find out.

-insert photo of favorite work of lesser genius here-

-this space intentionally left blank as I have no works of lesser genius. They are all brilliant!-

Solution 3: Don't even try to sell to friends. They often don't buy artwork anyway so don't even go there. Period. Yes, they buy expensive shoes, but just try to get them to buy a lasting piece of art (for the same price as that pair of shoes!) that will last a hundred years and not go out of fashion after one season. It's not completely their fault. There are no million dollar ad campaigns on commercial TV shilling the value of brand Vicky when it comes to wall décor. Even the large art museums are loath to spend on TV coverage. The concept of buying art is totally foreign to most consumers and social media has not come close to changing that. VanGogh and Rembrandt are not going to go viral anytime soon.

More on pricing methods another time. The price per square inch method needs a serious redux.

Happy painting!
Vicky

Rainbows in Winter

Rainbows in Winter

2020 is here and with it snow, rain, melting, more snow, and more brown on brown landscapes peering back at me from the windows of my house. I'm thinking that I now know what Monet was really up to and it wasn't exploring the effects of light. It was pure laziness. It was the inconvenience of physically dealing with the weather (umbrella? No umbrella? Cold today? Snow? Wet? Wool suit or linen?) and dragging all that that equipment from here to there. Of course, he had servants, but still, its the mentality of it. One just gets tired. Though Monet worked on location he actually did quite of bit of his painting in his studio. So, here I am painting the scenery outside my studio window and getting bored with what I'm seeing and with the results of my efforts. They are all beginning to look alike. Oh, pooh. I need to pull a page from the Monet Manuscript and change up what I'm doing. He painting the same grain stack multiple times. Here I am painting the same darn trees multiple times.

My solutions:

1. I can slavishly slant the color palette of each painting towards a particular hue. Let's say the color of the week is red. Here we go, mixing reds into either everything or only discrete sections, exploring their tertiary and complimentary colors. Do-able and fun, but a little superficial, maybe.
2. I can focus on color combinations, going in the direction of Pierre Bonnard, exploring different hue relationships, using the specific landscape in front of me as scaffolding for this type of work. This one is even more fun. If you have a background as a decorator, you're all set.
3. I could regress totally and treat each day as a stylistic journey into the past, being an uber realist one day, cubist another. A cubist tree might be kind of interesting. But, what do you do with the finished work? It's not really your style and definitely not salable. Oops!
4. I could focus, not on color, but on design. I have a long abused and unfinished copy of “The Artistic Anatomy of Trees” by Rex Vicat Cole. It's extremely dry. You'll want to add a mixer into it. It's also in black and white, so I did some research and posted the color versions of the works that I could find on my Pinterest site. It's one of those books that you need to work your way through and do some self-designed exercises for each chapter, otherwise you'll never remember the concepts he is trying to teach.
5. And last, to return to a variation on my first solution, I can look more deeply into each window scape, and go full on impressionistic, seeing the underlying hues in that particular light on that

Or maybe I'll just rotate through these approaches or combine them all together. It is the challenges in life that bring growth. For me this winter, it is the boredom that is forcing me to grow some, by exploring more facets of the scenery around me. I am by nature, somewhat journalistic in my approach to landscapes. I tend to paint what I see. With my watercolors, I work in series and it is the second and third iterations where imagination and creativity bring sparks of insight into the finished painting. My watercolors work up faster than my oils. I can do several watercolors in a couple of days. My oils are another story. Each one is more of a commitment. Heck, being an artist is a commitment in itself. Good thing the winter is long.