I was actually all set to write an lengthy treatise about privateering, but after I wrote about it in my personal journal, I decided I was having too sad of a day to want to post it in it’s entirety, so here are a few paragraphs in no particular order.
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Putting a work on exhibit with a price tag attached to it is a gutsy thing to do. On more than one occasion, I have taking solace in hearing a well-known painter I respect here in L.A., say that his/her paintings do not sell. He/she has said this publicly, which is even more of an amazing thing to cop to in a world where you’re a pariah if your work doesn’t sell. People want to equivocate sales with success as a measurable yardstick. If **
Another friend of mine makes ceramics. She has cultivated a collector base and mailing list since day one. Her work is not radical and she makes work priced from $15 to $130,000. Everyone bought up the $15 work at her studio sale. I would also add that she is the second ceramicist I know who set up a studio immediately after school in order to go into business. That was not my training. No one told me as a painter that as soon as I finished a work I should plop a price tag on it, set up a shop and go into business. It was about showing the work and making art that was critical. If I were to dwell in the past, I might wish that I had the benefit of more of a practical background. My experience is what is was. There are deficits and assets.***
I have received way too much flack over the course of my lifetime for making abstract work. This ranges from people who say they don’t get it, or think there is something that they are not getting- to educated art world people who think that abstraction is either too elitist, too emotional or irrelevant for our current times, to most recently, a beginning drawing student of mine I overheard ask, “Does it mean anything?” This doesn’t take in account the host of people who think anyone can paint abstract work to the recent letdown of hearing that a collector was more “curious” about my work than actually interested in collecting it for reasons that deal with things beyond my control.***
I have been passionate about my role as Defender of Abstract Art and Champion of Awkward Painting, most of my adult life. For me, abstraction and text are as real as someone else’s painting of fruit. Steven LaRose used the word, ‘pure’ and ‘pre-linguistic’ in conjunction with his image-based pencil drawings. That’s how I feel about my abstract work. Occasionally I will paint a recognizable object or words, but it’s all the same in my world, and it comes from the same point of love and investigation. That’s my purity.****
I finally set up a site, (without the eBay auction system, so far) in order to sell smaller works. I priced the works on paper at what people have spent on them in the past. When a gallery sells the same work, they take 50%, leaving me with 50%. They take that 50% because they are the ones marketing the work, exhibiting the work and hopefully cultivating a collector base for the work. If they’re doing their job, it’s fair. It’s hard to do two things really well. I paint. I suck at selling. I would rather just make the work and leave the selling to someone else, but this is not as practical as I once thought it might be and it's why I’ve become a privateer and set up a site for selling the smaller works. I’ve made a commitment to follow through with this, not because it's a holiday gift extravaganza or only in response to the economic crunch but because it's a step toward realizing a simple goal of just being a working artist. Simply put. Of course, it would help if I would actually publicize the site, so I suppose that is next.
2 comments:
hear here.
Funny, I have received flack (or derision?) for being a realist painter. And I wish I could make abstract work, I struggle with that daily. But what comes out of me looks representational, just as what comes from you is abstract.
Relatively speaking of course.
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