Selling: the elusive WHITE WALLS

Covid strikes again. The Art Fair is CANCELLED.

I’m having to rethink how to get the 20 plus paintings currently in piles and leaning against the wall in my spare bedroom off the premises and in front of art-loving eyes. The obvious solution is to find a gallery – I need some white walls. I have an artist friend Nicola, who is really good at ferreting out opportunities to collaborate with people with walls. She got together with a chef who owned a restaurant and decked it out with her beautiful paintings. Each painting was inspired by a dish on the menu. This worked well, as her core source of inspiration is the sensory deliciousness of food and her abstract paintings often make you feel like rolling in a vat of caramel, or squelching aubergines and avocadoes through your fingers and toes. She and the Chef drummed up a lot of energy around an event where he was going to cook a special menu he had created, tickets to the event were sold, everybody piled in, the wine flowed, my friend spoke a bit about the Art and paintings were sold. Boom!!

Nicola also worked alongside an interior designer and decked out a showhouse with her paintings. They had an event, canapes, wine, short talk about the artwork, money exchanged hands, commissions agreed. Boom again!!

Recently, Nicola and I were commiserating with each other that the Art Fair was not happening – ‘We just have to get creative Judy, see what opportunities we can create…’ I could almost feel my stodgy brain slump backwards into my head. For this, my creative juices just don’t flow. In the last 7 months I’ve birthed 18 new paintings. I’ve put together a 3 page prompt sheet to help people move creatively and with loads of variation through their paintings. I’ve dreamt up courses, stARTs: five different ways to start an abstract painting with activities to teach mixedmedia and painting techniques. And starting soon FIX & FINISH: how to navigate and problem solve your way through to the finish line.

I have energy for all that stuff – but when it comes to selling my work I JUST WANT SOME WHITE WALLS. The last thing I want to do is push the product and try and convince people to buy or show my work. I believe it will make your room look more interesting. Your heart will skip a beat every time you look at it. It might transport you to another Covid-free place, or in my friend’s case make you feel like rolling in caramel. It’s life enhancing – but it’s not life CHANGING.

However, when it comes to showing you how to MAKE a painting that you truly love. That fills you with joy and wonder, leaves you in awe as to how you managed to do that. Well I can get REALLY excited about that. This IS life changing, it’s changed mine.

When I paint, some pieces just happen easily. They almost paint themselves. In the past I have questioned their validity because of the ease in which they arrived. But as much as I pondered on whether they could really be done after so little effort or consternation, I had to conclude that indeed they needed no further meddling from me. This is wonderful and always surprising when it happens. It is by no means the norm.

My process no longer causes anxiety or sleepless nights, as it once did. The paintings go through ugly stages, offer difficult problem solving mental acrobatics and arrive usually having undergone a series of shifts and adjustments that sometimes feel like grappling with a continuously moving, possibly upheaving strata. Imagine the relief when the ground barely moves in the process, yet the result is equally pleasing.

This is the goal – although lofty and probably unattainable, I want to be where problems are few and life is easy. I just want PLAIN WHITE WALLS. I don’t want to have to coerce and persuade in order to get them. So, I have made a decision: I’m not going to concern myself with the selling of my work. ( I can hear my partner banging his head against a not-so-plain-white-wall as I write this. His concern always with economics, efficiency, and floorspace.) I will happily sell my work online to anyone who wants to buy, and I will happily ship my paintings off to galleries if they want to sell my work. I’ll even book another Art Fair next year. But I’m not going to do mental gymnastics trying to come up with new venues and ways of getting my work on other people’s walls in front of other people’s eyes. I don’t really care enough.

I’m going where the fun is – where I can see people get excited about their own work. I love it when something I have said or shown someone how to do takes them a little more quickly down the path on their artistic journey, and they discover something comes more easily for them. I know that one day they too will do a painting that almost paints itself.

I’m aligning myself with what lights me up: the making – I love painting and making art works, and the teaching – I love helping others make art works that light them up. It’s all about the making and the process, once that is done, excited as I may be about the result, I just really want to get on with making the next one and seeing what that will be. I will leave the pedalling of the product to those who have the white walls and happy I will be. Just as in my painting, I am following the lead of what I love.

If you would like me to help you towards making paintings more easily, check out my course stARTs.

The UpBeat Artist’s Group is where I share my process, help people with their artwork and celebrate their creative endeavours as they move along their creative journey.

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