15 Nov Create and Share

“Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.”

-John Lubbock

It’s been a bustling week in the studio as I am in the midst of holiday selling. This is something that I seem to be perplexed by every year…that as you approach the holidays people buy your stuff when you ask them to! Ha! It’s taken years for me to find a strategy that feels right and to be completely honest, the many sales emails that I am sending to my collectors always makes me squirm a little. But I try and remember that what I am selling is so much more than a thing you hang on your wall.

Picasso said “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary”. As artists we are putting our emotion into the work we create with our bare hands. An original painting is one of the rarest things in the world. It’s a one of a kind portal into a life, a mind, an idea. And while sometimes (ok much of the time) our older work makes us cringe because, well, it’s a reflection of where we were, a collector may see something in that piece that feels familiar and true and resonates with where they are now. I sometimes have no idea what will resonate with my audience. A piece that I don’t particularly love immediately sells and my favorite piece in a collection will stay in the studio with me for years. And while it’s frustrating at times that the selling formula feels flawed or shifty…it makes sense. It should be that way. Art is personal. Art is so inherently human.

Create and share.  Perhaps today you will share something you created that someone else really needs. It will make you happy to have made it and it will color another life.