Mood:
not sureTopic: art in progress
There is a website called America Oh Yes that sells folk art on-line. They buy collections, and I thought to maybe sell my entire collection of art I've made so far to them.
I don't think anyone on the America Oh Yes website is particularly better than me. Only thing is that the people there all have their own style. That is partly why the dealer is looking for a collection, it confirms that the artist is productive and mature. People stumble along looking for their own vision but those with the strongest vision don't have to look far. They are themselves right from the beginning.
I am looking hard for my own style. Artistic "style" is just the end result of a unique process. I am spending so much time in a process that I know in my heart isn't giving me an end product I am happy with. My art is not yet free, like what I see with some other established folk artists whom I admire. In my Risperdal Days when my life had a rhrythem to it, then, all my early work is clearly all of the same group and it all thrills me the same way. Now I am here in Brattleboro to stay for a long time and I want to start having a new group of art. I want to find a rhythem to life again. Now it is going to be the Geodone Days.
For a while now I am going to stick to a 16" x 20" format of working in oil paint on canvas. I know yesterday I said that I wanted to return to oil pastel drawing but I think that I have been spoiled by oil painting. You don't put glass over an oil painting so the picture and colors are immediate and kind of reach out and grab the viewer. I want to paint more than I want to draw because the final product of painting always makes me happier. Except, that is, what I did in my Risperdal Days.
I spent the morning working on a plan for the painting I am going to start in my class tomorrow. I did a lot of drawing. It would be wonderful if I got a relationship going with America Oh Yes website and then whenever I finished a picture I could just send it off in the mail for them to sell it however they see fit. I'm really scared though of contacting them. I'm also really scared of sending away all my artwork, the whole load. It would leave me with my hands empty, feeling that I had nothing to show for my talent. Right now since everything is in storage all I have to do is look and immediately I see concrete evidence that yes indeed I am an artist. It is like a pirate's hoard of treasure. The pirate doesn't go buy a castle and horses and nice clothing with all his jewels, no, he buries the treasure chest. Then the pirate sails about the world and thinks about his buried treasure. The wealth gives him satisfaction in a strange way. My artwork gives me satisfaction in the same strange way.
Selling my entire collection would help me to become more productive in the future because I wouldn't have past glories to rest upon. I would have to produce constantly to prove my talent to myself. But selling the entire collection would do something else. I would be able to start having a reputation. The work has to be out in the public eye for me to be noticed. Dealers need to know about me and that all starts with one, the first dealer. If I sold the entire collection I would be entering the real world where people communicate with each other, strangers move in and out of your life, and you are only as good as the last painting you made.
