Art for the Juror

Daniel

We all like happy happy.  It's easier to look at happy happy art because it doesn't challenge us, and who needs constant challenge?  Sometimes we just need to see something pretty.  Nothing wrong with that.

Years ago I spent a lot of time in Hawaii, near Kona.  The weather was always perfect.  There was nothing to complain about.  Every day was the same.  I really enjoyed it.  Really, really enjoyed it.  Beauty everywhere.

But I began to miss the seasons.  Hawaii's microcosmic and extravagant beauty couldn't stand up to the variety and extremes where my mind's eye wants my body to be. 

This is how I feel about art too.  I will whisper my secrets into the soul of the viewer, say something personal about me and you, create a record. 

Happy art is a good thing, as a good long stay in Hawaii can be a good thing.  But a steady diet of happy is a sure road to soul death, and art is about soul.  Art is about complete communication, a kind of oneness with the unknown.

An artist has an obligation to be a kind of explorer.  Someone who does a nice painting over and over and over again is not an explorer.  This is a person with a formula, and is stuck.

In order to break free and explore, an artist must allow himself to be unafraid of his own inner voice.  Is it a happy voice?  Fine.  Is it a pissed-off voice?  Fine too.  Sadness, misery, the gamut of emotion, they're there to excavate and reveal.

Some artists who are devastated by their personal circumstances take it all out on their art, and never see the inside of a psychiatrist's office.  Others pay for a shrink and produce pap…but pap sells.  There's a market for everything.

Here's what I wish: that I will be brave enough to be honest in my work.  When I'm happy, or feel pretty, I'll paint that, but when I'm not, when I'm depressed or scared, I'll paint that too.  I believe that if I can do that, the work will have a kind of integrity. 

Juried shows provide an artist with something to put on their resume, and to place at all in such a show is a prestigious feather in an artist's cap.  Jurors often view 'darkness' in a painting as a bad thing, and they avoid it like the plague.  Jurors generally like happy.

Take that as information, not advice.  Because my advice is, don't paint for the juror.  Paint for the invisible explorer that's in your own head, a person who is really your own inner voice, a part of you, and who will take whatever you produce and tell you, it's great, it's a museum-worthy piece.  Be brave.

Brave is the new pretty

Let It Go But Keep It Forever



One of the most important lessons any artist learns is, you must let your work go.  You have to let it go, if you want to eat.

Any parent knows you love your baby.  It's not quite the same with me in regards to my paintings, as I don't regard them as babies exactly, but they're part of my existential being.   Sometimes it's hard to let them go, even for money.

So I hit on a number of solutions.

First, I take a photo of the work.  Now I have a record.  Yay!

Next, I file it where I know I can find it again.  I keep 2 copies of this file.  One is in a digital form, as in a computer, and the other is in a transparency.  I put this in a little plastic box and label it by year.  I keep the little plastic box with other little plastic boxes in a small metal box, thinking maybe that'll keep it somewhat safe if there's ever a fire. In regards to the digital file, I also email the image to myself.  That way if there ever is a fire, I'll still have the image in cyberspace and can potentially retrieve it.

Grizzly Looking at You

Watercolor on paper. Original sold.

These are numbered & signed limited edition giclees with
various sizes available.

Next, I select certain painting images and send a digital image to my Giclee printer, who is an artist in his own right.  We work together to create a limited number of copies of the work, which, when I get the Giclees back, I will correct and embellish, and of course then number, and sign, by hand.

By creating a Giclee, I get to keep the original but sell the Giclee at a lower price than I would have to sell the original.   And of course I can sell the original at a much higher price point.