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.