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09/30/2007: "Inverting The Onus"

Alberto Sughi raised some very important and, for me, disturbing questions in his last Blog. Because the topics were close to what I had intended to post today I decided not to comment but rather to press some of those questions further, but the rightful place of this text would be somewhere in the string of comments to Alberto’s blog ‘Lo Studio’.

To: The Market! It’s logic! Conformity! Survival? I prefer to counter the following: The Studio! Lack of logic! Inconformity! Life - Art!

As artists we participate in the daunting task of making these two opposites come together without too much bloodshed. The task is ours alone because interest in lack of bloodshed is ours alone, the market and its agents merely see things from the vampire perspective of milking the cow – no sooner she dries up or the milk goes sour, they will unscrupulously have it done away with. If you happen to be the cow who’s teats are being manipulated you will, I will surmise, be inclined to enjoy it while it lasts. However, this does not preclude the fact that you have been manipulated. This does not rule out the truth that you fell for a pact with the devil and that this carries a price-tag that goes way beyond the 50% or 60% he charged you initially. Aspiring merely to be in the limelight is not unlike entering Dante’s description of the Inferno.



So, my question to us all is this: when will we decide to grow up? When will we stop viewing, and placing, ourselves as the underdog at the negotiating table? Because this is what it is about – the question here is not about our creative genius, nurturing it and guarding it -, it is about our mutual positions at the negotiating table, and reassessing it. It is a paradox that one of mankind’s greatest and most coveted outputs should not benefit its creators in equal measure to the profits it bestows on promoters, and the greatness it confers to nations.

Art is what makes things move forward, it inspires new discoveries well beyond its own scope. Because this happens at an extremely subtle level the link is easily smothered, the connection with the artist is lost and his voice at the negotiating table, silenced. But we are the ones who perpetuate this state of affairs. We should blame nobody else for our shortcomings. We are, all too often, the ones who fail to command sufficient respect for what we are bringing to the negotiating table – either we feign to shy away from the whole disagreeable experience of money-making, or we come expecting to ‘feel those fingers on our teats’, eager to see ourselves in magazines, dreaming of ending up in a famous gallery or museum [even if only in the storage room… for heaven’s sake!]. Wake up, shake out of it!

There must be a middle way, somewhere, somehow.

I often speak about inverting the onus. By this I do not mean that the artist should necessarily become more active in promoting himself to the detriment of his real and more urgent work, although this is becoming increasingly easier and possible to do, I mean that the burden should befall on those other parties living off the raw material - the goods brought to market: that they be made to look more engagingly for them [instead of the artist wasting his energy to little or no avail], that they consider accepting the basic premise that a greater share of the deal must go to the artist [regardless of rents and costs. Please, oh please, don’t reply to this blog about gallery rents and costs – those are the risks and burdens of any business, which, if well managed will move forward without taxing the artist unduly. Furthermore, the artist is hardly ever heard when he raises the question of his own rent, the cost of keeping himself and his family alive; the investment he made in paints and materials; workshops, seminars and other work-related experiences; the time and the money he spent before managing to take a seat at the negotiating table!!!].

So, how do we go about inverting the onus? I still don’t know. I’m still working on it. But I know this, it’s the only way I want to move forward, even if this means combating a certain tendency towards schizoidism [I’m very bad at dealing with the constant repetition of social rituals and niceties that are at the basis of ‘acceptance’ and ‘integration’ in the west, especially if they – and not the work in this particular instance – are the defining factors of acceptance and integration]. I too cherish the peace and quite I find in my studio and still need periods of ‘retreat’ at times, but the times are changing fast and new opportunities are arising that make me consider meeting the ‘Beast’ half-way – opening up the studio is one such step, with a prearranged schedule, naturally, or by appointment, and always, ALWAYS, practicing the same prices I would ask of a client through a gallery. At the end of the tunnel I see the possibility of a more independent artist – maybe not one fetching five figure sums, but one able to make an honest living off his Art.

Of course there is a danger, Alberto Sughi has warned us about it, and it will still loom above our heads for many years to come:

Question: «What damage or benefit will an artist receive if, out of impatience, sense of freedom or arrogance, he or she refuses to follow the logic of the market?”»

Maestro Sughi’s Answer: «If his value could be measured by a pure measurement of artistic assessment, I reply, it would not suffer any damage. However, since it is not known whether this measurement still exists, or even whether someone continues to believe in that kind of measurement, I think that the artist is more likely to be damaged than to benefit from it.»

But, then again, can we not say that this damage really only exists if our aim is to be carried on the shoulders of the market and if we are overly keen to join in on its present terms? Does not the danger of any damage cease to exist the moment your aspiration becomes something different and you no longer hand over your power to the ‘gentlemen’ on the other side of the negotiating table on their conditions? Wouldn’t we then, by generating a dynamic of our own, be making a move towards putting the focus back on ‘pure measurement of artistic assessment’ which, I too, feel is in danger of becoming obsolete? Or are we really so Pantheon-driven that our fear of not finding ourselves there moves us to recurrently fit in and foster a system we so abhor?

Let me ask you this: Apart from the advent of a natural calamity, massive financial crash, the onslaught of a World-War that would really make things all but impossible, what greater damage may come from deciding not to march to the beat of the same drum? Must we not worry enough already about visibility and juggle our earnings to keep afloat as things stand? Are we just going to shrug our shoulders and complain that this is the way things are? Must we seriously consider having this talk revived again one hundred years from now? Will we not dare hope that we can act in some measure, use the new tools and opportunities at our disposal, to change things for the better?

If we do – and participation and presence within aa is yet another such step – I foresee benefits primarily.

Alberto Sughi points to a clue: «There are, thank goodness, seriously committed artists who, although almost ignored by the market, still find their own admirers and collectors. By a strange coincidence, these artists are also almost completely ignored by the critics».

Surely there must be a way for us to hold on to these thoughts and enhance them – make them work for us in a positive way. I think all the hype of the limelight is overrated anyway… it is where creativity ends [up] it is not where it resides. Art lives in our studios – that is where they should come looking for it, on our terms.

I have hope.

Replies: 21 Comments

on Thursday, October 4th, walt said

Like a junky who robs the guy on the street we have to find a way, hopefully a legitimate way, to continue to do what it is we feel 'we have to do'. I often tell folks that what I do as an artist doesn't kill anyone. Doesn't steal from anyone. Doesn't take advantage of someone elses disadvantage. Doesn't kick anyone when they are down. Doesn't rape, plunder or destroy anything. I may make an image that isn't true from time to time. True is a debatable idea. On the other hand I make a lot of them that are. It's one of the positions we have that is worth fighting for.

on Thursday, October 4th, ellen said

I knew.... just wanted to say I knew....In my book, your work validates you!

on Thursday, October 4th, jose said

I know Ellen, that extra bit of comment was not directed at you. Forgive me if it sounded that way. Sometimes, writing in a hurry the thoughts just get scattered all over the place.

on Thursday, October 4th, ellen said

Sorry: The point is we do it because we have make art....like breathing.

on Thursday, October 4th, ellen said

Jose-
In no way was I implying that you do not contribute enormously to your home and family. I was merely trying to explain my own struggles to survive. In recent decades women are supposed to "work" to contribute to the family's income. My Mother always had two or three jobs as did my Father. Artists are also supposed to "work" to make money. To my parents WORK was defined as having a steady pay check and health care benefits AND (they were New York City teachers) a PENSION. Not only did I deviate from those "norms," but when asked about what I did/do I would endless have to say that art, to me, was hard work, little satisfaction and little financial renumeration for my efforts. No one "got it." Everyone (not my parents because they just thought I was being my usual contrary self....after all, they had paid for an education that gave me a teaching cridential This is NOT intended as a "self analization" and/or diatribe against my parents....I settled that long ago, maybe), all my friends/acquaintances thought that, at the very least, art should be FUN! "Well at least you enjoy it," I have heard daily for 40+ years (if I'm out of the studio). That is why I made my family my work and did not take it for granted. I had the double wammy of being a woman with no "job" and an artist with no signs of bring in "a living." Jose, no critism of you intended in ANY WAY. I can tell from you blogs that you are very wonderful.... sorry if I ....
Andrew- After receiving a commission for $2,500 in 1989, I remember leaving the client, sitting in my car and actually weeping from relief. I thought that I had "made it!!" I was 42 years old. I KNEW that the money was going to continue to roll in!! Guess what......

on Thursday, October 4th, Mark said

When a door closes, another opens. The task we have is to find that open door. How do we now work with a market that is no longer as it was, galleries and dealers no longer have the strength they used to. The internet has changed art, music and writting, so many avenues have opened up for the viewer, listener and reader that comes to them for free. So why buy art, CDs or books? We need to find a way to work with the new system no matter how badly we may wish for the old. Frankly even tho I am no bussiness man and hate promotion, I see exciting things in the future, I just do not know what it is yet. Will art in all its manifestations become marginal to the public at large? Perhaps, but there are ways to work with that, we just need to figure it all out, and we will.

on Thursday, October 4th, jose said

It’s hard for some to accept and to do, Walt, but it’s doable, we just have to want it badly and take the bull by the horns as you say. I bumped into a fellow painter recently who has been reluctant to agree with this line of thought but who now also sees it as inevitable. In Portuguese we have a saying: A necessidade aguça o engenho – something like: necessity refines the instrumentation [to achieve whatever it is you need to achieve]. Times are tough and will get tougher in the years to come, the economy [at least in Europe] is now proving that there definitely is no promise of prosperity such as we lived in the 80’s and 90’s [which was based on fallacies and hot air]; need is great, greater still for the little minnows to which class, let us be blunt, artists belong even if they manage sometimes to swim alongside the sharks; we are the ones who have to refine the means for our survival. Let the market continue its course, I’m not calling for it to be done away with, I’m just suggesting that we start considering generating our own course.

Andrew, I think you will agree that we kind of like it that way – that the money really never gets to be enough… it keeps us on our toes, helps keep the balance we need to be what we chose to be.

on Wednesday, October 3rd, walt said

To those who think art has no useful value:
Columbus' nonprofit arts industry generates $330 million in spending each year, along with $16 million in local tax revenue.(Greater Columbus Arts Council)

To those starving and impoverished artists horny for exposier:

People die of exposier. Any exposier has to be carefully thought out and planned if it is to be useful.

To those who ask the question how can I prosper from my art?

It is a prostitutes lesson. Be so sexy they have to have you. Meet the right people even if they are dangerous creeps. Create a myth about yourself then speak and act as if you are the most important artist in the world. Watch your back.

These are the things I've seen famous artists/people do. Personally I'm not always willing.

The big story in the music industry is that record sales no longer pay the artist very well because of the ipods and internet. Some are beginning to give them away seeing recordings as a form of promotion and PR. It's the live concerts, the licensing for advertising and movies and other collateral income that supports the artists themselves.

I agree Jose...we must grow up and take our own careers by the horns. To be an artist is one thing. To have a career as an artist is something else altogether. I was repremanded once in a meeting for using the word career in relation to an artists professional life. The word career is a dirty word in the art world that blithly ingores the elephant in the middle of the room.

I don't know if the market can be absolved of its sins or diverted from its perverse goals. I do know that to ignore it's undertow is to court instant death...or worse which is to be ignored completely. I am a child of a generation who told me that the cream rises...don't worry do your best work everything else will follow. Well they didn't tell me what everything else was and this has been what I've stumbled over blind for most of my career.

When asked for his wisdom the homeless drunkard said "keep your belly empty and your mind full".

on Wednesday, October 3rd, Andrew said

Jose, in my own art career, which is the one I know the most about, nothing ever changed because of a big sale, although in the begining I thought it would. I thought, "My ship has just come in!"
And nothing ever changed those many times that I was so poor I ate spaghetti and mayonaise, endlessly. Or potatoe salad, on a good day, with tuna in it.
How about when someone said they needed me to respray the side of their car? I could live a month off what I made in a weekend, especially if it was a Mercedes. Nothing changed then, either. The focus, my reason for doing whatever I did, whatever I had to, was my art. And now that I'm so recently married, and have two toddlers, has anything changed? Time is tighter, but in the studio, it's exactly the same. So I share the idea that one continues with this main thing, in spite of all the superficial changes around it. You have a day job? Where your money to do this comes from is not important, except that if you have too much of it, you'll find yourself lacking real ambition, replacing that with a carefully cultivated mask of passion. What's important is the sincerity with which you produce your work, and the talent you have.

on Wednesday, October 3rd, jose said

Ellen, I guess you are right, from a certain perspective family is a job when you decide to really be committed and not jump ship at the first signs of a storm, and I see we share similar views and experiences regarding this. From such a perspective I would have to concede that bm is not utterly wrong, in that there is a structure I can fall back on. But as you say, and well, I too cannot take from another person who is working for my welfare and keep a clear conscience if I do not make my own efforts to contribute: contribute in the home, as an equal partner, but also professionally for the sake of my self-esteem and all that does to contribute to good morale overall.

Curiously, the most critical financial period, in those years before we embarked on my wife’s new job, were the years I sold most paintings but still had to handle two other jobs besides the studio hours. I was more fortunate than you, Mark, in that I have had the good fortune to make money from things I enjoy doing – I translated books for two publishing houses and free-lanced as an interpreter for various conferences, and in the last stretch before we moved to Berlin I directed a gallery as well. With all that side activity I was still able to produce one of my most successful and abundant series and help my wife who also held two jobs simultaneously between 1995 and 1998 and took up a third in the last stretch leading to 2000.

This is why I reacted to bm’s comments about it being easy to have such a view, or that the side-job is what makes it possible. The view was there all along, even in dire times when I had nothing to fall back on, no extra money – quite the contrary. If the view or the life-philosophy isn’t there it most certainly won’t come about when you hit the jack-pot. This was a view that I shared with the artists and people whom I worked with at the time, and they can testify that even as a gallery director I worked towards promoting more ‘artist-friendly’ conditions against the owners inclinations. What we achieved [and I say we because I like to include the artists I selected to work with] in that one year with very little funds in a very small, out-of-the-way gallery, proved to me that the right kind of focus, determination and energy can bring about an unstoppable momentum. Unfortunately this momentum did stop because I had to leave for Berlin and the owner, who decided to take over did not partake in the philosophy I tried to pass on. In the last months our monthly events had people standing outside, waiting for their time to come in and see the show, and many events would continue throughout the evening or night, depending on opening hours, with artists, poets and musicians in animated debates with the public.

This is what I am trying to get across in [OD] and we are getting there, even though times are tougher economy-wise; this is what I want to share with you on this forum. The right kind of focus, determination and energy will attract the public; attract a growing and interested public for a sufficient amount of time and very soon you will have collectors coming to have a look; keep it up for a little longer and you may find that you have actually become the gallery – your own sales-agent – with an unbeatable added value, the aura of the artists. I know it can be done, we made it happen in Portugal before I left, we [a new we I gathered there] made it happen again in Brunei [and yes, again, against superior management’s initial inclinations], and I feel very confident that we are on our way to doing it again with [OD]… Of course I get tired of starting again and again from scratch, sometimes I may feel like giving up and just tending to my painting, but because I know it can be done I go for it. More fool me.

But what I really get tired of, what most infuriates me is coming across people who dismiss this as an easy thing to say… or that I [we] can do it because I [we] have financial back-up, or even that this somehow interferes with creativity or the quality of the work.

I try as much as possible on this forum to speak only of things I have gone through and can stand up for. Thanks for all your comments, the supportive ones and the ones that made me want to explain things more. Believe in your Art, find like minded artists and get things rolling down your end. It’s in your hands!

on Wednesday, October 3rd, Mark said

Jose, sorry the opening did not go well, perhaps sales will come later. The efficiantcy of galleries or those putting on art shows is much to be diesired. I recently participated in a show that for the most part was done well, till the time came to send the artists thier portion of the sales. It has been a long time and many emails and I am promised once more that the check will be mailed. We will see. I hope so. This could be a whole other blog.

It may be hard at times. My wife and I have struggled during our 30+ years. We raised two kids, now grown and we have just finished paying off student loans (it gets easier as time passes). We have a grandson (the perfect human being :) which fills our lives in ways we could not emagine. We also have aging parents which need care and perhaps even finacial needs in the future. Money (even tho my wife has a good Gov. job) is often short but we get buy and are lucky enough to have some things which others may be envious of, but they do not understand that for some of us who have what might seem extravagant (we have a small sailboat) have given up something else to have it. Many think that because I paint full time, teach part time and have some things that perhaps are not needed for daily living that we must be well off. Not so. We have what we have from hard work and doing jobs that we may not have wanted to do (I have worked at many hateful jobs to pay for a roof and food). There where times I did not know if I would have enough paint to finish a painting, but the children had to come first. It is all choices. But we go on. We create because we need to, have to. If we struggle to create as most of us do, then so be it. I would rather have little and create then have much and wish I had the time to create. We do not live the life that most outsiders think we do, we work hard and struggle, but then so does most of the non-artists of the world, we are not so different.

on Tuesday, October 2nd, ellen said

Jose-
I wish you all the success in the world!! You are such a sincere and decent person (In fact you remind me in your philosophical views of my late brother, Abner, whom I greatly admired). I am married to a teacher for 37 years. For the most part he supported me, our two children and my art. I always viewed my marriage as a job because I cannot just take from another person who is working for my welfare. (I do love my husband and like him, too. He makes me laugh!) I assumed all the tasks to make our lives better while I pursued my art. I also worked at night jobs here and there to get by. All our money went to the kids and my art....fortunately my parents helped out (by about $5,000 a year or so). My son and daughter attended Cornell University. I was terrified at the bills, but somehow it worked out. They both had small loans to pay, but I helped them as much as I could. This life did not create conflict in my family: it created a very, very tight unit. We all support each other and will drop everything to help one and other. Of course this is not a fairytale...It's been tough! But you will see that when the kids graduate from college, you will work HARDER to validate all that they, your wife and you have been through.
As for artists "making it" financially: what a GREAT concept!! I keep trying.... Absolute Arts has really helped with continued exposure and blogs to keep us going!
Hope the show proves very successful as it continues. All the very best Jose, Ellen

on Tuesday, October 2nd, jose said

bm, I don’t see myself as alone in attempting to be an exception to the general trend. Whether it would work or not for other artists I really don’t know, but I care and I try to find and implement ways for things to work out better for us, together with others who are willing to give it a try. I advance by trial and error, one step at a time. As to your guess, I still do not see where you find information that allows you to claim that I do not depend on the sale of my work to pay the rent or whatever it is I may need to pay for in life. Besides, I don’t see how the statement is in any way relevant? If I were to sell ten paintings a month for the next couple of months I would find myself in a position where I would not be dependent on the sale of my art for anything. However, if one follows your logic this would still give you reason to censor me or question the integrity of my motives because, once again, i would have money and would come across to you as resting on my laurels. So you see, the issue of where the money comes from is of no real value to our discussion, what counts is how we decide to live your life whether we have it or not. You seem to believe that having it makes a difference in relation to certain attidues one takes in life, I know that it doesn’t because I have gone through many spells in life when I don’t have it and I still engage myself in my art and in helping others with the same enthusiasm and in the light of the same principles I spoke of here. And to say it once more, and clearly, I do not have another job. I need, desperately, to sell my work.

Mark, the show last night was a shambles. In truth the pending disaster in the past week is what prompted this, perhaps more heated, text of mine. The show in itself - this was a group show at the Gallery of the Medical Doctors Guild - went rather well, apparently: we had many visitors, our own, not one single one from the medical doctors guild, [OD] and our projects within it were promoted and had resonance with the public and a few elements from the press, the paintings looked great and there will follow some sales, I still hope. That, however is not the fundamental issue here. It worked on the surface only because we, the artists made it work. I’m not going to say any more than this, but the gallery certainly did not do much to deserve the 40% + a painting we agreed upon initialy.

Brad, you usually place your link, bm if I am not mistaken, never has. No confusion there. I keep my own overhead also very low, there really is very little that I need or wish to acquire for myself apart from paints and canvases: I had very much wanted to attend a conference and teachings I mentioned to you a few weeks back but had no means of paying so decided not to, as luck would have it I was approached to volunteer in the organization - something not very much unlike what you say "Where your drift ends, so mine begins!". What my wife and I rake in goes mostly towards the girls' education as I mentioned before, they are in their last years of High School and so we’ve still a few years to go, though the toughest years are behind us, scholarships and part-time jobs should help them out in the years ahead and ease things up a bit for us. I don’t know what I’ll do with the extra money though, because I will then cease to be an artist, or be a somewhat lesser one, or lack in integrity regarding the views I uphold for myself and others, because I will no longer find myself in a position to struggle – depend so much on the sales, I believe it is - for my art. Now there’s a conundrum if I’ve ever come across one.

on Monday, October 1st, Mark said

Jose,
Hope the opening goes or has gone well. Good luck.

on Monday, October 1st, BradMM said

Jose',
Just so you know who is and isn't me. Falling behind is always, no matter your vocation, a stress I'd hazard to guess we have all experience in here. I have gotten by most every occasion because I've diversified my income into several sources. This means I have not had the luxury to always devote my entire life to my art. I'm kind of like the actor serving you bagels and smoked fish, or pastrami, at the Stage Deli, on 7th Avenue, in New York. I'm really trying to survive working exclusively on and off Broadway's stage productions. When the roles flow in - the deli job disappears. I was talking with a friend this weekend in New York, and she was covered in commissions - but they were more for her landscapes versus the abstracts her heart points her towards. She asked my how I was selling my work? I told her I let it come to me through the limited, but ever-growing presence I have just from being around for so long - nearly 37 years. I am lucky that my overhead is low. My overhead is small because I have sacrificed many of the normal devices available to us as members of humankind. I have never married, never had my own family. I've lived off of noodles and butter when necessary. Even as I put myself into a position of fewer debts - I also have never worked through galleries except with my sculpture. It seemed unfair to me I got so much more attention as a sculptor, than as a 2-D artist - more attention still does not mean more money. I had fewer sales, people were always trying to weasel down my prices, and I knew these new works I looked forward to were going to be expensive in material. That was an issue about my aesthetic I wasn't willing to compromise. So, I returned to 2-D and lived under less pressure and less income potential. I do not care if critics discover me. They have their own issues to deal with which may determine (through their tinted glass) who they will discover - raising the art buying publics perception and focus - upon the shoulders of some unexpected artist who will gladly, and hopefully, be capable and ready, to confront their break. Meanwhile, those who have been around will have their dry periods. The artist must sometimes be a good beggar, and keep going to the, "well." If I only have 50 dollars in my pocket, and a loved friend, or respected colleague, explains to me of their drift - I will give them my last 50 bucks and tell them, "Where your drift ends, so mine begins!" When we operate such a circumstance like a chain letter - amongst our most trusted circle - maybe we all survive, in the end...

on Monday, October 1st, bm said

It was a good guess: A great many artists do not depend on paying the bills by selling their work - they have other jobs as you may very well have. So, no need to read too much into it.

Putting into practice your idea would most likely not work with many artists. The desire for recognition, validation, sales, etc. is far too great a seducer. The terms are rarely those of the artist. You are, it seems, an exception.

on Monday, October 1st, jose said

bm, I am sorry, you seem to know much about me, unfortunately I am unable to decipher who you might be. So perhaps you would care to come forth and explain to this forum just what my reality is and why it is you are so certain that I am in no need to sell my art to contribute to the welfare of my family or relieve my wife from the burden she has taken over temporarily to allow us to get our girls through college. This has been my philosophy since very early on, well before I got married, all the way through the early years of my marriage when my wife could not speak Portuguese and could not get a job. What she and I have achieved we have achieved through hard work from both sides. To hear somebody imply that it is easy for me to speak of such a philosophy or approach to work is an insult, the limb you have gone out on was extremely thin.

Mark, I have an opening this evening, just came back from setting things up because the gallery delayed things somewhat. Am desperate to sell, have three months in arrears rent to pay on my studio and have been missing out on much beyond the warmth and love of my family and the solace of work for the past year. I wish to read your comment quietly tomorrow and respond with due care.

on Monday, October 1st, Mark said

Jose, I have to tell you I have not read your recent blog as carefuly as I should have before repling, so if I am off the mark forgive me (but I am short on time of late).

The "Art Market" changes about as fast as fashion these days. What is popular today will not be popular next week. Over simplified maybe, but true. Yes one needs to make money at one's art to pay bills and live a healthy life, but one does not to be rich to do so. I think it important that an artist do what they do as they see fit to do it and not be swayed by others or the market. To do other wise might put more money in the bank but it is dishonest to those who buy your work and even worse, dishonest to the artist, who in time I think will suffer for doing what the market wants. Besides one can go against the market and do well. An extream case is Andrew Wyeth who created deep works of realism when realism was no longer wanted, yet against the crtitics and those who think they know what real art is, he became one of the most famous artists in the USA and the world. I painted realisticly when realism was just beginning to come back, now I paint much less realistic as realism makes a big come back. Had I stuck with what I was doing I might be better off now, money wise, but my art spirit would suffer as the realism of my youth was not the art that I needed to create. What I create now, I must, sell or not. Sure I want it to sell (and it is selling better now) but I need to paint what is in me not the market. It is a hard line to hold I think, paint what you want and still make money, but only dedication will do it.

The art market I believe in some ways is a far more open market then it once was. Sure there are trends, but trends are to be avoided, unless you are lucky enough that your work fits naturaly into that trend. Art is not the best way to make money if that is one's concern, I would make more money digging ditches. There is a place for us all, we just need to find it and work it. Besides here in the good ol' USA markets don't happen, they are created, how sad is that.

on Monday, October 1st, bm said

And it's very "easy" - this word used lightly - to write such a philosophy when one doesn't have to depend on selling ones art to pay the bills. Yet, there is merit to this idea that you espouse... putting into practice or a reality is the part of the equation that may prove to be the most difficult for (I'll go out on a limb here) the majority of artists.

on Monday, October 1st, jose said

Andrew, in my book you are one of those who live by this creed. By sharing your experience in your blogs and comments you inspire others to follow along similar paths without fear. The power of the mind, indeed, but in the process let us not neglect the heart - allow it to pour into the work and to make us willing to share our experiences with one another instead of keeping secrets. What you said about six-figure sales has helped me set my mind about my opening this evening. Thanks for sharing.

on Sunday, September 30th, Andrew said

You do well to have hope, Jose, although much of what you speak about, or fear, exists only in the mind, and the minds of all who have come to believe that a market has any effect whatsoever. If we believe what we read, then we fall from grace into someone else's manufactured mousetrap, put there to stifle the creativity with which we might otherwise have been able to sell our work.
I speak from experience, not of five figure sales, but of six figure sales. None of these were made through any existing art market, but rather through one created from thin air, by me. Anyone can do it, if you only believe you can. Visibilus ex invisibilibus, or more simply put, the invisible becoming visible. The meaning of this phrase is that what we have to work with is our minds, containing only the invisible, our thoughts and reasoning, our strategies, and the result we can harness them to produce is the visible...our houses, our cars, our clothing and our studios.
Sure, it may seem easy if you start out rich, or have unlimited support; but that's the Catch 22. Ambition cannot belong to anyone whose life will not be changed by what they achieve.