I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING SOME OF YOU IN LOS ALTOS THIS WEEKEND, MAY 16-17 FROM 10-5, BOOTH 301
LINCOLN PARK, FOOTHILL EXPRESSWAY, LOS ALTOS, CA. THANK YOU TO ALL OF MY COLLECTORS AND FRIENDS!
Art Fair Season is upon me and My Mac is crashing. Something about an unresolved kernel panic. I am not good at this……But I’m excited about going to Los Altos next weekend and setting up to show my new pastels to a town that holds many collectors of my work. For the past 10 years I’ve been attending this and other shows in the West, this year I’ll be at only a handful of select venues but Los Altos is always near and dear to me. My supportive collector base has made me an invited artist year after year and put me in the #1 space of the show, right smack next to the entrance and for that I am humbly grateful. Hopefully my computer will hold out this week – I’ll have to have a technological epiphany or read the manual and neither scenario is going to come naturally.
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Friday 5pm my favorite time of the week! After working hard from Monday through Friday, including getting up every day at 6:30 am, making my daughter’s lunch and driving her to school for zero period at 7:25 a.m. and days filled with Wii yoga, treadmills, painting, emailing, networking, tweeting, facebooking, consulting, coaching, painting some more, ordering supplies, making dinner, talking to my sister on the phone (a rare treat), grocery shopping with teenagers, watching softball games in the cold at 9:00 at night, switching mediums mid-week from pastel to oil, ordering up a ton of supplies from Utrecht, coming up with creative dinners every night for the family, chaffeuring my daughter (who has quite a life), watching my daughter receive a certificate from the Bd. of Supervisors for committee work on Youth Relay for Life, meeting clients, blogging, spoiling my labrador who thinks she’s a person, monitoring every cough for the swine flu, and checking in on American Idol to see what Adam Lambert is going to do next I look forward to the break the break that is the weekend. I finished this painting this week. Another water piece but a departure somewhat. I got lost in all of that activity in the movement of the water and how the light danced across the surface. As they say on American Idol “I had fun with it.” I’m going to go enjoy my weekend now. Starting with a little quality time with the husband. I hope you all have a great weekend as well!
In addition to being a full time artist, wife and mom and other self induced labels, I also have been a marketing coach to artists for years. Locally I am a consultant to the Humboldt Del Norte Small Business Development Center. Its a great little gig…I get to meet with artists at various stages of their careers and help them launch further. Its interesting because I’ve found that it has as much to do with coaching as consulting. Artists sometimes need to know they are as ready and worthy as they think they are. Sometimes they need guidance and a little remedial training before putting out a full scale effort. Whatever the case may be I truly love watching these artists succeed. In addition to the marketing advice (that is also available in freeaffiliatemarketingbusiness.com site) I am their hand holder, mother, guide, cheerleader. I am truly inspired by these artists and their willingness to try at all cost to make their livelihoods creating art and for the most part I’ve been duly impressed by their work.
When I was just getting out of college in 1982 my expectations were low but I put my work in juried shows and had some beginners luck in establishing myself in the corporate collector market. I parlayed that into further gallery exposure combined with teaching for a while. In the late 1990’s the internet opened everything up and access to information was like a gift from the universe. No more going to the museum bookstore to purchase the latest book on art marketing. I was in heaven and completely overhauled my business plan. I was about as happy as a parent maintaining a career could be until this bloodbath of a recession blew across the planet. Though it has been rumbling for a while I’d say that for most it hit hard this past fall. I’ve ridden through a few recessions in the past without incident but I dare say this could be different. I have no illusions and neither should anyone else. This is serious. I’m still in the holding my breath phase as it hasn’t had a deleterious affect as of yet but I wonder about the upcoming months and even years.
On the flip side its also a very good time to produce your best work in the studio, network, reassess, and revisit your business plan. Social networking has produced a brave new world for artists to source out new audiences and perhaps new venues for exhibition and representation. Take advantage of Facebook, Linkedin and even Twitter (which I am slow to learn.) Or start a blog. I admit, I’ve a little lax on developing my own but hey, I’m wearing many hats these days and didn’t feel the need until, well, last fall. But I am the eternal optimist and I continue to plug along and encourage others to do the same. Collectors still want their art and when all this messiness is sorted out we artists will still be here, producing away. Ultimately its not about marketing at all but rather the creative impulse, the urge to forge ideas and visual delights. I’m hanging in there and encourage everyone else to do the same.
Learn MoreThank you to everyone to came to the opening of my show at Art Brokers a few weeks ago. The show looks great and everyone at AB did a wonderful job in every aspect of putting this show together. I managed to get a few pictures when we arrived…..or I should say my husband Bruce did. That’s him inspecting his favorite painting. The show will be up officially through the end of April and unofficially through mid-May so if you haven’t been to see it yet drop in.
Now its back to the studio to work on new work. I have new pastels in progress and plan on returning to oils next week. I’ll have new images to post soon.
"Harmony" 20x27" Pastel
March 27-April 26….New Pastels at Art Brokers Inc., 2660 Bridgeway, Sausalito, CA
Opening Reception: March 27 from 6-9 PM. Please come celebrate with me. This latest body of work is a decisively more intimate view of the landscape with emphasis on painterly images of streams and other waterways, a commonly explored theme in my work. New prints will also be unveiled at this show.
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