FineArtViews Newsletter Straight Talk about Art, Marketing, Inspiration and Fine Living For Artists, Collectors and Galleries (and anyone else who loves art)

 

 

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* Focal Point:  aesthetic experience

 

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How to Sell Your Art Without Selling Out

My name is Steve Popkin and I'm a glass artist. I have been working with glass for many years. More than likely you've never heard of me nor seen any of my work and that's OK. Probably much like you, I have always loved creating art. My dream as a child was to create great new "masterpieces" in drawings, paintings, jewelry, photography, clay, etc.

After years of creating artwork & selling it for less than what it cost me to make... or even worse, giving it all away to family and friends...

I figured if I was going to sell my work I needed to invest the time, money & research to do it right and discover the secrets of how well-known artists made their name & living.

It took effort but I finally "Cracked Their Code" and figured out Exactly how they did it and...I started doing it and making money!

My artist friends began questioning me . . .asking what I was doing differently.  It wasn't long before I realized there was a great want & need for this knowledge.

I took everything I learned and organized it into an easy to understand, step-by-step course any artist or craftsman could simply apply and
become successful. . .

Learn How to Sell YOUR Art Without Selling Out:
http://fineartviews.com/offers/popkin

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Art by Charles Peck
Today's Selected Commenter



http://charlespeck.com/

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Dear {{FirstName}},

Innovation is a branch of invention that makes changes in existing systems. These changes need not be dramatic. They may not even be seen as improvements. In the art game they need only to be different.

Yesterday, while I was looking into the innards of a public gallery, the work of Charles John Collings (1848-1931) caught my attention. Collings was well trained in English watercolour methodology. Immigrating to Canada in 1910 at age 61, he spent his last twenty years honing a unique style. Collings soaked the sizing out of relatively smooth (hot-pressed) paper. This caused the pigment to "bloom" to varying degrees--something like the effect one would get with blotting paper. Further, with the use of spatulas and burnishing tools, some passages had colour intermittently obliterated, textured, or entirely removed. The result was a sugary softness of enriched greys and impressionistic sophistication. "Collings lays his prepared paper variously on a sheet of slate, glass or cork to preserve moisture," wrote fellow watercolourist (Walter J. Phillips) "He paints with pure pigments, mixing them only on the paper, and removes any superfluity, or reduces intensities, with a clean brush."

Vigorous and active into his old age, he settled at beautiful Seymour Arm on Shuswap Lake in British Columbia. He needed to be far from the madding crowd. Several significant rumblings take place in the minds of this sort of creator. Taking little heed of conventional wisdom, they have an innate need to innovate. Further, the free-standing artist requires of himself the personal mastery of a personal innovation. Collings pressed his wisdom into the service of an already dignified spirit and evolved sensibility. Looking closely at his work, you discover order and rationality evident in every passage.

Innovation is its own satisfaction. The feeling that one's efforts are unique and different from the rest is impetus enough to continue. In my experience, innovators tend to be stubborn--in the sense that Edison, Ford and Banting were stubborn. This somewhat dated attitude is easy to miss in today's cookie-cutter society. Collings held his methodology close to his chest, sent his polished gems to a distant market in England, and listened to no one but himself.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: "His masses of floating colour, where they meet and combine, often create forms and hues of great beauty, fortuitous perhaps, but coherent." (From an unpublished manuscript, "Wet Paint", by Walter J. Phillips, 1928)

Esoterica: How to innovate? Look at your current work and ask how you might bring it more in synch with your vision. If you don't have a vision, keep asking yourself for one. If you ask long enough, you will receive. Ask "What could be?" This is how taste is raised, uniqueness is achieved and style is born. Get stubborn. If you happen to be one of those artists driven by curiosity, you're on your way. Innovators are lone wolves, rangy and independent. "What's the point," they ask, "in doing things like everyone else?"

If you would like to read more information related to the above letter please visit the Innovation Clickback

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Mere Shadows of Halloween, Art and Gentlemen,

Charles Peck Wrote:

Hello Clint,
I haven’t figured out why I react the way I do when you write despairingly about the subjective response in art. Part of it may be that I have spent most of my life in small communities surrounded by folks without an art education or exposure to the many centuries of human art production and they tend to adopt the “engineer’s” posture regarding art (no engineer insult intended – just that empathic, emotional, or intuitive activity usually is not their strong suit) .
One of the big changes brought about by the Renaissance was the move from craft to fine art which western society had left behind after Greco Roman times (this just happened to have coincided with the rise of Christianity).

Synergy may be the easiest way to explain the difference between the two, with Fine Art being more than the sum of its parts, while craft is or can be a fine piece of functionality.

First let me state that I quite agree that much ’art’ is no good – often this results from poor craftsmanship or grasp of the fundamentals of composition, value management, interplay of colors, handling of the brush/pencil/etc. as well as insufficient understanding of the role of expression or emotive content required to make a picture more than an exercise in mechanical virtuosity.

In the end the difficulty of achieving mastery of image production is something that seems to stay with all artists through out their life when attempting to achieve the results desired by deliberate practice or study – constant improvement.

No doubt the differences in human psychics or basic talent as well as “time in grade” account for much quality variation.
None the less, at least as much objective art suffers from a “hollowing out” of the emotional content as does some non-objective art. In fact it is more likely as the main point of non-objective work is the emotional content – the stripping bare of easily recognizable subject matter which functions as an enabler for the viewer’s alliance or cooperation in the communication through remembered visual experience.

This in no way suggests that by going non-objective it is easier to achieve the desired response; just the opposite is the case. I would argue that most likely a much lower percentage of non-objective work gets any where near its goal than does realist work … but when even partially successful it often creates a much more active, vital, powerful visual image than does even the best copy of nuts and bolts reality. There is more to art than becoming just another soft tissue pantograph.

This energy is something most artists wish to achieve in their respective styles and is often that which is most elusive.
As much as I greatly appreciate you having made possible my having a web site too show my work to a wider audience it does suffer from one modern society’s “hollowing out” habits. This is the habit of looking at a reproduced photograph of a piece of art work and thinking one has any damn clue what it looks/feels like. The easiest way to drive this home to one who does not know it is to show them a high end coffee table book of any master – hell, choose one my favorites, Rembrandt or Sorolla – and then go to a museum that has their work on display. It is the difference between reading a romance novel and falling madly, passionately in love with someone who returns your favors with gusto. It is but a pale, sad imitation of the real thing.

I often suspect those who hold forth with diatribes against art forms which differ from their preferred style have never gone to the trouble to really “see” the work they are talking about.
With good realistic work it is this very quality of a “subjective response” or an empathic expression that is the meat of the picture, the empty shell is the one which is very well done and dead because the artist had nothing to say. I have found skill is a very poor substitute for passion. When the two are wed is when the heart gets too sing just by looking at it.

The reason “informed” brushwork is so sought after is not because of some formula for application, but because it contains energy and is one the main vehicles for expression. This is a relatively modern development from the times of Franz Hal, Delacroix, Manet, Van Gogh, early Matisse, Joaquin Sorolla Bastida (1863-1923), Lucian Freud’s later work, and now we are in our times with the thread or trajectory still going strong. Those who “get” art are not troubled by that which differs from their particular, peculiar, preferences because they have an understanding that can “smell” quality even in the argument of the “opposition”.

Not unlike the very hallowed out, secularized, Christian appropriation of the Celtic fall holiday of November 1st, “Samhain”, which was an energetic, deeply felt connection to their pre-medieval understanding of life and its forces; a gentleman is an individual not of the common hollow understanding of a politically correct eunuch co-opted by the forces wishing to make all the same, an easily managed facsimile of a citizen, but an individual with sufficient depth of wisdom and understanding to know that not all will be as he wishes and enjoy the pluralism while reveling in the fabric of life instead of letting it trouble him.

One of art’s main jobs in any society (and quite likely has been since the beginning of time when artists were shamans) is to bring an uncommon awareness to the matter at hand – to point out that the Emperor’s new clothes are very light and transparent if in fact there at all. Otherwise it is just interior decoration, a cute craft.

Thanks for letting me get this off my chest … I feel much better now. Happy hollowed Halloween – with all its absurdities; here little kiddies, have some candy. What a long way from something meaningful. charles@charlespeck.com


More Comments:
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