Greetings! Today I am going through piles of little studies that are the result of outdoor painting trips, or efforts in the studio to study an idea. I admit to being pretty random when it comes to choosing the mediums for small studies. They might be gouache, oil, watercolor or acrylic. There’s no rhyme or reason, I simply enjoy what all these mediums have to offer. They continue to multiply until I eventually decide to see if anyone is interested in adding one to their collection.
You probably know of Duane Keiser, the artist who started the “Daily Painting” phenomenon that has been replicated by quite a few people and websites. I was recently listening to Duane being interviewed by Nicolas Uribe on his YouTube channel ‘Our Painted Lives’. Duane was talking about the period of time, around the early 2000’s, when he began to host shows and sell his work out of his studio, even though he was being shown in galleries, and just how much that was frowned upon by many, if not all, galleries at the time. This was before the Internet was as widely available, and conducting internet sales was not something that many people had even considered trying to do. If you wanted to sell your work it pretty much had to be in a gallery. To get into the galleries was a hell of a tough thing to do, and still is. Once you got up the courage to even try, you had to do it exactly as they suggested, submit a specific number of slides (real film slides), presented in a specific way, to a specific person, who may or may not look at your portfolio of slides… ever! You had to include return envelopes and postage if you wanted them back. I admit to never receiving back some of the slide portfolios that I sent out to a few galleries back in those days. If that happened, and you never received a phone call or postal letter back, you knew they looked at your work and it probably ended up in the “file” of never to be viewed again! Ahhh…the “good old days”!
Today, galleries and artists sell work via online sales. It’s become fairly comfortable to do so. A certain trust has been built up over the years between collectors and art merchants, and the technology, with the security in the payment process, and of being comfortable that the image quality will be very close to what we see on the screen, has gone a long way to making this a comfortable activity. The difference, I believe, has been that the changes in our economy over the last 20 years or so, has brought about a realization that the old methods weren’t the best. Galleries understand that we’re all trying to survive and keep our art businesses alive, and that we need each other. By both the gallery and the artist doing well, everyone does better. It’s a more even playing field. As long as an artist respects what the gallery does for them, understands that there has to be a separation between personal sales and what the gallery sells, there’s room for us to independently go about being business people and artists. That’s all a good thing. Thank you Duane Keiser!
Back to the piles… I have a new place where I am uploading these small studies for sale. It will be an ongoing process of adding pieces as over time. It is a Big Cartel site that I have named “Observations”, this is a link to it. All of the work is unframed (including no mats in the case of water based media), is very affordably priced (I think anyway), and I am not charging for shipping. If you’re interested, please take a look. The collection will grow over time, and maybe do some shrinking, I hope! I’ve scattered some of the newer images here.
Keep your brushes wet!
Cheers,
Marc
Love these small jewels! I also asked to see all of the works on paper at Meyer Vogl gallery. So inspiring! I have a question about how they are framed? Are they mounted and require glass? Selling small plein air studies done in pastel is a bit harder to ship but putting them under duralar works well for transportation. Take good care! Susan
Thanks again for your insight and opportunity to hear what's going on behind the scenes. The images look great. I was wondering/hoping if you could share your process of how you photograph your pieces in a future post. I'm currently putting together a website myself and struggle with the presentation of my work, glare, bad color, blurriness, etc. Thanks again for taking the the time to share your information with the masses.