I'm sorry if you stopped to chat today and I was not quite as friendly as usual. We're still mates, right? It's just that you drive me a little crazy sometimes...
'What is it?' She asked...
'Is that a sword?'
'Is she stabbing a child?'
'...no, I'm pretty sure that's a chicken.' (Its NOT.)
I know you are interested and I like that you are interested but pleeeease don't ask me 'What is it?'
First up, it makes me feel like a six year old bringing her crayon drawing home to mum. 'It's lovely, dear! What is it?'
The answer is... This is a partly painted mural that will take another two weeks to complete if the weather stays fine.
'Yeah, but what IS it?'
Well, OK, its kind of landscapey and kind of political BUT I'd rather not say more.
Maybe its hard to understand. It probably doesn't make sense but here are the other reasons...
>Secondly, I don't want to JINX it. (Superstitious?)
>Thirdly, I've just started painting it. Its still evolving. Who KNOWs what it will really be in the end. I don't! That would take all the fun out of painting it. (I have a rough idea.)
>Finally, there is no good reaction to knowing what it is.... let me explain...
POSITIVE
'Oh wow!' You say. 'I can see it all now. It is going to be the best mural ever!' If you already have my unpainted mural in your head then there is no point in me painting it is there?
NEGATIVE
'Oh wow!' You say. 'That sounds terrible. You can't paint that!' Well, guess what? I'm going to paint it anyway but now I'll probably be defensive and insecure about it. Thanks.
AMBIVALENT
'Oh.' That just hurts! I'd prefer you to hate it!
In a couple of weeks, when my mural is all finished, you are welcome to come and ask me if it really is still that incomprehensible to you... 'Abby, what is it? What have you painted? Explain it all to me!'
Just give me a chance to show you first, OK?
HUGS* the artist
About Me
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Blank wall fetish
Last Wednesday, I visited Kate at uni to discuss a mural project around the construction site at VUW. “You need to give me the dates you will be painting,” she explained. “I’ll pass them on to my boss, who will talk to the site manager, who will consider our proposal, respond to my boss, who will tell me, and then I’ll email you.” I looked out her office window. The construction site was a hundred metres away. “Can’t I just go ask the guy myself?” I asked. That isn’t an option. There are protocols to these things at a place like uni.
There are two days of sun and I waited impatiently for the go ahead. It was pretty frustrating. Up at uni there is a big beautiful, blank white piece of wall that belongs to me. I want it bad. Seriously! Honestly! I was gagging to rub my hairy brushes all over that baby.
Today was the day... GO! I packed up buckets, tins of paint, brushes, a drop cloth, lunch, water, etc. I loaded myself up and started the 30min walk up to uni. I wear ripped, paint splattered jeans, singlet and sneakers. It’s going to be a messy day. As I walk, I build the picture I want to create in my mind and feel myself falling into that meditative trance where creative expression thrives. It is a great feeling.
A third of the way there, my arms start burning. I have a bag over each shoulder and a bucket in each hand. I’m starting to ACHE. But I don’t care. I feel like a gung ho, working class artist. By the time I reach the steep hill the endorphins have kicked in, numbing the pain and feeding my natural high. Paint, paint, paint, PAINT!
I finally reach the site and drop all my gear. I just want to sit and gaze lovingly at my wall in all its shining potential. I eat. This is REALLY important. Once I start painting, hours will pass like minutes and I will forget about food and water and other petty distractions from painting. Hours later I’ll think to myself... wow, I’m really cold! Or... hey, how long have I been needing to pee? But right now, as I eat, gaze and dream up colourful pictures... the world sharpens and shrinks into a tiny space made just for me and my wall. Blank wall. MY BLANK WALL.
That’s when the rain started falling...
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Respectable living (Pricing Art 2)
What is 'a respectable living'? Enough to comfortably pay the bills, own your own home, feed your family, go on holiday once a year...? According to 'the Salary Guide' (Trade Me) Median incomes in NZ in 2010 range from $35 - $75K. So aiming for $50K a year as an artist seems reasonable...
When I left art school and began to sell works I had a lot of support from friends and family who wanted to buy my paintings (You guys rock x)... Most could afford to pay around $100 for a small artwork. To bring in $50K I would have to create 500 small works every year (1.4 each day) and sell every one of them! My larger works sold for up to $3,000... but they took several months to paint. I would need to create and sell 17 per year... giving me just 3 weeks on each work. In reality, the best works from start to finish, may take 3 months or more to create so the prices would need to be in the $12 - 15K range in order to make a living.
The big problem with the calculations is that your sale price is not your income... There are material costs (paint is expensive!), studio and gallery hire, running costs, marketing, etc, and so on...
Yet there are some great artists in Wellington who are creating large works and pricing them between $3,000 and $12,000 and making their respectable living. It's POSSIBLE!
I recently went to an exhibition of beautiful works where the artist offered it all. Small works for $300-400, huge paintings for $5,000-$8,000 and even rough sketches for $20-100. This is SMART pricing. Everybody can take a piece of you home (I mean your art) for the price they can afford!
(So that is this artist's modest dream this year... to paint, draw and create my way towards that respectable living. Ooh Aah... respectable living... mmmmm... respectable living, etc.)
When I left art school and began to sell works I had a lot of support from friends and family who wanted to buy my paintings (You guys rock x)... Most could afford to pay around $100 for a small artwork. To bring in $50K I would have to create 500 small works every year (1.4 each day) and sell every one of them! My larger works sold for up to $3,000... but they took several months to paint. I would need to create and sell 17 per year... giving me just 3 weeks on each work. In reality, the best works from start to finish, may take 3 months or more to create so the prices would need to be in the $12 - 15K range in order to make a living.
The big problem with the calculations is that your sale price is not your income... There are material costs (paint is expensive!), studio and gallery hire, running costs, marketing, etc, and so on...
Yet there are some great artists in Wellington who are creating large works and pricing them between $3,000 and $12,000 and making their respectable living. It's POSSIBLE!
I recently went to an exhibition of beautiful works where the artist offered it all. Small works for $300-400, huge paintings for $5,000-$8,000 and even rough sketches for $20-100. This is SMART pricing. Everybody can take a piece of you home (I mean your art) for the price they can afford!
(So that is this artist's modest dream this year... to paint, draw and create my way towards that respectable living. Ooh Aah... respectable living... mmmmm... respectable living, etc.)
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Pricing Art
Maybe this is a romantic fantasy... but I sometimes think back to a time when people lived and shared communally to the strength and benefit of all the people. I imagine the artists, the storytellers, the carvers, weavers and musicians as respected and valued members of the group, free to gift or exchange their skills and products not to some fixed value but as seems right. The more money-orientated societies become, the more most artists struggle to live and practice their craft... and sometimes they are dismissed as hippie, commie, dipsy, flakey, lazy, eccentric, degenerate, renegade, or space-cadets. Recent research suggests that this is because many artists are strongly right-brain thinkers... intuitive, holistic, creative as opposed to left-brain rational, logical thinkers. (A quiz at the following link tests whether you are a right or left thinking artist http://painting.about.com/library/quiz/blquiz-rightbrain2.htm - I'm strongly right-brain.) So managing the financial and administrative side of an art career is really difficult for some artists!
I recently read 'The Life of Benvenuto Cellini' an autobiography by an artist/sculptor from Renaissance Italy - a great book full of art, scandal, romance, and violence. Cellini has a hot-temper and often fights (with fists, sword or gun) for payments, materials or just reward for his creative labour. All he wants is the means to undertake creative projects but even late in life he struggles with pricing... When Duke Cosimo I Medici asked the price of Cellini's statue of Perseus (pictured below) Cellini felt furious... he wanted to create for the joy of creation, to be able to present his labour as a gift and to be handsomely rewarded in return with praise, financial security and more commissions - new opportunities to practice his art. He knows the true value of his unique, original work is immeasurable... far beyond the costs of material and labour.
On the other hand, deep down in their souls, many artists feel that art should rightly be free (or at least affordable) to all instead of the property of society's wealthiest few.
So how do artists make a respectable living creating works valued somewhere between $0 and infinity?
Most don't.
But some do... I'll blog more on them tomorrow...
I recently read 'The Life of Benvenuto Cellini' an autobiography by an artist/sculptor from Renaissance Italy - a great book full of art, scandal, romance, and violence. Cellini has a hot-temper and often fights (with fists, sword or gun) for payments, materials or just reward for his creative labour. All he wants is the means to undertake creative projects but even late in life he struggles with pricing... When Duke Cosimo I Medici asked the price of Cellini's statue of Perseus (pictured below) Cellini felt furious... he wanted to create for the joy of creation, to be able to present his labour as a gift and to be handsomely rewarded in return with praise, financial security and more commissions - new opportunities to practice his art. He knows the true value of his unique, original work is immeasurable... far beyond the costs of material and labour.
On the other hand, deep down in their souls, many artists feel that art should rightly be free (or at least affordable) to all instead of the property of society's wealthiest few.
So how do artists make a respectable living creating works valued somewhere between $0 and infinity?
Most don't.
But some do... I'll blog more on them tomorrow...
Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus (wikicommons)
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Creation/Destruction
Last year was a hard one for me including the end of a serious relationship, the end of the NGO where I worked part time with lovely, passionate, like-minded people... actually it seemed like all of the roads I thought I was traveling along turned out to be dead ends. I felt a little lost - my soul was dry, my light was gone - I knew where I was but I had lost where I was going. I was in that winter cycle where everything is destroyed to create a space for new beginnings.
At times like that, when you are resting and nurturing, regaining strength and returning to your truest self, it is a time for questions like... what do you love the most? ...what kind of life do you want to live? ...who do you really want to be? For me, that includes family, friends, happy laughter, natural healthy living... but art and creativity have to play a big part or I'm just not whole.
I was lucky to be involved in some great outlets for creativity last year (I'll come back to some of them) but one was especially related to the creation/destruction cycle... we called it 'Art Therapy A.K.A. Demolish the Quad'. I was at Victoria University in 2010 doing a couple of Art History honours papers and started an Art and culture society up there. In collaboration with VUWSA and Studio and a bunch of arty creatives, we let the students loose on the quad with all the art supplies we could get our hands on. The space was transformed from cold, grey, lifeless concrete into a multi-coloured wonderland. This delightfully cooperative, anarchic, chaotic, creative freedom came about because the quad was due to be destroyed during upcoming renovations. Sure enough, today a giant muddy hole has been hollowed out where the quad once stood and most of our creative work was destroyed. But sometimes life is like that... a series of building up and tearing down... replacing old with new. It is that natural cycle... but strangely art seems to transcend it. People are born and die, civilisations rise and fall but ART... images, stories, objects and songs... stay with us, passing through the generations to inspire or teach us again and again.
(Thanks to Rachel Brandon and Esther page for the use of their photos below... you can see more of Rachels pics at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=10150288913930577&id=831370576&aid=554096)
And a few extra links on this event if you are interested....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45442154@N02/sets/72157625012907193/show/
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=284220&id=285779926080
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/wellington/4225717/Students-splash-out-during-quadrangles-last-days
At times like that, when you are resting and nurturing, regaining strength and returning to your truest self, it is a time for questions like... what do you love the most? ...what kind of life do you want to live? ...who do you really want to be? For me, that includes family, friends, happy laughter, natural healthy living... but art and creativity have to play a big part or I'm just not whole.
I was lucky to be involved in some great outlets for creativity last year (I'll come back to some of them) but one was especially related to the creation/destruction cycle... we called it 'Art Therapy A.K.A. Demolish the Quad'. I was at Victoria University in 2010 doing a couple of Art History honours papers and started an Art and culture society up there. In collaboration with VUWSA and Studio and a bunch of arty creatives, we let the students loose on the quad with all the art supplies we could get our hands on. The space was transformed from cold, grey, lifeless concrete into a multi-coloured wonderland. This delightfully cooperative, anarchic, chaotic, creative freedom came about because the quad was due to be destroyed during upcoming renovations. Sure enough, today a giant muddy hole has been hollowed out where the quad once stood and most of our creative work was destroyed. But sometimes life is like that... a series of building up and tearing down... replacing old with new. It is that natural cycle... but strangely art seems to transcend it. People are born and die, civilisations rise and fall but ART... images, stories, objects and songs... stay with us, passing through the generations to inspire or teach us again and again.
(Thanks to Rachel Brandon and Esther page for the use of their photos below... you can see more of Rachels pics at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=10150288913930577&id=831370576&aid=554096)
And a few extra links on this event if you are interested....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45442154@N02/sets/72157625012907193/show/
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=284220&id=285779926080
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/wellington/4225717/Students-splash-out-during-quadrangles-last-days
Monday, February 7, 2011
Getting Started...
When it comes time to start things do you ever get that tension in your belly, like nervous butterflies, a reluctance to take that first step... just in case it takes you somewhere you don't want to go? I have been like that with my arts career. I have been an artist since I was born in hindsight... but I didn't come out of the closet (so to speak) and openly declare my self AN ARTIST until my son was born and I had spent several blissful years at art school where I could finally be my true creative self surrounded by people who understand that sharp jolt of inspiration and the sometimes calm, sometimes chaotic but always consuming drive to breathe solid life into your brightest imaginings.
Artists have a reputation for being a little crazy... maybe that's true? Maybe our brains just work a little differently? Maybe the openness to a potential that weaves reality into fantasy, and sometimes fantasy into reality, changes not only the way you look at the world but the way the world looks at you. And you can't go back, even if you want to.
That's just one of the scary things about being an artist... I'm hoping this blog will reveal some truths about art and artists, so if you are creative and my words strike a chord... please post with me. This year I have a great deal of work to do, skills to learn and fears to overcome as I establish my arts business. And along the way... art glorious art!
Artists have a reputation for being a little crazy... maybe that's true? Maybe our brains just work a little differently? Maybe the openness to a potential that weaves reality into fantasy, and sometimes fantasy into reality, changes not only the way you look at the world but the way the world looks at you. And you can't go back, even if you want to.
That's just one of the scary things about being an artist... I'm hoping this blog will reveal some truths about art and artists, so if you are creative and my words strike a chord... please post with me. This year I have a great deal of work to do, skills to learn and fears to overcome as I establish my arts business. And along the way... art glorious art!
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