Howdy! If you've ever seen Field Of Dreams, you're familiar with the phrase, "If you build it, they will come." In the film, which I've never watched, a character believes that angels will come to their baseball stadium if they build it. Why? That's his vision. Mine's more grounded. If I keep painting, writing, if I keep chugging along creatively, I'll find my audience.

It's been over a year since my last oil painting and while they've never been large, they are bigger than the little watercolors, gouache paintings, and woodburnings I bring to First Friday. Catering to the market, I've focused on creating pieces that will sell. This isn't to say I don't like the work I'm outputting. But, I am feeling stifled. There is a local gallery I've yet to submit any paintings to because I don't have new larger-scale work to show, and it's bad form submitting older pieces outside of a solo show. I've not been painting larger pieces because there is no guarantee the local gallery, or that I used to show at, would accept them, let alone sell them, and I've been prioritizing my financials. And, while art doesn't go bad, it does lose it's freshness, so should I delve into oils, which takes longer than watercoloring, and I fail to show the pieces in the first couple of years, they'll be destined to languish on my walls. Probably.

My husband and I are looking to buy a house. A part of me is hoping he will agree to a home in mixed zoning so I can have a gallery on the premises. I've seen properties within our current budget that could work. I'd need to designate a space for creating art within the gallery, in order to man my station wile still creating, but I've been through similar setups where artists worked over a tarp. It could be do-able, and if the gallery's mine, then the age of my pieces wouldn't matter. Trouble is, in the grand list of desired traits on our future property, it's potential as a gallery will be low on the list, if not for me, than for my husband. And I don't foresee renting or buying a second space to run the gallery-studio separately.

It's nice to advocate for making art for art's sake, and I have more wiggle room than many artists, as I'm responsible for making extra household income, not being the main provider, but it's difficult to commit to larger pieces when I know I can't sell them at my usual events. In fact, my oil paintings are so bulky, I can only ever bring a few to First Friday in our little Corolla, even if street fair customers carried around the kind of money I would have to charge.

Do I want to be shown in galleries of higher renown one day? Do I want dedicated collectors? Yes. But I'd be happy with my own little gallery, to be known locally as an artist whose work is worth seeing. And if we can find a decently maintained property where the mortgage payments are (ideally significantly) less than our current rent, bringing down our living costs, I'll be able to justify making more of the art I'd rather be creating, and less of what will sell.

With writing, the process is more straight-forward. I couldn't write for the market if I tried. I can only tell the stories I'm invested in, that I need fleshed out and concluded. My first two published novels haven't been very successful, in that there haven't been many sales, nor reviews, yet. But, for all my obvious bias, I like them, and I consider myself well read. I am confident that with every future novel I publish, I'll reach at least one, but hopefully a handful of readers who connect deeply with the piece. Through their continued interest and word of mouth, my reader base will grow.

At the end of the day, I'm not trying to get rich and famous painting, writing, creating. No, I'm creating because I can and I must. And while I would like to make a living, it's more important that I reach the right people, those who appreciate my work, rather visual or written. I'm in a marathon, not a race, and the only person I'm competing with is the me that I was.

If I make it, if I keep making it, they will come.

Thanks for stopping by. I drop a new blog post every Monday. Toodles!

Newsletter

Howdy! It's only been half a week since my last post and I have little to update. I'm editing my paranormal women's fiction novel, Soul Walker. It's slow going but I'm getting much closer to being able to query it. Again. While it would have been nice to have been contracted for three books right out of the gate, I'm grateful Tea With Coffee Media (and everyone else) rejected it. The story was fine but now it can be good.

I finished reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. It was a little dry. While, from the title, I knew the book was about Murakami's running history, I figured it would also focus on his writing career, and it did but minimally.

I'm now reading The Unbearable Lightness Of Being by Milan Kundera. It's a favorite novel of a friend, and from the title, I guessed it would offer inspiration like that of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, or maybe that of The Alchemist. I'm ~120 pages in and thus far the story is fast paced but there are low stakes and I'm not invested in a single character. It reads like a list of minor life events, revolving around a handful of people, meant to prove a philosophy. I'm not quite halfway through though so this is an early judgement.

Thanks for stopping by! I drop a newsletter every Monday! Toodles!