The Price Of Selling Art

Sold a painting.


Should be good news, and it is, but hey, I was not ready to part with that one. Why didn’t they want the other old thing? That was my favorite! I just finished it! I wanted to grab it back? I thought selling my work would be great! Why isn’t it?



When you stop being emotional about your work it is time to stop painting.



Period.

S. Tschantz
Sold

Of course you have mixed feelings about it! While I was relieved to have sold 3 pieces, I was also sad. I loved those pieces; that is why I put them up in the show!



Never, ever show work you are not 100% proud of. NEVER.



Always show only your best, that which will tear at you to part with. Only then can you be sure what you are offering is really art and not simply decoration. Artwork to be true art must speak to the both the artist and the patron. There should be a give and take in this relationship even if you have never meet and will never meet.

After Vincent

This is why van Gogh still claims such attention over the distance of time, because his work speaks to us. More to us today than in his own time. We all live in a turmoil and that is conveyed in his work, We understand him as his contemporaries did not.

So while you mature enough to let go of your artwork, it is and should always be a bit hard, almost painful.



We all know the painter who paints and who loves to shoves his or her stuff off on everyone. They copy crafts and decorative stuff and love to give it away, but there is no emotional connection there. While they often view themselves as artistic peers (actually I know one near by who talks down to me) their work is imitative. They follow a pattern. Copying other artists. Following the directions of their “teacher” faithfully (and to my mind fatally) one such person’s latest, a copy of a Kincaid card, is their current crowning achievement. Said “artist” then proceeded to photograph it and make "prints" of it on their computer. Then it was fostered off on all of us as a priceless “gift”. This work is dull. Oh, the image is there. They copy very well, but the work is static, lifeless and to a real art lover, well.......boring. Seen it before, better done. There is no emotion in that painting other than smugness at how well they did. And it shows.

Always hurt just a little, my friend.