The Ups and Downs of an Artist's Life
July 2002
I know, I know.... I'm not the most conscientious journal-keeper in the world. This doesn't mean that I haven't been busy in my art career. In fact, since I gave up my day job to become a full-time artist, I've been busier than ever. For the first 5 months of my 'retirement' from teaching, though, I was laid low with a virus which I picked up in France last summer. I lost 16 pounds in weight, despite being quite thin already, and had to change my diet drastically in order to recover. I've become intolerant of dairy foods which makes it difficult to eat in Italian and Mexican restaurants. There are worse things in life than this! Art was a comfort and an important motivator during this episode.
So, what am I up to now? Encaustic painting is still my passion. In February I attended a 3-day workshop taught by Cynthia Winika of R &F Paints at the Pacific Center for the Book in San Francisco. There I learned a lot of technical information which has helped me to focus more on being creative and less on wrestling with the wax. I've started to have my birch panels custom-made, rather than buying the hollow-core doors which I found too heavy to handle on my working surface. I work flat to avoid drips and to allow me to etch words into the surface of the paintings. My first encaustic exhibit will be at Napa Valley College Fine Art Gallery in November (visit the Shows page for more info). I will also have a few small works for sale at the Sausalito Art Festival over Labor Day weekend. But the best place to see the work in the flesh is to attend my open studio November 16th & 17th (see Shows).
This year I made the decision to apply to galleries as well as continuing to put a lot of effort into selling my work myself. In February I was contacted by a dealer in Beverly Hills who had seen my paintings at the Sausalito Art Festival over several years. He asked me to take some into the gallery. As luck would have it, I was about to drive down to Palm Springs a few weeks later, so I loaded the van up with a selection of abstract pieces and made a diversion to Los Angeles on the way. He expressed enthusiasm for the new encaustics, but said he wanted them to be much larger. (The ones I showed him were no bigger than 20"x 20"). I assured him I would paint larger ones and send him photos. This I did. Unfortunately this was months ago and I've never heard a word from him since, despite phone calls to the gallery, e-mails, and letters. It can be humiliating to keep knocking at closed doors, so I decided to give it up as a lost cause.
As if this wasn't bad enough, during my trip to Palm Springs I presented my portfolio to a dealer in Palm Desert whose enthusiasm for my abstract paintings knew no bounds. She immediately offered me representation starting in the Fall, along with a solo show in November. Needless to say, I was very excited and have put a good deal of effort into creating a cohesive body of work. This week, after getting no response to a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the gallery recently went into bankruptcy. Another shattered hope. Thank goodness I don't rely on galleries to sell my work all the time. Until the Spring I was represented by a gallery in the Chicago area, to which I delivered some collages in person in June 2001. It soon became apparent that this gallery was not able to sell my art to their particular clientele- probably through no fault of theirs or mine - so two months ago I had to pay to have it all shipped back to California.
Am I downhearted? NO! All these let-downs are not so unusual in the art world. It's important for any artist not to put too many eggs in one basket. I have plenty of other options: art festivals, open studios, shows, and workshops. This year, for the first time, I began accepting invitations to teach further afield. In June I had a wonderful experience teaching a 4-day collage workshop in Montreal at Carole Segal Studio. She has a reputation for running successful art workshops and no wonder. Her studio space is large and beautifully organized. She treated me with the greatest care and concern for my peculiar diet, personally making me lunch every day, driving me to and from the classroom, inviting me to her beautiful home, and taking me on a tour of Montreal. Her own artistic talents are incredible - from bronze sculpture to oil painting to assemblage. She has taken full advantage of all she has learned during the years she's been running her workshops. To find out more, take a look at her website (www.artworkshops.ca) I'm happy to say she's invited me back next year to teach another workshop - this time in Abstract Painting.
A couple of weeks ago I flew to Portland, Oregon to teach a 3-day workshop in collage/mixed media techniques. This one had been organized almost a year ago by two enterprising artists, Jan Heigh and Nikki Blackwood. Originally they had asked me whether I was planning to teach somewhere else in the area near enough for them to attend. When I said I had no plans to do so, they decided to set up the whole thing themselves. They advertised it to everyone they knew, then rented space in a local high school art department. There was no shortage of participants - 15 in all, an ideal number. Again I had a wonderful time, making lots of new friends and falling in love with Portland. I stayed with a friend of one of the students, Sam Lund, who owns a charming cottage in Maywood Park. She's not an artist herself (though her remodeling and room decoration is highly accomplished), but her hospitality knew no bounds. Despite the fact that she was still recovering from a broken leg, she drove me around the neighborhood and took me to the famous Rose Garden. Jan, too, chauffeured me to and from the airport, on a visit to a local rubber stamp store, and to dinner at the Kennedy School (yes, a restaurant that is converted from an old elementary school!). In fact, if I'd had the time and the energy they'd have taken me to many more places of interest. I was also invited for a barbecue at the home of Sandy Keating, whose husband is an English teacher at the high school where the workshop took place. She is an exceptional fiber artist and showed me work in her studio which took my breath away. She called them quilts, but I've never seen quilts quite as exquisite as hers before - it was more like drawing with thread and painting with fabric. No wonder the collages she produced in the class were so accomplished. In fact, I was thoroughly impressed by the standard of art produced by everyone in the class and only wish I had photographs of pieces to post on this website. We were all women, all ages, and there was a chemistry about the group that really worked. I can't wait to go back next year!
Back in San Rafael and Sonoma, CA, I've also been teaching a lot of workshops in Collage, Abstract Painting, and Art Marketing. I'm currently updating the student galleries to show off their latest work, so watch out for changes there.
So life as an artist ain't all bad...