Sometimes working on art feels like a case of poison ivy. The tools itch in my fingers, but I can’t quite settle into a project. The profit motive collides with what I actually feel like doing, and I end up as I did this morning: moodily sitting on our staircase, listening to KUOW’s pledge drive and watching Bob clean the kitchen.
I was doing little drawings for a while, with colored pencil and ink, like the things I used to draw for my kids, years ago.
The drawings actually sold reasonably well on Etsy, but I started to feel embarrassed about them because they don’t represent who I want to be as an artist. They were casual little pieces, sweet and sentimental, but don’t display any particular talent; I could have done them equally well when I was 14.
I quit doing them when I realized that I didn’t want my friends and neighbors to visit my Etsy shop because they might view me as an artist on the basis of those drawings.
On the other hand, the abstract raku vessels which I made the other day (shown in an earlier post) are exciting to me because of the form and shape of the clay; how it yields to my fingers, how it recreates the sensuous curves of Georgia O’Keefe’s flowers. But I have no faith that anyone else will like them.
And I do need to think about the marketplace… if anyone is still going to be buying art in this exploding economy, that is.
So here’s my solution for today: a local island/water/fish tile, done in raku clay, maybe 5 by 11 inches or so. The clay’s too gritty and the lines too fine to bother making a mold from, so it’s just a one-off. But I like it AND I think it’s marketable.
Coming to terms with the marketplace
seascape raku tile
I was doing little drawings for a while, with colored pencil and ink, like the things I used to draw for my kids, years ago.
The drawings actually sold reasonably well on Etsy, but I started to feel embarrassed about them because they don’t represent who I want to be as an artist. They were casual little pieces, sweet and sentimental, but don’t display any particular talent; I could have done them equally well when I was 14.
I quit doing them when I realized that I didn’t want my friends and neighbors to visit my Etsy shop because they might view me as an artist on the basis of those drawings.
On the other hand, the abstract raku vessels which I made the other day (shown in an earlier post) are exciting to me because of the form and shape of the clay; how it yields to my fingers, how it recreates the sensuous curves of Georgia O’Keefe’s flowers. But I have no faith that anyone else will like them.
And I do need to think about the marketplace… if anyone is still going to be buying art in this exploding economy, that is.
So here’s my solution for today: a local island/water/fish tile, done in raku clay, maybe 5 by 11 inches or so. The clay’s too gritty and the lines too fine to bother making a mold from, so it’s just a one-off. But I like it AND I think it’s marketable.