ITS BEEN A LONG TIME
since I have seen my artwork hanging in a gallery. In fact, the beginning of the cancer chapter was the end of the gallery gala. (Not exactly accidental.) So, since then you can imagine how that collection of art has been treated. You can’t exactly justify getting rid of them. You can donate them to different places; you can rent a storage room. You can hang them end-to-end on walls in your home that don’t really want them. Most products you can name have better solutions for storage than paintings do.
I have done all of the above.
Now I have an office in the largest gallery in East San Diego and have been invited to participate in their monthly exhibits. Then I had to take a critical look at those things I had been playing mother hen to for these eight years. They are scratched, have damaged frames, some not that good in the beginning, and others that I have grown so attached to that I don’t want to hang and sell them.
That leaves a small window there for ones good enough to hang, bad enough to get rid of, the ‘might work if I did a little more work on it,’ plus frames that might be fixable, and scrap those that are not. You see the problem here.
For those old enough to remember (or care), I have been painting for many, way too many years; until eight years ago. In total I have owned four galleries, so most of my life has been spent with that. The last one I opened was exactly three months before I was diagnosed with cancer. Since it was breast cancer, holding my arms up long enough to paint was an effort. Actually that is a cop-out. With the closing of the gallery was also the loss of the studio, so there was no convenient place to put up with all the mess, much less the smell of paint and thinner in any room you choose.
Factor in that without a gallery, and the speed with which I paint, it is always a problem with where to put them. So, I stopped painting. It was a life-changing event for me.
So, I pulled together a show last week and it will be hung this weekend. I am excited. My solution for the whole dilemma was to just triple the prices and then I won’t shed many tears if some of the loved ones sell. Maybe no one will like the ones I do and we will all be happy.
Gotta go now. I need to paint…