Dear Reader, I'll be upfront and honest with you -- I want to sell my art in a professional and businesslike manner. I know you're taken aback and may take a while to recover from the shock, but I am determined to exchange my artworks for filthy lucre. ("Lucre" is defined as "shameful profit" and I'm proud of it).
As I go about my daily life, I buy goods and services from dozens of people and companies. I don't know why, but I expect good service. I am a stickler for expecting companies to answer the telephone promptly and efficiently when I call. I believe my well-reasoned emails should merit a response within a reasonable time. I take the view that the machines of industry should be well oiled and that business should proceed in a prompt and efficacious way.
Then we come to art. I paint pretty pictures. You have money and like original art. Let's do a deal.
You have to be smoking weed. It doesn't work that way and, even in this Internet age with smartphones and GPS/Sat Nav, the tradition lives on. Art is different. One has to view the artwork "in the flesh" and to meet its creator "in the flesh". This means an artist needs more than one channel to market. Bricks-and-mortar galleries still play an important role in selling art.
I feel confident that a majority of readers will have dealt with gallery directors and curators. A strange sub-species of homo-sapiens. Apparently while sitting an exhibition, bored witless, they surf the web on their laptops trying to appear to be researching the artworld online. (They have yet to discover me). This takes up so much cerebral effort that they are unable to respond to emails or to answer the telephone. Or perhaps technology has developed an "app" for their smartphones that flashes "newbie artist" whenever I try to call. Having completed Probability Theory 101 at Art College, they know that the chances of a "newbie artist" selling out his exhibition on opening night is infinitesimally small, so the phone goes unanswered.
Don't try to get me started on dressing like an artist. Now that almost everyone is covered in tatoos, has body piercings and streaky hair, I'm not even going to attempt to differentiate myself. That said, I did see a gallery director type wearing a business suit, lace jabot and bright red "pope" slippers last week.
Then there's a little issue of my nebulous "artist statement". I believe that my former life has equipped me well for a juxtaposition of technology and creative art. Nice word is "juxtaposition". I should also try to interweave the words "spiritual" and "healing" into my spiel. "Intersection" is also a favourite when taking philosophical pilgrimages. Of course my paintings talk to viewers and to each other in exhibitions.
No, no, no. I simply paint pictures which I like and hope that others may also like. Period.
Yes, I admit that I indulge my passion and enjoy my professional "work". I know that's generally a venal sin and that a large number of artists paint to wind down from a hard day at the abattoirs, coal-mine, recyclable rubbish sorting, or merchant banking. I don't have a real job and for that I apologise, but could we just revert to the topic in hand?
Do you like the painting? Is the price affordable? Do you have the money? Let's do a deal! Yes, I take credit cards. Even American Express.
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