Lead the Field

Tonight I want to tell a personal story and give a recommendation for Earl Nightingales "Lead the Field". Above is an old clip from when Earl had a television program. I never saw that, and had no idea who he was until...........

I had a gallery in Rockport, a shoestring undercapitalized operation, and I wasn't making enough money to pay my bills., I was making some money, but not enough. I decided I would visit an older and very successful artist who I knew. This fellow had a reputation for advising younger artists and I sought out his help.

His enormous studio was filled with the paintings he was working on for a major gallery in New York . He was one of the best selling artists in that gallery. I arrived at the time on which we had agreed, and he talked to me about painting and some production methods, and ways to get more efficiency in your painting. But then he stopped and asked. Do you know about "Lead the Field"?

I said no, I did not, and he wrote out for me an address, for the Nightingale-Conant company where I could order a set of inexpensive tapes of Earl Nightingale. Ordinarily a series of instructional tapes by some geezer who was the radio voice of Sky King would not have got my attention. But because it had been recommended so highly by this big time artist, I bought it. When it arrived, I put it on , and it changed the whole game for me. I am not the end all, be all in the art biz, far from it, but I can make a living. Here's where I learned a whole lot of the attitude that made this possible. It is a down to earth, no mumbo-jumbo course in sales and self growth for the real world.

My father was a doctor and so were all his friends, no one taught me how the world in general, and the business world in particular, worked. They were all salary men. Others did the business for them, I have had to do my own. Art is a business. If you have a problem with that, maybe you should teach, or work in Hollywood or design things for a company that hands you a check every week. Before Earl, I didn't understand why some guys made a living and I didn't, now I learned the score. If you want to earn more as an artist, start here.

Earl laid it all out in an orderly and reasoned, optimistic and nurturing way. So many of the unexamined ideas and preconceptions I had, were discarded as Earl explained what the world was about. I don't know of any book that had the effect on me, of these tapes. I can thank Earl for helping me get my act together and make a living as an artist. It is really all the same you know. Art is a small business, whether you are running a shoe store, or a gallery, or a department store, the principles remain the same. They are also timeless. Every week brings a slew of new business "how to books", and none of them replace anything that can be found in Lead the Field. Today it is on disk rather than tapes. If you want some wise mentor to sit you down and tell you how to make it in the art biz, or any other biz, you need Lead the Field

Item two. I am announcing a workshop to be held at the Sunset Hill Inn again. This one will coincide with the Lupine season there. Artists go there to paint the spectacular flowering fields. Join me this June 19th thru the 21st in the White mountains for a workshop I will call;

LUPINEWORLD 2010

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