An open letter to Xanthippe Cleavage-Heaver

Xanthippe Cleavage-Heaver excitedly opened the waxen seal on the letter from the Accreditation Commission For Conformity Assessment Bodies. The tiny crabbed printing in brown ox gall ink informed her that she was the recipient of the National Assembly of Compulsion grant for the arts. Her proposal for "The Bridges of the Hudson" had been selected for a show at the Great hall of Conformity at the University of East Delft!

Here are some things that Xanthippe is going to need to know. Bullets!

• You don't want to do a show like this on short notice. Three months is short notice. Sure you could do it, but that's a finished painting a week with no time to spare, that's every week, so you had better get a few ahead in case it rains or your back hurts. That sounds like a show of 8 by 10's to me. Also every one of the twelve will have to be used, there isn't time built in to reject a few weak entrants.
• In order to do the show I outlined for Xanthippe last night a year is a nice lag time. You aren't only going to work on this project this year you have to paint for a living in the meantime, getting all of those paintings done has to fit into your present life's schedule. You are going to have to keep at it though, you will be glad to have the lead time.
• I would restrict the paintings in the show to two sizes I like 16 by 20 for the small ones and 24 by 36 for the larger. Oh yeah, and two squares, hows about 16 by 16 and 26 by 29 (Metcalf square). Also some 9 by 12's for the reception area, maybe half a dozen.
• First you stretch up a big pile of canvasses those sizes, many more than you will need and stack those in one corner of your studio, ready to go at a moments notice.
• Can you afford to buy your frames today? Or will you have to wait for your income tax refund? I expect to average 300 dollars a frame, the big ones will cost more, and the 16 by 20's less, but that isn't a big budget for professional quality framing with closed corners. We can go cheap on the 9 by 12's later, but the 12 pictures in the show will cost about 3,600 dollars to frame. I would order them now, framing takes a while and something might screw up if this is on a tight deadline, so better call your gilder and get on that now. Then you can try the paintings as you make them into their frames to see how they look. Incidentally with canvas, paint and a few other costs like gasoline, you are already on the hook for at least 5000 dollars.
  
• One nice thing about having a year, you can have pictures from several seasons, rather than a whole show of only winter bridge scenes. I am assuming you are going to go to the locations and actually make these pictures and not work from the file photos at the Peoples Community Center. That's what most people would do, and it's quick, but it stands almost no chance of being a really great show, and you want that, because you want to have a career not just a show. This show needs to be great!
• Next weekend, you throw the rottweilers in the back of the International Harvester Travelall, grab a notebook and go visit the bridges. There are probably more than you can do in a day, probably that will take three days. At each bridge you find a location or two and scope out the best angles. Write those things down in your notebook, one bridge per page. Better get a picture of each possible view also.
• You better pick out two of those bridges for this months paintings too, if you can get the first half dozen done in the first four months, you might make that deadline. For sure you have to get ahead of the schedule a bit. You don't want to be in a position of having a show only three weeks away but you still need three paintings. That can't be done. at least not well.
  

A scam that targets artists

I heard from a friend today that he received an inquiry over the internet from someone who wanted to buy one of his paintings. I hope it was for real, but I did take the time to warn him against a common scam. Perhaps you already know about it, but in case you don't, here's the deal.

There is a scam that targets artists and any one else who markets online. What usually happens is that you receive an e-mail, often in stilted English, that says something like " I have seen you paintings on the line, and I am most serious to buy many.

Thumbscrews

They often want to send you a cashiers check as they are foreign or moving. They ask to overpay you for one reason or another, often shipping, and you are to deposit the check, send them the paintings and the balance left over from the cashiers check after what ever arrangements you have made. In short you are to take a cashiers check, let it clear and mail them money. What most people don't know is that a bogus check can clear your bank and then be rescinded.


Many artists are so delighted to receive the sale that they comply. What happens next, is the bank contacts you in a week or two to explain that although the cashiers check appeared fine and they have posted it "cleared" to your account, it was a fake and bounced. The check was a fraud. You are out the balance that you sent to the customer and perhaps a painting or two as well.

The easiest way to avoid this is to set up a paypal account and take the payment through that. If the client won't do that, walk away. No matter what the deal is don't do business with anyone in Nigeria. If that seems unfair to you go ahead, but I warned you.

How low can you go?

This is another of the pictures from Cazenovia, New York that has now been finished and returned to Joe Sosnowski my dealer over there, who will be opening a new gallery next month.

Well, I guess I am going to write some more on pricing your art. It seems that there are a lot of people with the same question and in the same place in the market. Their business model is to sell VERY low priced art to the middle class and do high volume or at least cover enough of their materials to make painting modestly profitable and hope to find their way ultimately to a higher rung on the ladder .

I believe the post I wrote for Fine Arts Views read it here which assumes a dealer in the business plan can still be serviceable for those of you who are not using a dealer,or at least not yet. If you are showing with a dealer I stand by that formula. If you figure out how to set your prices using that formula but don't double it to cover a dealer, it cuts those numbers in half.

For instance, if you were happy to make 10 dollars an hour, ( and you were able to feed your children snowballs this winter) and you could make a painting in an eight hour day, that comes to 80 dollars, if you add to that 50 dollars for a frame and since we are assuming the painting is small 10 dollars for materials you are at 140 dollars to that you need to add at about 50 dollars for the cost of promoting it yourself and your phone bill, and possible shipping.

So there you are at 190 dollars. You still need to be paid something for the art that doesn't work out say 20% of the whole so add that and you are at 228 dollars.If you are participating in an outdoor show or venue for which there is a fee I would go to 300. In fact I would round the number up too 300 just because, frankly, a payday smaller than that leaves no room for any unexpected expenses. You will have those, count on it. So there is what I think the absolute bottom number should be, 300 dollars.

That price is for a small picture in an inexpensive frame that you sell yourself with no commission to a dealer. The old rule of thumb on what an artist can spend on a frame is 5 to 10 % so you are going to have to spent around 30 dollars for the frame.That can be done, but just barely, and only by buying wholesale, mail order. I don't see that coming out of a frame shop.

I have said before I don't recommend playing at the bottom of the market, so in my view this is the starting point. You want to get up from this level and not see it as a viable business model, because I don't think it is. But it is a place you can start. There are going to be people below this price range and you shrug that off. There are people below them too. The Internet is full of unsold hundred dollar paintings. Its not just about price.You should have larger pieces at higher prices as well.

The middle class is an unreliable patron in my opinion but there are a lot of them. The 300 dollar price is about the same as a family trip to the grocery store. It is not a weeks wages for a working man. I have no problem thinking about receiving a month or several months of my clients wages for a painting, you should be open to asking a weeks wages from a middle class wage earner for your paintings. Yes that may mean you will have to make the paintings EXTRA NICE, but that's the idea, I think you need to work towards getting a weeks wages for a painting.

I don't think this is where you want to build a career, this is a starting point and a very shaky way to view the art market. Its not easier there, and its not safer there. You are going to have to learn to make very high quality art to survive in any price structure.

I CAN'T IMAGINE WHY ANYONE WOULD WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH A PIECE OF ART THAT WASN'T VALUABLE.

Here is the Guild of Boston Artists booth at the Boston International Fine Art Show. I spent the day there again. I heard a talk given by both Joshua Rose of the American Art collector and by Peter Trippi of the American Art Connoisseur
Tomorrow will be a big day there I think. Here are a few shots I took today. This is Quidley Gallery of 118 Newbury Street in Boston.

Theres a nice Sergio Roffo in the middle, I painted that location with him this summer. It is one that was painted by all of the 19th century luminist painters and is from a place called Echo lake. Below is a shot of a nice Waugh, you know how fond I am of him.

This is a wonderful painting the photo doesn't do it justice. It is shown by Peter Rudolph of McClees Galleries from Haverford PA.

I must get some sleep, but I will see you again tomorrow .

Create great crates

One of the readers of this blog e-mailed me to tell me that she had to crate twenty six paintings to be shipped for a show. She wanted to know if I could do a post on crating paintings. Here that is.

I sometimes use cardboard boxes to ship small paintings or those that I own, or those that are in a cheap frame. HOWEVER, if I am shipping something in a valuable frame, or that a client has paid for, or if I have a whole show full of gold frames, I use wooden crates. Here's how I make them, below you see a form my wife made for me. It is going to appear full sized if you click on it and you can print it out. You will probably want to replace the Stapleton Kearns logo with your own, or a picture of your art. This form is for designing crates, you just plug in the numbers, add them up and then take it to the lumberyard. You can let them cut the luan, (that's thin plywood ) for you, just hand them this sheet and they will know what size you want the two sheets to be.

When you get those pieces home you lay them on the floor and assemble the 1 by boards by screwing their corners together using drywall screws and your battery drill. Then you screw those to one of the sheets of plywood with a screw about every six inches. Now you have an open topped box into which goes the painting wrapped in bubble wrap. You may want to cover the face of the painting with waxed or plastic coated paper in case the bubble wrap wants to adhere to your new painting. I have heard of that happening.

Secure it with either the plastic strips you get for this purpose from a moving company, or use the wide plastic shipping tape on a roll and a gun. But you must be very careful with that tape. If you touch a gold frame with the tape it will pull the gold right off of it. After two layers of bubble wrap, I sometimes put the whole thing into a plastic bag, and then into the crate it goes.

You may also want to put in a sheet of paper on the top of the whole assembly that gives the price of the painting and its title, if that will be needed on the other end. Also you may want to write in big letters on that " Take all the tape off before opening the bubble wrap". That may keep their stupid intern from destroying your frame. Maybe not.

You may want to put several smaller paintings in one crate. But don't load the crate so much that it will be hard to carry.Then you screw the top on (just like a coffin!) with your battery drill, again placing the screws about six inches apart.

It sounds like a big deal but actually crates are pretty quick to make and if you are shipping an entire show to a dealer they are always impressed when it comes in crated. Clients like it too, it certainly makes what you are shipping look valuable. And it looks very professional. I have been known to use woode crates just for the effect, when I wasn't really worried about the frame etc. I just wanted to be impressive. But it does provides good protection for something you REALLY don't want to have damaged.

Then I call ADCOM worldwide, sometimes I use FEDEX for a single package, but if I am shipping a group of crates for a show I use these guys. They are dependable and less expensive if you have a big shipment to put out. Whoever you use, make sure you tell them before they come to pick up your crates, the dimensions and sizes you are shipping. I think adcom will ship anything, but other carriers have specific size limits or oversize charges that may be exorbitant.

Good luck with your show, M

The Guild show, a painting, and a demo.

Here is a painting I did early this summer on the Penobscot Bay near Belfast, Maine. This is the mouth of the Little River where it empties into the Bay. The painting is 24 x 36.

I made this painting standing in front of the scene as is my usual practice, but of course I fine tuned it in my studio .This painting is more like a Hudson River school painting, that is it is more detailed and less impressionist than many of my paintings.The background goes nicely into fog, and you can see the atmosphere over the bay as it stretches out to the distant shores.A beached sailboat waits the tide in the middle ground.
I am almost always happiest out painting somewhere beautiful when the light is good. We had a lot of rainy days earlier this summer and when there were these few sunny days it was great to be on the shore working in the warm sun. That helped me get in touch with my inner lizard.


Here is the facade of the Guild with its windows on the court facing Newbury street.
This painting will be my submission to the 95th anniversary show at the Guild of Boston Artists at 162 Newbury Street in Boston.




Above is a video of one of my several mentors, Robert Douglas Hunter, doing a demo recently at the Guild. The snowscape behind him is incidentally one of mine. The show in the room where he is working was called Robert Douglas Hunter and his students.

Being the artist at an opening

Fredrick Leighton, The painters honeymoon image artrenewal.org

I have done this more than a few times and it is a role that I am comfortable in. I love doing openings as the artist. A whole gallery full of people, all of them paying attention to ME. I do have a few thoughts on how to do it, and perhaps they will be useful to you.

• Make a point of speaking to everybody who comes to the show. Shake their hand and introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Stapleton, thanks for coming, will you let me know if I can answer any questions for you? if they want to start a conversation stay and talk to them for a while but then keep moving. If you have a big crowd you will need to.
  
• A lot of the people who come to an opening are college age and like a glass of free wine. Its a free party for them. Greet them, nicely. Never assume anyone can't buy your art. That's a very expensive habit. Its called prequalifying your customer and it's a sales no-no. You never know. That kid with the barbed wire neck tattoo may tell his girlfriends mother about your paintings because she collects.
• I used to wear a dark suit for openings. No more. Now I wear khakis and a shirt with a collar, and no tie. When I wore a suit and tie, all night long people came up to me and said,"I'll bet you don't wear a suit very often do you?" Me in a suit clashed with their idea of an artist. In my case they were right too. I usually am covered in paint and wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt. I have gone to one of my openings in blue jeans and a t-shirt and it was fine, but unless you know you can pull it off, don't.
• I don't imagine you are going to do pushy sales moves, but I think it is a big mistake. If someone is going to be pushy let the gallery do that.
• Drink the soft drinks stay out of the wine. I have been to many openings where an artist has made a fool out of themselves because of liquor. It can sometimes be a very emotional event, and if you are loaded you might lose your cool.
• So never drink at your opening.Never.
  

• When someone buys a painting, congratulate them and shake their hand. Its nice to pose for a photograph with them in front of their painting. Tell them where it was painted and why. The gallery can send them a copy of the picture later.
• Sometimes you will get amateur artists who are seething with resentment against you because they aren't having a show, and they paint better than you do! They may want to argue aesthetics with you, or give you advice on painting. Listen to them for a minute, thank them for coming and move on. Don't allow them to rattle you.
• If someone comes up to you and wants to cut a better deal on a painting, tell them that all transactions are handled by the gallery and that they do all of the sales, introduce them to the dealer, and clear out.
  
• Don't give out any business cards, your phone number or tell people your address. People will try to go around the dealer because they think they can get a better deal from you. Allowing that is a breach of ethics and when it gets back to a dealer that you have done that, you may well be out of the gallery. If you get a reputation for doing that, you can really damage your career.
• At the end of the night, help the dealer clean up, and then you will often go out to dinner with them.That seems to be the custom. Thank them for doing the show.

I am sure I have forgotten something, but I don't remember what it is. If you have a question, ask me in the comments.

I am finalizing arrangements for a New Hampshire workshop in September, more about that soon.

It is getting to be time for another reader critique. If you would like to submit your paintings to my scalpel, e-mail an image or images to stapletonkearns@gmail.com. Put "image for critique" in the subject line please. In a week or two I will do the critiques, These are a regular feature of this blog and I enjoy seeing what you are making out there.

The sinking stepping stone theory

Fredrick Leighton, The Music Lesson image from artrenewal.org.

I will return to the theme of preparing for a show, tomorrow night. I want to tell you a story and make a point about art careers, at least what I have seen.

In the 1980's I ran a gallery showing my art in Rockport, Massacchusetts. That was the standard sort of gallery in Rockport at that time. It was a pretty shoestring kind of a business and I was always struggling to keep the bills paid and the lights on. It was like grad school for me. It was a forced work regimen. I always had a one man show hanging and I had to replace what sold. I got feedback on the paintings in real time as people came in. They could get really blunt. It was sometimes a rough crowd and you needed to be tough to deal with them . I have some great stories about that, but I will come back to them another time.

After I opened my first gallery there which I shared with two glassblowers (actually lampworkers, they make those little glass animals and doo-dads, its a handcraft) the real estate market in Rockport began to heat up. Soon it became a speculative fever and buildings in the commercial area would sometimes change hands several times a year, for ever increasing prices.

The rent on a shop might double or triple as the new landlord sought to recoup their investment. I had to move several times because the rent would go up to a point where I knew I couldn't turn a profit. I used to joke that the only thing you could sell out of a building in Rockport that would carry the rent was cocaine. There was no business you could open that would carry the mortgage on the buildings at their dizzying new prices

What had happened was that the business of Rockport was no longer selling things out of the shops, it was about selling the shops themselves. A business was merely a decoration to a larger real estate investment.

The shops were rented out by the year, so you would have to rent the shop through the winter, in order to have it for the summer when the seasonal tourists came and hopefully bought your art. It could be a real burden carrying that non producing shop until May or June.

One year I rented a shop, carried it through the winter and in the spring the building changed hands. The new landlord refused to honor the agreement under which I had rented the building all winter and wanted a 300% rent increase. I had to hire a lawyer along with the other tenants in the building and things got nasty and expensive. He was a developer and he really just wanted to get rid of us so he could condo the building and flip it. He had a very low opinion of me (because I wasn't rich ) and saw me as an impediment to his designs. He had an unreasonable idea of what he could sell the units for, and ultimately suffered shirt removal. I helped.

I knew I would only be able to hold him off for the season and at the end of the year he would be able to evict me or raise my rent to a stratospheric level and I would be out. It would be the third shop in three years. I was getting sold or condoed every season. It made it nearly impossible to do business, but I didn't have much choice if I wanted to continue having my gallery.

It was then that I developed the sinking stepping stone theory. It went like this;

ANY TIME I WAS DOING WELL IN A GALLERY, OR SHOP, OR HAD A BIG CLIENT BUYING MY ART, IT WAS A STEPPING STONE THAT WOULD IMMEDIATELY BEGIN TO SINK UNDER MY WEIGHT. SO I HAD TO ALWAYS BE LOOKING FOR WHERE I WAS GOING TO STEP NEXT, WHEN THE STONE INEVITABLY SANK BENEATH ME. THE STONE I STEPPED ON AFTER THAT WOULD IMMEDIATELY BEGIN TO SINK WHEN I STEPPED ON IT TOO.

My whole career has been like that, many times I have had a gallery selling like crazy for me, stop. I have had giant clients buy everything I made for years,then suddenly quit. I have had my best dealer die. I think it must just be the way of the world. Now there may be artists who got into that great gallery and spent their whole life with them, but it never happened to me. I have been in situations where I have made excellent money and drove new cars and sent my kids to private school. I have also had times in my life where I was only a step ahead of the bill collectors .

The lesson here is that even though you are selling this month or year , you need always to be looking out in front of you for that next stepping stone. What is working for you now, will in my experience, nearly always end at the absolutely worst time and you need to have some sort of a plan for that eventuality. Know where you are going to step next!

Here is a wonderful painting by Jan Asselijn 1610-1652* I included this painting for no other reason than that I have loved it for years and I nearly froze painting outside today. I was wearing a fleece pullover in July. Then it rained. Again. Its been raining for about two months. Somebodies going to pay for this!

I received this from one of the readers today, and I think that it will make a good subject for some posts.

I've got my first one man show coming up in exactly one month so I'm making the most of my studio time. Which brings me to a question you may consider for a blog post sometime. How about some bullet points on preparing for your first (or any) gallery show. I've done the usual preparation, I googled "preparing for your gallery show" and chatted with my artist friends who have had shows. I got some good tips about being there and conducting myself professionally, no hard selling, be available to answer questions and be prepared to discuss the work, etc...I should have close to 20 pieces by show time (I'm dropping off ten on Friday). Sizes vary from 6x8" all the way up to 30x40". I have three different frame types with 75% using one style. The other two styles are similar designs but different colors that I think look best with the particular piece. I have my bio available and typed out professionally, plenty of postcards provided by the gallery, they also did some local press and I'm sending a notice to my mailing list....have I missed anything?

I have done some one man shows and been in many other shows. Here are some of the things I can tell you.
In the sixties and early seventies I would go to shows and see red dots everywhere. I don't think it happens as much these days. Maybe in those days people wanted to be seen buying the art and perhaps prices were comparatively lower. Maybe today people want to be more considered in their purchases and they will come in later in the show to buy, rather than impulse buy so big a purchase. There are I suppose some artists who do sell out shows on opening night, but I have never been among them.

In fact, I have never had a particularly great opening night of a show, although on occasion I have sold a very large showpiece that put me well into the black. I have always sold something though. But every show I have ever done has done enough sales over its run to have been worth doing.

• I am assuming you have read my post on art and price, if not here it is.
• You must have a schedule of what must be done by when, in order to get the show delivered in time.Leave yourself sometime for weird screwups. I have had them, ice storms and all sorts of things can go wrong, so leave time to handle those.
  
• I would (if you have the space) put the paintings in their frames, using two brads and array them around your studio where you can see all of them.
• Then you can work the whole show at once. Take individual paintings and set them on the easel and tune them to their frames. If you feel confident doing it in the frame, OK, if not take them out and work on them and put them back in. Look at the painting and make it look good in the frame. I am assuming you are using attractive framing. Often a painting will looks better with a little glaze somewhere to bring up or take down a color, or an accent needs more power, the frame interacts with the piece and you should know and consider that. Sometimes you may get a painting onto the easel and figure out that the frame is killing it.
• If you can, leave them where you can see them for at least a couple of days so that you will notice any ill considered passage in one of your pictures.
  
• Check the condition of each frame and touch up with gold filler any that has a ding or rubbed corner.
• Varnish everything, sometimes artists want to wait for six months first, if you have six months before the show fine. If not, varnish them all, with retouch varnish.
• Write the name of the each piece on a card with a price and the title. Tape that to each stretcher. If you are really ambitious, write a descriptive paragraph about each one too. That will give the dealer or his assistant the ability to say a little more about your painting.
• make a master list with the vital information from each card , price, size and title. Print out about three of those.
  
• Photograph each painting. Color correct each image before it leaves your studio, while you can still have it to look at.
• Find out what hanging method the gallery plans on using. Lay a rug on the floor or over a big table with a blanket over that, and one by one secure the paintings in their frames and put the wires and screw eyes on them, or whatever the gallery wants to be compatible with their hanging system. Set em all up again and check each painting, are they all signed? The signature isn't crooked is it? I have shown a painting without a signature more than once.
• Bubble wrap them all one by one. 'That's best if you have valuable frames. The bubbles should face INWARD and you shouldn't be able to feel the frame through the bubble wrap. You can also stack them in your car or van with cardboard spacers and moving blankets but you are liable to take more damage that way. Even though you are planning to be careful. Remember when you unwrap a bubble wrapped painting, TAKE ALL OF THE TAPE OFF FIRST! If a piece of packing tape touches a frame it can pull off the gold . Removing it all first reduces the chance of that.
• Load the car, put in your paintbox in case something gets scraped, load in your tool kit and fitting supplies, call the gallery and give them a heads up. Bring your wife, husband or a friend to hold doors and help carry paintings.
• If the show is far away and you are shipping it, crate the big paintings,( I guess I need to do a post on crating a painting). You can send smaller pieces in cardboard boxes, but I have often crated them, several to a crate.
• I like to use ADCOM for shipping crates particularly piles of them. They are reasonable, dependable and careful.
  
• Don't count on getting paid by an insurer for damage, I don't buy insurance unless the painting is sold and I am shipping it to a client. It is easier to argue for the value of a painting if I have a client on the receiving end who has paid for it. Many insurers won't touch fine art. I have had them argue that the value of my work is totally subjective, despite my having sold truckloads of paintings and kept good records. Pack things well and you shouldn't have much damage.
  
• You can buy those art boxes or use a special art moving company, but both will cost a fortune. The people who do that often have a third party payer like an institution paying the freight.
  
• Deliver the show, but before you unload it, sit down with the dealer and make sure you are agreed on their commission, and who pays for the brie and wine . Do this before you unload the show. If the agreement is going to come apart on you, you still have leverage if you haven't yet brought the show in through the door. A dealer is going to take you more seriously if you stop and review your agreements at that time. Have a second party present when you do this if you can. Usually all of this is in a written contract you all agreed to a month ago, but its still good to check, and it also puts the dealer on notice that you are not expecting any surprise charges or expenses. I have had a dealer one hour before an opening tell me that I had to drop my prices because he thought they were too high. I wouldn't do it. I decided later he just had the pre show jitters and after we got that out of the way, things went smoothly.

There's the mechanical part of delivering a show. Tomorrow I will talk about publicity and advertising. I wonder what I forgot? If anything occurs to you, ask me in the comments.

* image from: The age of Rembrandt and Vermeer by J.M. Nash Phaidon Press 1972

Some questions and answers.

Here I am working in the restored village of Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Its my blog, I can put my picture in it if I want to. Besides, some of you may be wondering if I look like a junk yard dog or not.

When I opened the comments page tonight there were six posts, each with an excellent question. I think I will answer those questions in the post tonight as I hope to make their answers useful to the larger audience of this blog.

I was also asked if we were aware of what was going on at the official art schools, and how we felt about the popularity of gesture drawing. I am a little embarrassed to say we were pretty contemptuous of the art schools of that day, but we had all fled them to the atelier, and those schools we had left behind were pretty bad.

THE PURPOSE OF AN ART SCHOOL IS TO PROVIDE EMPLOYMENT FOR ITS INSTRUCTORS.

I think we would have been wise to do some more short poses, if not "gesture drawings", but not at the expense of the longer poses. I have always enjoyed twenty minute poses when I am working in pencil.

I was asked if I look back on those times fondly, I do not. It was a time of endless labor and not enough to eat. I had no contact with anyone outside the studios, so I was deprived of the company of women which I have always enjoyed. It was a monkish sort of existence. I guess it is like asking someone if they miss boot camp. They are glad they did it, and wouldn't give up what they learned there, but wouldn't want to go back either. After a year or so in the studio's I was really tired of the shower trail, and not having a kitchen or a bathroom, or "real electricity", decent heat, and clean floors.

Another question was whether there were any women artists in the atelier. There were not. Ives didn't want to teach women. He was a bit of a misogynist. He put so much work into a student, I think he was afraid that a woman would leave the profession to have a family at exactly the most critical years in her artistic development. To Ives credit though, after my time there, he changed his mind. I think it remarkable that a man his age and from the Edwardian era still could radically revise his attitudes, but he could. I think the rise of feminism provided him with a new kind of female student and he recognized that when he saw it. A woman named Susan Stokes, a former fashion model from the Carnaby street era in England convince him to allow her to study under him.

Another reader asked : Gammell seemed pretty committed to developing imaginative/narrative paintings in his own oeuvre...did he ever have you guys do inventive composition exercises or memory drawing?
I didn't do much designing of imaginative and narrative paintings because I was so involved in learning the basics below that level. I did some of that on my own but I don't think I showed them to Ives. He would have said I was getting ahead of myself. I remember some other students doing some of that . We did do memory drawing. Ives was interested in Lecoq de Boisboudran who was a 19th century writer on the training of the visual memory. There was a period of time where I did that as a regular discipline. I guess I should do a post on memory drawing.

I was asked to do a post on going from student to professional and I will get to that as my autobiographical posts continue. I am spacing them pretty far apart as I don't intend to make this blog about me. It is a tutorial , and I want to stay mostly on that track. The personal history does have an instructive value in that it gives a picture of how I got here , things and people I have seen along the way and so that you will know who it is you are reading .The transition to professional is a chapter or two out, but I think you will find it interesting if not harrowing.

I was asked what Gammell thought of Dean Cornwell the American illustrator. I remember him speaking warmly about Rockwell and I am sure he knew who Cornwell was, but I didn't. The early drawings he showed me when we first met had the look of Howard Pyle to them. I have said this repeatedly, but it is instructive to remember that there were no books on any of the artists of the 19th and early 20th century who were not part of the modern camp. Even Sargent was reviled and ignored until the Ormond book came out in the mid 70's there wasn't even a book in print on him. We spent our time looking at old prints of French academic painting and looked at a lot more old master art

Another reader asked , do you find sight size valuable enough for amateurs to learn? I have done it a little, but it is hard for me to see how it applies to painting outdoors. It seems to me like relative measuring is usually good enough.

I do think that sight size is a good thing to know how to do, all knowledge is useful at one time or another. It is most useful in a master pupil; situation where the teacher is making corrections that can be readily pointed out and justified. It is also useful for painting portraits. I will do a post on how to set up a still life in sight size soon. There is a danger for the landscape painter in working sight size, in my opinion. It encourages the selection and copying of a "window" selected from nature rather than a design using the landscape in front of you as a opportunity to select and arrange your design.

I was also asked if we talked about the value of doing the "grueling" sight size training, I don't remember any of that, in the studios. As I became more of a landscape painter I came to question its value outside, and then became uncomfortable with it in general. It is a wonderful teaching method but I think it carries some danger of the aritst falling into purely visual draftsmanship. I discussed that here.

One of you asked if I had any of my old figure drawings to show. I have nothing from the Ives Gammell era. I worked so hard during that time, but I have moved repeatedly and it has long ago been lost or destroyed.
I have been invited recently to join a group of artists drawing figures up in Manchester and if I do , I might show you what comes from that. As I am a professional landscape painter, I feel like I should show what I do best .

One of you e mailed me and asked me what I do about health insurance, They are on their wife's policy now as she is employed .That is often how artists are able to deal with that problem. I do carry health insurance. As I have a family I must. It costs a fortune and I have a high deductible. This is one of the things that crushes small businesses. But you must have health insurance. After my mortgage health insurance is my greatest expense.

I have been speaking with some people who would like me to do a workshop later this summer over in Western New Hampshire. If you have an interest in being a part of that, e mail me and let me know. stapletonkearns@gmail.com

I think I will start the great reader critique either tomorrow or the next day.

The art business waltz, lesson 8

Here is a painting by Sanford Gifford of Eagle Cliff. Above are two photo I shot of the location last fall. He was further back and to the right. It is near Cannon Mountain in the White mountains of New Hampshire. There are many 19th century luminist locations within a mile of here. Including a Bierdstadt. I like to hunt down artists locations and I will do some posts in the future of some of these.

I spent the day painting in Kennebunkport and am going back up again tomorrow. I am real tired so tonight's' post is going to be truncated.

I have a few more thoughts on gallery hunting.

Those of you who are doing the daily painting thing might be in a position to really cover galleries, as you have lots of inventory, and the capacity to churn out more. You would have to raise prices. If you are getting 100 now you should think about going to 300 or 400. Good paintings sell very well at that price point. You would pocket about 200 bucks apiece, less your frame. That is a days wages. A days' pay for a days' work! This would still have you doing the discipline of making the one shot small paintings.

Now lets jump ahead to what happens after you get your art into a gallery.. Do you roll over and go back to sleep? No, you do not. You go out and repeat the process again. You hunt for another gallery, but this time you look 50 miles from the other gallery or more. The idea is to get a string of galleries going. If you are a daily painter, you can get up enough inventory for several galleries. So lets imagine that you have three galleries. When the art gets a little stale in one, you rotate it out to another gallery. Each painting goes through each of the galleries, if it doesn't sell first. You maximize the exposure of your paintings by "touring" them through your galleries.

One of you asked in the posts about a gallery with a huge stable ( group of artists represented whether it was a a good idea to show there. I think probably not. Dealers may stock a lot of painters, but they are generally selling only a few. If you want to sell well in a gallery you need to be important in that gallery. Thats hard to do if you are one out of many. It is better when you are beginning to show your art to be in smaller venues where you can be important.

Dealers want to sell your art, that's how they get paid, so they like an artist who tries to keep them well stocked and is able to bring them new paintings when they sell . If you can, never tell a gallery "no I don't have another painting for you". If you always bring in another, you will be seen as a near endless resource. I unfortunately have dealers waiting for things all the time. Maybe I should become as daily painter.

You will find it surprising and unsettling what sells best in a gallery. Its often not at all what you would expect. Often it is not the best art in the gallery that sells, sometimes its the loudest, or the gallery is known as a place where you can buy the work of a local artist that everybody llves.

Back about a zillion years ago, before I married my lovely and patient wife I used to go out with a girl I will call Linda for the sake of this story. Linda grew up in a tourist town and her father owned a big store full of touristy stuff. Snow globes and rubber tomahawks , those little wooden signs that had witty sayings about fishing and cooking. They also had those carved wood figures of hillbilly's drinking from stoneware jugs with xxx on the side. That used to mean poison I think. You could get a Zippo lighter with a screaming eagle enameled on the side there if you needed such a thing.There were also salt and pepper shakers shaped like breasts, next to the troll dolls. You get the picture.

Linda who had worked in dads store every summer since she was a little kid was appalled at all of the crap and asked her dad if she could bring in some better quality merchandise. Her father pointed out a glass case or two and said she could stock those herself with money from her wages, if she sold anything she would keep the profit.

Linda stocked the cases with silver Navajo jewelry. It was big back then and was a nicely made handcrafted item that wasn't kitschy. Well you can guess what happened. Just like wise old dad knew it would. The Navajo jewelry didn't sell at all. The people who came in the store really only wanted the junky little trinket's that the store always had sold.Linda had misjudged her clientele on the upward side.

The same thing goes on in galleries. You find out they are selling some crappy art like hotcakes. You think that if you put something of great quality and taste in to that gallery it should do well Don't count on it. Often times galleries are full of bad art because that's what their clientele will buy. Its hard to fight that. If you see a lot in a gallery that is embarrassing to show alongside, go find another gallery.

Too tired to continue I will be back tomorrow.

The art business waltz, lesson 7

I actually painted this one a year or so ago, but I retrieved it from one gallery today and I am moving it to another. It was painted on Vinalhaven.That's an island in the Penobscot bay about 45 minutes off of Rockland, Maine. The painting is 24 x 30, I paint a lot of those.

Lets see now, I believe we have done the preparation and it is time to actually hunt the galleries.
You are hoping of course to get one of the galleries you have scouted to hang your work. Now I am not talking about art associations, restaurants etc. I mean a commercial gallery. There are, thankfully, lots of them these days.

You don't want to go into this with the idea that you are going to get this GALLERY and then your art career is launched. Showing in galleries is a process. Plan on being in a bunch of them. Hopefully, in escalating quality. The first one is a big deal and you will be nervous and fumble.
I think I will compare it to meeting girls when I was young. ( girls LOVED me when I was young, they imagined I was sensitive) That was before my hair got sick.

There is no set "line" that you can just trot out in every situation. Some galleries want nothing to do with new artists at all. Others ( like some of those girls I remember ) would say thay are'nt looking at any new artists, but just might, you know. It is chaotic. You can't be real invested in the first gallery you approach. This is your first experience with this and it is going to be a little clumsy. After you have had a gallery accept your work it will change your whole attitude. So start locally and low on the ladder of prestige. Go for a small gallery that isn't full of professionals with regional and national reputations.

If you have a friend showing in the gallery, walk in with them if you can, and get an introduction. If you can't do that, go in to the gallery at a time when they are empty, do not distract them from dealing with a customer. You always come second to their customers, even when you are established in the gallery. Nothing in the whole world angers a dealer more than some artist who wants to be in their gallery interfering with them when they are talking to a likely prospect for a sale. Walk around and look at the art,that's important. If you aren't interested in their art, how can you expect them to be interested in yours?

They will almost always greet you and you can say," I'm not a collector, I'm a PAINTER" don't say artist, let them be the judge of that. Besides calling yourself a painter is cooler. Never ever tell anybody you are an artist. If they ask,"are you an artist?" answer."Boy, I sure hope so!" Often they will ask about your art or a conversation will ensue. Find out if you are talking to the owner, "Is this your gallery" If they say yes, say something like "I am looking for a gallery to show my art, is there a good time where I can show it to you?"

If they say "we aren't looking at any new artists", thank them, give them a card and ask them to look at your web site. They might, then don't just turn on your heel and walk out the door, that's rude, spend a little more time looking at the art in the gallery and then leave, thanking them politely. Don't burn em down, you may well deal with them in the future. besides the art world is a small place and you never know who is connected to who. DO NOT REACT IN ANGER IF THEY DON'T WANT TO SEE YOUR ART. many galleries won't look at an artist without an introduction. Remember they get asked to see artists work all the time and they have probably had to deal with a few wackos.

If they say OK, ask "have you got a computer? I can show you my web site. That can be a bit brash, but I have certainly done that. I do it routinely in fact, but I am an established artist and I don't really have much on the line, galleries call me. That's is incidentally how my world works. I seldom call on a gallery and try to get them to show my paintings. Because I have advertised and am known in the New England area, I get calls from galleries, and I generally can't take on another anyway, as there are already dealers yelling at me for art.

The other thing I have done many times is walk into galleries with my book, that is a fine leather three ring binder of pictures of my art ( this is kind of old technology ) and see if they ask to see it, as I am obviously an artist. I am hoping a conversation will begin and I can connect with the dealer.There are dealers who I can relate to, and those who are just too different from me and we have no rapport. So they see the book and ask if I am an artist and I show them the book, if they like what they see, I say " I am looking for a gallery in this area, I've got some paintings in my car, would you like to see them? If they liked what was in the book and you have a good rapport they may. Then you bring in the paintings and set them against the floor on one side of their gallery.

If they like them you you say " why don't you choose the ones you like best? If they do, you go over the details of what their commission percentage is, whether they have any weird contract stipulations that are unacceptable, and you then get a consignment sheet spelling out what you have left with them, what the price of each of those painting is, and what percentage they take.Then you give them the short form and the long form bio. Assuming you are not too far from home, you say " I have a better three page bio I will bring in for you in a couple of days. OK? Now they are forewarned you are coming back soon. That will encourage them to get the art hung up and when you return you can answer any questions about the art that will have occurred to them since you were there last.

There are a lot of different ways all of this can go and every time will be different. The first few times it will be nerve racking, but that passes, as I said. I have no problem asking anyone to look at my art.There is never going to be one line or one approach that will always be right. It is a sales job and you need to listen to them and figure out what the cues are that you should act on. But always be behind them, don't push, always ask if you can go on to the next stage, if you don't feel like you are connecting or they are becoming unwilling to look at your art, don't try to talk them into it, or defend what you do. Get a yes or a no from them. If the answer is no, find that out and move on. There are lots of galleries, this might not be the one, so try another.

I will continue with this tomorrow.

The art business waltz, lesson 6

I am going to talk a little more about framing tonight.



Several of you have asked me to recommend a maker of inexpensive frames. There are many. Almost all of them have problems with either worksmanship or aesthetics.The art magazines carry advertising from the various framers and I am afraid to recommend any particular one. I have had lots of problems with cheap frames. If I recommend one, when you have problems you will blame me. So if you like the brand of frames you are using, write into the comments about it, so we can all see what has worked for you. I am going to recommend a framer though. But this is a fine art framer. These are handmade closed corner gold or metal leaf frames . These are priced competitively in their part of the market, but they are likely a lot more expensive than what you are using now if you are buying mass produced frames.

The framer I am recommending is P.S. Art frames. They are in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and their website is www.psartframes.com. You will have to paste that into your browser as I can't seem to make it clickable.I have had no problems with their frames. I haven't had the corners on one open up yet and that is what happens to closed corner frames when there is a problem.
The frames I am showing from P.S. Art are all 23 carat and are very nice indeed. Up top is whats called a scoop frame, and here is a Whistler style frame. The Whistler frames have channels running along the moulding. These are variations on framed designed in the 19th century by James McNeil Whistler.

There are many variations on this design. Its simplicity and timelessness make it very useful for a lot of different kinds of paintings. Here are some arts and crafts style frames.



Below is a different sort of frame that is from an earlier period. Its is often called a Hudson River school frame. Notice the striated or combed cove.

These frames are of the finest quality. I show them not because you are labile to buy frames of this level as you hunt for your first gallery. I show them so that you know what top quality frames done right look like. As you hunt less expensive frames you can judge them by how closely they approximate these. If you are an established professional and looking for a supplier of gold frames I think these guys make a good product for a fair price.

Notice that all of the frames I am recommending are relatively simple. The ornate Louis the 14th frames are beautiful and in a few places in the country they are popular, but in most places they are a hard sell. Contemporary buyers see them as being out of step with their interiors. I like em, but I gave up on trying to get anybody to buy my art in one. Simple is good. Stick to that.
Black frames, silver leaf frames and other variations are nice, but I would start out with yellow gold frames. The largest number of buyers will want those. Often people have no imagination at all. If they see a picture in a frame they don't want, they are off, they usually can't imagine the picture and the frame as separate.

I will return to the subject of frames and how they are made in future posts. There is a lot to that. But for now I think that will do, unless someone has a question out there.

You are going to need at least half a dozen, and better yet about ten framed paintings to offer a gallery . You really can't hope to sell any, if all the gallery has is one painting, their clients will want to have a selection of your paintings from which to choose their favorite. You remember me talking in a former post about only working in about six different sizes. Now is one of the times that pays off.

You may show a gallery more pictures than you have frames and let them decide which ones you will leave with them in a frame. Frames need to have screw eyes and a wire on the back. The gallery is probably not going to want to do that for you. Do not write the name of the painting or its price on the back of the frame. If you do that you ruin the portability of your frames. You will need to trade paintings into your limited frames until they sell. As your paintings improve or as things remain unsold you will return to the gallery with paintings the same size and trade them into your frames.

I believe tomorrow we will talk about actually approaching galleries for representation.

The art business waltz, lesson 3

Tonights post is illustrated by yet another fashionable 18th century portrait painter, Thomas Gainsborough, 1727-1788 Images from artrenewal.org

Eric Rhoads the publisher of several art magazines is contemplating resurrecting Plein Air magazine. He has sent out a questionnaire to artists about that possibility. I have provided a link here where you can go and fill it out.
http://www.pleinairmagazine.com/

Send me your art for the the next reader critique, my e-mail is stapletonkearns@gmail.com. If I use your art I will photoshop your signature off of it and I will tell no one whose art I am
critiquing.

The next step in getting your art shown is scouting. You need to have a deep and honest discussion with yourself and figure out where you might begin to show your art. Most of you who are reading this are at the beginning of the process, but there are also lurking out there, established artists who are following along to see if they can glean any useful ideas (I hope so) . I am going to write this for the totally uninitiated though. If this is your first foray into the art scene, you are probably not going to begin by showing at a top flight gallery in a major city. Nor do you want to. You want to cut your teeth out in the bush leagues. You are learning a skill, showing art and dealing with galleries is a learned skill.

The lowest rungs on the ladder are usually the outdoor art fairs, the local art associations and smaller galleries that specialize in inexpensive art. You need to begin here. But keep your eyes open, if you have been painting for a while you might be of interest to a gallery a rung above these. You should begin by investigating these venues. l suggested in an earlier post here
that you should join a local art association if there is a good one around and join a more distant one if there is not. You can ask other artists you meet there about the quality of the various shows in your area. They may be able to tell you about the local gallery scene also. I say local because unless you live in a very rural area there is usually a gallery within 25- 50, miles of you.This does not include non art venues like banks restaurants and dog groomers, those are not places you should show unless you have lots of inventory, and even then is very seldom productive.

If there are outdoor art shows and fairs in your area sign up for a couple. You will need to find out how much display equipment you will need. If they require a tent or any fancy infrastructure you will have to decide how much investment you want to make. Some shows provide a wall for you to hang on.and a table too. For others you will need to rig up a screen of some kind to hang your art on. A little research on line or at the local library will give you an idea of how to make a simple display screen for your art. I always enjoyed doing outdoor shows and you might too. If you price your work right you will probably make money at some of them. If you are able to do a handful over the summer that's a great way to begin showing your art and building experience and confidence. If your area has outdoor shows or weekend festivals I think this is a great place to begin.It is a short term, low buck commitment and it still has all of the elements of the more "uptown" art market. If you sell a few things , and you should price your art low enough so that will happen, it will change your entire attitude on the business end of the art game.

Let me tell you a story about an artist I know. He was a working guy with a wife and a home who was working as a stripper. No not that kind of stripper! Back in the pre digital days there was a job preparing lithographic plates in commercial print shops called a stripper. I am not even sure exactly what they did, but I am pretty certain very few of them are doing it now. For his birthday someone gave him a paint set. It went unopened for a while, but one evening with nothing else to do , he got it out and decided he would copy this poster of a beach in Florida, with palm trees. Hours and hours go by and he is working away having lost all trackof time and his wife is asking him if he intends to stay up all night.The next day after work. its the same thing, and it quickly becomes a compelling hobby for him. After a year or so of this he decides he will do an outdoor art show. He has only one frame and only one painting of which he is proud enough to display. So on the Saturday morning of the show he sets up his little display and posts a ptrice on his painting. Before too long someone buys it. Now that really affects the guy and he spends all of his nights over the course of the week making another seascape, that's what he was making, for the next weekends show. Of course that one sells too. All summer long this is going on, and the next summer when the outdoor show season begins again he is better prepared and is arriving at the show with a little collection of paintings and he's improving and charging a little more for them. Because they are selling, again he is up,till all hours of the night painting. He is dragging himself into work every day looking haggard and probably not functioning as well there as he had in the pre- painting days. A group of his buddies started ragging on him for his all night painting and telling him he needs to get more serious about his job. He angrily tells them " I'm making more money painting pictures at night, then I am doing this dumb job!" And then of course he has hit the tipping point. He asks himself the logical and dangerous question "well then what am I doing working here?" Now he has been painting professionally for many years, but it can be a precarious existence. Sometimes you make money and sometimes you don't. His wife married a tradesman with a good job, she didn't know he was going to morph into an artist. All these years later they have raised a family and they are still together, but I always felt it was an unwelcome surprise for her to have to adjust to the bohemian life.


Here is another Gainsborough. They look a bit different from the previous portrait artists at which we have been looking because he was a generation earlier.

If there are no shows or outdoor festivals near you, or you want to do the gallery thing right away you need to do some research. There is no reason to drive 100 or more miles to find your first gallery, you will do that later, but the place to start out is near where you live. Start walking into galleries and reconnoitering, notice whether the person running the gallery greets you politely, they can leave you alone after that, but they should acknowledge your entrance. If they don't, that's not a good sign.

DO NOT GO UP TO THE DESK AND TELL THEM YOU ARE AN ARTIST, AND ASK IF THEY WOULD LIKE TO SEE YOUR WORK!

This is just an information gathering expedition. If you are in a conversation with them and you have talked for a few minutes or if they seem to want to know if you are a collector, then you may tell them then .But don't ask them if you can show them your work.You might say that you are scoping out local galleries to find a place to show. If they ask to see your work that is fine, but galleries have people walking in all day and pestering them to review their portfolios and they get real tired of it. Usually the people who do that, are not of the caliber the gallery shows and the dealers have all had the experience of some wannabe artist they have politely rejected going bonkers at them. The dealers are very apprehensive about going through that again so they dread the whole portfolio showing thing. Visit a number of galleries and compare them . You didn't marry the first girl ( guy, or indeterminate creature ) you met did you?

Take a friend with you and make a day of this effort, go out to lunch and discuss with this person what they think, then go back out for the afternoon and see some more galleries, if there are that many near you. Look for handout art newspapers and guides in the galleries, they may guide you to more galleries that you might not have known about. At the end of this process you will probably have found a gallery or two that look to be likely prospects. Did you notice any art remotely like what you do, in that gallery? If all a gallery shows is photography and you embalm sharks, they might not be right for you.

Look in the appropriate magazines or local papers to see if a gallery is advertising, they should. Even a little galley should have some sort of system of letting people know they are there, even if they are operating on a shoestring budget. Notice other things in those galleries too, what sort of framing seems to be the norm in the gallery. Are there only small pictures shown? If the owner is showing his own work there , does it look like the the art there gets a fair chance to sell, or is it just there as a foil and space holder for what is really only a gallery for the sale of its owners art? How good is the location of the gallery, does it have good signage, etc?

The next step is to find out if you know any of the artists in the gallery. Ask around your art association and perhaps you already have an acquaintance who is in the galley, if you do that's useful. You can ask them what their experience has been with the gallery .

This lady has presence, she looks boldly out of the canvas at us. She is strongly characterized, I will bet it was a speaking likeness of her, although of course we will never know.

All of this is a little like hunting for an apartment. And like an apartment you can almost count on its being a temporary affair. You will probably be in several galleries before you find a good fit.

Go to the openings of the shows and talk top people. Going to openings is a good thing to do anyway. You like parties don't you? Andy Warhol went to almost every opening in New York. If you were a young unknown artist you might be surprised to have Warhol show up at your opening. On one such occasion someone asked Warhol if he would go to just any art opening. He replied" I would go to the opening of a box of saltines!"

Tomorrow we will talk about a web site. You are going to need one.

The art business waltz, lesson 2

Continuing with our theme of fashionable 18th century portrait painters, tonights post will be illustrated with the work of Englishman, George Romney. 1734-1802.
For some of you this old art is quite familiar and for others it it not. If it is not I hope to kindle within you an interest in our wonderful legacy of great art . Images of course provided by artrenewal.org.

As I mentioned yesterday there are some things you will need to have before you are ready to call on a gallery. The first was a business card and I have discussed that. The second thing you will need is a bio. Actually you are going to need three of them!

• The first is what I call the short form. This is a two or three paragraph description of who you are and what you do. It should be no longer than a third to a half a sheet of normal paper.You will use this routinely ,whenever you are asked for some short information on yourself this is what you will present. If you are in a show or a paintout event etc. the sponsors should be able to use the short form in their literature, or after your name to describe you. It should also have a picture of you on it, either a headshot or a picture of you working at your easel

• .Now I am going to tell you something that I think is an error many artists make on their bios. I know you like Sargent and Sorolla and Anders Zorn, but don't put them on your bio. Routinely I see the work of a very average painter reproduced and the text tells me about their love for Sargent (or whomever ) I look at the art and if it isn't pretty damn good , my next thought is, how pretentious to be dropping names of that caliber. Most people who will read your bio don't know who these artists are, so they feel like something just went over their heads when they read that. Those who DO know who Sargent, Zorn and whoever else you admire are, will not see what the relationship you have to those guys, that puts them on your resume. So unless you studied with an artist, don't list him on your bio. Ask yourself what you would hope to accomplish by dropping these names. Make your bio about you.

• I know you studied with a great teacher, but I would soft pedal that in your bio. People are funny about that. Many of them don't like to think that an artist has to learn how to do what they do, they want to believe it is pure feeling and expression. Your bio is not a good place to tell them they are wrong. Many of them recoil from the word student, they may not want an artist who was ever a student, they want a natural, an original. Most of the buyers and the public know nothing about art. Its too bad but its true. I am sometimes referred to as a member of the Boston school, I never say that in a short form bio, some people think it means I am still in school. Maybe not all of them, but more than I can afford to lose. So mention your training very early in the bio and keep it short. Even if you studied with Emile Gruppe, 99% of the people out there wouldn't know who he was, you might as well tell them you studied with Benjamin Bathurst
  
• Do talk about what moves you to paint and use evocative words that create an image in peoples minds of art. Use words like color, light, feeling, expression and nature. Rather than trying to appeal to them with a laundry list of achievements or attempting to link yourself to your artist heroes you want to get them to think of you as the real thing. Don't look like you have something to prove, be interesting and believable as an artist. That's one of the reasons why it is good to show a picture of you at your easel.
• Sell today, educate tomorrow! The purpose of your sales literature (which is what a bio is) is to sell yourself and your art. Don't try to teach people anything at this point, don't try to bring them "up to speed" on the art world or tell them about art history or deep art theory. Do that later if you must, but after you sell them. This has been hard for me to do myself, as I suppose you can imagine.
  
• The short form bio should leave the reader with a feeling that you are a real artist, there's no point in trying to tell them you are a good artist, they will make up their minds for themselves when they see your art.
  

Notice how restrained the color is in this portrait . We have less and less in our culture which is formal . One of the characteristics of formality is understatement. There's a diagonal movement in her collar and hair that gives a lively look. She looks like she might just turn her head and look at you.

The next of the three bios you will need is what is sometimes called a CV. For a beginning artist that can be a problem. You will have to muddle through as best you can. A C.V. is a list of all your accomplishments in art. Where you studied, shows you have been in. awards you have won, boards of art organizations you have been on, magazine articles about you etc. These are usually arrayed in chronological order. Usually a dealer wants this one. They put it in a binder and wave it at clients who will seldom bother to read it. When asked for a C.V. I bury them in paper. I have been doing this for almost 40 years so I can give them six pages of bulleted facts stacked up year by year back to the 70's.

If you are just starting out you will have to finesse this one. In fact the purpose of a C.V. is to distinguish the long time established players. Put down what you can and hope for the best.Try to emphasize the short form if you can, if they don't specify what kind of resume they want from you, send em the short form, till you have built up your C.V. In a future post I will talk about resume building but that is outside of the topic for tonight.

The last of the three bios is the long form, this is like a short magazine article. Perhaps three or four pages long. This should be your personal story and an exposition of what you are up to in your art. If you can throw in an illustrative or humorous story that's good. The idea is for people to read this and know who you is. A picture of yourself working and a picture of one of your best paintings should probably be on here as well. If you don't have the computer savvy to do this yourself, ask the nearest 10th grader.

If you get into a gallery that has 30 other artists, and on three days of the week that gallery is run by an employee, they ought to be able to read the long form and have enough of a feel for you and your art to talk to customers about you . If you get a call from the local newspaper or a publication the long form is what they get. Journalists love it when you do their job for them. Sometimes an artist will include a copy of the long form in an envelope on the back of a sold painting.

You should be able to make these three forms of your bio on your home computer and store them in your documents, ready to be updated if necessary and then printed out as you need them. print them in Helvetica or Verdana or some other contemporary and neutral typeface. Keep them uncluttered and clean looking and in plastic sleeves if you are going to be leaving them where they will be displayed in the gallery. print them out on quality paper, I like a linen color better than a bright white, I think its looks elegant.

At the bottom or somewhere on each of these documents must be a block of text that gives your address, phone number and e-mail so that people know how to reach you. When you get into a gallery they may want copies of all of these bios with all of these addresses stripped out, so their customers don't go around them and contact you personally. So don't go to the printer and have 1000 of these made. Print out a few at home and print more when you need them to allow you to doctor them for various situations.

Well I hear the anteaters softly whimpering for their kibble, and I want to get up in the morning and finish this picture I am all excited about, so I will end this post here. Tomorrow I will continue with the waltz of commerce.