Perils & Pleasures of Advice Taking

Last winter I was experimenting with oils, practicing landscapes from around my rural neighborhood. I had started the summer prior, thinking that I would reinvent myself as a plein air landscape painter! Why would I want to do that, is the question here.

I had taken advantage of some pandemic-driven Facebook-live tutorials, and had absorbed the practical advice that I instinctively reject, in life, in general. The advice was the usual stuff: if you want people to buy your paintings you need to make paintings that people want to buy! People like landscapes. There was also the marketing stuff: be consistent in style, post regularly on Instagram, get your work “out there” by showing locally, have a strategy, find a niche, tell your story. So, I started practicing, figuring I would develop skills through practice, got an Instagram account, did not delete Facebook, and started trying to make paintings the way other people make paintings! I got over my fear of posting (that was huge), made myself an art website, and occasionally wondered how this painting-like-other people thing was gonna work out.

Takeaways: having a website allowed me to realize what a varied “body of work” over the years I have accumulated, and that some of it is darn unique! It even is consistent, in my own unique way of conceptualizing and mark-making processes. Looking over it, and past art notebooks dating back to the 80’s I saw themes that have persisted. Why in the world would I want to hide some of that? Bugger the more shallow consistency of the brand-makers! A blog function got me writing stories about my art, and that has enriched me, much less any readers! Writing as a way to present myself is within my comfort zone. Story is my natural milieu. Posting has allowed me to come out as an artist, during a pandemic, with some protection around my shyness while I adjust, since I need time to figure out what I am going to do next in life. Plus, the idea of setting challenges and practicing skills has always been something I embrace, choosing constantly whatever was most difficult in a seemingly masochistic inability to capitalize on my strengths. 

The most surprising takeaway is that I actually do like painting landscapes! I am definitely going to keep it up, along with all my other artistic interests. It is not at all painting-like-someone-else, it is simply a matter of working within a set of parameters. Limitation leads to unexpected freedom, and a tradition such as landscape painting is a discipline I can and should explore. It is harder than it looks, people!   A person, an artist anyway, should and must do whatever they want to do. This is the ultimate freedom. Now marketing, I may never be good at, just like playing the violin, veterinary medicine, following knitting directions, or math (all of which I have tried) but maybe I might sell a few things, eventually, to keep me in art supplies. I am working up to it!