Slow Painting

10:02 AM 8/6/2009 (date written)
Note: If my memory serves me correctly, this piece must have started out as an imaginary Q&A between myself and myself. But, here, the questions (Q:) were never written in….???? Interesting? I will leave it at that. Now the reader has to form the question after reading the answer… like Jeopardy.
5:42 PM 8/20/2010

Slow painting

Q:
A: My paintings require a slow entry into them. They are not taken in within a few seconds. It could take an hour, several hours, over several days, over several weeks. It takes some time to get comfortable with my work. My work doesn’t sit well, or fit well, into a world of the sound bite.

Q:
A: Popular culture is just that: popular. The closer an art form comes to how the “average” person relates to it, the more popular it is. Most people are not educated in the more sophisticated underpinnings of what goes into the making or the history of an art form. The less complicated the art form, the more everyday in its relations and communications, the wider its audience; the wider its support; the wider its sales possibility.

Q:
A: My painting is not easy. It not easy to make. It is not easy to read. It is not easy to sell. From a commercial view point it is not a commodity in the popular sense. From a sales position it takes time to sell the work. We exist in a commercial era where time = money. Extrapolate: short time = short money or long time = long money. Uh! No. This isn’t how it works. Gallery success, as I understand it today 2009 (and hopefully it is changing back to where quality over commodity rules) if a painting doesn’t nearly sell itself from a wall, then the art is not successful. In this vein, the artist is dropped from the roster. If the artist doesn’t sell, then the gallery doesn’t support. Pretty direct in my case these past 10 years. An example: In the 80’s my work would sell regularly from a gallery. Also galleries supported an artist more fully than today. When the 90’s started, the art market began to show less interest in art and more in kitsch because kitsch seemed to be where the big bucks were. And big bucks ruled. My sales for the 90’s was dismal. By 2000, my sales were almost 0. No gallery wanted to handle my work. There were no $$$$ (dollar signs) connected to what I was doing. No galleries were interested in me if there was no possible future or money for them in it. And, there was no real interest in investing time via advertising (group and solo shows, print, etc) offered by a commercial gallery. Popular culture had won this battle.+

Q:
A: No. I am not bitter. I understood this problem of self isolation from the very beginning; 1960 or so. ABEX was on the wane then, but I hadn’t entered the art scene yet; and was naive in many ways to painting and the art market (what was an art market to me as an Iowa bumpkin in 1960?). so I set out making the art I wanted to make. Still am doing this today.

Q:
A: Today, 2009, I am hoping that art will be placed back into the art market equation. I would also like to see art education put back into our schools. There has been a steady removal of art in schools over the past 30 years. Bad times = take art out of the schools; funding issues (they say). And who runs the schools? This is another story. Back to my point. Increased art education for the public plus the return of art to galleries should improve my situation. I am nearing 70 so I don’t think this will realistically happen in my life time. I will be grateful to be represented somewhere by a gallery who can tell the difference and is willing to support art and money equally and not money over art. An equality between art and moneyed will be a more successful strategy for selling art in the future (I believe). A point: When looking at old master paintings, the junk still is junk and has no value. The good stuff still is the good stuff and still demands the highest prices and widest viewing. This is a truth then and should be a truth for the future.

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