Frogs and Crocodiles

Free Agent

Almost done: Crocodile and Frog. 30 x 40, or 40 x 30. I can’t decide which orientation I like better.

Today I officially terminated my contract with the local gallery I’ve been in for the past 6 months. I’ve been going back and forth in my mind with whether to take the step, and finally I realized it’s not doing me any good to stay there, and I thought of what Nick said and I’ve heard this at other times in my life, sometimes you need to get out of a situation in order to allow new energy to come in. And that thought is what pushed me to finally do it. I went down there right after she opened and I gave her the letter, the one I wrote a month ago and each time I thought I wa going to do it, I printed it out and had to change the dates. I was in a month to month renewable contract, required to give 30 days notice in writing.

She was really nice about it and told me if I wanted to come back in the future to let her know. I took my four remaining pieces from the gallery home, and made an adjustment to my website so people will not contact the gallery if interested in those pieces.

So now I am officially a free agent, I no longer am represented by any gallery, and that was the thing that was in the back of my mind, holding me back from following through. There’s no rule that says you have to be in a gallery to be a real artist. I think that was something that as a new artist was validation that your work was good enough to be shown. But that’s not true at all, and I know it isn’t. I’ve now had my work in three different galleries and what I’ve found is it’s hard to find a gallery that has all the characteristics that you want. Some are better than others, but the gallery owner has to be committed to the artists’ growth and provide an environment where their work will stand out.

It might be a while before I can find that but I won’t stop looking. The art world is changing, and that will require different strategies.

For the past few days I’ve been working on the painting above, and at one point a crocodile and a frog both showed up at about the same time. I decided to go with it. I’m still in the process of adjusting values in the shapes and desaturating some of the colors, and I can’t decide if I like the little white spots in the frog’s eyes, and whether it’s still too busy, but I like it and it was fun to use different colors and metallic paint. Sort of like Pink Pasture, the animals appeared and it was fun to make them look more interesting with the paint colors and markings.

Tomorrow I need to pack for Crested Butte. I hope the altitude and hills won’t e too hard. I feel very undertrained for long runs, but I can’t wait to get out there and hang out with Towanda. This is the 6th annual meeting of the Towandas. I love that we get a week together every year to hang out and be ourselves to the max. The years go by and you realize that time is not guaranteed, so each successive meeting becomes more valued.

It’s quite late for me, so I’ll keep this short and I’m sure I’ll have amazing scenery to share in the coming days. Thanks for reading!