With the Des Moines Arts Festival sitting dauntingly on the horizon, I’ve been racking my brain trying to find a way to combine the style of artwork I like to do, with something that will sell. That task isn’t quite as easy as it sounds, given that most of my potential buyers are going to be about 30 years older than me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer in sticking to your artistic roots, and placing priority upon your own creative mind, rather than catering to the projected preferences of others. However, I think compromise is possible.
I’ve been thinking of my parents a lot lately, when visualizing my potential buyers. For about 2 years my parents were on the prowl for a perfect piece of artwork to sit above the mantle. I remember being so frustrated with them, because all they wanted was LANDSCAPE LANDSCAPE LANDSCAPE. I spent a lot of time trying to defend the modern-day, starving, broke, post-undergraduate artist, and encouraged them to look at some abstract work. For a while I tried to look around for a happy medium, but came up empty-handed. Eventually, I surrendered, and we found a nice, semi-realistic landscape that everyone was content with, that now graces our mantle.
I was so frustrated the other day, thinking about this landscape fetish that our parents’ generation seems to be fixated upon. So frustrated, in fact, that I said, “Fine, I’ll show you a mother F-ing landscape in my sweet-ass style.” And that is exactly what I did. And I really, really like it.
Happy medium, I found you at a good time.
