Well babiez,
Today was my first glimpse into the world of a real live grown-up artist. It was a hella-long day (despite the unfaltering and much appreciated help of my mother). The art festival has only been open for 6 hours, and, already, I’ve learned loadz.
It was important to me that I not set any sort of monetary goal to reach in earnings. I was juried into the festival, and I am proud of that. I stayed true to myself when creating my artwork, and there is nothing more I can directly do to make money. Money MUST be a lesser priority. Yes, I can market myself to high heaven (and don’t get me wrong—I’m working on it), but at the end of the day, one cannot measure their accomplishments by the weight of their wallet.
That being said, I didn’t sell anything today— haha. I did, however, receive a commission, which is encouraging.
Also, it occurred to me that buying a painting is a commitment. The buyer must love and appreciate my work for what it is— enough so that they want to invest in it, adopt it, give it a home, and live with it every day. I have faith that at least some of my paintings will find their soulmates with time. Hopefully my biased parents won’t be their only one-true-loves…. Otherwise I might have to resort to putting them in a basket and letting them go in some river reeds, hoping they’ll find a young, unsuspecting mother to love and nurture them and call them ‘Moses’.
All-in-all the day went well. Except for acquiring trench foot, shutting down for an hour to let a monsoon pass, and getting my credentials stuck together via a Baklava disaster. In all honesty, though, I learned a lot, and I am grateful, and there is no where to go but up :) It was a good day.
