New Opportunities

At the beginning of this year I did a lot of reflecting. I asked myself a lot of questions regarding my art. What do I want to focus on this year? What are my goals? What types of opportunities was I going to seek out? 

If I wanted to do any exhibitions or art fairs, I was going to need more inventory because I had sold seven of the eighteen paintings I had created during college.  I am excited that I have created art that people love enough to buy and that there is a market for my art. I decided not to wait for commissions and to continue creating pieces that went with the body of work I did in college. I also decided to revamp some of the pieces that hadn’t sold. Find some of the ones I did last year here, and the one I just finished below. Even though I had a plan to only create new paintings this year, I just was not loving this one and felt like it needed a change that made it feel more cohesive. The picture on the left is the original painting and the picture on the right is the new and improved painting.

When I am working on art pieces, I usually text friends progress pictures when I need to talk about them, get outside perspectives, especially when I can tell something is off but can’t pin point the problem. While I was working on the new pieces for the year, I texted one of my friends that works at a gallery. We were talking about both of our art and then she asked if I would be interested in showing my work at the gallery she works at in an exhibition. She said it would be with her and one other artist in April. I agreed without hesitation.

I felt the time crunch to get my paintings done sooner rather than later because now I had a set goal and timeline where I needed more inventory. I got back to work and started really trying to work on my paintings.

So, I came up with some idea of art pieces I wanted to do, I planned them out and then I got to work. I had an idea for a drawing I had been wanting to do of a little girl blowing bubbles in a butterfly garden and I decided to do that one first. I had something very specific in mind so I asked one of my friends if she could take a picture of her daughter and below is a picture of how that one turned out. When I was done, I showed it to my friend and she ended up loving it so much that she bought it right then. That felt pretty good.

The next two ideas were paintings that are similar ideas. I am almost done with the first one but I will do another post later about those two that go more in depth when I have finished them.