Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Pay Day






Forest Through the Trees, 2005, Oil on Panel, 24x36










The mail brought me a lovely surprise on Monday. A beautiful, signed check from my new gallery signifying my very first sale with them, made within a week of delivering my paintings. A good sign, I think! The painting that sold was this one, which I should add, looks much better in real life that it does here. My work can be very difficult to photograph because of the layers of color and purples are especially challenging. This piece is a large one, for me, so that's exciting too, to sell the largest one of the group that I took over there. I think this is only the second 24x36 piece I have ever sold (the other one is pictured above, which looks rather red here, but is actually a bit more purplish, see what I mean?). Most of my work is 18x24 and smaller, most often in the 12x16 or 8x10 range. At first I worked very small, 4x4, 5x7, 6x6, but in the last six months or so I have gotten more confident and have been working larger. I hope to do some paintings on 3'x3' and 3'x4' panels soon, but have to resolve some pesky storage issues first.

Today I have a ton of work to do. I am currently completely off my painting schedule and I need to do some underpaintings so that I can get back on track. I have to do several barns for an event this summer in Saratoga (they would like a few images now for publicity purposes) and I need to do some more landscapes as I have to replenish my inventory. Thomas Deans, who represents my work in Atlanta and has sold several pieces lately, also wants more work soon, and I have some group shows coming up in June, which will sneak up on me, I am sure.

Holy cow, just thinking about all of this makes me want to take a nap.

3 comments:

martha said...

Your work is going so well! Congratulations on that. And I've noticed the very small sizes of some of the paintings-- I have to admit, I can't even imagine working that small. But the storage would be sooo much easier-- in fact, I'm scaling down because I just don't have anywhere to put the damn things. Especially now, since we put pocket doors in the walls I used to hang work on, and now we can't put nails in the walls! Any tricky ideas about how to hang a painting without nailing underneath? I'm not sure how well a picture rail would work, since we don't have high ceilings. And just a little addendum to say how very envious I am of your productivity.

Tracy Helgeson said...

Thanks, Martha. I was going to suggest picture ledges but I can't think how you could put them up without nails. Can you put hooks or nails up high, past the door and hang paintings from those with wire?

My pat answer to questions about my productivity is that I am making up for the years that I didn't paint, but there's more to it than that. Maybe I'll blog abot it tomorrow.

Tracy Helgeson said...

Thanks Cecily, but (and here's where I am laughing hysterically) you don't need to win the lottery to buy one of my large paintings. A good tax refund will do. My prices are still a bargain at this point, as I am still a nobody in the art world. Thanks for being happy for me though, that's nice.