Seashell #4

Sold


Good Morning! Well I'm very pleased to announce that I've got my first bids on Ebay for my little Seashell Paintings! Yippee! I'm totally new to all of this, I feel like an old lady trying to get her head round this 'new fangled technology'...I need a 10 year old around to explain it to me. Anyway, this is all a great learning experience - and that's so important to me. I forget where this nugget of wisdom came from but I was advised long ago to regard my art career as a lifelong apprenticeship, and I do. It's been a bumpy rollercoaster ride, very exciting and very depressing at times, but it's worth it.

It's dangerous to regard your sales patterns as a validation of what you do - as that should never be the motivating force behind your work if you want to paint with integrity. I now know after taking a couple of years out to travel - and I suspected this all along - that I would paint anyway, regardless of exhibitions or sales: it's part of who I am.

On the other hand, since I was about 12 I have been determined to make a career out of art (after a brief daliance in school with the idea of being a Radiographer) and shamelessly commanded money for my craft from an early age. I remember those days when some friend of the family would 'commission' art from me...some of them where completely offended that I asked for payment, no matter how small ("you should do it because you love it..") They obviously hadn't read Atlas Shrugged, otherwise they'd know that the world would fall apart without the notion of fair trade. My family has a strong work ethic, and the success of our old-school family business (a carpet and furniture shop in Llandudno) has been due to hard work, old fashioned values and the not inconsiderable charm of my grandad, Ted, who refuses to retire and still calls me his 'Dolly-bird' in front of the customers and his golf buddies.

So yes, I'm as pleased that someone is bidding $50 for my painting a day, as when I sold my first four figure sum canvas - it means I can carry on doing what I love, and get paid for it!