"Paintings With Personality"

Title - La Puerta - Size, 18x24 - Medium - Acrylic.

I am submitting an abstract for the 2nd of my 5 day challenge, and putting it in my blog. Kind of like "killing two birds with one stone." I don't often do abstracts, but had a lot of fun with this one. Hope you enjoy it.

One of our granddaughters, (Lu, is her nickname) was supposed to return to college in Florida, the day of the Joey blizzard. The airline called three times to change her flight, finally ending up with 3:30 pm on Monday. Honey and I were taking her to the airport, and our son-in-law asked us to get her there by 1pm because of airline traffic problems.

Later, when all the passengers were on board the plane a tinny voice came over the intercom announcing they didn’t have a pilot, so would everyone please get off the plane. Lu finally departed at 6 pm with an overnight layover in Houston, TX. The airline promised to put her up in a hotel, but had changed their minds by the time she landed. They said they didn’t provide hotels due to adverse weather. The person involved became very rude when Lu explained it wasn’t weather but the lack of a pilot.

By that time it was 10:30 pm and Lu had been gone 11 hours, she was exhausted. She held it together until she heard her mom’s voice on the phone, then started to cry. She is only 19, and went to a hotel alone where she arranged for a shuttle to take her to the airport the next morning, before she was finally able to get some rest. The next day everything went as planned and she checked into school having missed the 1^st two days of the new semester.

Nothing in life is easy, in fact, sometimes life can be really tough, especially for artists. It seems that everyone, today, thinks they can make paintings. They simply boot up their computers and open Photoshop, never taking the time to learn any of the things artists must know.

Artists also compete with the vast quantity of artwork to be found on the Internet. Computers, have placed art at the tip of the consumers fingers, which may not be a good thing. Potential buyers become so overwhelmed with choices they eventually tire of looking and either purchase the next work that comes up or give up entirely, and buy nothing.

Art is no longer used for recording history, but for decorating, for entertainment. Today, the general public gets a print at Target to decorate, and buys a DVD or pays for the many available channels on TV for their entertainment. That has made it much harder for artists to make a living. Only a few are highly successful, while the others face constant uncertainty.

Fear of failure might be the hardest thing for artists. Their work is part of them, making them feel rejected if their art is rejected. You would have to be very thick skinned for failure not to hurt. Each time an artist, no matter who they are, begins a work, insidious fear creeps in. A little “devil artist” sitting on their shoulders saying, “You’re going to mess up, go do something else.” That can actually be a good thing, because if you think everything you create is perfect, you will never be successful. Seeing art that is better than yours makes you strive to be better.

Artists have to market their work as well as create it, or know someone who will handle the business end of their art careers. Marketing yourself takes away important studio time, after all, you can’t sell what isn’t there. We have all seen “bad art” sell because of great marketing.

Being an artist is certainly a challenging route, but so is everything in life. Is it worth giving up wealth to be an artist? Absolutely! Art is difficult, but just try to find something to replace it.

Art and life are adventures, even when airlines mess up.

What do you think is the hardest part of being an artist?  Later, Judy

http://judyballance.com/