Strawberries, Art, Live-and-Dead Artforms & Processes,Van Gogh…and Other Hodge-Podged Musings!

(This is an X-post from my newsletter blog…I thought I’d put it here, too, since it is interspersed with a variety of musings about both my art and my life.) For anyone wanting to subscribe to my business newsletter blog, please visit this link.)

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One of the things I really want/need to establish here in my new location are local painting/craft parties or potentially teaching ongoing art instruction to homeschoolers, for example.

Between 1995 and 2001, I regularly taught a number of art classes to homeschooled students (6th-12th grade) through an accredited umbrella school, and private offerings for 1st to 5th graders of families I was interconnected with in that local Delaware community/network. For younger ones, I did a variety of quality hands-on art activities/processes with all kinds of mixed media, and high school classes included an Advanced Drawing Course based on Betty Edwards’ book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and year-long courses focusing on the art of Illustration, with a focus on the Brandywine/Chadds Ford Illustrators (Wyeths, etc) and folks like Norman Rockwell. I could easily resurrect the Advanced Drawing Course (I know the material inside and out pretty much) these days if I somehow found a group of local students/parents who would commit to it weekly, including compensating me for my time/expertise and doing their part involving significant out-of-class assignments.

Oh, but how to do that!

Awhile back I assembled some vintage footage from one of our Towle School Art Shows and shared on YouTube and in a FB Group Towle School & Homeschool Former Art Students Creativity Connect I had created a couple years ago, that didn’t get the response I might have otherwise imagined when I spent a winter Saturday setting it all up. It seemed like a good idea at the time, given the number of social media reunion groups of all sorts to keep in touch with folks from out past. But like all good ideas, if there isn’t much response and interest, continued investment of time and energies become those of diminishing returns.

We are all navigating this “Brave New World” of sorts, these days, rightfully needing to pick-and-choose that which we give our attention to. It is tough and challenging, for sure.

These days, I’m struggling to figure which ways to go here, and while I have my own goals and agenda, personally and artistically, I would be open to considering additional avenues that would be a win/win for those interested, and still keep me in the realm of my overall creative aspirations and especially, continuing my 35-year art career that slowly unfolded from the kitchen table in a mobile home in 1989, after the birth of my oldest son. It has been a home-based, unique career path developed alongside being a wife, mother and homeschool mom, for a good part of it. I have fully developed and trained myself into a position that only I can fill, and have not been any traditional, full-time workforce since 1989–when I began my maternity leave.

For those interested, I wrote a piece last year IN CASE YOU ARE WONDERING, I HAVE A BS…THAT’S SOME KIND OF SCIENCE DEGREE, NOT ART(S) surely during one of my periodic existential, comedic fits of thinking concerning the current state of things, now that I am (now) sixty-years old, twice-divorced, in complex webs of personal, family situations, and have relocated 800 miles back north during a worldwide pandemic!

Ha. Did I miss anything?

Well, I should add that since 2003, I have moved for various reasons–each time needing to physically establish my home studio, which does keep expanding for better or worse–six times. As I see and know things, I feel like, in some ways, each time I physically relocate my home-base business, it “may” set my progress/career/investments & losses of money and time back ten years each time! So at this rate, my sixty-year-old self might be fighting sixty years of setbacks and detours!

Ha.

I’m just throwing out a huge concept there, not to be too literal, of course.

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Back to teaching…

But surely, the personal/cultural/national landscape has changed a lot since 2001 when I last taught art. I am currently competing in very real ways with Orwellian forms of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and increasingly needed technologies that are hard to articulate to the non-art-entrepreneur, but trust me, when your competitor is no longer the lady in the next town who also offers hand calligraphy, but some monolithic, nameless, faceless thing that chomps-up-and-eats its way through Google and then spits out forms of so-called art and creativity with loud, ugly burps and hiccups, it can leave the basic, true artist reeling!

And surely, I still reserve hope that post-pandemic there is still a place for people actually coming face-to-face in a room and touching paint brushes and pouring real paint? Surely we haven’t devolved into preferring the sterile zoom observation of people painting together, as we buy our own supplies and pour our solitary glass of Merlot, watching others virtually clean-up the mess of it all??!!!

If you a rooting for my success here, I ask that you would share this with others who feel the same–who want to get back to a number of things. People you may know who think it would still be great for a family with some children and friends to contact me about creating a special hands-on experience and outing for them! For my readers who are in DE, I am a two-hour drive. An outing on a Saturday, or during the lazy-hazy summer week days with several moms and kids who carpool, is more than do-able!

I have animals that can actually be touched!

And when the holidays come, I would love to have visitors here to my Open Studio events, aimed toward gift-giving and generally mingling/learning about my commissioned work.

Perhaps you have a group of friends from church, or your workplace. Doing something fun and creative together can be a team-building-bonding experience.

A few months ago, a friend kept urging me to do a “virtual” painting party. I put together “Musical Whimsical Keyboard Full Painting Party Tutorial” and attempted to promote/sell it for $25 per family/group etc, and sadly, after probably forty hours work, had zero response.

These days, for a number of reasons, people want/need/expect a number of things to just be free. And I am no exception, sadly, and find myself benefiting from artists on Spotify, for example, who are not under the traditional labels that existed in the 1970’s, where somehow, they were (sort of) compensated by agents/vinyl records/making it into Rolling Stone/doing concerts).

It’s a whole different world! Including, the world of sound bites and short attention spans. (Me too.)

And therefore, I’ve recently tried to “jump start” the painting party thing here with two “free parties” consisting of two groups of people I knew (in the 2nd strawberry party of adults, I knew the one person, and he arranged for friends to come!)

But the reality is, no one can work for free!

I once replaced a damaged item for a custom (knowing I would get reimbursed by the postal insurance) and the client, a minister, sent me an additional check. I explained that had not been necessary, but he insisted. His little notation in the memo meant quite a lot to me for many reasons, and I keep it tacked on the wall over my watercolor table. It read, “no body should work free.” It was significant to me also because of the specific year (2018) and what was happening in my personal situation, and also, it was written out on my birthday (May 16th!). By an online stranger that ordered a matted Christian wedding gift I’ve now done for over 1500 couples since 1991, that the Postal Service damaged and I quickly replaced, before anything else. And I note how difficult it feels for me to hold the marriage covenant made in Christ with such honor and yet, sadly, to find myself twice divorced with all the deep heartbreaks/sorrows that has held for myself and my sons, in one form or another. Some of my clients/friends may not know, but I have twin grandchildren born last August. And for complicated reasons, I have only seen them once this past April, and learned of their names last November. Life is challenging, to say the least. But I am trying to stay the course in my faith in Jesus.

Back to Painting Parties, and more.

I like to do things that are similar to checker moves. Meaning…I don’t like to just jump one piece at a time, but somehow figure out how in one move to jump several! In art, it’s called derivative works.

For example, during the two free painting parties, I finished off an 18 x 24 canvas (while giving my free takers matteboard scraps, that served their purpose) with demonstration of techniques, and verbal guidance/conceptual teaching about layout that could be applied to other art attendees might do on their own–with a whimsical work I will simply call, “Strawberries.”

It can now go on my Etsy. Perhaps in five years, someone will search “strawberries” for some reason and want that image on a notecard that I sell currently for $6. Currently, I have over 1000 listings on Etsy of images I’ve created for one purpose or another during the last 35 years, available print-on-demand when ordered, as matted pieces of various sizes and notecards. Compensation dribbles in…sometimes in a trickle, other times more substantially, over time. But it is a long-haul thing. I actually must pay someone to manage my Etsy listings–I have to. It’s terribly time-consuming. Having a friend who works here and there from home, helping take my art images/match them with quotations (I tweak the Photoshop work) and then do the listings with all their needed tags, etc is something I cannot do myself, along with all else. She focuses only on that for me, while being a younger mom raising teens, being a wife and active in church. It’s a blessing, for sure. It’s a seemingly needed seed-planting, but the overall need I have here, to continue thriving and creating, is a more rapid overtaking/return on my investments of money/time in attempting to rebuild my life and business here in PA.

Anything and most everything helps, but it feels like ten baseball games being played at a time! It can be hard to keep track of Who is on first, and What is on second! A lot of days I’m throwing up my glove saying “I DON’T KNOW!!! I DON’T KNOW AND OTHERWISE HAVE NO IDEA WHO’S ON FIRST OR WHAT IS WHERE…I JUST WISH I COULD EAT ME SOME RELAXING POPCORN AND CRACKERJACKS!!!”

Bottom line, historically, I can offer keepsake portrait work at affordable prices because live caricature gigs offset the very low profit margin on such meaningful works. But, rebuilding and getting these gigs takes time and work, online and locally, too. I get frustrated that I can draw cartoons of people at a high dollar amount but can’t pay my bills creating potential family heirloom images.

It’s just because our world is so upside-down, in part. But, artists have always struggled and starved. It takes a lot of tenacity and audacity, I suppose, to keep pressing forward. A lot of commitment to creativity, and a number of inter-related, old-fashioned concepts and values.

Selling these original works like “Strawberries” (like “yesterday,” not “ten years from” now at 50% clearance, ha ha!) is really, really helpful. Even if it might seem like small potatoes, rather than…um…strawberries!.

Part of me thinks, who wants a picture of “Strawberries” on their wall?

Ha. I have no idea.

Well, actually, I do have ideas…but…they are from a bygone era, perhaps.

Do people still have sunrooms? Do little girls look away from TikTok long enough to enjoy something hanging in their playroom? Do they play with dolls and games or go out and garden these days?

What about brightening up some dismal, bland hallway or church bathroom? What about sticking THAT in some office waiting room. I once heard someone tell me they were working with inner city kids in a food program, and a boy told him he “didn’t know how to eat an apple.” So…hmm…could this go in a school (private or public) somewhere?

Could it hang in the room of some outreach program or nature center?

I don’t know! But, I’m trying to do what I do best here. Be an “idea generator” (before the “idea of ideas itself” has been fully deconstructed, too!)

I thank those who have read thus far, for their interest in my work, and for that pesky old concept of prayer!

I thank you for prayers! Over that past month or so, I have seen various movements I believe are responses to prayers. Some more significant, some seemingly small but noteworthy. As in many things, it is the small, seemingly imperceptible things that it seems God often works through. A lot of endurance, trust, and perseverance required.

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I am going to put a number of various YouTube links at the end…including giving out the full tutorial here for the “Musical Whimsical Keyboard Full Painting Party Tutorial” for free to my followers. I would ask that you try this with your family/friends at home, in church, in homeschool groups (Oh, do I believe in homeschooling these days even moreso that when I finished my turn at it with my own two sons…) and then please email me pictures from your group and the results! I would appreciate feedback–if I did it again, I might approach the video work differently. Be patient and kind! It was my “first” attempt and felt awkward and unwieldy. I’ve learned now (oh the steep curve of all technology) that I can put painting demonstration videos at 300X speed and give the gist, shortening the overall presentation!

And, if you felt you got some benefit from it and pleasure, I would gladly appreciate “tips” which can be sent to me through Pay Pal https://www.lettersource.com/paypal_link.html

I do have a produce stand and my son told me awhile back, “don’t set any prices…people are more generous than you might expect if you just put stuff out with no price!”

I found that idea interesting and compelling. I did enjoy reading Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein awhile back. Interesting thoughts about how we value time/skills/currency exchange with a good focus on one hundred years ago when doctors traded help for eggs, for example, and the idea of the barter. However, in the five years or so since I read it, I would be a bit more cautious perhaps about some of this underlying beliefs/trajectory. As in most things, listening to ideas can provide both positive and negative takeways.
For me, in terms of produce selling, it seems to be some kind of experiment in deep, costly investment with little immediate return. In the least, it is a social experiment, and I do like to learn from all things! My goal with my produce stand business here is ultimately to connect with my local community, to sell more art. And to keep myself healthy in a number of physical and emotional ways.

On my personal blog, I’ve put the “Buy Me a Coffee” feature which many artists/writers/musicians use. (Only) one time, has a friend/reader “bought me a cup of coffee” for $5! It was great. And it was also funny, sort of, because I can’t withdraw it until I reach a $25 threshold! It just added to the irony and amusement…after all…and it truly is the thought that counts. She bought this cup of coffee surely because this dear friend (who knows who they are!) had prompted the creation of the artwork and the funny short story I wrote to accompany it. It was called Vincent and the Instagram Influencer

(I still have THAT original for sale, too!)

One reason I added this feature to my personal blog is that I write/raise awareness about religion/politics/current events that affect us all. While some may agree/disagree with my take on things, I do pour myself into writing these days, too. It is something I’ve always done and enjoyed in various capacities all the way back into my high school years. It serves several purposes in my life these days. I watch little “TV for relaxation” and this use of needed down-time/outlets seems best at present. If there are those who value some of the topics/things I write about being put into the internet, the “Buy Me a Coffee” is basically a “tip jar” to encourage me and potentially help offset the overall costs of all that I am doing here, in the creative realm. Same with My Patreon. I recently learned that the online groomer “Jeffrey Marsh” has numerous Patreon pledgers Nationwide at a very small amount. I stand strongly against everything he is and stands for.

For Sale – Original Pen With Watercolor/Torn Paper Edges/Segments are mounted and raised on pieces of foamboard
Van Gogh and the Instragram Influencer
~7 x 29 inches framed (I need to change out the glass, I notice a flaw but wanted to post it with this!)
$295 with shipping

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Well, it’s well past 4 pm here and I must mosey on to the next thing before me, which seems to be working on a bridal bouquet preservation and a flowers preservation, sadly, from a funeral of a four-month-old little girl who died suddenly July 4th weekend in her crib.

I think a lot. And I want my life to have purpose, and I am still aiming to try to create as much art and beauty as possible in this world, for as long as possible. Whether it writing, art of many sorts or art services, or the art of growing food or the art of living well, I want to do that.

I think of flowers of joy (weddings) and flowers of sorrow (funerals)…and I think of God, and a number of things, these days…