Tidbits - on stress

You will soon break the bow if you keep it always stretched. (Norman Vincent Peale)

There are two ways to remedy stress. As a visionary artist you become the magician and transform your stress into a series of works. The other is sex. (Genevieve Serret)

The painting experience is exciting and frustrating, empowering and risky, all of which come under the heading 'Stress.' (Simone Joliet)

Painting and sculpture, labour and good faith, have been my ruin and I continually go from bad to worse. Better it would have been for me if I had set myself to making matches in my youth. I should not be in such distress of mind. (Michelangelo)

Roundup of Results

Much has transpired since the March Artzine,not least of which is the feedback I received on that issue!

Firstly...the "Baldfaced Bulldogger" scratchboard I showed in that issue - and am including again at right - garnered a lot of compliments from readers (many thanks to all of you who wrote!). That's not the half of it, though!

The piece sold on opening night at the Panhandle Plains Invitational, with multiple collectors vying to purchase it, and it was one of the top vote-getters for the show's "Patron's Choice" award. (Thank you, Scott H.!).

Humorous aside: my mother - who rarely comments on Artzines - mentioned this piece specifically and said it made her "crazy" to think about the work involved in rendering the tack.

Secondly, there were the four days at Western Masters as part of "Western Art Week" in conjunction with all the CM Russell museum events.

After spending 36+ hours sitting in my gallery room in the Best Western Heritage Inn and interacting with the public, these are a few of the things I learned:

• I should have had about 20 more scratchboards to sell. I sold all I brought, and sold the one I was working on during the event before I'd even finished it - to another artist! (Thank you, Carol!)
  
  
• People dressed in sweatshirts, jeans, and boots were 100% certain to be:
  a. Locals from Great Falls
  b. Making the rounds every year to look at art
  c. Not art buyers, and not much interested in talking to artists (except for the high-school students who were assigned to interview artists...but that's another story).
  
  
• People from out of state and dressed in fancy western duds were 100% certain to be:
  a. collectors
  b. interested in art and the artists
  
  
• People dressed in sharp East-Coast outfits were possibly art buyers, but also possibly art sellers (witness the family who came in my room auction night, and later went home $500,000 richer after selling 2 original Russells).
  
  
• The variety of humanity out there is mind-boggling (evidence: the short fellow in greasy coveralls and top hat, wearing a backpack with 2 gigantic femurs - dinosaur? mammoth? - sticking out the top and threatening my paintings every time he turned around). Clearly, I've led a sheltered life.

It was exhausting, sort of fun, and made me realize that this is another important art networking event - like Fall Arts in Jackson - that probably has to go on the annual list...and hey, my Russell auction piece was purchased by the chairman of the board of the Russell - darn cool.

FOOTNOTE from the March Artzine - After the discussion about my "multi-panel" paintings, I have much better terms for these pieces thanks to suggestions from readers: "quilt" or "patchwork" pieces.

As one reader commented: "Your multi-panel pieces are just beautiful....and so interesting. I found myself just staring at the horse on the ground rolling on his back, with his head disappearing into the next picture. Wonderful!" (thank you, Judith K.!)