Selling Art

It has proven impossible to guess which paintings will sell in an exhibition. I’ve been at this over 30 years. I never know. Some years I sell every one. Some years only half.

I will admit a vexed relationship with money and art.

Mr. Blake said, “Where any view of money exists, art cannot be carried on.”

A wise man. Or was he? A genius certainly. And a man who’s funeral was paid for with borrowed money.

I don’t object to money. I think my trouble comes from growing up in a family of art. My mother was a painter and an art teacher. My eldest sisters the same. Both reminded me that young children’s art can be more beautiful than Picasso’s. A Picasso quote, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” My mother assured me that he never made it. But he got more money for his.

Art in my house was everywhere. Everybody made it. It was valuable, important, but not in a money way. You just did it. Everybody did it, like conversation. You don’t charge for conversation.

I remain confused about selling art.

I spent time in New York. It was the time of Warhol. He got money. It put a stain on the thing for me. For him, for that group, making money was the art. And it carries on.

As I say, I have a vexed relationship with selling art.

But every year I go thru the years crop and put my favorite paintings on the wall. It is an important thing, to dress them up with a frame, or at the very least to back them, take the creases out. Give them a little wall, to see what they can do with it.

And some I sell. I’m happy to do it. One can’t be one’s only collector, not enough space!

As I say, impossible for me to predict which ones will sell.

Virtual exhibition opens today

Because of the pandemic I decided to have my exhibition on line. Still I put up paintings. No frames this year. I used clips and tacks. Unthinking I had a pistachio binge last night and developed a blister on the same thumb I used today to push in 52 thumbtacks.

Painting Materials

Is it important what materials you use to paint? Each one has a different feel, a different look, a different speed, a different strength.

I came to Japan as an oil painter over 30 years go. More to fact I had come to Japan as a given up oil painter. I didn’t bring paints or a sketchbook with me. But before long I was cobbling together a paint box from scraps of wood, buying local paints and going out to paint the landscape, crowded little houses and vegetable fields in the part of Nerima I had landed.

Soon I tiptoed into ink painting, slowly at first, but soon was all in. It was exciting to learn a new language, and it came more naturally to my hand, to my eye.as well.

For 30 years I have been an ink painter. But now and then I open that old box of oil paint.

This year I painted the same humble house down the hill, in oil, than later in ink.

Frames

Three frames this year, for three oil paintings. The ink paintings will be backed, trimmed and hung on the wall. I used to control the whole process; the frame and the scroll were part of the art. Japanese scrolls add the element of collage to the the work. The way Rouault used to paint on his frames inspired me as well.

This year I will make these three frames for the oils. I delegate the job of scroll or frame selection for the ink paintings to anyone who wants one enough to buy it.

Signing for the show

Mostly I paint with Japanese ink on Japanese paper. This year I also did two small oil paintings. I’m wondering if I should include them in the October exhibition. I signed them today just in case. It felt funny. I don’t sign ink paintings. Ink paintings get stamps of one kind or another. The bovine dragon painting is the biggest painting this year; it got the biggest stamps.

Looking back

I opened my computer this Saturday morning to do more on line teaching stuff. Before I started I ventured into a file of paintings. This was 2016, down the hill in Ameyoko. I never exhibited this one. The black and white version went on the wall that year.