At Long Last

Hung the new still life and a large collage in the coffee shop yesterday afternoon. Steve helped, as the collage is in a glass frame and was a bit heavy for me to manage. When he gets a pic taken, I'll post it here.

There's nothing like having your work hanging in a public space to make it seem more real, somehow. The studio is little better than an extension of the inside of my head. Artwork collects there like stacks of memories. But once a piece makes it to the outside world, it is expressed to the outside world, takes on an existence different than the existence in the studio. Sometimes the expression connects well enough to be purchased and thus extend the expression even further.

I find that once a work is purchased and taken away to a place where I might well never see it again, I tend to forget about it. This was not true when I first started to sell artwork. After the first year, however, I had enough confidence in my ability to do good work consistently, that each painting or assemblage stopped feeling like precious, happy accidents and more like one part of an ongoing saga. It's a process not unlike publishing a serial novel--the story evolves, but you can't redo what's already been published. I'm fine with that.