Back to Work & Sticker Shock

I’m still working on the Discarded Snapshots series, but it’s been super slow-going. I’d been run down and taking a lot of naps. That didn’t fully stop me from “working” though. My brain is always going and I painted whenever I could stand for any extended amount of time. However, I had no other choice than to listen to my body. I had to take a ton of breaks.

The last few weeks, little by little, I progressed on the 3-panel piece, which is close to finished now. It’s called King Baby.

It still needs a few colors: pink and yellow on the right side woman’s dress, white touch-ups, blue and white candles, red letters in the cake frosting, and a cobalt blue plate in the bottom corner. But I have to wait for some of it to dry. I can’t reach into those spots with the oil paint as thick and as wet as it is right now. I had to stop for now.

So, I finally worked on one of the collaborations I have going with Niki Ford. I knew what I was going to do on this, but I let it sit for a long while. I realized it was going to take a long time, so I procrastinated.

Stage 1

It felt good to finish it, and Niki really loved it, so that felt fantastic. This is the sixth (successful) piece in the series. We’re going for twelve, a good solid number, me thinks.

Finished

I’m undecided on which painting I’m going to attack next, but I think it will be this one:

There’s another taken from a vacation my mom took with her friends to Mexico in the 1950s, but I’m really not as excited about that one. Or maybe I’m nervous about it. I’m not sure exactly what’s up with that one. It calls to be the sloppiest, but it also doesn’t have other members of my immediate family in it, so I’m a little torn.

I was originally drawn to the photo because she was young and happy then. No kids. Unmarried. Free. It was very rare when I saw that in her growing up. I saw flashes of it though, mostly when she was concocting rebellious endeavors that gave her a shimmer of “hope.” Hope for what, I do not know, but she was always after something that never satisfied her. And in some ways, I’m a lot like her, unfortunately. At least I recognize it?

So, I don’t know if I will even approach this one. It’s from a black-and-white photo and not sure how I’ll put color to it. I’ll figure it out, I guess.

In other news, I decided to participate in this year’s Open Studios Tour in October. I didn’t participate last year. I wanted to see other artist’s studios, and I was also still traumatized from the first time I did it. It wasn’t easy for me at all, but it certainly paid off in a number of ways. I can’t lie about that. And I met some amazing people. It was just a lot of work and some of the people that came were not so nice. Many took issue with my prices and had absolutely no problem voicing their shocked opinions about it. And these were studio prices.

Am I supposed to give the work away for next to nothing? I guess some artists do this and so that’s the expectation for many of the Tour-goers. Nothing I can do about that, so I just shrug my shoulders and say nothing. What would you say? There’s no kind of way to respond to that which would be appropriate. Eject them? Defend it? Apologize? If I opened my mouth about it, it just wouldn’t be good. But I have to say, to you, dear reader, it’s more shocking to me than it is to them that they come into my space and behave that way.

Such is life.

This time, I am going to be sharing a studio with a favorite artist of mine, Teresa Watson. We are sharing it with another artist as well, whose name I don’t know yet, but it’s her niece. She does ceramics and watercolors (I believe). I’ll just bring smaller works, as I’ll have limited space. I’ll do my best to price everything as low as I can, but I can only do so much. We’ll see how it all pans out. Stay tuned.

6 thoughts on “Back to Work & Sticker Shock

  1. Hannah March 19, 2023 / 9:37 am

    The kind of “people” who express shock at the price of a piece of art (while standing in front of the artist) are not your customers anyway, so you don’t have to justify anything to them or accommodate them in any way.

    • Ayin Es March 20, 2023 / 6:36 am

      Thanks. Don’t worry, I won’t accommodate Anyone who is rude. They don’t really deserve a response though.

  2. reuben sorensen March 21, 2023 / 6:39 pm

    I like the idea of ejecting them 🙂

    • Ayin Es March 22, 2023 / 2:38 am

      That is a good idea, isn’t it? A chair with a big ejection spring! Ha ha ha.
      Good to hear from you Reuben!

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