thoughts, works and occasional videos

I really don't care why someone likes or buys my paintings. I'm just happy that my work pleases them. And if someone wants their art purchases to be certain colors, I am happy my work gives harmony to their life.

Really as an artist when I make my art available to the public it is akin to a Dandelion releasing its seeds to the wind. It isn't my business why someone wants to live with my paintings. We should concern ourselves only with producing work we love and are proud of and want the rest of the world to see and enjoy. Of course with any luck they will wish to buy them all...

Sincerely,
Jeffrey

I was taking a stroll through a large department store complex in South East Sydney on Friday last ( truth be I was looking for a toaster) I started looking in those stores who specialize in home decorating for young well to do inner city couples, concentrating on the art available.
Most of course were reproductions and were in the 300 to 600 dollar range and were usually placed within a living space say a bed room , lounge room ect.
Now I wasn't surprised that they were colour matched but what did surprise was the simplicity of the work.
Almost no attempt or feel for the individual piece just a jumble of tones and lines squares and circles and broadly executed nothingness.
No one thing in the setting took precedent , an interior design conglomerate. I did not leave feeling well at all , and perhaps I should have thought "this is easy give them what they want ...Bland!

I agree with you, Cynthia. I create the art that I do because it makes me happy. If someone buys a painting from me because it matches their sofa, the so be it. I tend to paint bright, happy paintings and the people that purchase my art often due so because the colors make them happy. If my work brings joy to someone, for whatever reason, then we have both gained something from the experience.

This is an interesting point and I may wind up being radical here. But my art career began with dragon drawings at fantasy conventions and proceeded to street portraits in New Orleans before health made me retire. I'm a cat nut and post my cat paintings on Facebook along with cute cat photos.

I know how I am about the furnishings of my own home, my own room if that's all it is. They must be sumptuous. They must include jewel tones and rich fabrics, satins or velvets or brocades, ornamented objects like fancy lamps, a crystal vase is a new delight that's starting to become a still life object. Color blazes everywhere and if I'm stuck with white walls they fill up fast with my paintings and those I bought.

Long, long ago in New Orleans, I noticed that my art teacher's home was amazingly beautiful. Every direction I looked was a paintable scene in perspective. I complimented him and got a two hour lecture on how he'd composed it to be exactly that! His black and whte checkerboard tile flooring was a perspective trick inspired by Botticelli along with the soft saturated tints on walls and harmonious placement of plants and furnishings. He was great and his entire house was an installation he lived in.

I remembered the homes of other artists I've visited or lived with. The older and more skilled the artist is, the more their home becomes one of their works as a whole.

Sometimes it's conscious. Sometimes it's not - my room gave that impression long before I understood why it did. I saw it in my own furnishings when I went home from my teacher's house after that discussion, the way the bed coverings, chair covers, curtains, chosen art arranged and framed to my tastes all became a seamless whole.

I had a devil of a time understanding why anyone would hire an interior decorator. ACK! The thought of someone else choosing my furnishings according to what would impress other people was creepy. The idea felt like a personal invasion, like my personal space had become some public business space where I had to answer to some boss. No way!

I had to meet and get to know a few designers to understand that a skill I took for granted wasn't shared with non artists and that a decorator meeting me wouldn't be doing it to normatize me but to create a work that appealed to me particularly. Would source Oriental carpets and crystal chandeliers and cool little baroque items and put it together in a way that harmonized with... my art.

And that this is a great benefit to someone who doesn't understand color harmony or perspective, composition, etc. as I'd learned over all those years.

I'm home all the time being disabled and always had mobility limits so it mattered more to me than most men. But it always mattered a lot.

If a buyer were to look at one of my landscapes and go "Wow that would be so perfect over my couch! I've got this great couch and it's floral and bright, it has that pink you used on those bushes and that bright blue and the oranges and violets... how dd you do that?" Well, I'd go into my usual mini-lesson since I love explication. And know what their couch looks like, have a good guess at the curtains and knick knacks and cultural details.

Whether they realize it or not, a person decorating their home is creating art. A very special kind of art, the kind you live in. Humans are artistic by nature and decorate what matters to them. All these furnishings are culture, when you're home you're surrounded by objects and artifacts that remind you who you are, make you feel safe and happy and centered in your own life.

If I was participating in a group project, a mosaic made up of other artists' paintings and the organizer said "Do whatever you want but try to make it mid value and predominantly bright greenish blue like Pthalo" I could work with that.

And it would be *exactly* the same thing as "Can you do something like that but match my couch?" When I was done and it went up, my blue painting would be part of the pond or the sky or the blue eye of the face and both the whole and my part of it be good art. That's how I feel about "match my couch."

It means the couch matters to them too. When I look at couches I also see an artist behind who did the abstract splashing or the loosely rendered roses on the fabric.

I know if I sold a painting to the collector who buys what he hates, that might be a little disturbing but understandable. If it went to a collector looking to bank on my future career like playing the stock market who'd just archive it and never look, I'd be a little creeped out. The buyer that matched the couch is the same as the buyer who says "I know that spot, I went fishing there." Or was subculture and needed a big dragon for that big free space on the Wall of Dragons.

Now I think that some classism comes into this - not always on conscious levels. Things learned in art school or art classes carry a weight of elite approval by experts and curators, but those same people often also appoint themselves arbiters of taste.

I don't let fashion police dictate what I'm going to wear in part because I do not want to give a conservative, bland, corporate impression. I wear the clothes I like as signals of my authentic beliefs, associations, ideals and personality. In a skill way I tend to arrange them well as a coherent message. But the message is not one of the "mainstream" and definitely not smoothing out individuality to fit efficiently into conformity. I never fit in. I limp to a diferent drummer and look good when I'm being real in all my intensity.

Home furnishings are that same personal message. My favorite couch might not be yours. Give us each a big chunk of money to buy the best of our taste possible and odds are we'll choose something different. Or just get some stuff and build it from scratch, have known people who do.

A decorator, of course, is an artist with a different medium. If I'm doing a commission for hotel room paintings that's literally a collaboration, my work is an element of theirs as surely as the pthalo blue square painting in the mosaic.

Last reason I question the whole idea that matching the couch is crass or bad or not artistic is sexism. Decorating a home was seen as part of traditional housewife stuff, mister normal probably also has his clothes chosen by his upwardly mobile wife. Who is probably buying art along with curtains and furnishings and not paid for any of her work, but it had better be top notch.

Nontraditional people care about their furnishings or delegate to an expert as they do, but in looking at why it would be a bad thing to choose a painting to match the couch, I think sexism is part of it. Sexism, classism, a host of traditions so old that these things were much more deeply enforced in the past. Fine art is a sumptuary item that defines prosperity, while having real art in your home at a lower income level is still a luxury, something not needed for survival but enriching life.

I wouldn't turn down a client for wanting a painting that matches the couch, would do a commission provided I was accepting them at the time. The groups I do belong to had the same elitism but not as much on economic lines - lots of working class fannish people love dragons and save up for months to go to cons and buy real art in their styles. Their homes reflect it and are sometimes intense. Some might not bother getting a fancy couch but spend more to have a scene on another planet hanging over the one they got on Freecycle.

Another might have all sorts of medieval elements in furnishings and a painting I did of a castle sold by subject, with or without dragons. But they want their own coat of arms colors on the banners on the castle and I could do that.

It's all personal - and art bought to live with is going to be a part of their lives. It will harmonize with the rest of their physical culture and when it doesn't they may need to get a different couch or the place doesn't look right. Oh, I'd be very pleased and flattered if someone got their couch reupholstered to go with my painting. That might be a sign of success too considering the price of reupholstering and couches. But I don't expect that - if they fall in love with one and say that, it just means that they already imagine it in its place in their lives, loved and appreciated.

Selling my art is a bit like finding homes for kittens. The couch-matcher loves it. That's what matters. They brought it into their life and it fit that well, it has a good home. So no, that would not insult or bother me at all, and if they liked my style and showed me a room photo I might accommodate that. It's only another form of collaboration to me.

Hello Carol Schmauder. I am pleased to have your voice included in this discussion. I just have to smile at your input because I really do agree with you wholeheartedly. Thank you.

Stephanie Newman, yes, in the end it is the ability to sell that can be recompense enough; but I do hear your frustration or discontent when they fail to recognize that which is good and that which does not work. Though, through it all, I still maintain that when it comes down to it, we can really only live our own lives, so we might as well do it in the best way possible.

To everyone, please excuse my tardiness in responding to your comments, but I was preparing about 40 works for a show and had to drop them off, as well as deal with family issues and seasonal issues since I go west for the winter but make my apartment available to others. Take care everyone and thank you again for your input.

So very, very true.