A Hiatus

After doing our taxes this year, I see a dog chasing its tail, of sorts.Ya gotta spend money to make money. Or so I'm told...

Hard to get the make-money part to exceed the spend-money part. And so you make some sales, and win some prize money, and you're happy, right? Well, yes, I am. But I'm spending as much as I'm earning, and so, in a financial sense, it's been a wash. What's that you say? "But you're creating a lot of artworks that you ordinarily wouldn't. That's good, right?"

Well, yeah. But if I hadn't spent the money that was invested in selling them at no gain, I'D STILL HAVE THE PAINTINGS!

Not that I have a great love-of-possession for them. They were all "exercises." And I have decent digital versions to satiate my shallow pride.

So here's the premise of my new tack:
I will take a hiatus from entering competitions (yes, art shows are competitions) until such time I deem my catalog "deep and full." I'll later define "deep and full." For the first tax year, I will have, for the greater part, eliminated most outgo. And, meantime, my artwork proceeds at a pace not dictated by false deadlines, but by a desire to paint. THAT is what gets lost in the commercial realm of chasing shows and sales. And THAT, I hope, is when I get a better sense of what "Art" is to me. And only me, likely.

On that subject, I have to confess — for the sake of the hardcore reader that's delved this deep, thus far — I have no idea whatsoever, “what art is.” I really don't even care, because I always find it — or it finds me — in the least expected places. So it must be something more than wordy ideas. I’m only learning to be, in its quiet to powerful presence.