Your presence is a mirror, taut and round, a love letter from a time I can’t recall, so much of me, it’s hardly there at all, the surface of a depth far more profound than space. You are the wind with which I run, the movement in the sky, that which I breath, the essence of the soul that I believe conjoins us all, the shining of the sun without being the sun itself. Mute voice reciting all the poetry I write, inverse dark matter cradling me in light. We look into each other and rejoice. We never knew that we would find a twin. We reach our arms out and then step within.
1446 “Love Clouds”. Mixed media on panel 19×6″. $100. The following poem is written for and painted into the painting: Love the clouds above Nothing else will bring the rain That brings earth to life.
1444 “Golden Dawn”. Mixed media on panel 17×9″. $100. The following poem is written for and painted into the painting: Look up to the sky – the sun lights the clouds on fire at the edge of day.
Hopefully the title of this email will encourage a higher than average number of my followers to read this post. If that’s you then let me keep it quick and ask you this: Now that galleries are mostly closed and art fairs mostly cancelled, if you were to go online to buy a piece of art for your home, which websites would you check out before making a decision? You comment on this post and let me know as many or as few websites as popped into your mind. (Other than skyscapesforthesoul.com 😊 )
Now for the more involved reader… I hope you will answer the question anyway. I guess not everyone will answer skyscapesforthesoul.com, which is what I want, I’m not famous (yet).
I’m at a point where I need to get some feedback on which online galleries to apply to. Some I’ve tried to work with have standards involving what to wrap the artwork in and how quickly to ship it. This is not unreasonable for the artist who lives near a town, but I had to decline working with a couple websites in previous years because art had to be shipped UPS/Fedex next shipping day and I would need to put my site in vacation mode every time this clashed with an art fair or class. To put the frosting on the cake, I couldn’t add any charge for a 90 mile round trip to the nearest UPS drop off location. One allowed an extra $50 for a 100mi round trip, but 90? Nope. And as far as being good the planet with reused shipping materials or going to the UPS store combined with other errands within the week, no way!
I have an Etsy store where things are (occasionally) listed and worked with another online gallery who recently decided to discontinue me for ‘portfolio review’ reasons they wouldn’t specify, though I suspect they don’t like the mixed media work I recently added. I have some items on FineArtAmerica.com, which is primarily for reproduction work, as is Society6.com (You can get masks with my art on here!), and I’m just setting up a Square store. Both Etsy and Square allow me to control shipping, so no contention.
Who should I approach next? There are many online galleries out there. I get a lot of emails and bot-directed advertising of certain online galleries, because I’ve investigated them as potential outlets, but my thought is, for the average buyer, when that big gap in the wall starts to rankle, which url do they reach for? Which ones have they heard of? Which ones are famous?
Who knows, by this time next month, I might be! (Buy now, before artist gets discovered! 😊) At the time of writing I have only online events.
Group Online show “Planet of Joy” with Lark Gallery. who also has a brick and mortar presence in Santa Monica. I’ll be on the zoom webinar on the Sunday Jul 12, 2020 12:00 PM. Meeting ID: 390 158 8938.
I have three paintings that may or may not still be available through July 12th in the 6x6x2020 Online fundraiser for Rochester Contemporary Art Center Check out arthola.com – there should be three of my paintings there you can vote for (the most voted will get a small prize, so please pass this around!) Arthola also has a program where you can subscribe to use art images as screensavers for your smart tv when you’re not watching. A piece of revolving art instead of a black blank screen! And one painting in the La Quinta Art Museum Group Show “Uncertain Times” theme: “Something I Realized” – tentatively mid-July thru? with the above artwork ‘United’ 36×24” Oil on canvas.
There are so many species on the brink of extinction, hence this influence.
1445 Remember Butterflies. Mixed Media 15×9″ on shaped panel. $135. Contains the poem: Were they just a dream? Remember the butterflies, how precious they were.
Of course I’m going to create a painting involving meteorites when there’s a meteorite shower in the offing, and of course as a poet I’m going to romanticize it.
1444 Wishing Stars. Mixed Media 18×10. $180. Contains the poem: What do you wish for? I wish only for clear skies and the stars above.
Always my pleasure to pass along the Cloud Appreciation Society’s occasional Newsletter.
If you are – or you decide to become – a member of the society, you can also join local groups of cloudspotters. I started the Imperial County California group, and then was encouraged to merge with the Borrego Springs group. It’s a small world of little towns and big spaces under this open sky and the coordinator of the Borrego Springs group was none other than a client of mine!
Now that we have the two groups merged, it’s actually catching us at the least-busy time of year for cloudspotting here. Plain blue is installed almost without exception through about the end of July. We might get some thunderheads to look at in August! But if you’re in our catchment area, please join us and we can start sharing some of the clouds when they return from their sojourn.
1443 “Spinning World”. 17×9″ Mixed Media on solid panel. $110 Contains the poem: The earth spins around Twirling the clouds and making The sun seems to rise.
Finally got the last edits done to allow my latest poetry and painting book ‘My Next Breath’ to be available in Kindle as well as in print.
Here’s the link to the books page on my website which will show you all the books without having to hunt them down on Amazon – or you can just search for me on Amazon if you wish. I’ll be ordering physical copies soon for the studio so let me know if you’d like a signed copy directly from me.
