COMMISSIONS

The Wedding Site

      Having successfully completed many commissions over the years, I feel qualified to give some advice and a few opinions. First of all, I recommend painting two versions of your commission. The second one can be painted in a looser style or you can tell yourself it’s just for fun .This second one can often be the better of the two considering you don’t have the onus of pleasing the patron attached to it. Then when you’re finished you can choose between them and have one left over to possibly sell at a later date. Secondly, it is best to email a charcoal drawing of the proposed image and get an approval before starting .Then send another “in progress image”. This will eliminate any problems with the patrons changing their minds midstream. Of course you need a simple contract that outlines the payment schedule and a date for completion of the painting. If you received the commission through your gallery, then the contract is with the gallery and should be signed by both parties. It is your responsibility to take care of this contract. Thirdly, take the best reference photos possible. I took a professional photograher with me to my last commission, the wedding site and I’m so glad I did since he climbed over a tall deer fence and lugged his equipment up a steep hillside in order to get the best shot. I would not have been able to do that myself.My last piece of advice is to send a follow up thank you note. Consider the commissions important sales since the patrons requested that you paint them. It is really very flattering and an honor.

GETTING STARTED

Hopefully I can encourage you to come into a relationship with your painting and record something, perhaps a feeling, or a sense of the place or season, and enjoy the process. Painting on location does help you get away from seeing painting as object oriented and instead, begin to paint without judgment. This is due partly to the time constraints of the changing sunlight forcing you to paint faster and partly from deepening your awareness of the natural word around you. As a professional full time artist, I have to continually reinvent myself. Success can actually stop your process and keep you making the same thing. I search for what really interests me, and then delve into it. It’s a challenge to start each new painting, to question why I paint. Every day I’m asking myself questions regarding my work, does the painting have a sense of space you can walk into, have I shown movement ,does the painting have power? Whether you are a beginner or experienced painter we can keep the beginner’s mind and always learn more about art and painting.  I believe drawing is the foundation to painting, but there is no realism test!  Start with simple basic shapes and experience the rich lovely texture of the paint and the brush stroke. When I give myself permission to welcome all the experiences and feelings, even the rough ones like when I have to scrap off what I started, I usually finish the session wanting to go back and try again

SENSE OF PLACE

 

 What is a sense of place?  It comes from my appreciation of the place based on my knowledge and history of it and it can also be how I am interdependent and a part of all of nature. In order to know a place I have to let it run through all my senses and perceptions until I am not just an observer, but a part of the whole. Maybe it’s a temporary part, like an ephemeral mayfly, but none the less, I breathe the oxygen, have a life force of energy and evolve just like everything living in the place. As I paint another bird’s nest view of the valley below I think of Turner and his skies. His belief that light represented God made him fill his canvases with light. Van Gogh said he felt most alive when painting. I think both these artists had a sense or spirit of place in their work. As artists we must go with our deep seated reverence of the land as a means of giving life to our canvas, but it’s the painting itself that takes precedent. It has to be a good painting and stand on its own more than it needs to be a realistic depiction of the place.

 

  In order to make a good painting with a sense of place, I am at my best if I can just paint all that I gather from the place, with nothing between me and the canvas, no anxiety, no expectation, no self consciousness, only painting the experience of the paint and the place .A sense of place is not a separate amplification of a vision or site, it exist, like beauty or love, from experiences. And when I am honest in expressing my experience  ,often  someone else will feel the same way when they view the painting .When that happens, it  gives me a sense of peace.