“Niobe” – mixed media, 7 x 9 inches (17.5 x 22.5 cm)
Some time back I wrote a journal post here in which I bemoaned the fact that a couple of pieces of artwork that I had just completed seemed to be falling flat with my usual public. In retrospect, I realize that I may have sounded petulant, and perhaps even just a tiny bit snobbish.
What’s changed since then, you may ask? Last week a total stranger walked into the shop where those particular works were on display and purchased one of the pieces in question — by far the more challenging of the two — “Niobe/The Immaculate Heart”. This was not a friend or relative browbeaten into making the purchase just to shut me up, but someone I didn’t know, an out-of-towner who just happened to be in the market for art.
In fact, “Niobe” only hung on the wall for a couple of months before finding a home. Like all artists, I can get a bit needy sometimes, looking for some sort of approbation or validation for my work from the people around me — these squirrelly little objects are like children to me, and it’s all too easy to interpret an apparent lack of enthusiasm from the public as rejection. In the grand scheme of things, however, two months to find a purchaser for something as intense as “Niobe” is pretty darned good: the weakness was not in the public, nor in the art, but in me, in my own confidence. It was me who didn’t appreciate the value of the art, not the public.
Consider me chastened.
Sales are still slow, and I realize that some pieces will probably end their lives packed away in my basement, or cannibalized for parts, or devoured by wild beasts — and some of them probably deserve such a fate — but but what matters is that I am making a connection, at least part of the time. It’s still worth doing.
I may know a lot about art and books and Bugs Bunny and the history of the Byzantine Empire, but I can see that I still have some things to learn about having a bit of faith.
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