"Here there be Art Collectors."

One of the side benefits of the events of the last few months is that I have gotten back in touch with some artist friends who I have lost touch with over the years.  It is a sad testament to where my head was at for so long that I let insecurities, jealousies and petty human squabbles isolate me from the very tribe that gave me so many opportunities.  Opportunities for interesting projects to work on, opportunities for friendship with a broad spectrum of fascinating, creative people.  That was then though, this is now and getting back in touch is fun and enlightening. I say "enlightening" because I have learned just how wrong perceptions can be.

When I meet new people it is often the case that, after a time, I will hear a couple of particular phrases, usually after the friendship moves into the stage where we are getting to know more about the day to day of each other's lives.  When a new friend actually starts to get a feel for how difficult the life of a freelance artist is, usually in comparison to their own more standard form life, I have notice that eventually they reach a point of incomprehension.  It is as iff they cannot fathom how someone who has spent their life gathering skills and knowledge can be treated so shabbily by the world.  It is at this point that I usually hear:

"But you are so talented..."

"...there has to be a place where they will pay you for your skills..."

and finally

"You're so clever, you will figure it out (you always do)"

So for the non artists in the audience let me pause right here. If you ever feel the desire to say any of these phrase to an artist who has just told you they were having trouble finding clients or they might lose their house because they can't make the payments or they have to go move their van because they have been parked too long in one place and the neighbors might call the cops STOP TALKING.  We have all heard it and are tired of trying to come up with clever responses.  The only thing that should come out of your mouth at that point is possibly the tip of your tongue and your incisors neatly snip it off as a result of you biting down on it to prevent the words from issuing forth.

So you will understand my embarrassment when I find myself almost using the same phrases with the friends I am getting back in touch with, artists of skill levels far greater than my own but whom I come to find are in similar situations to my own, or much worse.  As I hear about pals who have been kicked around by the changing art market those same dreaded words begin to form on my own lips more out of incredulity than anything else. The manifold manner in which the stories propagate through the friends on my contact list is even more disturbing. Unfortunately it all fits into a pattern, and that pattern is the bass track to the cacophonous soundtrack that is the "Walmarting of America".

The problem is simple, Americans have never been a highly cultured people.  That can be witnessed by how many painting/ prints that Thomas Kincaid and the Keene sold over their careers. Even worse, with the advent of world markets that allow offshore art to borough in as "textile materials" and the internet serving as a gateway to the "World Market" art has ceased being a luxury item and it has become a commodity. Additionally, in a market driven by contracting paychecks and a communal lifestyle more about Large box stores than cottage industry the concept of PRICE point rears it's ugly head.

Most of my friends and I come from a time when there were Collectors", something we now speak of in the same hushed tones once reserved for the margins of maps where antiquarian cartographers scrawled...

"Here there be DRAGONS."

In the past we lived in the same ways that Defense contractors did in the heyday of the cold war, we did original paintings and sold them for high prices.  The trouble is now that model no longer works and a lot of artists haven't kept up with either the market nor the technology that fuels it changes.  This latter point makes me sad because as I listen to my pals bemoan the extinction of the wily art collector in the wild it becomes obvious that a lot of them are tired, confused and don't realize that even though things have changed they have not changed necessarily for the worse.

The truth is that if you are aware, pay attention and learn from the past the options for the freelance artists in the world are better than they have ever been.

What are they? Well we will talk about that tomorrow...