Words that turn me on....

........."The Arts Festival thanks you for your submissions to the Open Art Competition and Exhibition and is delighted to exhibit your work"...... such sexy words - along with "Hi Jackie, we're interested in a painting of yours that we've seen recently and wondered if we could come and see it again?" - Oh yes!!! Course you can!!........

Now I know that just because the arts festival want to hang three of my paintings, and the fact that someone wants to come and see one of my tiger paintings again, doesn't necessitate a sale on either count, its a start, and I'm happy that there's interest!

Some years ago I met a woman who really liked one of my paintings - it was a weird surreal painting she'd seen at an exhibition, and she absolutely raved over it! I must have bumped into her five or six times over the course of the next eighteen months, and everytime I saw her she mentioned this particular painting and how much she liked it, and wanted to come and see me, and view it again. It got to the point when I was just about to blow my top at her, for wasting my time even bringing up the subject, since she obviously had no intention of ever doing what she was promising, but then, one day, she came to see me, looked at the picture and said "I've just got to buy it!" and I realised that it had sort of haunted her in someway - she had fallen in love with it, and just had to own it, to view it everyday, and that her life wouldn't ever be complete until she had purchased it. And that, for me, is why people should buy art - because they love it so much, they need to look at it because it fills something within them. I love it when that happens - particularly when its something I've painted and people make an emotional connection to it.

So, just because someone has seen one of my paintings, doesn't mean they're going to buy it, but it might set an idea growing, and they just might come back to me, and they might just buy it at some time in the future........ maybe...