Letting go

I've had two emails today from recent buyers of my artwork and its poignantly reminded me again of what it's like to create a piece of artwork - either as a commission or as an exhibition piece - and to sell it to someone. If its a commission I know what I'm painting as the client has specific ideas and I just have to find out what they want and create it for them. If its a painting for an exhibition I paint something that I hope may appeal to someone, as the idea has appealed to me somehow. But either way the painting is created and either short term for commissions, or sometimes long term for exhibition pieces, the painting will be stored somewhere where I see it regularly. And I get used to seeing it, and I like looking at it, and get pleasure from it. And then, suddenly, its sold. Its gone. I don't see the original anymore. I can see a copy of it but not the real thing.......

..... and then today I get an email from the buyer of the erotic landscape of New York, the painting I've entitled "Towering passions". He came to meet me and collect the painting at the weekend and he just wanted to say a big thank you for the painting and to say that he'll miss looking at it when it goes as a Christmas present to its intended recipient! And I realised that he was going through what I did - getting pleasure from the painting being in his view for a short space of time before it went to to hang on someone else's wall full time.

And then later on today I got another email from the USA - from a fellow blogger who has recently bought another of my paintings, and who received it this week, and wrote to say thank you and to tell me she is delighted with it. Which in turn delights me. I love it when one of my paintings goes to live where it will give pleasure to the people who now own it.

And the really nice thing too is that I'm meeting some lovely people through my art and the circle continues when my art brings people to me, to commission one of my paintings, or I advertise my art and the people come to me through that .... because it turned out that I know the buyer of the erotic landscape, although I had no idea who he was when he commissioned the piece. I had no idea who he was when he walked through my door at the weekend, it was only when he told me his connection with someone I know from years ago that I realised exactly who he was!! What a joy to meet him and say hi. What a powerful pull art is, to bring people to me, and for my art to be pulled to them through the images I depict.