Alchemy

I've been searching for a long time for a gallery. One that's right for me. Because I don't fit the criteria of most galleries. I'm not a traditional artist and I'm not contemporary either. I love doing erotic art and painting fantasy, but I enjoy painting old buildings, tigers, cats, dancers and horses too. But now I'm in the Guild of Erotic Artists, and it is an outlet for my erotic art, I felt it was time that I found another gallery for the vanilla stuff too. And with that in mind, I've spent this last week searching for possible places. Cities are the obvious place to start, and I'll look further into them in the future, but sometimes the less obvious places can yield interesting results too. And there was one place on the map that seemed to have what I was looking for. So that was where I went over the weekend, to see if my hunch was right. And it seemed it was - a small town just far enough out of London to be in the commuter belt, so there was money there. A town that had an individual feel to it, with unique shops with their own personalities rather than the faceless sprawls that most towns have become with all the same national names plastered up and town the high street. A town that had a nice ambiance to it, so the people were happy. And better still a town with a number of art galleries, which meant that the people not only liked art, but bought it regularly enough to keep the galleries in business. I liked the look of the place and started my search. I had done some browsing on the internet before I went, and there was one particular gallery that had really caught my eye, and that was the one I found towards the end of the day. It was purpose built, bright and fresh, had good artwork at reasonable prices and I liked the guy running it - we had similar forthright personalities and as we chatted both said that the other seemed to be saying all the right things. And even better, he said that the artist set the retail price and he took 50% commission. Other galleries I've spoken to have asked what I as the artist want, and then add a whole load on for themselves. So for instance if I wanted £300, they'd sell the painting for £2,000 and to me that's a lot of a difference! So, to hear this gallery owner say that he wanted 50% was very fair, to me. And he seemed to be good at his job since he'd been in the business over 30 years, and had a lovely light and airy bespoke building for his gallery with the no doubt costly overheads to go with it. So he looked at my website as I looked at his gallery which gave us both time to decide if we wanted to do business with each other. It seemed that we did. He asked what sort of art I did, and I said I was an erotic artist but I wasn't looking for an outlet for erotic art as I have the Guild of Erotic Artists gallery for that, but intriguingly, he wasn't at all interested in my landscapes or animal paintings, he was actually looking for an erotic artist as a client of his had suggested only last week that he sell more erotic art! And then a few days later I walked through his door! A good sign for us both! So after he'd looked at my website, and decided exactly what sort of thing he was looking for, he's asked me to go away and do some fresh artwork on that theme. How exciting! I shall love doing that for him, but it'll take a while to think of exactly the right subject matter. And if he likes them, maybe that will lead on to bigger paintings based on them. It all looked very promising. Especially as we discussed an up and coming artist whose artwork I like, mostly for the colours he used in a set of paintings I'd seen, and its those colours the gallery owner wants for the artwork he wants from me - again, a good sign! And to add interest for me, this artist regularly sells his artwork for £6,000 to £13,000. A bit more than I sell my artwork for at the moment - although I'm working on it! LOL The gallery owner asked me what I wanted as an artist and I said cheekily to be "Rich and famous!" and he laughed and said that I could be famous and I could make him rich! His cheeky response made me laugh out loud delightedly!


This week my spiritual healer friend referred to me as "The Alchemy Artist" because I was taking some of my old mediocre paintings and painting over them to produce far better paintings - or as she called them "breathing new air over them and re-creating them as masterpieces of mystery and magic" - I love that idea! She tells me that I should believe in myself and my talent and magic can happen. I believe it. And I hope so. I think I've had some of that this week. Having said that, for magic to happen I've got to work for it. It won't just appear. I've worked hard for how far I've got todate. I have to continue working hard for the next batch of magic - but I think it just might be in a little town I visited yesterday..............