The Changing Art Market

Sunlight in the Valley
SOLD print 1/20

I quit being a project control engineer for a major international construction firm and returned to New Mexico with no solid plan on how I was going to support myself beyond an advantageous marriage. I did manage a fairly decent income with freelance writing, and then stumbled into a mask making business because of my association with the costumer for a dance company in the state.

Lunacy Limited was quite successful until I literally fell on my head after being hit by a skier. Up to that point I had broken into all the better fairs, several good galleries around the country and a wholesale market which came too close to feeling like a slave shop. Recovery from the CBT took longer than I wanted and threw me out of step with my "business plan."

Fortunately two therapies I had picked for myself, photography and watercolor painting, opened new opportunities just about the time the economy crashed,  galleries began going belly up, and art fairs became more entertainment that vendor opportunities. By then I had my studio which was open to the public and easily was accepted in just enough fairs to cover costs with my sales.

Now the art market has returned to begging for space on restaurant walls. If you are lucky they ask you. One of my venues is the Enchanted Circle Brewery in Angel Fire, New Mexico. The owner wanted me to hang my photography, which to that point was winning awards in exhibits but I thought second to my painting, which had a higher price point because of where the market had crashed. I resisted doing giclee prints of my original work but photography was different. I fell in love with giclee prints on canvas of select photographs. No broken glass or scratch frames and if the print is damaged just reprint. And if print one of 20 is sold print number two.

The economy seems to be picking up a bit and happily so are sales of giclee prints from the Brewery. Sometimes you just get lucky. At a younger age I might have wanted to be Ansel Adams or Georgia O'Keeffe. Now I am just happy to have local recognition and a market. And to sell a painting now and then because I love to paint.

Big Blue 1
SOLD print 2/20

Clouds' Illusions
For Sale Now

What is Being Printed

Ghost Elk of Santa Clara

Between the blog just before this about my choices of what images to have printed, and decision time I took more photographs on a great trip over the high plains. It is always nice to get off the deck and out with my camera. And being with another photographer always makes me pause and look at the options closer or linger longer. There is always the obvious and the elusive.

Main Street Gone

With Ana McCracken we discovered a surprising past in Wagon Mound and a wonderful old crumbling building in Miami. The array of opportunities was inspiring. And I was once  again amazed at how differently two photographers can record the same reality. We decided to do it again only this time over the Johnson Mesa and into Folsom and the grasslands of New Mexico.

Here, There, and Beyond

As I have mentioned before in this space photography began as a way for me to record my life much like a visual journal. Than it became a tool for me to capture images to translate into paintings in my studio. It is only in the last few years I have become to appreciate photography as an art within itself. And within the last couple of years it has become a profit center.

When I am out and about taking pictures it is the first two purposes which govern. I seldom, if ever, think this is a money shot. The elk on the wall in an abandoned hardware store in old Santa Clara and the window in a crumbling old building in Miami were because I felt driven to record for me. The photograph of the clouds below were for paintings. And because it just seemed such a wow moment in clouds building over the distant mountains.

Clouds Illusions

And the tree below was so wonderful in shape and form it had to be recorded as a possible inspiration for a painting or just an element in a future painting. I was surprised when I posted it on my Back Country Photography  page how popular it was.

A Tree Grows Beside It

And then there are the subjects I just love to record - old trucks. I just love old trucks. And this spring I was down in Ojo with another photographer Terry Atkin Rowe who also loves old trucks. And we were able to take pictures of our two favorite trucks. I also love playing around on photo editing with trucks. I have come to see them as a canvas for pixils. I also turn them into mixed media paintings. But they are the closest to a money shot as I have in my portfolio.  My giclee canvas prints of my old trucks sell. That is why they get selected to be printed but not why they are captured on my camera.  The problem was of all the photos of these two trucks which would I print first.

Big Red Chevy

Big Blue Profile

And, of course no run of giclee prints on canvas is complete without at least one pure landscape of the land I love.

Old Mike from Spyglass

The above will soon be displayed on the walls of Enchanted Circle Brewing. I am grateful for the opportunity to show my images there. I have picked sizes based on what fits. But all these can be printed in the size you want. Or any of the images that did not get picked in this round of what I can afford to have transferred from my camera to my computer to canvas.