Three New Giclée Prints

Crown Grove

I decided to send off three photographs to a new printer I have found on line. They were having a sale and it seemed a good time to invest in inventory which could be sold during the holiday season.

The real plus with photography is it can be kept in the computer till time to sell. This is different than painting which requires an investment in materials before you even begin. So when money is short giclée prints are unrealized. Good for the photographer but difficult for the art buyer. They have a difficult time looking at a digital image on their computer and imagining it hanging on the wall.

And I have in the years of selling giclée canvas prints dealt with printers personally. Even sat at their side and approved changes they made before printing. And I have gotten the canvas or paper prints and done my own stretching, framing or matting. Prints on paper, matted and framed are very easy to do in house . . . or in studio and at times I have simply done a print and mailed it to the buyer for them to have framed. It is a big problem shipping a frame with glass. And expensive.

Stretched canvas art is lighter and easier to ship. But another side effect of having my photographs printed on canvas is the buyer (and the viewer) often sees them as paintings. They sell cheaper than paintings but obviously translate as "art" more than prints on paper under glass. And the price point is definitely attractive to the buyer. Businesses like Enchanted Circle Brewery in Angel Fire seek art on their walls. And it is easier for us artists to provide it if it is a canvas print.

Heading Home

It is going to be a good year to sell art. I say optimistically. Two years of galleries and studios being shut down has homeowners wanting art on their walls. Especially all the new home owners following the recent real estate boom. And it looks as if supply chain issues will not be a consideration with local artists. The items you buy from local artists will not be lost in a container which fell off a barge in the harbor.

And most of us switched to buying our supplies locally when the pandemic shut everything down in 2021. Whether printers will have issues with canvas and inks remains to be seen. It just seemed wise to have some of my images put on canvas to hang on walls even if the wall space is getting scarce. But I sold four paintings off my walls and two giclée's off the Brewery walls so it seemed a good time to invest.

 

Bench in Autumn 

 

And the really good news is these can be reprinted. Part of this exercise was to determine the turn around time required by my new professional printer.

Golden Days of Indian Summer

Standing out in a crowd

Some autumns are just better than others. This one was different. It looked like snow would come early but after a couple brief false starts it went away. Nights have been cold but the days warm. Windy and busy so I have had to sneak in my leaf peeping. But after years living here I have most of the most spectacular show offs memorized like the crown grove below. The weather conditions gave it more red and orange this year. 

Crown grove

But there were some surprises like when I got lost down an off road in Valley of the Utes. loved the layers of colors visible from the top of a hill.

Valley of the Utes 

The winds blew the high clouds around and in the photo below seemed to give this grove of aspen a halo or tiara.

But sometimes it isn't about a huge grove of color but the light within the grove. Autumn light in a New Mexico forest has a unique color and feel.

Bench in the shade of aspens

Gold on a familiar hillside

And There Is Life

Lonely Cloud and On the Edge

And the official studio tour was again cancelled. And it looked to be death to arts yet again. But we all did not go so easily into the dark. It becomes irritating to be deemed non-essential for another year. Music from Angel Fire decided to protest and continue its concerts. And give space to a select group of artists in their lobby. As one of the chosen I took paintings down from the wall to haul into the light.

It always feels a little artificial to chose which to show off. Which creation to sacrifice? Which to say, these I am most proud of? I had just finished Return of the Yei on the upper right. After a year I was relieved to have it off the easel. I sold the little shelf duo on the table at the exhibit. And at the South Loop Studio Tour I sold Rio Grande Rio in the upper left.

Exhibit at Music from Angel Fire Gallery 2021

The Enchanted Circle South Loop Studio tour was the rebellion born by artists talking at the MFAF Gallery Exhibits. It was a rag tag group of 14 artists started from three. We were scattered around in six studios with only two weeks to get it all together. Meetings held on Zoom. Grand ideas and no time and no budget. A couple hasty press releases and just promoting on social media sources. Not everyone knowing how to do that. Lots of work for possibly no business. But there was interest. And they found their way to our studios with no big fancy brochure and map. And so what if it was just locals. They bought art.

Rio Grande Rio
SOLD

Tres Amigos
SOLD

And since that magical weekend the movement seems to have continued. I have rehung paintings and rearranged and then gotten a call to hold this one or that one to be picked up this week from the studio or the Shuter Library of Angel Fire where an exhibit of my paintings have been hiding out through the pandemic.

Return of the Yei
16 x 30 Mixed Media on Artists Canvas
$1200

The activity has inspired me to paint again. In case you missed it I was debating not painting again. I figured Return of the Yei would be my last painting. Wild Goose Witchery creations also did well at the rogue studio tour. But to have it look like an active art studio I had begun another big canvas to sit on the easel. And doing a couple 5x5's for the Shuter Library fund raiser I ordered more paints and some new brushes.

Diptych of 5x5's
Mixed media on artist canvas

 

Paintings Returned to the Studio

Lonely Cloud
30 x 18 Watercolor on artists canvas
$1350

 For those of you which have followed this developing drama of the lost painting I am happy to report it has been found. And the mystery solved. Just before the shut down last year a visitor had called about buying this painting. Evidently at that time the facilities manager then (there was a whole series of temporary ones) had taken it down and put in a safe place for her to come back and buy it. Covid-19 interrupted a lot of things.

Window to the Past
20 x 19 Mixed Media on artists canvas
$720

And normal routines were no longer normal. I had photographic giclee prints on canvas locked away at two businesses which were shut down, paintings at the library which was also closed, and at the airport which wasn't. But I was one of those told to stay home and stay safe. I ventured out only to get groceries or to pick up mail. I lost track of what art was where.

Home on the Fat Grass
20 x 30 Mixed Media on Canvas
$1500

And with our governor deciding art was non-essential I had doubts about moving forward with the studio and arts at all. So did it matter if the inventory was up to date or correct.

Over the Edge
20 x 30 Watercolor on canvas
$975

On the Edge
30 x 18 Watercolor on Artists Canvas
$1350

For a few years I had been called back to my on the edge series of impending doom. Premonition of the pandemic? Or just my dark side coming out?

Purple Sage
19 x 36 Mixed Media on Artists Canvas
$1600

 Who knows but for some reason it was those paintings which were missed on my airport records. Those which I thought were boxed up in storage in the box room until I went there to search for Lonely Cloud and found all the boxes empty. Now they are all home and hung on the walls of the studio or my living room or designated to be hung in the new VRBO guest house.

Sometimes the Message is Mixed

Big Blue

 I donated the above small painting to the Shuter Library fund raiser. And it sold big. I am thrilled and a bit overwhelmed. Just before our state was totally shut down I had the opportunity to hang a lot of my paintings at the library. It is a wonderful venue in a town which no longer has art galleries. We once had three. Then suddenly the places my art and photography could be seen closed. Even my studio was closed. Only the county airport was open.

The library is now open again. I need to go there to fill the space where Big Blue was hung. And I have to go tomorrow to the Airport and remove my paintings there. They are remodeling the terminal where art hung. Win one, lose one. I have forgotten what paintings are hanging there. Have not a clue what I am going to do with them. Some I can hang in the AirBnB. Most will be boxed and stored. 

Night Run
18 x 24 Mixed media on canvas
$1050

I forget what is there. This one for sure. I love this one. Something else will have to come down in the studio so it can go up. 

Homage and Portal
Both watercolor on canvas 14 x 46
$1200 each

I lost the individual photos of the above two works of watercolor hanging at the Airport. That was the great computer debacle of 2010. And I have lost the painting below Lonely Cloud. I thought it was at the airport. Someone saw it there and wanted to buy it. Didn't. My inventory says it is at my studio. Cannot find it. That is the trouble on hanging your art in every available spot.

I have the sketch and I have the photograph. I could try it again. But I am not good at copying and it will no doubt be different. There is always the hope it would be better.

Other Side of Tomorrow
20 x 16 watercolor on canvas
$720

And per my inventory that is all I have to pick up tomorrow. Just four paintings. Clearly my inventory needs some work. And my photo files of my work. In the last transfer to a new computer Carbonite deleted some of the titles.

Clearly A Post is Overdue

I may have been looked down most of 2020 beginning in March but I was not locked up. I did get out with my camera but to familiar places I knew would be people free or close to it. And within the range of a half tank of gas in the Explorer. But some of the photos were also taken from a really safe space like my deck or my studio.

Or my yard once the snow had melted. And whether it was I was more intent upon things within my range zone or because of lack of people disturbing their space there just seemed to be more visitors to my yard like the bumble bee below.

 

Or this Western Tiger Swallowtail butterfly.

And it was an incredible fall. But about that time my computer failed and maybe my hope because all the venues for artists to peddle their wares were cancelled. Even our Studio Tour. Depression became the pandemic that needed to be defeated. I forced myself to get out and take photos but the complexity of Windows 10 on the new computer presented me with challenges I did not seem to be able to defeat. And my paintings stopped.

Yesterday with a photography contest to enter I finally devoted hours to unpuzzle where my photos landed and how to access them. And developed a strategy to be able to utilize them.

And I realized there was an unfinished painting on my easel.