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

To Post a Daily Photo or Not?

I have done the daily photo challenge since 2012. I got if off the internet as a way other photographers were encouraging themselves to take pictures. I have proven to myself I don't need to do that. I take pictures. I take my camera to lots of places. I make up excuses to take my camera places.

I take pictures of flowers and reflections in ponds and pictures I am painting and my pets and how deep the snow was. And dead Raven Wings with rain drops.

I don't need a challenge to take photographs. But doing the challenge for seven years has resulted in a nice sorting of my photos and been an assistance to finding photos to print, enlarge, enter in contests, or use for banners and on blogs. And it forced me to post frequently on my various pages and also blog routinely.

But having blown it a few times this year on numbering the photos, and a dwindling readership on this blog I find myself bristling at beginning another year of the challenge. And a couple photographer friends who took part of this journey with me have moved to another way of expressing themselves.

I am giving myself permission to change - and change my mind. I am going to focus on more free form in blogs and maybe even in photography. It is no long about capturing the perfect landscape in my travels or the perfect dawn outside my studio. Binford-Bell Studio page will still do that. And Binford's Back Country Photos  I promise won't be as abandoned as it has been this last couple of years.

And I promise to update the other pages on this blog with more current inventory. And as I move through the coming year of creative shift I will blog more about the journey I am on and the creative process.

Happy travels to us all. Hope you come along for the ride.

Note: All photos on this page are from my blog archives. No numbers and no years but they span a few.

I Will Always Paint - A creative Process Blog

Painting is for me a journey which began in my preschool days with watercolors on Mother's Italian Linen table cloth. She was not always that thrilled with my early artistic expressions but did contribute to an endless supply of coloring books, paper, and crayons. It kept me away from the walls and the tablecloths.

I will always paint and draw and fill sketch books and canvas.

I did not begin photography until seven when my father gave me his old Kodak Brownie camera and slipped me extra in my allowance to develop the pictures I took. When, because of living conditions I could not paint, I took pictures. And when I had studio space and could paint I took pictures as a basis for paintings.

Currently my photography seems to be in ascendancy. That could be due to the economy. Or that I showcase it better on this blog and my Facebook studio page. Obviously it easier to come up with a post per day in photography than a post per week even in paintings. And I view my photography as just another artistic medium like watercolor or oil sticks or Mother's table cloth. Photography is just a digital painting with light and pixels. When printed on canvas people even think they are paintings.

Sold another digital painting last week. And was also offered the opportunity to hang my photographs in another venue in a town with no art galleries.  The economy has not been kind to art galleries. And I have not done a weekly review of my photographs on this venue for a month though I continue to post a daily photograph on my studio page.

I am going through a reassessment of art and my life as 2018 winds down.

I will always paint. I will always have to get my hands (and clothes) covered with paint. But photography currently pays for my painting supplies when once my paintings used to pay for my photography equipment.

I will continue to blog on this platform but I am giving myself more freedom on the subject and the timing. Sidetracked Charley, my more freestyle blog, has a greater readership than this one. But this one still functions as my web page for paintings and photography.Hopefully you have looked at the other pages behind this blog.

I will continue to blog. Just giving myself freedom to blog about what is moving me at this moment in my artistic journey.

Canyons, Fat Grass, and High Plains - A Creative Process Blog

High Plains of New Mexico

In 2004 my sister and I went on our first Thelma and Louise road trip to Utah. I was not seriously painting at that time. In fact, Lunacy Limited, my papier mache mask business was still going. But I was bored with it. And still struggling with the effects of a head injury on working in three dimensions. The canyons of the Colorado Plateau woke something in me and I came back from that first Utah trip determined to capture it in paint.

I had been trained in the fine arts and University of New Mexico and watercolor was a long lost love I still played around with as a hobby. So my first paintings of the canyons were on watercolor paper. But time had marched on and there was watercolor canvas and liquid watercolors and metallic ink pens. I came back with pictures I used as models but it was the feeling I had absorbed while standing in the magical land I had to paint. I had to translate the emotion to the viewer of the finished painting.

Canyon March to the Moon

And obviously I did. I won prizes and sold paintings. The mask business was soon history. There are several ways to go as a painter. You can paint what you love or you can paint what sells. The latter had been how I ran my mask business so I fell into that with painting. Until I got tired of painting ten mission churches in two weeks for the next big show. Then I quit painting for almost three years.

Mystic Mustangs

When I went back to painting it was because I missed painting, and I still felt I had something deep inside which had to be translated so others could read it. I must love my subject. I deeply love the Colorado Plateau. They continue to inspire me. But another painter recently took me on a tour of the land which inspires him - the high plains of north eastern New Mexico. I came home with more than a 100 photos and a need to paint the feeling of that day on the plains.

First let me say, I do not do green. It isn't in my palette. I cannot wait for fall to go back and record the scenes which so turned me on in fall colors. Meanwhile I could not wait to put my feelings on canvas. If you are used to my orange and red canyons and my yellow churches the paintings below will seem strange. I have often said I do not do greens.

But I do skies and I do alone. I may put horses or crows or a woman spinning clouds into a landscape but basically it is the emptiness of the landscape, the silence but for the wind or distant thunder. I do not do cities except in photography. And a fan told me my buildings always look abandoned.

Alone on the High Plains
14 x 30 mixed media on artists canvas $1050

Home in the Fat Grass
20 x 30 mixed Media on artists canvas $1500

I begin my next challenge today. I am painting the interior of a Johnson Mesa church. It's empty. I am alone in my studio.

Week Six - 2014 in Images

Day 36
Winter had been so rare that year, one had to pause to recognize it.

We finally got a bit of winter this week. It merited recording. This is also been a week when I have been actively revising my definition of photography. The digital world has mad it so much more than just the recording of events or chronicling a great sunset. And a whole subset of photography has grown up which finds it limiting to be called photographers. Terms like digital artist or digital painter are bantered about. Nobody knows quite what to do with us.

Day 37
House to let

I am not quite sure what to do. Photography was initially and adjunct to my painting. And then it became a replacement for my painting. And then it became this other art I practice. I am not just into pretty pictures. I want windows into another world. I want to record what the casual viewer walking through the landscape may often miss. Make the ordinary stand out.

Day 38
The old bell stood silent witness.

I am probably a bad photographer in the classic definition because I really do not care about f-stop or that painful clarity of detail which distracts often from the image. I do not lug tripods around. I walk through my world and record what strikes my fancy.

Day 39
Winter came early that year before the gardening was quite done.

I have all these pixels at my disposal and software to manipulate the image. My goal is to capture what others miss. Everyone with a soul stops in awe of a sunset but they miss the icicles blowing in the freezing rain.

Day 41
A moment frozen in time

Of that for one short moment the sun came out behind the week of clouds and created a shadow across the snow.

Day 42
The shadow entity

But the last few weeks I have gone back to my original use for photography. Recording my progress with painting.

Day 40
Soon to be High Pueblo Dawn I hope

Week 5 - 2014 in Images

Day 29

My mind has been into painting. Photography has taken a definite back seat. I still take the camera when I go our or to just do a spin around the house and studio. But mostly the camera has been picked up to take progress photos of paintings I am working on. Besides the January landscape (and I am mostly interested in landscapes) has been very boring. Not any snow and too early for spring flowers and the sky has been largely gray. Except for that one cold day when the fog froze on the trees.

Day 30

Now that was a sky that day. New Mexico can have such awesome skies. They are not just blue but all shads of blue and sometimes on the same day and in the same photo. But that was one day out of a week of days and soon I was back to aiming my camera at just anything. I have weeks during the 365 days of the year when I am taking so many photos I do not have to take any more for maybe a month but I do and I get way ahead on the photo of the day task. Not this last couple of weeks.

Day 31

So I go back and borrow from previous weeks. This one was Day 28 in black and white last week. I like it in color.

Day 32

I love color and I have been working on paintings in vivid colors at the moment because it is so very gray outside. So gray I was hoping for white. But when the white came it too seemed gray. It did not do that New Mexico thing of snowing and then clearing up so you had the stark contrast of blue sky and white land.

Day 33

No sunshine so even the red of the tail lights beneath the snow looked grayed. And the landscapes were just shades of gray.

Day 34

So when I took a picture of my black and white cat in a sunspot in the studio I was not satisfied even with the rust colored carpet. I had to play with color.

Day 35 - Scrappy in neon

So if the weather doesn't improve expect more insane play in the dry darkroom this next week.

Week 29 - 365 day challenge in photography

The week in photography began slowly. You are probably tired of hearing about it but life has been busy. I relied on photos I had previously taken to meet the daily challenge. There are always those photos you take but do not get back around to doing justice too. The one below falls into that category. In the month of August I am going to devote more time to learning some new post processing techniques like filling and layering and object removal, etc.

And I want to dedicate more camera time to shadows. I was quite happy with how the one below came out. But my skills at shadows are not nearly as developed as my mastery of reflections. Yes, I do think practice has made me quite good at reflections.

Day 197

Day 198

The rains brought out the flowers and the butterflies so I got to devote some lens time to working on my macro skills. I do not technically have a macro lens so my flowers are either taken with my long zoom which does quite well as a macro or my wide angle with ample cropping. The long lens means I can stay at a distance and not scare the butterflies.

Day 199

Day 200

Thunderstorms re-entered my area of focus. Because of rising thermals some of these clouds became enormous. The valley floor to approximate tops of mountains is about 3000 feet so you do the math of tops of mountains to tops of clouds.

Day 201

 More macro practice. My sister, and fellow photographer, Deborah Binford Baker, is the master of the macro. I feel blessed to have an ever widening circle of photographer friends. I gain a lot of inspiration and knowledge from being out with them on exhibitions. See Binfords' Back Country Photography for more of my sister's work.

I got out of the neighborhood the end of this week! My friend, Terry, came in from Virginia and we hit the road. Literally. This will be the third year she has come out to New Mexico and we have taken in the photographic opportunities. For an introduction to the work of Terry Atkin Rowe see tArt - Photography and Art.

Always fun to be out with another photographer. It seems to increase my own creativity. You are standing side by side pointing your cameras often at the same object and I just feel driven to somehow do it differently. See it differently. Week 30 and 31 should be an explosion of creative images.

I must confess, however, in the instance of the photo below it was happy accident. I had my camera on my wrist harness and reached up to adjust the stampede strap on my hat so it would not be blown off and accidentally depressed the shutter button a few times.

Day 202- Walking the high bridge

The grinning truck, however, was deliberate. Admittedly when I was standing in front of this grill it was reminding me of something from a Stephen King novel. The Ford pickup is a basis of a homemade camper that served as a home for one of the notables in Taos. She is now less than mobile and her former home is a piece of lawn art at the B & B where my friend stayed, the Old Taos Guesthouse. Was invited to breakfast before my friend left for Santa Fe.

Day 203

Note: The above blog has been amended from that originally posted. In my early days of blogging I was informed that beyond a correction of a typo such things were just not done. But I confess to having the week entirely wrong and had posted one photo in both Week 28 and Week 29 blogs. That just would not do because it left this delightful old truck dangling between weeks in never, never land.

Mea Culpa.

Week 11 of the 365 Day Challenge

Day 70

Took a break this week from lessons as it were and just played around with my camera, taking a picture of whatever I wanted. The above urn has been a frequent focus but I have always been trying to delete the railing in my photographs. This time I embraced it. Really like the result.

Day 71

There is what we think the week is about and what it turns out to be about. I thought I was giving myself free rein but in fact I ended up revisiting subjects of stopping to take pictures of familiar views or objects I had driven by so many times; always saying I should stop. The above mining car fits into the latter category. It is on the lawn of the Raton Visitor's Center. I stopped finally.

Day 73

And another picture taken on the day I stopped. I love the abstract nature of this photo. I used to diligently post process a whole upload of photos (or ignore them because of my schedule), but what is working for me now is rating the photos on the first pass through and then going back and post processing one or a few at a time. Yesterday I took over 500 photos of Big Horn Sheep. (See Binford-Bell Studio/Big Horn Sheep on the Rio Grande). Just one pass to delete the obvious and rate the others was exhausting enough. By picking at my food as it were, what I do with one photo does not influence what I do with its neighbors in the file. You can begin to see an image as too precious to play with.

Day 72

This French door on a greenhouse I visit often is a frequent subject of my photos. Most images are taken from the outside. And I like it especially when the humidity in the green house causes the condensation on the panes of glass. Works best when it is a grey day outside. The sun was shining weakly on this day and the light it cast across the sandstone caused me to change my perspective from outside to inside. The image required the cloning out of several annoying distractions on the floor but I needed the practice and the final result seemed worth it. Next grey day I want to put some dead leafs from the plants on the floor under the bench. A week of still life images has made me think about setting up a photo.

Day 74

I love the placement of this picnic table. And like the French doors I have taken so many pictures of it. Mostly all from a different perspective; downhill looking up. The shadows on the snow caught my attention this day as I was walking down the hill toward the pond.

Day 75

The above picture was just because it was there. I like the bud, the flower and the died dead blossom all in the same frame. I usually try to tone down geraniums. Their colors are too showy for me. But in this photo I upped that showiness. I used an enamel effect because it also turned the plain stucco wall into a bloom to rival the geranium. The same post processing program effect was used on the photograph below but this time to add color to dry twigs and their shadows against a stucco wall.

Day 76

One Subject - Several Views

Butterfly Amaryllis

Monet painted over and over the water lilies in his garden pond. When I lived in Washington, D.C. I had the opportunity of standing before two of his water lily compositions at the National Gallery of Art. They were wall size - floor to ceiling and placed on two walls that met in a corner. Standing there you felt surrounded by his subject and just a bit overwhelmed.

Artists do repeat themselves with a subject that entices until they feel they gotten it right. Beginning on January 15th I took numerous photographs of my Butterfly Amaryllis as it has bloomed, withered and then bloomed and withered again.

Post Processed

I have tried different angles, different effects and even gone black and white for a subject that seems to be all about color.

Spreading its wings

The Butterfly Amaryllis is difficult to photograph because it always blooms in twins and is huge from tip of one flower to the tip of the other. And the depth of each blossom is almost four inches.

Dying Swans

As the second set of twins slowly opened I found my photographer's eye drawn to the withering blossoms of the first set of blooms.

Taking a bow

Even fading from its full glory it maintains wonderful color and grace. I could not trim the husks from the plant as my mother would have advised because they were still magical expressions of nature.

Turning away from the light

I think of all the pictures I took of this flowering event in my studio the one above is my favorite in its utter simplicity and to me statement of a profound moment. I found this dying blossom as it wilted and turned away from the light spoke volumes to me of the process of living things. And in the ability of artists to delve deeply into one subject through repetition. My one question, however, is do we ever get it totally right?