Yesterday, a coworker wandered into my office, saw “Burning” sitting on a shelf in my desk, and asked me about it. We had a one-minute discussion about it, where he asked the usual: “what does it represent?” I said something about burning leaves, and then he made toward the door.
He stopped, though, and decided to tell me a story about how he’d bought a painting over the weekend. While in another town on vacation, he went into a gallery, filled with paintings by an “old hippie-type dude” (his description). The artist was tall and lanky, wearing cutoff jean shorts that were too big for him and were tied with a rope belt. His clothes were covered with paint, his long hair pulled back into a ponytail. Seeing a piece he liked, my coworker told the artist, “I want to buy one of your paintings.”
“I don’t sell my paintings. They’re all for me. I will make you a print of it, though. It will be 1 of 1.”
The artist had a giclee print made of the painting, and sold it to my coworker for $150. It sounded like, though he left the encounter somewhat satisfied with a print, my coworker really wanted to have the actual painting. He seemed as baffled as I was by the idea of an artist who refused to sell any of his work.
With very few exceptions, every piece of my work is for sale.
When I create a piece, the urgency and hunger that I felt while making it disappear completely when it’s done. If a painting or sculpture of mine inspires a new spark in someone else, I want them to have the original. I’m fine with offering prints of a drawing, but I don’t know that I’d ever feel right offering prints of a painting. The loss of texture drains some of the life out of it.
That, and I’m a crappy photographer. If I can’t stick it into my scanner, it’s gonna lose a lot in translation.
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