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Dear Art Lover, This is Part 1 of 4 in a series called “A Business of Art”. A Business of Art, Part 1 of 4: It’s Just Math As Seattle endures a significant cold snap, I’m driven indoors for studio work instead of my plein air (outside, from life) practice. Watercolor paint freezes in sub-freezing temperatures. I’m working on a solution, a few people have recommended mixing alcohol into the water to create the opportunity to paint in the cold. It sounds promising, but the forced change of methods of art practice has been welcome. I don’t mind the studio - it’s fun to approach different projects, to have more time and space to work on something repeatedly rather than all in one sitting. The new body of work isn’t quite ready to be shared - but don’t take my lack of new plein air watercolor landscapes to indicate that I haven’t been painting. Thank you to those of you who have been over to the studio and shared your impressions of this new direction, which I will be sharing eventually with a broader public audience. While I’ve been indoors, my plein air watercolors have been out in the world. Last week I received good news from a watercolor show, the “Arizona Aqueous XXXVIII”, held at the Tubac Arts Center in Tubac, AZ. I’ve never been, but had submitted work, and my piece “Plein Air, Mt Rundle and Golf Course, 11am-noon, Banff, 9.2.23”, was accepted by the juror Tracy Lynn Ross. I was informed the piece had won an award, the Juror’s Prize, with a cash amount, to boot. While I don’t paint for awards or recognition, it’s nice to have, and who doesn’t enjoy some prize money to offset shipping costs. In the new year, sales have slowed down significantly, which I expected. The campaign to sell work during my 2023 Holiday Sale was rigorous - and leaned on the recipients of this email list heavily. When most art narratives around me are “people are buying less art” or calling un-creatively to “support art!”, and other nonsense - I turned up the heat to max on my marketing (emailing!) for the months approaching the new year. The campaign was, by any metric, successful. At the end of 2023, 27 pieces sold to 22 different clients, representing in dollars 23% of the theoretical max amount to be earned had all available pieces sold. In any marketing campaign, as I understand it, 10% is a “successful campaign”, while anything above is extraordinary. So, again, thank you to the clients who invested in art in 2023. While I don’t expect my continued email communication 5x/week to continue to push math in the direction I’d love it to go, I figured, what’s the harm? Of course, there are many people currently unsubscribing to this email list. Anyone wishing to can! All email lists not intentionally grown will organically decay over time. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been asking any of you true believers who enjoy these messages to do whatever you feel like doing to recruit a few of your contacts to sign up. If you’re really enjoying these messages, and you feel like every single one of your email contacts should get them too, send me a .csv file of your whole contact list. This is a semi-serious suggestion, one that if everyone who enjoys these emails actually (and perhaps… irresponsibly…) followed up on I would likely have a sustainable art practice for life. I’m not kidding - it’s just math. — Thus concludes “A Business of Art, Part 1 of 4: It’s Just Math” Stay tuned for tomorrow’s "Part 2 of 4: A Numbers Game” As ever, if you haven’t already, sign up for email newsletters on my website, and encourage anyone you think would enjoy them to as well. Cheers, David
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