6/28/2015 11:48:34 AM
Why I Pulled Out of Galleries Part II
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At the time, I was making two types of landscape paintings. One type was landscape studies from life and the second type were invented scenes. My plein air studies, for me, were just for learning. They were like an extension of my sketchbook. I didn’t want the pressure of trying to make a painting on the spot. I loved just sitting down and trying to understand the landscape. So I never really showed any of those in the galleries. It almost didn’t even occur to me to do so. The invented landscapes were made with design in mind, composition, mood and aesthetic appeal. These I made specifically to show in galleries. But there were specific reasons why I was doing so many more landscapes than figures. And most of these reasons were financial.
First, it was much easier to sell a landscape painting over a figure painting, at least in my experience. Second, the models were free. I never once had to pay the landscape to sit for me. And lastly, I wasn’t efficient enough in the figure work I was doing to make it financially responsible to do it. It took me often 4-10 times as long to complete a figure piece as it did to do a landscape of similar size. And I couldn’t sell my figures for 4-10 times as much. As a young artist who was trying to make my living as an artist, I had to be reasonably responsible with my decisions. Add to that the fact that I was trying to provide for a young family of five and the pressures were enormous. The tough decision was actually not that tough at all for me. My only option was to go back to school and become better at the figure so I could handle it with a similar, and hopefully better, facility than what I was learning to do with the landscape. So, to a large degree, I put my art career to the side and took out some monstrous loans and moved my family back to Italy to finish up at the Florence Academy of Art. This burst open the door I had been trying to peek through for years. It shined a light on and helped clear the path towards what I ultimately wanted to accomplish with my art. |
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But……it also changed what I was painting. And the galleries I had worked with before, were suddenly somewhat apprehensive about my “new” direction. In my mind, it wasn’t a new direction at all. It was the same one I had always intended. I was just finally capable of realizing the works.
To restate where I came from, I had not been brought up around any type of art. So the meaning of art for me was something that took years to develop (and of course is still developing). But the training I received at the Florence Academy of Art helped me realize a greater purpose and potential for art that I had always innately felt, but had never been able to define. I wanted to create works of lasting beauty that were far more than decorative, pleasing things, but objects of crafted beauty that took great pains to conceive of and accomplish and gave the viewers reason to pause and fed them continuously. I wanted my art to be service oriented. Although it would be the fulfillment of my vision, it would be made with the nourishing effects it might have on the viewer in mind. I wanted to make works with purpose. And, although galleries seemed to verbally applaud this goal, I felt like they also considered it a bit naïve and childishly purist. I think their apprehension came from the fact that they had probably heard this speech a thousand times before, and in their experience, that kind of sentiment was short lived. Successful artists, financially successful artists, do one thing and do it well. It is the basis for branding and marketing. My vision was far too grand and far too broad for any of that. And what I enjoyed painting were a broad range of subjects, sentiments and narratives. It was just never an option for me to neglect anything I felt like I needed to paint. So I needed to develop the ability to paint everything.
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