Getting Organized

In order for an artist to be successful, there has to be a system in place to manage all the parts of being an artist.  I’ve gone for years thinking it’s not a problem to get organized in the business of art – I’d just let it happen naturally. 

I wasn’t sure if I should just photograph and frame my paintings as they were produced or if I needed professional help.  At first I tried to get expensive professional photos of my work, just so I could send off slides to various contests but that was, well, expensive.  Ultimately, with the advent of digital cameras I decided I could just take my own pictures and get by. (Avoiding the advice of a good friend who told me the only paintings she ever got into shows were the ones professionally done.)  There are artists who always reproduce their own paintings digitally and they do it very well, but they have taken the time to study photography, know the language, and have read the directions included with their cameras.  I just want to paint.

Then there was the problem of framing.  I learned to frame pastel paintings myself and managed to accumulate lots of frames from here and there as well as a fair amount of matting material.  I have a good mat cutter, but can’t seem to be able to get those mats cut perfectly.  It’s not the mat cutter’s problem, it’s me.  Again, I haven’t yet read the directions for my mat cutter and have impulsively been trying to cut mats on my own.  I’m surprised I haven’t cut off any fingers, God knows I’ve been close.

I got into a gallery – that’s a whole other story – and proceeded to dig into my painting drawer for decent paintings to hang.  I found some fair paintings, but of course none of those fit the frames in my stash.  I was determined that every painting I did from that time on would be finished on materials that would fit regular, over-the-counter frames.  Somehow that hasn’t yet happened.  I managed to get enough paintings framed for the gallery by framing some myself (sometimes reframing, because I needed to change something in the painting), and sometimes actually using a professional framer.

The paintings were starting to pile up and I found I was confused about names of the paintings and where they were – some were at shows, some were at galleries, some had been given to family members.  I definitely needed to get organized and develop some sort of system.  Check later to find one way to manage these organization dilemmas