“Merriman Falls”, 48″ x 36″ oil and wax on canvas.
I’m constantly being reminded of how times have changed for artists over the years, and especially so when I prepare for a show. Years ago, I would do the paintings, decide which one represented the show the best, have a professional photographer do a transparency of it and give it to the printer for a mailer the gallery would send to their mailing list of clients.
This past week I have photographed several new paintings with my own digital camera, plugged the memory card into my computer, cropped the images and uploaded them to a magazine for an ad for my September shows. I will also be sending the images to the gallery for their website and for them to send e-mails to their client list. Then I will send the images to my webmaster to update my own website. This definitely is progress and once I learned how to do all of this, was a lot easier and more effective than advertising used to be.
SOME THINGS STILL STAY THE SAME
I also am pleased that my experience in preparing for shows gives me a set routine to follow. I still have a theme for the show and try to vary the compositions, colors and sizes of the paintings to express that theme in as many interesting ways as possible.
Water is the theme for the September shows and I’m including rivers, creeks, waterfalls and the ocean in most of the paintings. I’m balancing those paintings with forest scenes and autumn leaves for color accents.
I just completed the painting above and am currently working on a smaller painting of the same scene, but from a different angle. Both of them are of Merriman Falls in the Olympic Peninsula.
