Oil Painting

Attending my high school class’s fiftieth reunion this past June has me in a reflective mood. Home, back then, was South Florida, and I had not been ‘home’ for many years.

It was a good school, Coral Gables High. A large and diverse student body; integration came in ’65––our class was the first to go all three years together––but South Florida was already a melting pot and that was no big deal, at least at our school.
A moment ago I was listening to a song on Pandora; one I often heard played years ago: Thanksgiving, by pianist George Winston. He made the recording in the late seventies I think, and then went on to sell literally millions of albums. Triple Platinum. To help out I bought several; still have them, awaiting vinyl’s inevitable return.
George graduated a year ahead of me at old Gables, captain of the varsity in basketball and baseball his senior year. So who suspected he also played piano? Not me, certainly. In my own class, a skinny kid, Winston Scott––in my mind I see him clearly, playing trumpet in the middle of our school band’s brass section––became an astronaut. What the––! Another boy I knew chalked a cartoon on the blackboard each week of football season, lampooning the opponents in our next game. Between classes everyone would peek into that classroom to see what he had drawn. Frank wound up in Hollywood and was Artistic Director for Shark Tales and Sinbad. Okay, I should have seen that one coming––didn’t––I was not even aware my school had an art club. I could draw––could even cartoon––but so what? Couldn’t lots of people? No? Really? Well, never mind––no one makes any money at that anyway.
My younger self put so much effort into being unremarkable­­.

My point (and I almost always have one): like many young people, I had talents or, at least I had a talent. What I lacked was the imagination to develop it, the confidence to follow it. George, Winston and Frank saw doors and went through them. All I saw was a room. Rooms are comfortable places. Safe.
Imagination, creativity––drive; these are all ‘muscles’ inside us that have to be exercised and developed to reach our potential, just as an athlete builds up and trains his/her body. In 1968 my imagination was the proverbial ‘ninety-pound weakling,’ and I was not into exercise.
I did not take my first art class until my junior year in college. I immediately switched curriculums. My talent was evident––but I could not see the career steps to follow, and no one was offering advice. Still in my ‘room.’ It was not until I was out of college that my imagination finally kicked in, and I found my first door. I can even identify the moment: seeing John Singer Sargent for the first time. “I have to learn how to do that!” My job at that time had me on the road, so I visited museums regularly––the L.A. County Museum, the Gilcrease, the Amon Carter––and examined the early work of famous artists. I noted some of it was not so good––which was actually encouraging: “Why, I can do better than that!” I began to read and to learn––calisthenics if you will––something just as important as ‘exercise’.
Long story, short: I did not pursue art professionally until I was thirty-four. Just one year later I got very lucky: horses.
I am from among the ‘bootless and unhorsed’––I am not, have never been (and never will be) a horseman––yet I stumbled through a wonderful door into the field of painting horses: “We make brown look good.” Ahem.

By happenstance I fell in with horse people who took the time with me to explain the subtleties of their particular sport (which are numerous) or the characteristics of a particular breed (even more numerous) When I was shown paintings by Munnings, I (again) said: “I have to do that!”
Now I say to others: “You have to do that.” Don’t suppress your talent. Find the doors. Every question of subject matter, composition, technique, is a room you are placed in. It is your job to find the exit doors. They may lead only to another room. But there you will find fellow travelers: ask lots of questions, that you may be prepared to leave many answers.
It is the way it is done.
I would not change a thing, if I could turn back the clock. (Once I became an artist that is––who wouldn’t tinker with their high school years?) Painting horses and equestrian venues exercise and combine all my (current) artistic desires. Horses are the most varied, versatile, nuanced, and aesthetic animals on the planet, the most difficult to ‘bring off’, presenting a never-ending challenge for figurative painters, or for painting landscape, historical events, materials, textures, equipment, lighting, action, motion.
Not everyone thinks of ‘horse painters’ that way––I know that.
It is just the room they are in.

Most painters today think of Sargent as a realist; an artist who was capable of painting extraordinarily life-like portraits and beautiful landscapes with ease and fluidity. While both points are true, there is another aspect to Sargent that began to appear after he stopped painting the aristocratic portraits which made his reputation. Sargent began to push the compositions in his work beyond what was normally accepted by the audience of his day. (It is important to note, as we discuss this aspect of his work, that Sargent was well aware of how the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and Modernists were also challenging the established norms of the time, and likely, he was responding to their efforts in his own inimitable way.)
To put it simply, in the post-portrait period of his career, Sargent often consciously manipulated and violated many of the established rules and formulas of painting to create a compositional problem he could resolve in a novel manner.

This is one of my favorite paintings by Sargent. It isn’t one of his better known works, but it is a fine example for us to analyze here. Sargent painted Home Fields when he staying at Broadway, a quiet village in the Cotswolds of England while recovering from a disastrous rejection of his portrait of Madam X in Paris. While there, it is possible all the vitriolic furor that erupted over his outrageous portrait encouraged him to reflect upon painting for himself first, and others second. With that context being understood, analyzing the composition of Home Fields becomes more interesting because it suggests something about Sargent that few people appreciate. Sargent was a experimental formalist, who, if he had been born fifty years later, might have felt perfectly at home working as an Abstract Expressionist during the mid-20th Century. Yes, this is a big assertion to make, but signs of that kind of thinking are present in this painting and others. When Sargent pursued his own work for his own ends, via the landscape, he liked to cloak his unusual compositions with a power of descriptive might, perhaps to make the odd experiments more palatable to the public, or simply because he could. However, if we strip away the narrative elements and detail we are left with a fascinating interplay between abstract shapes, directional lines, and the physicality of his paint.
But, before I go further please allow me a moment of self-indulgence…
I first encountered Home Fields in 1983 as an undergrad at in art school. I stumbled across it in a monograph being sold in a museum shop. (I starved for a week to buy that book, hoping it would still be there when I came back for it.) I didn’t know much about Sargent then, as few people did. He wasn’t included in my history classes and when I showed Sargent to my painting instructor he dismissed the work as being manneristic. I struggled to accept what I was told and eventually decided it was best not to bring Sargent up in his studio again. This was at a time when the art world was beginning to turn back to more academic ways of working, and the primacy of Modernism was being reassessed.
Sargent’s Home Fields converted me into a plein air painter before I ever set an easel up outside. The fresh and direct handling of paint, the keen observations of light, and the outrageous graphic composition triggered something deep within me. I had been studying 20th century art that semester and Home Fields, and Sargent, seemed to bridge the gap between the traditional and the modern. I stared at that reproduction for weeks before finally seeing something I had missed. Sargent had literally put himself into the painting. (Do you see him?) Yet I did not read anything that pointed to that fact for years afterwards.
But back to Home Fields…Does it really imply Sargent was a nascent Modernist?
In a word, yes. The underlying force that gave rise to Modernism can be summarized by two things; an artist’s desire to be recognized as a member of the avant-garde, and the influential opinions of the 20th century art critic Clement Greenberg, a man who achieved cultural authority thirty years after Sargent’s death.
So what is, or was, the Avant-Garde? By itself, it is a fairly self-explanatory term since it loosely translates to ‘the vanguard of the main troops’. Applied to painting, it was used to identify any artist or movement that led the way from something old to something new. During the 1950s Greenberg rose to prominence by emphatically arguing the most pressing concern of the Avant-Garde was ‘flatness’ and ‘the dissolution of form’, an obvious appeal to break away from the timeline of European Art and setting up something uniquely American in its place. Greenberg was largely successful in his goals, turning US academic painting towards his interpretation of art, and his influence and pressure was felt by any artist who wished to be considered relevant. Up to that point, for over four hundred years, one of the most fundamental aspects to painting had been about creating the illusion of form and space behind the picture plane. But late-stage Modernism demanded the painter now relinquish the illusion of form and depth and place everything ON the picture plane. Nothing into. Nothing out of. Make it flat. Make it abstract.
(Side Note: I’m sharing this background in the hope it will encourage you to consider how you fit into the traditions we all love. Why? Because knowing this kind of stuff can guide you to a deeper, more meaningful destination.)

Sargent presented us with a flat front face. This aligns the shed with the front of the picture plane. (Perhaps I should explain what the picture plane is. You can think of it as the actual surface you paint on, the canvas or panel. In a traditional composition the artist treats the picture plane as a piece of glass set into a window frame, through which you can see the world. Whatever the subject might be, it would be placed behind, or rarely in some circumstances, in front of the picture plane. (Sometimes, using extreme foreshortening, Caravaggio would try to the viewer to believe parts of his figures were projecting out in front of the frame in 3-D. So the idea of the picture plane is not a recent concept.) With late-stage Modernism, the goal was to have everything set ON the picture plane – neither behind nor in front.)
However, there are more things to consider than the shed. Sargent deliberately placed the shed so that the right side abuts against the right side of the painting. That placement is unusual. It attaches the shed to the edge of the painting and inhibits our ability to visually push it back. As a result that shed becomes a foil to everything else Sargent invests into his composition.
Next, look at the row of trees and distant hills Sargent has arranged along the horizon line. (The yellow lines.) They are dark and soft and vary in size. But when massed together with similar values they create a strong horizontal force that spans the picture plane. Plus, the base of the trees and hills have been arranged to be in-line with the shed, again further flattening the picture plane. Taken together, the virtual horizon line, the shed, and the trees and hills contradict the illusion of deep space.

Take a moment to appreciate how he designs with whatever falls within his view. One set of diagonals make their appearance as cast shadows (blue lines). Following the principles of classical Renaissance perspective those shadows correctly converge towards a common point along the virtual horizon line. Don’t let any slight variance in the convergence confuse you. This was a quickly executed painting and I don’t think Sargent was overly concerned about maintaining mathematical precision. Sargent used this convergence to generate a powerful visual push into the picture plane – creating what many of us today call a ‘lead-in’ – and interestingly, those diagonals point us away from the shed. (Convergence is a time-honored way to direct the eye towards a specific area of a painting.) Due to Sargent’s amazing ability to capture light, shadow, and color, we can feel the exact time and position of the sun. It is behind us. It is late fall or winter. It is the end of the day.

And even more diagonals… To design with the shadows would have been enough for most painters, but not for Sargent. He chose to include another diagonal movement within his view: that rambling fence (red lines). The fence itself echoes what the shadows are doing, but the figure/ground relationship has been inverted as a counter movement. (The fence is light against dark and the shadows are dark against light. Plus, the fence is a fixed object and the shadows are ephemeral and remain in constant movement.) The fence provides a similar repeating motif to the shadow, yet is different. Just like the shadows, the fence moves diagonally into space. But this time the fence points us towards the shed, and in doing so, effectively balances out the shadows that are pointing us to the left. When combined, the fence and shadows form a downward “V” which points directly to the feet of Sargent – and thus our feet as well. (So perhaps now you realize how Sargent inserted himself into this painting, using his own shadow, and perhaps you can better appreciate how this turns you, the viewer, into Sargent himself. We are seeing what Sargent saw, from exactly where he saw it – another nod to classical Renaissance perspective, when the fixed position of the painter’s eye becomes our own.)

But there are even more, subtler diagonals to consider… When Sargent included those wispy trees in the middle ground he threw up another barrier to deep space. Yet he also uses the base of each of those trees (the pink line) to provide a series of stepping stones that lead us to the shed again. He is simultaneously encouraging our eye to travel into the picture plane again, and impeding our path to get there.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

And finally, as if anyone could run out of things to say about this painting… There are additional simplified shapes and contours created by various elements in this painting to consider. Shapes that continue to line up in such a way to lead us relentlessly back to the shed. That d*mn shed! I can’t think of a single classical painter who would have put it there – certainly not one who lived and worked before the advent of Modernism. Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Poussin, Rembrandt, Fragonard, Watteau, Reynolds, and the rest of the usual suspects would never have put an orange rectangle against the side of their painting and then expended so much effort trying to push it back into space with all these diagonals. (And it bears repeating, Home Fields was not an anomaly for Sargent.) Traditional painters were far more likely to place their point of focus, like a building, towards the middle of their painting, about one third up from the bottom, and then lead our eye up to, and around the area in a circular fashion. The old masters would never have done something so quirky as to place a building against the edge of the canvas. They would have considered that a nutty thing to do, or worse, a terrible error of judgement.
Arguably, how much of the composition in Home Fields was calculated vs how much of it sprang forth directly out of Sargent’s intuition is anyone’s guess, especially since he left few personal insights into his methods or technique. But the obvious things he did to flatten this painting, and the diagonals he introduced to penetrate or contrast that flatness are there for everyone to see. If Home Fields was just an aberration we could dismiss it as a happy collision between a genius and an unusual subject. But after years of studying Sargent’s oeuvre, I think not. Everything in this painting feels calculated, and if you look at it long enough you may come to the same conclusion I have – that Sargent intentionally set up tricky compositional problems and then enjoyed finding novel ways to resolve them. In other words, Sargent experimented with some abstract ideas that would not be explored in greater detail until after WWII, when Abstract painters such as Kline, DeKooning, Pollock, Motherwell, Still, Nevelson, and others took the stage.

Kathy Anderson is a very accomplished artist, represented by many respected galleries and the recipient of too many awards to count, including 2 awards received at this year’s OPA National Exhibition. Kathy also received her OPA Master Signature status this year.
After studying advertising art and design at college for one and a half years, Kathy worked as a watercolorist. She sold her work in outdoor shows. Other interesting notes on Kathy’s resume include helping paint large backdrops for her son’s high school theater class, and conducting a mural business for about 7 years.
Stuart: What kind of murals were you painting?
Kathy: Crazy, unbelievable things. Anything… I was painting paintings on people’s walls, basically.
Stuart: So, internal wall paintings?
Kathy: (nodding) I did an entire ceiling once of sky, just sky and clouds; working on a scaffold.
Kathy: Anyway, from there, I was still doing the outdoor shows. And I used to do this show in Sherman, Connecticut. And one time I went to pick my work up and the ladies there were like, “Guess who bought one of your paintings?!”… It was Richard Schmid!
Stuart: Wow!
Kathy knew of Richard Schmid and admired his work. Richard had previously lived in Sherman, Connecticut, and he would loyally return each year to give a demonstration.
Kathy: I went back the following year to see his demo. He was walking down the path and my girlfriend was like, “Go say hello.” So I went up to him and said, “You probably don’t know who I am, but you bought my painting last year.” I was like, “You probably threw it out when you got home and saw you’d made a big mistake.” (Laughter) He was so sweet.
While doing his demonstration, Richard Schmid had talked about painting with a group in Vermont. Kathy, assuming that this group was a work shop, asked if it would be possible for her to sign up.
Kathy: He (Richard) said, “Oh no, it’s not a class, just come up and paint with us in Vermont.” Which was 2 hours 15 minutes from my house in Connecticut. So I went up there. I didn’t even know what we were painting. Turns out we were painting a model. I’d never painted a model from life before. And I thought, “I can’t believe I’m doing this!” …And he asked me to continue coming.
That began a meaningful relationship Kathy has enjoyed with the Putnam Painters. Kathy gave us a little insight as to what the group is like.
Kathy For Richard he always looked for, not so much ability, as passion; and …somebody that he knew would be totally compatible. That’s one thing we’ve always said about the Putney Painters that’s so incredible, there’s no competition between us, we’re just all like a family. It’s a great group of people. We’ve painted together for 18 years.
Stuart: How often would the Putney painters meet?
Kathy: We would meet 8 times in the spring and 8 times in the fall. Everything from life. It wasn’t a teaching environment, except Richard always taught. He would walk around and help each person. He’s so generous and wonderful, and Nancy (Guzik) too.
Kathy: (speaking of Richard Schmid) He loves problem solving. Everyone has problems with their paintings, even Richard Schmid. He’ll say, “The joy of problem solving… you just stop and you figure it out, and you go to your books, or you go to another artist, or you wait on the painting” …. allow yourself the time to let that painting rest a while, so you can go back and look at it with fresh eyes… Many years ago Nancy Guzik said to me, “When you do a really good painting, try not to just put it out there to sell it. If you know this is a good painting, save it for Oil Painters of America, or save it for your big gallery that is having a great show.”
Kathy spoke very highly of Richard Schmid and his wife Nancy Guzik, and the impact they have had on her. She even told us, light heartedly, the difference between Richard and Nancy.
Kathy: Richard loves what he paints, and Nancy paints what she loves. Everything Richard paints turns out to be so gorgeous, and he’s just in love with the paint. He loves the challenge of taking the craziest things and turning it into a painting.
Stuart: And where are you on that scale?
Kathy: I’m like Nancy, I have to be madly in love with what I’m painting.
In addition to drawing inspiration from Richard Schmid and Nancy Guzik, Kathy has many other artists who have influenced her.
Kathy: I’m very lucky that I have a very close friendship with Richard and also with Everett Raymond Kinstler.
Stuart: He’s known as a portrait artist.

Kathy: Yes, he’s painted presidents and movie stars… I never was fortunate enough to study under him, but I’ve had a very close friendship with him for about 10 years… He’s been a huge influence on me… He’s 92 years old and he will aways go and support another artist or a friend because he knows how important it is for him to be there, at someone’s opening. He’s such a loyal person. My favorite Woody Allen quote is “80% of success is showing up.” Well, Everett knows that for sure… he just knows the importance of supporting other people and keeping yourself out there.
In addition to being an accomplished exhibiting artist, Kathy also teaches workshops around the country and has taught many students over the years. Here are some of the things she frequently teaches her students:
Kathy: The main thing is drawing, drawing, drawing! You have to start with your basic knowledge of drawing. It stops you dead if you’re struggling with your drawing. In jazz they say, “Through knowledge comes freedom.” Know all your scales, know your chords, know how to read music, and when that’s like second nature to you, then you’re free to create what’s important, the essence of your painting. So drawing’s the most important.
Kathy: And also painting from life. I mostly paint from life.
Other tid bits Kathy finds worth repeating to her students:
-keep organized
-keep clean
-know your equipment
Kathy’s sentiment was “you can’t be free to do a beautiful painting when you have other obstacles hindering you.”
As the audience enjoyed seeing several of Kathy’s paintings projected on the large screens, we heard more about Kathy’s process of creating a painting.
Kathy: (referring to her paintings) All this is started from life… maybe I go back twice. And then take really good photos. What I try to capture from life is my values and my temperature. Color is not that important to me from life, because I know my colors. And I’ll have color on there anyway. As long as they’re pretty colors… What I use photos mostly for, is drawing. (Kathy walked us through her extensive process of finishing up a painting of daffodils in her studio) I had my full photo of the whole set up, and then I had individual photos of each flower so I could see where each petal was and if I had to fix a drawing or something like that.
Stuart asked Kathy how she begins a painting from life. Especially paintings which come from scenes that are naturally more chaotic and wild.
Kathy: First of all I’m an avid gardener so I know my subject really well… But I really stress design, and to me that’s the foremost thing I think of when I’m starting a painting, is the design of the painting… When I go out and paint from life with flowers, I carry little bungee cords with me. I bungee things where I want them… I did a 30 by 40 plein air painting up in Putney. What was there in life was this beautiful quince bush, giant quince in bloom. And my painting had daffodils, tulips, and pansies in it too. I picked all of that. I bought little 6 packs of pansies, took them out, and arranged them on the ground… You know the little flower tubes you get when you buy roses? I carry them everywhere and I stuck all the daffodils and tulips in the little tubes. And I stuck them in the ground underneath. So I composed the whole painting. And for the end of the painting, I had a dead Baltimore Oriole in my freezer, thanks to my little cats.
Stuart: Who doesn’t have a dead Baltimore Oriole in their freezer?
Kathy: Everybody has that right?
Stuart: (Joking) I believe they’re available on Amazon.
Kathy: I actually right now have a chipmunk, and 3 or 4 birds including a woodpecker.
Stuart: Ok, chipmunks, that’s available on the Dark Web.
The audience had a good laugh with this banter. Kathy assured us that she is very protective of wildlife and tries to rescue small animals whenever possible but occasionally her cats bring her offerings or a bird doesn’t survive after flying into a window. These are the animals Kathy would use for a painting.
Stuart: This is interesting, the flower tubes, the bungee cords, dead animals. Any other tips (laughter), things that would fall into the category of bits and bobs, you would use in composing your floral paintings? Do you ever have to stake the flowers?
Kathy: Oh yeah! I do everything. Anything to make the painting right. In someone else’s garden I’m a little more respectful though.
Stuart: So by whatever means necessary?
Kathy: Yes, what ever means necessary. In other words you don’t have to paint what’s exactly there, is the point.

Stuart: (speaking to the audience) When I look at Kathy’s paintings, what I see reflects her personality. This sort of exquisite sensibility, of gorgeous paintings, of color and composition and technique. But I think what you get a sense of here today is that there’s a real sense of gaiety, of joy and humor in her work. It’s charming, it’s beautiful. That’s hard to do, to express yourself in that way.
Kathy: I think you see people’s personalities in their paintings. Thank you for saying that. That was very nice.
Stuart: Do people paint who they are, in a way?
Kathy: I think so. I see people’s personality in their paintings.
Stuart: In their choice of subject? Or in the manner of execution?
Kathy: Or their pallet. Their color choices. We all see color differently. One of the things I think is lacking in my work is I think I don’t use enough cool colors. Sometimes when I’m trying to balance the cools and the warms, which is the most beautiful pallet for me to look at, and yet it’s harder for me to do that because I respond so much to warm colors. I think you just have to be true to yourself.
As this delightful 60 minute interview wrapped up, Kathy left us with a couple of pieces of wisdom:
Kathy: If you have the passion for painting, then you’ve got to put your hours in, study with someone you really respect, and then meticulously evaluate your work.
Finally, we ended with one of Kathy’s favorite quotes:
“The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.”
– Stephen McCranie
Stuart spoke for us all as he closed:
“Thank you very much Kathy Anderson! We really appreciate you coming out!”

It’s all about the process and not the end result.
2017 was an experimental year for me. I modified my palette and decided to work from plein air & studio studies. My plan was to go small before going big. My palette now includes only 4 tubes of paint – Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Lemon, Cadmium Red Light & Titanium White. I am working hard to keep things simple!
Every painting begins with an idea that needs to be conveyed to the viewer. These ideas could be shadows of clouds over the hills, the warmth of sunshine or the roar of ocean waves breaking along the coast. Once I have locked the idea, it is all about holding on to it. This idea is rooted in a deep emotional connection that I establish with the landscape. If I stay honest to my own memory of a scene, I can teleport the viewer to a place that connects with their emotions.
Being true to the moment and trying to translate that to the canvas is always the biggest challenge. While staying true to my emotions, it is equally important to not ignore the technical sensibility of the painting process. Painting is about maintaining a balance between technical and emotional sensibilities of the mind.
Once I have the basic idea, I start with making several thumbnail sketches. Sketches help me in deciding compositions and value patterns. Whenever possible, I go to the location and make small plein air studies. These studies serve as reliable color and value notes. Once I have the grayscale sketches ready, I move on to making color studies. Sometimes, making a color study in addition to a sketch helps in working out the finer details of the composition. It is all about arrangement and design!
Once I’m satisfied with the design of my small study, I begin painting a larger studio version. Of course, all studies do not transform into larger pieces. Many of my studio paintings are as small as 11”x14”. However, the process still remains the same irrespective of the size.
Painting for me is a personal expression of my connection with Nature. It is about holding on to a fleeting moment in time and making that the main focus or idea of my painting. I hope that my emotionally involved painting process ultimately translates into great visual experiences for my viewers. In the end, it is important to paint with emotion and enjoy the journey the painting takes you on.

Over the last 7 years of being an artist, I’ve heard and said many comments, concerns and judgments around the subject of marketing. Some of which include: “I just want to paint”, “if the work is good, it will speak for itself”, “I’m not a salesman”, “he or she is only successful because they’re good at marketing”, “I don’t know how to Market my work”, “I’m embarrassed to Market my work”, “I don’t have time for marketing”, “that’s why I have galleries and why I enter shows”, etc. I have identified at one point in time with all of those statements; however, over the years I’ve slowly discovered that I disagree with them.
Too many artists confuse marketing with advertising and, in my opinion, it’s not the same as advertising at all. Sure we are trying to sell paintings, but I think marketing can be about showing the world who we are and why we do what we do. The “artist” is very much a part of what the collector is buying just as much as the artwork. Marketing is purely about creating value and connection, there should be no shame in that. My primary concern is what can I create that will bring value to someone else and how can I get that to them or find those who desire this value and connection.

The challenges surrounding marketing in art seem like a new concept, but are they really? As I’ve read through various art history books, I’ve found that this really is nothing new and that artists have been doing it for a long time. Once I saw that truth, that historical artists that I admire were successful at marketing, it made me question my own assumptions.
For example, Albert Bierstadt was known to charge admission for a theatrical revealing of new paintings. He, like Frederic Church, would include artifacts, plant life, and even (although politically incorrect now) hired Native Americans to be at the showing. What a way to draw attention to your work! Bierstadt also travelled with a celebrated writer, Fitz Ludlow, who later published a book about their adventures. He was also successful at cultivating his own important patrons and promoting his work.
Thomas Moran was a self-proclaimed romantic but a shrewd businessman keenly attuned to the market. Moran said that he secured 100 commission contracts before even traveling to the Grand Canyon. Like Bierstadt, he too would arrange press releases and showings of his work in venues that would garner the most prominence and prestige.

A completely different artist, James McNeill Whistler, would notoriously throw himself into the public eye. He wrote the local press often about his work and would combat with critics, keeping his work in the news longer. He hosted collector’s brunches where he would entertain his patrons hoping to secure future sales and commissions. He would even write his own memoir, The Gentle art of Making Enemies, and another with his thoughts about art, Ten O’clock. Whistler might be seen as one of the first artists to brand themselves by using a butterfly as his signature.
Obviously we can go on and on with examples all the way back to Michelangelo, who notoriously added his name (branding!) to the Pieta when the crowds gave credit to another sculptor, assuring his future commissions. The point is that all of these artists adapted to the ways of their time and put themselves out there by both self-promoting and aligning with others to promote their work. These tidbit examples are a small but crucial part of their artistic lives. The quality of their work did not suffer because they promoted themselves and in fact one could say because they promoted themselves they afforded the opportunity to create and leave quality work behind for the rest of us. I believe that if marketing was imperative back then, it should be even more so today with a highly saturated art market.
I challenge artists to question their beliefs and fears around marketing. What is holding you back? What judgments do you have and are they serving you? If you were to put yourself out there what kind of rewards might you see? Who might you bring value to? Can you shift the way you look at marketing? Who are you afraid of offending?

In whatever way you decide to move forward in your art career I hope that this article will bring an awareness that marketing has always been a much needed skill for any artist who wants to continue successfully creating and that your marketing can be meaningful, if that’s of importance to you. For me, I have experienced far more reward by sharing my work in the social sphere. By marketing in a meaningful way, my way, I am effectively building relationships and inspiring students and collectors daily. Marketing allows me to sell more paintings which in turn provides me with the opportunity to keep painting full time and investing back into my business.
There are so many ways that you can get started marketing today. You can do it by email, in person, in magazines, and various print and social media, to name a few. First, I encourage you to get to the bottom of why you’re not marketing and then think about how you can start marketing. If you don’t know how to do something, well there’s a book, a blog, a video, an online course, a coach, or someone you can hire for that. Your subsequent artistic career depends on it so get started today!