The Cycling Artist - In the studio, on the shore

Selling week: um, a wee break...

2009-12-09T08:58:00.003Z

I haven't drafted today's post and am being stolen away by the nice and clever Snapdragonbeads (http://www.snapdragonbeads.com/) (and her toddler) for an escape to the British Museum and Wagamama noodles. It wasn't entirely unplanned, but unfortunately my blog was. Sorry!

So I will still post this evening UK time, which will mean a post about mid-day if you're in the USA somewhere.

Selling week: It's Seasonal

2009-12-08T09:49:00.003Z

An unexpected aspect of selling art - seasonality. This surprises a lot of people when I tell them, how seasonal business can be.

A big seasonal aspect is art fairs. The big ones tend to "clump" - happening mainly in early spring (Feb/Mar) and again in autumn (Oct/Nov). I have a gallery owner friend who's main income is from the fair circuit. We hardly speak to him in November! A gallery doing the whole round can be at Art London 8-12 Oct, Edinburgh Art Fair 20-22 Oct, London Affordable Art Fair 22-25 Oct (Sydney AAF is at the same time), then Amsterdam AAF 29 Oct - 1 Nov, Art Ireland 13-15 Nov or maybe the Northern Art Show 12-14 Nov. The Frieze and Zoo art fairs are also mid-October. If you're an artist you might be providing work to your galleries for these shows and be doing artist fairs as well, for example the Brighton Art Fair 1-4 Oct.

The pattern repeats in spring. London Art hits a little earlier in January, starting the season. Then Glasgow Art Fair is in March, as is the spring London AAF and the Brussells AAF.

If you're a commercial artist represented by galleries these two seasons can be exhausting. They can also be potentially all your income for the year.

To top it off we artists do like having Open Studios! And hopefully you like those too. An opportunity to meet each other in person and have a genuine one-on-one opportunity with buyers and fans that usually only talk to the gallery staff. And guess when those tend to be? You guessed it: spring and autumn.

Now, there is a reason for these seasons. At a basic marketing level we, like any business, want to be sure to reach the most people, and the most appropriate people, at the best time.

Winter/Christmas isn't on the whole a big art buying time - by which I mean larger gallery pieces. Yes people buy small works and popular works as gifts but art can be a very personal choice so understandably it may not be a good gift choice if you're not certain. Collectors feel a little guilty buying for themselves at this time when they maybe should be buying presents for others! Hence the new "season" starting about late-January into early spring: January payday has hit and people are recovered from Christmas spending.
(Painting: "Cold Water", acrylic on canvas, 24"x36" © Tina Mammoser 2009, £900 - painted from winter days of ice and snow gathering on the Lake Michigan shoreline, in Chicago.)

Summer, at least in Europe, is when half the population disappears. Most people here take at least 2 weeks off and go on holiday, many take longer (we get a lot more vacation days than folk in the USA; I used to get 30 days back when I worked in the city, which could be topped up to 34). Kids are out of school so would need to be brought along to events. Artists themselves are of course home with kids or on holiday. (Unless you're like me and take the opportunity to hide from the direct sun in your studio for 2 months.)
(Painting: "Splash (Starboard)", acrylic on canvas, 100x80cm © Tina Mammoser 2009, £900 - painted this summer on Lake Michigan in Chicago, splashing waves on the beach wall at Oak Street Beach)

So that leaves us spring and autumn. Add this seasonality to the usual unpredictable income any self-employed person has. So when we're in the studios nonstop spare a thought for us - we probably have a bunch of shows coming up at once, or are trying to paint madly before the crazy season hits!

Selling week: Red Dots!

2009-12-07T13:32:00.006Z

This week I'm going to let you in on that little secret artists don't like to talk about - we SELL our work! Oh yes. And we like to. And we need to. And it seems oh so forward, but we are businesses too. We just happen to love our business. So here's a week of blog posts about that secret we-can't-afford-to-be-quiet side to being an artist.

First a bit of trivia for those of you who don't go into galleries and the like. The Red Dot.

"Spring View", acrylic on board, sold last week, © Tina Mammoser 2009

Ah, the bright shining light for any artist! We have shows and look for the red dots. At art fairs galleries will put a little line up of tags for sold work, with red dots on them. Big shows, like the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, may have little red dots on label stickers all over the place. They're even starting to appear on websites. But, you say, what is this red dot thing?

Simply put: red dot stickers are a simple way of showing a piece of art has sold, but where the art stays on the wall for the duration of the show. Sometimes you'll see multiple red dots for things like photography or printmaking editions (so 3 dots will mean they've sold 3 prints from the limited edition). You might see an orange dot! or other non-red colour. Generally this means something is reserved. And here's another little secret - sometimes we put red dots out as a marketing ploy. Success breeds success, so the impression of sales generates interest and can draw people in.

The symbol is becoming trendy even outside the gallery itself - the term being appropriated in other ways by art organisations. There's now the Red Dot Art Fair (giving an ever hopeful impression of the sales they'll generate) and the Tate Modern used to sell a red dot tote bag.

So if you ever go to a fair or gallery and see red dots, you'll know there are probably happy artists behind the scenes!

"Blackgang, Below", acrylic, 120x150cm, sold last week, © Tina Mammoser 2009

Flashback Friday

2009-12-04T08:07:00.000Z

Crest X and Crest XI
Oil on loose canvas
Approx. 5"x4" each, circa. 2000
© Tina Mammoser, 2009

Tiny oil paintings from my period of transitioning from figurative to abstract work - when I was concentrating on texture and patterns of water in my paintings.

Art for Christmas!

2009-12-03T08:55:00.000Z

It's December - I can use the "C" word now! (or "x" word if you more a xmas kind of person)

I've been working on more small paintings like ACEOs (2.5"x3.5" miniature paintings) and my 5" horizons to take to this Saturday's WeMake Christmas fair. (The ACEOs are mounted on cards too, all ready to send as a gift!) It's in Chelsea Town Hall, London, and I'm looking forward to meeting more fellow Etsy craftspeople there. While you wouldn't usually find me at a craft fair I'm making an exception - because of both the community and the quality. So I'm nearly packed, and I'll be making my way on the tube to Sloan Square - the joys of not driving!

A mini-interview with me on the WeMake Blog is here!

WeMake Christmas
Chelsea Town Hall
Kings Road, London, SW3 5EE
SATURDAY 5TH December
11.00am- 5pm
(Nearest station: Sloane Square)
Entrance: £2 per person, children free

Research and development

2009-12-02T08:43:00.001Z

Today is my weekly R&D day. Alongside a computer task day I give myself 2-4 hours purely to read, look things up, ponder, and just generally absorb information. Used to be I felt guilty about that time so just fit it in as and when. I recently realised that when I did set aside some solid time for this, say an afternoon, my actual painting time was more inspired and productive.

So today I'm in the comfy red chair and here's my little pile of things to read or browse through:

Turmoil and Tranquility (looking at dark stormy seas)
Art for the Nation (ditto)
Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester (going to pick 2 artists at random to read)
latest Coast magazine
Creative Authenticity, by Ian Roberts (going to read principles 10 and 11)
Amnesty International catalogue (a bit of xmas shopping to break up the reading!)
An Introduction to Astrobiology (brushing up on some geology background)

Artist writing

2009-12-01T08:18:00.000Z

I recently spent a week writing a new artist statement, following Alyson Stanfield's The Relatively Pain-Free Artist Statement (and that is an affiliate link).

It's still longer than it probably should be. This is meant to be a short "draw them in" kind of statement and not the typical long rambling artsy essay.

A lot of the things I wrote were already in my sketchbook thoughts in one form or another, but the worksheets and Alyson's questions made me think about them more and distill them down into the really essential points. And there were ideas in there that keep coming up in my jottings and I think are very important - but not for my artist statement. They're issues and ideas relevent to my development and conceptual side of the work. Basically, studio writing not public writing.

At some point I'll have to whittle it down more - a lot of applications and websites want 150 characters for example. But until then here is my new statement. Enough to tell you a bit about me and the work and make you want to go look at the paintings, not sit and read more words.

"The vastness and power of the sea is a constant source of inspiration. In my paintings I simplify real seascapes into tranquil spaces of line, colour and light. The sea is one of the few places we can experience total isolation and become absorbed in its overwhelming space and force. We cannot master or humanise the sea, so I capture mere moments of its lifespan.

Though the paintings are specific places from my cycling along the British coast, many people are reminded of places from their childhood or a favourite seaside spot. Simple abstraction connects with real landscape. The depth and luminosity come from many very transparent layers of colour built up slowly, an effect rarely achieved with acrylic paint. The longer you look the more of the colour and variety you see in the paintings"

Black I - I think it's finished

2009-11-30T08:16:00.000Z

The story behind the black paintings...

I've been saying for a long time, several years possibly, that I could just paint grey forever. I love it! In fact I do have to try and control my tendency to grey down everything because otherwise I worry I would never sell any paintings.

So one day I was chatting to Veta over coffee and mentioned this again. At the time I had a giant canvas sent to me by mistake (right size, wrong brand) from Jacksons and it was cheaper for them to just let me keep it while they sent the replacement than return it. So one thought was to chop it up and do a bunch of grey paintings, just for me. Alas, the perfectionist in me couldn't bear to use the canvas (too thin and cheap) for anything.

But then a few other people in a rather short period of time responded to my idea of black and grey paintings very positively. This took me totally by surprise.

So I felt a certain justification in doing something reckless. And so began a very quick dive into the abyss! I admit the so-called "recession" was another factor - this is my year to really focus on production. An opportunity to focus on the studio side and create work so it can develop and progress without pressures the the commercial side, which is starting to falter anyway. Part of my 09/10 business plan is to pursue purely experimental projects. (the result being that in time the economy will recover and I'll be ready and already present with strong new sets of work)

It started with Black I ("Oh What a World"), which was a rescued failed sky painting as you know. Then I realised I needed to go bigger. Pulled out the 120x150cm canvas. A 120x120 canvas is aside for the Black III. And I know I want to go even bigger, so I'm hoping a sale will come my way to buy a bespoke 2x2 metre canvas (which can't be purchased 'off the rack' as it were, even in the good Italian brand I use).

Black I, finished, has had only positive responses. Everyone seems to like it. Veta seems to think it's even art-fair worthy (art fair work, for very commercial fairs, tends to need bold colour impact), an opinion I take seriously. Veta knows her stuff when it comes to selling. The business side feels some vindication.

And the creative side of me is extremely happy, working on these is just a joyous process!

Painting image: Oh What a World (Black I), acrylic on canvas, 120x100cm © Tina Mammoser, 2009 (better photo to come after it's varnished)

Flashback Friday - black painting

2009-11-27T08:25:00.000Z

Lightning Storm over the Lake
Acrylic on canvas
20"x20" (50x50cm)
2004 © Tina Mammoser
All rights reserved.

A combination of an earlier horizon and a dark "black" painting. This is from the first Lake Michigan set of paintings, which were technically the first set of all-horizons paintings - before the English Coast series began.

The goal was to create a deep dark nighttime feel with imposing weather, a crash of lightning on the lakefront in Chicago. Like my current black paintings the dark tones were created entirely with colour - in this case deep crimson reds and ultramarine blues combine for the darkest area of water in the middle.

Cliffs - tackling the nemesis

2009-11-26T08:16:00.000Z

So despite the cliffs being a source of frustration (and challenge, which I rather like), they once again jumped out at me to be painted.

When preparing the canvases for the Essex paintings I realised something: I needed to paint that little sandy cliff. It just spoke to me, even though the photo and the sketch weren't the strongest.

And a realisation struck. Out of the corner of my eye I spied a large pastel drawing from a while ago. Actually inspired by Filey Brigg. You may remember, I decided to re-try that painting. (the original diptych painting of Filey Brigg is in yesterday's post)

Now looking at this pastel drawing I once again saw the strength of a composition. A composition I actually did try to start painting on a large canvas - the 80cm square was also lurking in a corner, faced to the wall.

So down came the little white hut painting and up went the sandy cliff. Out came the little 5" study on canvas with it's oddly bright orange yellow and green.

The charcoal is down on a 1 metre square painting, and I'm quite excited! Wish me luck with attempt number... well, I've lost track.

Cliffs - my nemesis!

2009-11-25T08:46:00.001Z

Cliffs cliffs, everywhere cliffs... white, brown, red. Tall, short, sandy, rocky. My constant challenge is how to paint these verticals in a way that speaks to me.

Photos in order: The Needles (Isle of Wight), Alum Bay (Isle of Wight), near Dover, Yorkshire, Portland Isle.

Various attempts over time. From 2.5" to 5" to 48" wide! Still the perfect composition eludes me. And I'm starting a new painting of a small cliff at Walton on the Naze, inspired by all my previous cliff attempts. More in the next blog post!

Paintings in order: "Golden, Chesil Beach" (Weymouth/Portland), ACEO of the Needles, "Scale Nab" (Yorkshire), Filey Brigg (Yorkshire), study for Chesil Beach.

All images © Tina Mammoser, 2009.

Sketches vs Photographs

2009-11-24T08:45:00.000Z

Last month I had a visitor to my studio who got the chance to see the very start of the Essex coast sketches and photos.

What struck me was how much she enjoyed seeing both the original photographs and the tiny little sketches - and she could pick out the photo that a sketch matched, even though they were just scattered on the table.

So I thought I'd share that with you my blog readers too! You've seen photos, and you've seen the sketches. You've even seen some of the 5" colour studies. So I thought I'd line up a few for you to really see side-by-side how I distill the photo in the first instance.

The similarities are obvious. But in the sketches seen alone you wouldn't necessarily see the "place" or seaside features, though they're easily matched in the photos.

This process is what my studies are about, reducing the image bit by bit to just find the exact elements need to keep a clear reference to landscape but eliminate unnecessary visual clutter. Every painting in the coast series started from a specific photo just like these.

Progress on Black II

2009-11-23T08:16:00.000Z

The second Black painting is coming along nicely - a warmer painting this time. (The finished version of the Black I will be posted later this week.)

It will, of course, become much darker!

Podcast - 3 Shows

2009-11-16T13:43:00.003Z

http://files.me.com/timelady/stzmdt.mp3
Duration: 10min 55 seconds, approx. 10Mb

This month I podcasted live while visiting 3 exhibitions in London: Miroslaw Balka's new installation in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, Estelle Thompson at Purdy Hicks, and Turner and the Masters at Tate Britain. A cross-London tour! You can hear what I see and how these 3 shows might influence me and my paintings.

Remember you can subscribe to the podcast specifically at
studiowaves.blogspot.com
or through iTunes at
tinyurl.com/studiowaves

Flashback Friday - beginnings of abstraction

2009-11-13T08:06:00.000Z

Waves
Oil on loose canvas
size unknown
est. 1998 © Tina Mammoser
All rights reserved.

An early abstract seascape - created from a photo I took of water hitting the side of a barge on the Thames River in London. This was done with the help of an "abstract seascapes" class I was taking at the time at the Blackheath Conservatoire, and my venture into abstraction. You can see that even here I was simplifying my canvas areas, almost creating colour fields but looking back that wasn't really my intention. Paintings that followed were still very impressionist and my abstraction first came from areas of texture rather than areas of colour.

The colour studies: Your votes!

2009-11-11T08:52:00.000Z

Well the "vote" for your favourite small studies was fun. Every painting got at least one vote, and there were no totally clear 1 or 2 winners. Just goes to show that we all like different things!

Now I fully admit that it was difficult to see the tiny images but that was sort of part of the plan. Since these are just studies even I will squint at them to get only a very general idea. There was a flaw in the whole things though - some of the paintings aren't quite the colours I would actually use, since I was trying to test out those Daler Rowney paints at the same time (half of which are colours I wouldn't buy). So I still need to go back and possibly compensate for a few by considering the actual palette they would be if big.

Here are your votes! (which came in via the blog, Facebook and direct emails - thanks so much guys!)

This image will enlarge bigger than the original one.

The numbers are your votes. The red ones are my choices but I did not count my own votes in the numbers. And of course I have a slight advantage of knowing what imagery is in my head. ;)

A few surprises both to myself and from your input. A few I immediately turned face down (rejected) got middling votes - the paintings third from the right and the left. On a personal level two others frustrated me. The 4th and 5th from the left were ones I really wanted to work from the photo stage. But the 4th, with a pale strip across the middle, I'm quite sure I've painted before. I need to pull out old canvases and my database and see what this is reminding me of! So that kinda freaks me out. The 5th, with the little white square (a beachhut), just doesn't work at all here. Just plain old disappointment at play for me. The idea is good I think but the composition is very boring - I may play with that one though.

Also worth noting - the votes did fall into a visual bell curve (paintings on the ends got less votes than the middle). The scientist in me would love to do this again with the paintings rearranged to see what the results are!

Black paintings... continued

2009-11-10T08:36:00.000Z

And the start of a second one - this time 150cm x 120cm (60"x48"). (note: the painting from yesterday is 48"x40"(120cm x 100cm))

Just so you don't think that I actually use any black in these black paintings.

Black paintings...

2009-11-09T08:28:00.000Z

No narrative on this one, because it's mentally a work in progress as well as painterly. It's the side project that developed from the failed Sky painting.

Flashback Friday - the first horizons?

2009-11-06T08:00:00.000Z

These oil paintings are one of those things that you look back at and see the future.

These are pre-horizons. Pre-Lake Michigan series. Pre-abstraction. Pre-bridges and river paintings! In fact, I created these paintings when I first started experimenting with seascapes and abstraction generally - at the time my work was still quite colourful, very impressionist and painterly, and still contained objects (boats, piers, bouys, statues, etc). Figures, portraits and Scottish landscapes were my main output. I hadn't yet focused mainly on water as my subject matter and I certainly hadn't simplified anything down to something as simple as just a horizon line yet.

Painted sitting with my wooden Russian easel and oil paints (and are mainly knife-work too) on the lakefront during a Chicago visit - in winter! These paintings are a somewhat spooky prediction of things to come and clear sign of how much Lake Michigan and my home has influenced all my work.

Small studies finished

2009-11-05T08:53:00.001Z

My first round a small studies for the Essex coast paintings are finished.

These are 5" canvas paintings of the 11 final sketches chosen. This essentially is the colour round of the studies (the sketches having been black and white - you can see them in last week's post). They're also another quick round of composition.

Some are inherently week - the colour either weakens the composition or they weren't strong enough to start with. A few are automatic contenders for larger paintings.

So out of curiousity, even this small and from this distance which ones catch your eye? Which makes you go "ooh, that would be a cool big painting"?

I'll share my choices and yours in another post!

Greenwich Park paintings now on Etsy!

2009-11-04T08:44:00.000Z

You may have seen me Twitter it, but for the die-hard blog-only fans here's the news! My Greenwich Park paintings are now available through my Etsy store. (2 have already sold, heading to Australia) If you prefer to buy in GBP you can purchase on my website instead.

What do you think of my new "home" product shots?

Paintings:
"Tate & Lyle Sugar Factory" © Tina Mammoser, 2009
"Towards Squirrel Heaven" © Tina Mammoser, 2009
All rights reserved.

Testing testing...

2009-11-03T08:37:00.001Z

This week I've received a variety of new paints to trial from Daler Rowney - they're launching a whole new Cryla "brand". New sized tube, new labelling (and far more information), possibly new paint but not being a Cryla user generally I'm not sure on that count. (I have a couple colours but they've always been a back-up.)

I'm using them to do my small studies for the Essex coast paintings. Starting small to get a feel and general impression of colours (pigment load), texture and body. Of course I would like to test them larger, since my small work is far more forgiving of different types of paint - but am struggling slightly due to the colours I was sent. Daler Rowney was not to know of course, but I don't really use half these colours. (by "don't really" I rather mean "not at all") But I shall persevere! I'm quite impressed so far so feel I really do want to go large with them and see how they hold up with my masochistic glazing techniques.

Back to work...

2009-11-02T08:32:00.000Z

New work in full flow, well the start of it anyway... so I'm afraid it will be a leaner meaner blog this week. You can see how I'm getting on but I'm going to focus more on the actual getting on.

Clean water ready for brushes and fresh paintings - a rarity! (man, I never clean this thing and the brushes live in it 24/7)

Fresh Start Week! - Preliminary sketches

2009-10-30T08:12:00.000Z

With a clean space before me and a head full of ideas I now forge ahead into the new set of work.

Which is overwhelming to say the least!

A sketchbook and 100 photos from 2 days cycling. (most trips are longer and around 200 images to work from) I start with the photos... go through, toss out the images that have nothing interesting going on.

Down to 34 photographs.

Then I pull out a tiny little sketchbook, of which I have several. Will it be a passport sized one? My little newsprint one? Or the brown paper one? (All, by the way, from Muji.) And what to sketch with? Pencil, ink, charcoal, marker or pastels? I decide I don't need colour yet as I want to focus purely on the strong compositions. I opt for the brown paper sketchbook so I'm working on a mid-tone, then using white pastel and charcoal to sketch. (I grabbed some blue as a second slighty-lighter midtone too because I felt like it.)

This is fast work. Maybe a minute or two each. Grab a photo, get down the major elements, shade in the important bits that really create the composition. Spray with fixative and move on. 34 tiny sketches.

I put aside the photographs and just look at the sketches - pull out the ones that instantly grab my eye. The strongest. Look again, squinting to reduce them even more, and again pull out the strongest. Grab the photos again, match up to paintings, and consider why some of the strong photos have weak sketches. "But I like it" is not reason enough. Only two pass that test - in these cases it's the colour that would actually strengthen the composition but that can't be captured with in monochrome; the colour being the reason behind the photograph too. (Vivid green and violet-red on a shoreline at the Naze and a bright cherry-red painted line along the promenade in Frinton being the successful candidates of that round.)

Down to 11 sketches.

Still too many, so my next studio day I'll do small studies. Either pastels or ACEOs/5" canvas paintings - both methods let me introduce colour.

The goal: 5-6 images from this stretch of coast.

Next week:
The painting begins (blogging it will depend on how I feel about my progress)
Flashback Friday will return next Friday!

Fresh Start Week! - prepping the studio

2009-10-29T08:11:00.000Z

Previous set of paintings done, new ideas gathered, paints ordered... what next?

Well, the studio is (no question about it) in a state of chaos. After each set it always is. So I have a good old tidy up. Things get put away. Finished work packed. Furniture rearranged. Floor swept. Rags put in trug. Table cleared. All pints returned to their shelf or basket.

This time I had a bit more of a project to do. It turns out that due to several financial commitments coming up over the course of the winter (overdraft, university tuition fees, tax bill) I must postpone the idea of having my handyman friend come make my studio the beautiful perfect thing I envision. Which is fine, it inspired me to do what tasks I could, compromise on making spaces workable rather than visually ideal.

One major task was to lay plywood over all my wooden timbers then paint it white to create larger flat white work areas, since I paint with the canvas directly on the wall. The diagonal timber support created last week is now a more permanent solution than intended, which is fine. I may just put a few more elsewhere. So the other important step was white paint - the yellow timber creates too much "business" in the room and is distracting. So I painted all my timber (and the masonry wall around the window) with my remaining white paint from the original studio build. (You can see the pre-version here.)

Ignore all the clutter in the middles! That's all happily back in its proper place now.

So clean and tidy, to an extreme this time. Ready for new canvases!

Next:
Sketching. Yes, actually artwork of a sort.