art as business

today will be a chop wood carry water day. julie and i have to prepare some art packages to sen d off to a new gallery we are going to be in Atlanta, and we ve got to get one together to send off to a new york gallery for me. packages consist of slides, cds of our work and an artists statement, and a bio and or resume, where you ve been to school or who you ve studied with and what your art is about, exactly what i was talking about in my last blog, how to put into words what you do in the abstract. the more professional the package the better presentation, don't forget galleries get thousands of these sent to them continually. the new york gallery found me via the sale of one of my head paintings to a client who told them about me, they in turn looking at a web site i was on, contacted me. the Atlanta gallery found julie on the Internet and contacted her and she told them about my work, and they looked at me on our website and asked me to join in also. the web spins and spins. now we must follow up and send off our work and statements. all of this is a lot of work and we do it in the evenings. with the coming of the computer, the old ways, the dealer taking care of everything for the artist is gone, you have to promote yourself tirelessly, and constantly find new ways to get your work to your audience. we both know great artists who are broke and struggling who have no Internet presence, and have relied only on galleries for their livelihood and when sales go south they are stuck , waiting, waiting. julie and i have had our own businesses before and we are pro active in the pursuit of our careers, having put on our own shows and traveled and been letting the world hear about us, hey we re alive ,we re painters. some artists consider this a dirty business, but for those off us who ve worked 60 hour week and hustled and been in business it goes with the territory, work hard b e lucky, jgk our website is wwwsfabstract.com check out our bios, resumes, statements.