The Beach is More Than an Idea

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I’ve been asked a number of times, "What is it like living at the beach?"

My answer is usually a question: "What would your life be if everyday was a day at the beach?" Ask yourself: "would you rather be an accountant in Tupelo, Mississippi or bum at the beach." I think anybody with any sense would rather be at the beach doing nothing than doing anything, someplace else. It’s freedom here – it’s bondage anywhere else.

Can you imagine being the tight-lipped CEO, or on the Board of Directors of General Motors? The traders on the New York Stock Exchange are looking at you as if they are watching the fall of Vietnam. When I had, what some people called "a real job" over twenty years ago, the owners wanted me to goose-step like a parading soldier. Salute the "higher margins," and the "return on investment."

But I was out of step. Even then I lived at the beach – and it would call to me. "Don’t go to work today! Come on over! Bring the volleyball! Grab a surfboard!" Don’t forget your towel!

And then I got lucky. They fired me for being belligerent and persistent in my ill manner. I’ve been lucky ever since – I now have an empty bankbook and no shiny three-piece suit in my closet, no lace shoes and certainly no ties. My uniform is flip-flops and a bathing suit. When I exercise, I run barefoot in the sand.

I’m here to tell you: everyday is sunshine –. It’s dancing with Lisa Rinna. It’s cedar-planked salmon with dill hollandaise sauce. It’s life on the edge – both metaphorically and concretely. It’s where the continent ends and life begins. To most people the beach is an idea, a wish, a dream, but living here is real.

Living anywhere else is amateur – living at the beach is for the pros.

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The Taxman Can’t Take Away the View

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Sunset from my place

"April is the cruelest month," so said, T.S. Eliot. Well not here. I don’t know where you live but it can’t be anything like this. It was 89 degrees today. That’s no April Fools joke. The taxman has cometh and gone, no iceman and no April showers. Just one gorgeous day. And check out the evening photograph from a few nights ago.

As you can see the view is spectacular. Neither wars, nor bank failure, nor loss of as job, nor the yak show hosts with megaphones kill the beauty of the sunset. And all of that above certainly tries to create depression – but it can’t. That is because a sunset at the beach is spiritual (and I don’t mean religious) A sunset transcends an expensive meal, an eight hundred dollar suit, a grand house. The sunset goes right on by those things. A sunset can make you feel more joyous than any music you have ever heard. The actual sunset can not be captured by the camera or painting or any movie. I certainly cannot express it in writing. It transcends it all.

Sunsets come in all different colors, shapes and sizes. And it doesn’t happen only in America or Russia or China. It happens all over the world and at the same time (and I don’t mean clock time). It happens a dusk when the sun drops below the horizon and reflects it’s light back up into the sky. And no rich dude owns it. I’m sure if some entrepreneur could find a way to capture the sunset and put it behind a curtain and charge for it, he would. But every day the show goes on for anyone who wants to take a look. There is no fee, no toll no assessment. It is free to see. A sunset has not missed one day of performance. And it won’t. It shows up whether you or I am looking or not. Day in and day out until the end of time.

My Art’s Symbolism Disclosed

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"The Game" Painting - 50" x 72" acrylic/latex on unstretched canvas

Symbolism in my art is uncomplicated and thoughtless devoid of consideration for any emblems and iconography. And, if not trite exactly, depends on an "affront to originality." This leads to art that ranges from " no emotional connection’ to better dovetailing the ‘static world’ with irrelevant content."

My art represents an outgrowth of the brighter, cheery side of Romanticism mining the mythology of "Hallmark Cards" and the dream imagery of "American Idol" for the visual language of my colon. The symbols used are the familiar tokens of mainstream icons and are intensely general, public, transparent - and are obvious references to the contemporary.

As with most of my art, its ineffectiveness tends to be proven by the fact that only a few of my clients continue to purchase (which is too common today) my art for their collections. When asked, "Why do you paint this way?" I answer, "I need two pair of jeans, a new harmonica, and three fresh apples."

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Marsha Norman Quote

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"Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you."

- Marsha Norman

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Emancipation in Pricing Your Art

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Painting of John Papadakis father of Taso and Petros Papadakis
30" x 40" acrylic on canvas

First – do not tell your client how easy it was to create your artwork or they won’t respect it, there-by devaluing your ability and talent. For example: If you can do a drawing in a couple of hours tell them it took a week and you suffered black-lung disease from the charcoal dust. This pricing policy is based on equality between you and the client so they need to know you have struggled and endured.

The best clients have struggled through their MBA program and now sells sub-prime mortgages or unsecured bonds – and we all know how hard those items are to sell. Like you, they are selling an intangible item that has no intrinsic value. So you have to establish grounds for cooperation in place of competition for their all-mighty dollar. Because, invariably, they have the money and you don’t.

Here is how the pricing policy works. Let’s say it takes five days (in an eight hour day) for you to create a piece of art. Your price on the work is exactly the same to everyone – and I mean everyone. You want, in return for your five days of work, the same amount of money your client makes in the same time period. For example – you paint the portrait of a piano bar musician who makes (between his gig fee and tips) around two hundred dollars a night. The musician pays one thousand dollars for the portrait. Let’s say you paint the portrait of the Wal-Mart greeter who works the third shift. He makes ten dollars an hour (if he is lucky) and only works six hours a night. He pays three hundred dollars. But you get an attorney and he is making three hundred dollars an hour. That is twenty four hundred dollars a day or twelve thousand dollars in five days. That is what he pays. Twelve thousand dollars.

As you can imagine this pricing policy brings out deep-seated resentment in some "would-be" clients. And just so you know why this irritates some people so much: it is that you (the artist) think you are on equal footing with them.

Now – you know who will yell that your price is way out of line. But it is not. Everyone pays the same price. Five days of labor. I have had lawyer men tell me this is not fair. Fair? Fair? And I tell them they are welcome to come over and take five days painting my house and we will call it even. Or he can give me five days of that lawyering stuff he does.

But you may still run into some resistance with the attorney. He will say that he spent a lot of time in attorney school. You counter with the fact that you also spent years in graduate school and have your Master in Fine Art (MFA) and have fifty thousand dollars in student loans to prove it. He will say he has a large, plush office to maintain and needs it to impress his clients and justify his high fees. And you counter and say you have a large and luxurious studio that you have to maintain to impress your patrons. He punches and you counter-punch. And he will come up with enough excuses for why his time is more valuable than yours. And at some point his arguing skills will wear your down. At that point you say: "Okay. Okay. You are right. I’ll knock off twenty percent and you can have it for seventy-two hundred."

Do not sell your artwork short. When pricing your artwork here are my final words: Thousands and thousands of years ago "man" started painting on the walls of caves. (That is – if you believe in evolution. If you don’t then quit painting like someone else does) If god wanted artists to bend over he would have had those cave people paint on the floor.

PS: If you do not like this pricing policy check blog posting: "Capitalist at Work - Pricing Your Art in a laissez-faire Manner"

Martin Luther quote

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"How soon 'not now' becomes 'never'."
- Martin Luther

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How to Price Your Artwork

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Painting of Jeff on Harley-Davidson Motorcycle

8 feet by 5 feet acrylic/latex on unstretched canvas

The first question is: "How much?"

An important lesson in selling art is establishing a price. The gap in the artist’s head is between what they think it is worth and what someone is willing to pay. " - and that is a emotional problem, not a pricing problem. With pricing, it is far, far better to get as much as you can as it is being consistent. Although I am an advocate of laissez-faire system of pricing my artwork I am also willing to establish a fixed price. But I do not believe in the "price per square inch" pricing method. In reality some paintings are better than others and should be priced accordingly. You want some play in that pricing policy.

One of the most important points to remember is - people want a good deal on a piece of art and will pay any price to get it. Also remember – as an artist you sell a piece of art by conning others - by creating something of value that did not exist before. Think of it. You may take a piece of canvas, some brushes and slop some paint on the canvas in some morally repugnant manner – and magically there is something out of nothing. And somebody will come along want to buy it.

So this is what I did for a number of years – particularly with business people. I called it the capitalistic way of pricing. It does not matter what is the size or quality of the artwork. You select one of the three prices represented by a current stock market indicator. And you tell your client it is based on that particular indicator. Which one you select is based on the qualifications of the client’s ability to pay and your perception of your artwork’s value. The price indicators I used were the S&P 500, the Nasdaq and the DOW on any given day. For example today’s S&P 500 was at 852, which means your art sells for $862. Or the Nasdaq was at 1,626 which means your art is $1,262. Or the DOW was at 8,029 – which means the artwork sells for $8,029.

Now, if for some odd reason you may feel any one of those prices are too high you can lower them by using the same index - only change the decimal points. The S&P 500 was at 852, which means your art sells for $86.20. Or the Nasdaq was at 1,626 which means your art is $126.20. Or the DOW was at 8,029 – which means the art sells for $802.90.

What is fun about this pricing policy is that it fluctuates on a daily basis. This allows the capitalist businessman to hedge his bet on when to purchase a painting.

My final words on pricing: (other than the "Emancipation in Pricing Your Art" seen in another blog post above). Pricing your artwork properly is as hard to do as it is for a fortune telling gypsy to be accurate.

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T.E. Lawrence Quote

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"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible."

- T.E. Lawrence

Hail Mary - Let me Paint in Peace

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48" x 60" acrylic on unstretched and unprimed canvas

One of my favorite movies is from the 60’s named "The Graduate". You may be too young to remember it. In the movie, a recent college graduate (Benjamin Braddock played by Dustin Hoffman) gets seduced by Mrs. Robinson (played by Anne Bancroft) and then falls in love with her daughter Elaine Robinson (played by Katharine Ross).

Ostensibly that is what the movie is about. But what it is really about is stated in a conversation early in the movie between Ben and Ben’s father’s business partner, Mr. Braddock. Benjamin (who has not found work since graduating) is asked if he is worried about his future.

Benjamin: "I don’t know … I want to be…"
And Mr. Braddock asks: "To be what?"
Benjamin looks at his father who is across the room. Benjamin says:…"Different."

Now, like Benjamin - I do not want to be like anyone else. Not Picasso – or Van Gogh or any other seductive artist. (For they are the, "Ben’s father and Mr. Braddock, and Mrs. Robinson"). I do not want to paint their paintings. I want to paint my own. Paintings’ appeal is making my own mark of paint on the canvas – however it looks.

Painting is a daily challenge. I crawl out of bed in the morning, and with brushes in hand, drag my old body outside. (I paint outside because I have poisoned myself three times with the fumes from my paints). And with a few "Hail Mary’s" in my petition for "grace" (because I can’t do it any other way) I try to paint something – anything – including the fence – with a certain quality that I cannot define. (By the way those "Hail Mary’s" are also used as a prayer in desperation, especially as I am near completion of a painting). (Another aside – Benjamin, in the final scenes of "The Graduate", is in a church throwing a few "Hail Mary’s himself)

I do not particularly care if I paint a person, a landscape or a dog - as much as how I paint it. But when I’m painting - over my shoulder, with a cup of coffee, a donut and wearing turtle necks is Picasso and Van Gogh and Warhol and a thousand ghosts saying "Idiot! Not like that! That’s crap." (It’s Ben’s father and Mr. Braddock and Mrs. Robinson "déjà vuing" me)

You’d think the bedevilers would have something else better to do instead of tormenting my conscience by saying things like "you need a little more on the left" or "you need some red." Red? I don’t need red. Red is needed for painting firemen and I’m not painting firemen. But I will tell you what I do need, I need those specters in my brain to – "shut the f*** up - and let me paint in peace!"

Now, how does one do that. That is the question. Because it is not like the movie’s ending where Benjamin gets the girl. Painting everyday with the ghosts is like what Yogi Berra, the great baseball player, said, "It’s déjà vu all over again."

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Have you recently seen the sun set?

Here in Los Angeles it is quite provincial to admire the sunset. There is no money in it. I see the sun set every day from the art studio that overlooks the Pacific.

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Mark Twain quote

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

- Mark Twain

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The Sure Thing

48" x 60" charcoal, ink, acrylic on paper

You know, it is in the mind of a lot of artists, - and I was one of them - if you needed to make a living, the best you could do with your talents was to paint signs. Or get an MFA and teach constricting and largely irrelevant skills. Now, with that education you can go out and web-site your way to a subsistence level.

I confess, I have been tempted to take those different paths. I had an opening for a show once – a one-person show – at which twelve people came to the opening reception. That night it poured rain – not only cats and dogs but giraffes and cows – the whole ark. Of the twelve only one person was not family or a friend. Can you imagine. One person! We had sent out over eight hundred invitations and had a short article in the newspaper. Nobody read their mail or newspaper that week and nobody had a boat. We had enough cheese-wiz left over to feed the entire homeless population of Santa Monica. I almost quit painting.

From that experience I developed a guideline on how I was to achieve some sort of financial success (in the most meager of measurements) as an artist.

1. Don’t squander time.
2. No whining – no complaining.
3. Bite the heads off of chickens
4. Don’t ever be embarrassed or proud about your artwork.
5. Don’t question the nature of the aesthetic experience.
6. Wear a cape.

And the one thing I learned from that show - and the final words I live by is: "Kiss every hand and shake every baby" for you never know where opportunity will come from. Why? The one guy who showed up at the opening I had, passed along the invitation to a friend. That friend came in the day before the closing. He was a set decorator and rented twelve paintings and commissioned three paintings for the John Cusack/Minnie Driver movie "Grosse Point Blank".

Trust me. I’ve lied to you before but this time I am telling you the truth. It is a trade. Do it all. You never know.

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George Bernard Shaw quote

"Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get."
- George Bernard Shaw

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Quickly Dismissed Ideas About Art

48" x 72" acrylic/latex on unstretched canvas

Anytime a group of artists gather to look at art the conversation turns to a variety of subjects that nobody really care about. So I’ve listed below a number of thoughts I have brought up but were quickly dismissed.

1. I think any artist who paints twenty paintings in the same subject in the same colors and/or size is faking it – period.

2. The only artist (male or female) that looks good with their hair pulled back is Salma Hayek as Frida

3. Three times is two too many times to have poisoned myself with the toxic fumes from painting.

4. Any artist using red in a painting should be painting bullfighters.

5. I do not like creamy gallery owners

6. How come there are not many really good dog paintings?

7. When I see an artist wearing painting clothes to an art opening I figure they are posing.

8. Painting is always a good excuse for having a beer in the middle of the day.

9. I think Lucian Freud’s paintings look absolutely fabulous in photographs but not too good in person – except for the queen’s painting.

10. I never met an artist who didn’t think he deserved a show.

11. I think those artists using feces in their work should resign from the human race.

12. I was told twenty years ago that if I’d paint the same subject fifty times I am bound to paint one good one. Good advice – and -that is about my percentage.

13. Every time I need inspiration I visit the Lamp Art Project. - see: http://www.lampartproject.org/

14. If you told me twenty years ago I’d be an artist I would have thought you were speaking about my wind chimes.

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Jim Rohn quote

"You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight"
- Jim Rohn

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