Tuesday Oils and My Neighbor Looking Me Over
This! 2026. Oil on paper, 18 x 24"
Some more paintings keeping me grounded in explosive spring. Tomorrow I’ll finish the big piece upstairs. During break time, I met a new next door neighbor. I was taking the garbage out dressed in my painting suit. He said “Oh, you paint, but not just houses!”. I said “Yes” it’s what I do. Then he said it was a nice hobby to have, but nobody wants paintings. Maybe they will in 100 years.
This is par for my course of life. I live in hell whenever I let myself out. I didn’t look at his clothes and guess a career choice. How could he imagine, in working class America, that an adult of this neighborhood would choose to be an artist? It must be a hobby. He assumes I’m retired, and took up painting to pass the time. That’s all anyone can think about art getting made ever, because I live on a street that exists in a bubble where freedom can only come from a hobby. Usually fishing, or refinishing a big boat.
I nodded, and commenced a brief lecture on having a sense of history, while holding the garbage. “They certainly will be valuable in 100 years,” I told him. “If not to the great wide world, then to my great grandchildren, who will want to know all about me.”
His name is Alex, and I think his hobby is carpenter because he was holding a hammer. But he wore a button down Oxford shirt, so maybe he plays free time as a financial advisor, or an insurance salesman. Maybe he’s a neat painter, but then he’s surely retired, and there is nothing else left to do...
What I Did Here is Way Out of Line for Paper 2026. Oil on paper, 18 x 24"
One Design, No Noses 2026. Oil on paper, 18 x 24"
A Star In Space 2026. Oil on paper, 18 x 24"
Beans Sowing Beans 2026. Oil on paper, 18 x 24"
The value of a work of art is linked to the quality of the artist. We know many great painters, but their struggles help us understand why.
Your art is the consequence of feeling, creating, and remaining true to yourself. This mindset is what separates true artists from those who only paint as a hobby.
Being an artist is inevitably a lifestyle; it's not always understood, not always supported, and it's almost always a narrow path of immense solitude, traveled with one's gaze fixed on the past and one's heart on the future.
It was a comment here on Steemit several years ago that renewed my positivity about making art a living, and vice-versa. It was about art and commodity and one’s “calling” to be an artist. I paraphrase: “Aren’t artists by the very nature of choosing that path expected to make ends meet by different means from the majority? Art is not supposed to be easy. And sales? Forget it! Fine if it comes, but just forget it. Otherwise become a business, a commodity, if that’s what you desire. But don’t call yourself an artist.”
So true, and often very lonely. Being an artist is a lifestyle, a narrow path, and immense solitude. I believe it is a visual counterpart to being a philosopher, one without the degree:) Thinking, and more importantly, feeling out loud.
Thank you for the gift of your writing. I am lifted.
The comment is well-deserved; your art inspires, as does your perseverance.
That's why I said that art is a consequence of the artist's inner world, their vision, their reality, which is unique and captivating. Your art moves me, as does that of any artist who puts passion and dedication into what they do; otherwise, how could you be an artist?
Your actions also encourage others. We don't see many creators, painters, who don't see art only as a commodity, which is why we must build bridges that keep us on the path of Van Gogh's sunflowers.
A hug from this shore, this Caribbean island.
I'll be waiting.
Hear hear!
Communion has always been the number one reason for me to express art. It’s the human connection, the sharing and reciprocity, that pushes me on to the next day. For all the hells the Internet has put us through, I have deep gratitude for all the meaningful art connections I’ve made because of it.
It is the other people living out an equal fate that have given me strength to continue. I think I’m over the hump and won’t quit now until life quits me. Van gogh didn’t have any Steemit to cheer him:)
Thank you.
For sure Steemit would have done Van Gogh some good and if not Internet would have. The same counts for more if not all artists. It is good to watch, see and talk to like-minded people. They must be there, somewhere. Not people like your neighbour using a hammer to look active and a diy-er.
I have broke bread with other artists across the ocean. I have had physical space exhibitions with over 40 painters living in 10 countries. That could never happen without fame 50 years ago. There was no “pen pal” society with an art category to join. I would have become a seasoned chef, or restaurateur if I was fortunate.
Finding a pen pal has always been hard and those artists you and I would mainly bump into are those already being supported by the government or those with some rich parents to make it possible for them to do as they like.
I am really happy I never have conversations like these since my childhood and the beatings artists cannot make a living and art is useless (said by those having a membership card for the musea and theatre...).
Indeed Alex will never be noticed simply because he decided at forehand it won't work. Lack of motivation, lack of creativity, not much lost in paintings without a spark of his soul.
P.s. Salesman you said... Who knows he spreads the word and your art will be more known thanks to his complaining. 😉
Welll said, and you’ve been fortunate not to have the open criticism. I recall not too long ago volunteering for an exhibition set up at the local art association. Another volunteer asked me what I do for a living. I told him I was a painter. He just shook his head and laughed, like I was being cheeky or something. It could be my own projection mostly, but I feel in this working/middle class bubble, a man choosing art while raising a family, is nothing less than a bum, a beggar. It doesn’t matter that my wife and I chose this route because she is the better bread winner. Patriarchy has deep roots in this society. I took on all the traditional roles that a married woman would be responsible for a half century ago. And because of the chip on my shoulder, I think, in retropect, that I took on these roles to the extreme. Scratch cooking every day, raising the daughters, home schooling them to high school and then college on full scholarships. And always finding time to create predawn, or late at night, exhausted.
Alex is the norm, and I accept it now without that chip on my shoulder. Age wraps up the story you told with life.
I have told arrogant salesmen who swear they could sell mousetraps to mice, that a mark of expertise in their field would come from success at selling one of my paintings. Not one has taken me up on the offer. Even when I tell them to mark it at any price and take half. No takers. No salesman sales.
More proof that art is not a commodity—a very hard sell, like air.
And yes, negative publicity is still publicity:)
Thanks always for taking the time to read my posts:)
You don’t need to justify yourself to me. In my family, the women always worked; my mother was the breadwinner, and I’ve always been the same – alongside being a housewife and who knows what else. The most important thing is that we do what we’re good at and find fulfilment in it; that’s what matters most in a relationship and a family. I would have loved to have had a creative parent, like some children did at primary school. I know one was a potter, another wove reeds and did fretwork. Nobody thought that was strange or inferior. All the pupils learnt these things, just like etching, playing the recorder, singing and drawing. I miss schools like that these days. How can you be creative if you never get the chance to try it out?
I think it’s also been drummed into us that art is inferior and that it’s only art if it meets a certain set of criteria.
I believe there’s an art market coming up in June where the painting group will definitely be present. I plan to be there and we’ll see if I can get people excited and, of course, reap any potential benefits.
It’s a shame none of those representatives took up the challenge; I certainly would have. A real salesperson can sell anything, no matter what it is (as an employer once said to me when I was providing information about a care home. It’s true, I could have sold a load of rubbish back then too. What a salesperson does need is enthusiasm. If Alex can really paint, he’d be the right person to sell art. Unfortunately, he seems more dead than alive, and he won’t get very far with that hammer.
By the way, I wanted to ask you if there’s a logo for Free Art, or is it ‘Artists and the Entire Population’?
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Both! I think Edgeworth is making a logo. And yes, it is also, “Artists and the Entire Population”:)
Here in the U.S., the pendulum is swinging. Young people I know aren’t buying into a world without art and freedom to experiment. Many are refusing to work 40-50 hours a week laboring for money but no chance at security. Why bother? Owning their own homes is nearly impossible, no matter hour worked to death they are. I am confident that a better world is coming. Fruitful for more people. An anti-greed revolution of every day life. No more Teslas, and frugality and non-participation in systems that deplete will become the new black.
I used to pin on my website and offer to anyone to sell my paintings at any cost they want. Just get me a hundred bucks per, and keep the profit. No takers.