Here’s a painting which sold in January of this year at my show in Baltimore at Gallery Blue Door. It’s another one of those paintings which had been published in one of The Old Farmer’s Almanac calendars years before I added a gnome to suit my weird proclivities for having magical stuff show up in rather mundane settings.
I’m rather fond of the idea of a wizened little man taking a nice siesta under a large planter of strawberries on a warm early summer day. Perhaps he’d been picking fruit all morning and got a little sleepy after his big lunch of farmer’s cheese and baked apple pie. Well, anyway that’s the story I’m telling about him. He should retire already and get some quality rest.
In my 1 year partnership in selling my work with art agent, Jane Frank, I’ve learned a lot about the market of art and the specificities around selling to buyers. One thing that’s come up in our conversations is why one should refrain from ever changing a painting after its publication. There’s the provenance of the work— the proof of its origination— to maintain. A published work will have the actual printed objects to prove what its original state was and if you go changing that, well… perhaps the collectors will regard it as an entirely different work. It’s lost its “place” and is regarded as less valuable.
However, this strawberry pot painting was changed long before I received that advice (there are 6? of these changed works and two are halfway, irreversibly changed) and so I can only say that maybe I feel differently about the garden calendar art than I do about the fantasy book or magazine covers I’ve done. And then there’s the question of digital work. I’ve been doing the OFA calendar digitally since 2016 or so and it feels different— less precious— mainly because there’s no original to sell with digital work. But is there a similar etiquette for the sake of the publication itself? Am I taking this “contemporary” art practice a bit too far? Come now, you can be honest with me.
The Strawberry Pot art as it was originally published for The Old Farmer’s Almanac 2011 Garden Calendar.
In any case, I felt (feel?) that the old Garden Calendar art has become a bit lost to the world. By adding the gnomes, the physical work is rejuvenated for me— and perhaps others will find it more easily.