where i'm at....

the last few weeks have been a struggle for me. i'm finding it hard to find the motivation to create work. and in part , i think its because i don't have any direction or brand identity or a place i want to put it. agh i sound so distraught! but really....

i am losing faith in etsy. i will probably keep a shop there on the off chance that someone in that dismally low-priced market will be interested in some fine art. fact is: fine art doesn’t sell on etsy. people are looking for oochie goochie 10$ shit to give their mom. i have played the etsy games and chattered in the forums (which i find to be largely self congratulatory) i still see little success financially. and when it comes down to it, my hourly wage is wasted talking to faceless knitters and jewelers who aren’t interested in my drawings and prints. furthermore, any serious critique threads or business discussions i try to bring up are quickly ignored. unless im under someone's desk in brooklyn i dont think we'll ever be seeing fine art making a regular appearance on the front page. i'm not trying to be harsh, but that's how it is.

i even thought of abandoning the traveling painter name. i've been using this moniker ever since i realized that my art is always influenced by where i am. and after a stint as a guest artist at a nature conservatory, i thought, "hey this is pretty fun...traveling around and making my work.' but i digress. i've been "traveling painter" for years and it's catchy enough (tell me if I’m wrong!) so i think it will stay.

i've decided to go out on a limb and try to create my own marketplace. primarily because (especially from a business standpoint) i want to direct anyone i talk with to ONE place. not a blog (a long hard to remember address), a shop (another unfamiliar address- eeetsyyy? etsy? what's that?), my twitter (at least that's still pretty fun), etc. I don’t want business cards plastered with 45 urls. i think it looks disorganized and amateur.

I bit the bullet and went with wordpress hosted from my own website. this will allow me to have a blog AND my own store, with advanced selling options, my own rules and no "fees" under one easy to remember, subdomain free web address. you can check out my work in progress if you like. www.travelingpainter.com

i'm still messing around and auditioning shopping carts so forgive my dust. once it's officially launched, i'll shut this blog down and redirect there. i'll be updating in the future from www.travelingpainter.com.

maybe getting this off my chest and out of my head will free up some creativity. i'd like to feel excited to create new work for this newfound concept, but it's hard to shake the "will etsy receive this well?" thoughts from my head. not that it should matter, but i doubt any artist hasn't had the conflict of making for art’s sake and making for an audience.

so. that's where i'm at. i want to make art in my place, for a different audience. has anyone else been having these thoughts?

thanks for listening to my rant. :-)




p.s. i'm done worrying about capitalization. this is after all, the internetzzz.