Sunday, September 15, 2013

Celebrating President's Day with Pain!

Celebrating President's Day is fun...but is pain fun? I recently had a in-clinic medical procedure done that was extremely painful. Given a topical anesthetic but still very painful. What if there was no pain? Could we survive? The short answer is no. Pain is a messenger that something is wrong. Pain lets us know when there is no pain. Without pain we would not be human. Animals feel pain, but I often wonder if plants do. Are plants screaming in pain when we pick them? I don't think so but some people think so. We do what we can when we need to. Pain is a great motivator, and that's what I'm alluding to here. Without pain, we probably would never get on a great eating plan to lose weight. It's that pain we feel when we try on clothes that used to fit but don't anymore. That's painful. We then are motivated to really do something about it. Going through the painful-ness of a situation is perseverance. And perseverance produces results. Results make us happy and we travel to the planet of NO PAIN and that's where we want to be.

Pricing and Art

As time goes by, does art appreciate in value or depreciate like a car? One would hope it would appreciate in value. What to do when pricing your work? One adage that I adhere to is this: "You wouldn't have a job in America if your employer is not making money off of you". This is certainly true. In recent days, I've bumped into women business owners who are hearing from their mates: "when is this business going to make money?"-- describing their wives' businesses. It certainly is a daunting challenge and one that I've heard from my own mate! I keep trying to make it profitable and keep trying to win supporters and relish even an encouraging word. But it is a challenge. I'm not going to blame the economy, blame the president, blame America, or whomever is the financial boogey-woogey man that is taking my fame and fortune away. It's up to me to make it profitable and do the necessary work that will create a profitable art-related business. That is, ask the hard questions to yourself: would you buy this from you? That's the first question. And if the answer is "yes" then how much are you willing to pay? I have a couple of dilemmas I'm considering right now. One is: how much to charge for art-cards I create myself via cyanotypes and the other is to gently encourage a sale from a friend in another state who stated that he was very interested in purchasing a photographic print. The other thing is that I need to keep up with my website, keep updating, keep blogging, expand my presence on social media. The list is long. Are you willing to put in the time and effort?