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Highs and Lows of the Art World

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On Top of the World

Things were really beginning to go well for me now. I was publishing, painting, teaching, and travelling. It was time for me to intensify my markteting. The next step I took was to bring in a business partner, who invested money into my publishing company. In the early 90’s, we signed four other artists to publish their limited edition prints. We also continued to advertise in the major trade publications and to attend publishing conventions. Within two and a half years, we became one of the leading publishers in the limited edition print market.

Even though I was experiencing the “success” I thought I wanted in the art world, in an ironic way I was actually pushing my art to the background once again as I made sacrifices to get our other artists into the trade magazines. Anyway, things seemed to be going well for a couple of years.

That’s the end of the good news.

 

Back Down to Earth

In 1992, I went through a terrible partnership breakup. It was then my depressing duty to call the four artists
that we published (who were also my dear friends) to tell them about the “divorce.” Needless to say, it was
devasting to their careers. One moment they were with a leading publishing company, the next minute they were each unemployed artists.

My career spiraled downward right next to theirs. I had travelled oversees, been published in leading trade magazines, was an up-and-coming publisher myself, and had even had my work featured on the front of a magazine. Now all of that was gone. Although those were extremely challenging and tense times, I’m very grateful for my business partner, because he helped me do things in the art world I would have never been able to do alone.

With that part of my career behind me, my teaching began to take on a whole new significance, since the majority of my income was now coming through my classes. I had never wanted to be defined simply as an “art teacher,” so this was a pretty severe blow to my ego…

It was just what I needed.

 

Adjusting the Course

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I am now convinced that this was from God’s hand. He had a different path for me to take on my art journey, and now I was being directed in that way.

At first, I was teaching only because I had to pay the bills, not because I derived a lot of satisfaction
from it.  I was fighting depression. By 1994 I couldn’t even hardly get out of bed, other than to go to art class, yet always faking it by wearing a smile. Maybe you’ve been there.

I began to force myself to study fundraising, since I had donated artwork to charities before. I didn’t realize how much of an impact that would have on where I am now. I continued to work on commission pieces and put on “one man” art shows. But to be honest, I was struggling big time.

Because of my stuggles, I lost focus on my art again and  started working in many network marketing companies, trying any way I could to make a buck. But I found out quickly that the MLM’s I tried to work with made money off of people, rather than help people make money by being successful. The insights I gained from that experience actually helped me to rethink how I did my teaching and publishing.

Because I hadn’t yet embraced art teaching, you could classify the next several years of my career as “coasting.”

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