Mr Chips finds a new home, selling art and other exciting news from the studio.
"We just sold Mr. Chips! I have a check from the purchaser for you. Congrats! "
"Wait, What?!? No way!!! That’s awesome!!!" It was some much-needed good news on an otherwise tough week, but more importantly, I was thrilled to find I had connected with someone who loved my art as much as I did.
For those of you who haven’t been following along Mr. Chips is a piece very close to my heart. He’s been hanging on the wall behind my desk for the last year or so before finding his new home. Mr. Chips was also a part of the Dreams Gallery solo show, Wooden that be fun? in Wilmington.
Selling art is a strange thing. There's a part of you that feels elated, and strangely, another that feels a small pang of loss when they go. I know that probably sounds odd, but each piece I create has its own story. Whether they represent a giant leap forward in development or perhaps an exploration using a new technique. They all have their special place. The earlier ones tend to be most significant when it comes to milestones, and Mr. Chips arrived on the scene quite early. He was a big part of my new discovery and was actually created as a learning experiment. A crash test dummy for many of the techniques I carried forward into some of my larger works.
Most people visualize an artist's work as something that happens on a whim. The merry artist wakes up when the sun is warm, puts on his smock, dons a jaunty beret, and paints until his heart is full and he is content, the masterpiece magically revealing itself when the time is right. While that might be true for a few lucky artists, for me, nothing could be further from the truth. Most of my work is created after hours of agonizing over trivial decisions that usually wind up being changed, scrapped, cursed at, recreated, and then left to sit on my easel for months while I try to unlock the secret that’s missing. Spoiler alert, the stuff you see has passed the test, the rest waits for better days.
Creating art is like a puzzle. Each new discovery unlocks a secret. Those secrets are passed from one piece to another, then to the next, and the next. Once something has revealed itself, it becomes a part of the tool kit. That tool kit then becomes the foundation that builds the next piece.
Mr Chips art Mr Chips being glued Mr Chips art being wired Mr. Chips being lit Mr Chips added to his frame mr Chips the final product
The ordered fashion in which I present my work here on the blog may appear organized and sequential, creating it is in no way a linear progression. How pieces are completed is a long series of trial and error. At any given time, there are at least ten pieces in random stages of completion and ten more ready to go.
Pieces I thought were finished long ago are often revisited. I may finish a piece only to haul it off the wall, rework it, hang it, then pull it down again. The things I learn from one piece may inspire me to take a new direction and change something, only to be disappointed and change it back again. It probably sounds a little nuts, but it’s all part of the process, and as anyone who creates art can tell you, the joy is in the process.
The fabric of completion is a slow and steady progression that's woven together a little at a time over months and, yes, sometimes even years. What you see in the gallery may look effortless, but in reality, what you see is most likely about to become another work in progress. What I’ve learned through all this is that no piece is ever actually finished until it is out the door and finds its new home. I’m not sure how other artists work, so I can only speak for myself when I say it's the never-ending story, and for that, I’m truly grateful.
So long, Mr. Chips, have a great new life; you'll be missed.
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