It’s that time of year when I show you all the paintings my customers commissioned during the holiday season. This is definitely the busiest time for me in the studio, as people tend to order more custom paintings in time for Christmas, but each year I manage to complete every single one on time! That’s not an easy feat, considering that oil paint takes longer to dry than acrylic. Thank you to all who commissioned paintings this year, and in the past! It’s always great to work with you on these projects, as you share your personal stories with the artist, and trust me to capture those special moments in timeless paintings. So, without further ado, here are the 11 commissions I painted in the last couple months. I provided links in the captions for the ones that are available as prints at our Etsy shop.
20″x16″, oil on canvas. Prints available at our Etsy shop.
30″ x 24″, oil on canvas. Custom silhouette portraits available at our Etsy shop.
8″ x 10″, oil on panel
11″ x 14″, oil on panel
24″ x 12″, oil on panel
14″ x 11″, oil on panel. Prints are available at our Etsy shop.
December is here, and it is now officially crunch time to get your holiday shopping completed. As an artist, I have mixed feelings about the holiday season. On one side I make more money at this time of year than any other time. On the other side, I have to work almost every weekend at in-person vending events, such as pop-ups. We sell art primarily through these channels: in person at pop-ups/craft fairs, at galleries, art shows at venues around town, and online.
Vending in person at pop-ups and craft fairs is an interesting opportunity for both the buyer and artist. I get to meet my clients, and can help them find the art they are looking for, or let them know about art pieces I may not have brought with me, but are available on my Etsy shop. In which case, they can pick up the artwork when it is ready a few days later at the studio (if you are lucky, you might get invited in for a home-brew ;). It is a lot of work setting up and taking down the booth, and has to be calculated in to our work day. Most of the time, there is no fee for us to sell at pop-up events, except credit card processing fees, and the cost of a couple beers, if the event is at a brewery. Sometimes breweries waive my tab, which always makes me very happy! Craft fairs charge a few hundred dollars for a booth. By the way, I’ll be selling my art at a pop-up at Anchorage Brewing Co. along with several other local makers on Saturday, December 3, starting at 2pm.
Selling my art at a pop-up at Anchorage Brewing Co.
Galleries are a way to work with sales people and meet a larger audience. However, galleries take 40% – 50% commission, which makes sense, since they have brick-and-mortar overhead. After dropping off art to a gallery, the artist doesn’t have to do any work except keep track of what the gallery has and what they will need when something sells. Unfortunately, the gallery only has a certain amount of space, so artists are limited to sell only what the gallery is willing to put on its walls. Galleries have sales people that work to sell the art. This is a major benefit, especially since artists are not always good at selling their own art. I’m very happy to have my art at Dos Manos Gallery!
Art shows at venues like breweries, restaurants, and coffee shops are another way for an artist to reach an audience. This is a bit more than a pop-up, but less than complete gallery representation. It is super fun as an artist to have a reception at your art show. Everyone is there to see the artwork, and that is really rewarding. The artist often has to handle all the sales, if the venue doesn’t want to process art sales, which is a hurdle for the buyer, and leads to fewer sales. Art shows last about a month, so you are committed to that venue for a longer bit of time than a pop-up. Most art show venues don’t care if they sell anything, or not, so you often don’t get a sales person, like yourself at a pop-up, or an employee of a gallery. Sometimes nothing sells at all at an art show venue. Most of the time people go to the venue for the real reason it exists: food at a restaurant, or a haircut at a stylist, or beer at a brewery. Or they go to see your artwork. Most likely, if they are already on an artist’s mailing list, they already have artwork from the artist and may be there to support the artist personally and not to purchase art. My next art show will be at Midnight Sun Brewing Co. in January.
Online selling is a good way to sell art. It is also very challenging, but if done correctly, can be quite profitable. You can sell direct from your website, this requires expensive web hosting, and secure checkout. SEO is a problem with that. There are a few other online venues: Etsy is one of the best, but there is also Fine Art America, iCanvas, Redbubble, and Deviantart. The listings are time consuming and require a keen eye for detail. Art purchasers don’t like to see typos in a listing — it makes them feel that the artist is careless. There is often a lot of communication before a sale is made, and if it isn’t handled correctly, the sale is lost. It is tedious to manage an online site for art sales. Some of these websites require the artist to make and mail all the art, like Etsy. Other sites, like RedBubble, or Fine Art America print all the merchandise, and mail it. But these sites take a much bigger cut for those services. Buying art online is really easy, you can do it from your phone, however, it is hard to tell what you will receive. This is fine when ordering a t-shirt from Redbubble, but a bit disconcerting to the purchaser when buying expensive originals, or fragile pieces. We just sold an original painting to a client in France, and I was really proud of the Real Art Is Better team, that my artwork was being shipped all the way to the cultural center of Europe. We’re offering a 20% discount, and free domestic shipping right now at our Etsy shop for a limited time.
We use all of these methods to sell art. And I find pop-ups to be the most work, but also the most profitable, especially when I am at a brewery. Not so much when I am vending at a craft fair, because there’s more competition from other vendors, and beer art is not everyone’s cup of tea. Galleries are good because they get the word out to art collectors, and help with establishing your brand, and the gallery does all the work. Art shows are fun, especially at the reception when the artist is honored, but most often you only sell a small percentage of what has been hung, and it is a lot of work moving artwork around and taking it back down. Online is a lot of setup and a ton of work when it comes to packing and mailing, or requires faith in the offsite production of reproduced items. We find that all these methods are working to keep our business running. All have their pros and cons. It’s a matter of getting it all out there, whatever the method.
Is it just us, or is summer crazy for everyone? I feel like I’m flying by the seat of my pants, and running around with my head cut off. Most of the time crunch has to do with going out to our cabin in McCarthy, which is very time consuming, but so worth the 300-mile trip one-way! Because the drive takes so long, we try to make it worth our time by spending at least a week out there. When we’re back in Anchorage, we’re catching up on painting commissions, mailing orders, doing art shows, and managing to do some house chores and hang out with our friends in between. The unrelenting summer heatwave with endless sunlight also contributes to the hyper-activity. I guess we have all winter to rest.
So, what are our summer plans? Well, Maria’s mom really loves visiting us in McCarthy, but she’s fed up with staying in our small cabin with us, so she commissioned us to build her a log cabin on our property. I’m really excited about building another log cabin, but Maria says she already built one, and is not that stoked about doing it again, because she forgot how hard it is! This project will take up most of our time, and we hope to have it completed this summer.
The foundation for the mother-in-law cabin, and some of the D logs that we have to peel for it
Other than that, we will spend most of our time working on the art business. I have two art shows happening this summer that are kicking off tomorrow on First Friday, June 3. One is my regular show at Midnight Sun Brewing that I have every year, and the second one is at a new-to-me venue, Dos Manos Gallery. I have been selling my art there for several years, but this is my first time being the featured artist in the gallery room! We hung the art there today, and I’m really happy with how it looks! I hope you check out both of my art shows, and bring your friends!
We will also be vendors at two events. The first one is the Eagle River Beer & Music Festival on Saturday, June 4th. I love having a booth at beer festivals, because that’s where I find fans of my beer art! We will also be participating in the Beer, Beards and Art Market at Anchorage Brewing Co. on June 18th, 4-9pm.
Besides work, and building a cabin, we’re flying to Sitka to celebrate Maria’s birthday. She likes going to places in Alaska for her birthday that she’s never been to. Of course, Salmonfest is not-to-be-missed, and then Maria’s cousin from Germany is coming to visit with her two sons, so we’ll get to do some Alaska tourist activities with them, which are always amazing!
I hope to see you at some of these events this summer, and if I don’t, I wish you a safe and fun summer! What are your plans this summer?
If you have stopped by our studio in the last three months you saw the enormous oil painting filling my work space, or stashed in the hall in order to make room for people during open studio events. The Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation built a new clinic in Bethel, and released a call for art in early 2019. We applied for several wall spaces, and were awarded a contract to create a 12ft x 6ft oil painting on canvas for a large area high on the wall above a stairway. This is the largest canvas I have ever painted!Last week I delivered, assembled and helped install this piece at its location in Bethel.
So, how do you take such a large painting on a jet-plane? I designed the canvas from the start so that transporting it on an Alaska Airlines flight would be possible. However, we all know that while some things seem easy conceptually, they can gain complexity as they progress. The stretcher support was made up of 45 individual ash and birchwood pieces, and no piece was longer than 6ft, because I wanted them all to fit into a ski bag. The canvas was rolled up and the stretcher support dis-assembled for its journey.I waited until the day before departure to break it down, and pack it up.
I awoke at 3:30 AM to catch a 6AM flight to Bethel. I brought two checked ski bags, and a carry-on backpack.No extra luggage fees for me with Club 49 thanks to Alaska Airlines! I could have brought another checked bag, since it was an in-state flight! Alaska Air and TSA were gentle enough with my precious cargo, and everything arrived in good shape and on-time.I was picked up by the YKHC maintenance foreman, Pat, at the airport.He and his team have been installing all the newly-acquired art pieces at the clinic. I got to see some of the art while I was there, and I must say that the committee chose some incredible art!We drove to the maintenance building and picked up two more staffers to help lift the painting onto the wall. Re-assembly took me a couple of hours and I had a conference room to myself.The extra help was great, and I don’t think I could have stretched it back to its original tightness without the extra muscle.
The maintenance crew was clutch, as I had planned to hang this colossal piece the same way I hang smaller pieces — on a heavy-duty wire.There is only an inch of clearance on either side of this piece so getting it straight on the wall was the real problem.Pat suggested I use a French cleat, and I agreed that would be better, if only I had thought to bring one.Pat was a superhero and produced the hardware from his storeroom!This made hanging the piece much easier.Four guys and two ladders later the 90lb painting slid into place.This took us right up to lunchtime, and I was a little disappointed I had taken the early flight, as now I had 8 hours to kill until I could catch the return flight to Anchorage.Pat had to check on his dog, and I had packed a lunch, so I chilled out at the hospital for an hour and breathed a sigh of relief.
After lunch Pat took me on an amazing driving tour of Bethel and the Kuskokwim River.I got to go to the grocery store to replenish my snacks for the return trip to Anchorage.Pretty expensive to buy food and gas in Bethel. $4.49 a gallon for gasoline, and $8.49 a gallon for milk! The area is beautiful tundra with mountains glistening in the distance.I got so see a pretty nice chunk of the town, which is much larger than I had expected — about 10,000 residents.The area around Bethel is very interesting, but the people are where the real beauty exists, everyone is so friendly and helpful.Bethel is a hub, but it felt like a really welcoming village.
I was dropped off at the airport with my drop cloths in my ski-bag, and I was feeling really fatigued by this time. I hunkered down at the airport and worked on my beer coloring book pages for a couple of hours before catching my flight home at 10PM.I met a fellow who was so happy to pick up his crate from Alaska Airlines.He said he had snow-machined for two hours from his camp to pick it up!This was right at twilight, so it was going to be a dark return trip for him.Adventurous people live in the Delta and I was happy to get a glimpse of this culture.Thank you YKHC for this superb opportunity!Maybe next time I can come in the summer and do a little fishing.
Here is a slideshow of some pictures I took during this whole process. Below you’ll also find three timelapse videos of my painting, and the last one is of us taking apart the painting and rolling up the canvas.