Make or break, or the artistic prostitution

Your options are: make it work or wait for the big break

The odds are definitely unfavorable when you wait for a big break in the Art world. I don't have a number for you here, but I would certainly not bet on it. Stacking against you even more if you haven't gone the traditional education way and have to call yourself Self-thought (I have to).

You can go with the flow, I did for years, selling a couple of paintings here and there, not having the credentials to get into galleries, not getting the credentials for failing to get into galleries. I could have gone on tipping away, banging on closing doors in the hope one would open, and even then, there was no guaranty a success would happen and last.

Then someone said "why don't you paint the landscape and sell it to the tourists"

But I don't do landscapes, I thought, this would go COMPLETELY against my integrity as an artist, that would be like, like... artistic prostitution!!
Now, I wasn't all that offended really, I just had never envisaged doing Art for what the customer would be looking for and my ego may have rebelled slightly against the fact that it made perfect sense (how had I not thought of that myself!!)

And so I painted my first landscape in many years...

And another...

I was strangely surprise that my style could still translates in landscapes, I made them into limited edition prints and off I went to the shops and the rest of that part of the story is history...

But then I kind of lost myself, painting after painting, I didn't realized that I was taming more and more, becoming "generic", unrecognizable and to my eyes, well ordinary...

I put this painting up reluctantly, not because it is particularly ugly but only because despite my signature, this is not my painting, it is not me.

It is one thing to tweak art to suit the demand but if it's not you than is it worth trying to break with it?

I revisited the same subject, to make a point, I am stubborn like that... It is still in the drying room but I will show it soon, to make a point.

The lesson to be learned here is you can do the city streets (painting that it), you can do the country lane, dress it in red, dress it in blue, the only thing that matters is that skin deep it is all you!

Apologies, that's quite terrible as rhymes go, but you get the point right, cause that's all that counts, that I made my point!