One of the challenges that I face as an artist is creating art for passion versus creating art for profit. It is frustrating to note that the biggest criticisms and biggest praises for my work have been the same “The horses in these compostitions are not real–they are fantasies”.
And so I have struggled to find a way to appease the demands from the buying public to paint “real horses”, and my desire to create more emotionally-based imagery.
Many of my horse and carriage images are an attempt at compromise. They are real horses placed in settings that exist only in memory.
Unfortunately, I often feel that the horse and carriage scenes, while pretty, are not lively enough.
And too many of the little drawings in my sketchbook are never fully realized because they are not necessarily happy “real horse” scenes.
It’s been hard to try and please two masters and frustrating in this current economy to try to create art to please buyers that are holding on to their purse strings ever more tightly.
Something’s gotta give….
One Comment
I hear you load and clear. Some of the work I enjoy doing most is rather abstract. I find the audience for this work to be very small. I do enjoy more traditional realism equally though and so may not be in the same place as you. My happiest images are those that are realistic but with an abstract edge to them. It is difficult to be true to oneself and also create what people want. It’s a great topic for further discussion.