Back in the saddle and rarin’ to go! I begin with a renewed commitment to write and to post, each Thursday…experiencing, expressing, creating and contributing to living the best art/life. Thank you so much for being here!

A brief rewind will set the stage…

I officially began my professional art career in 1980 when I had my first gallery sale…one hundred and eight paintings to one collector. Yes…really…108 completed works chosen on a Sunday morning…Easter morning by an exceptionally kind man, one of my earliest supporters.

Naturally the events leading up to this experience were the result of a series of deliberate actions.

Years earlier I had worked nights waiting tables and days on the restoration crew in a stately theatre across the avenue from ‘the best gallery in the city’. Many evenings as ‘Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris’ was being performed inside I would step outdoors into the evening air and stand under the extravagantly restored theater marquee with my co-workers on a smoke break. I would gazing dreamily across the busy main downtown avenue wondering if I would ever have the guts and the gumption to walk through the door of ‘the best gallery in the city’; a beautiful hallowed space filled with exceptional art.

After two years of harboring my vision I resigned from both jobs at the theater, moved to a quiet semi-rural area, planted a garden, got some chickens and embarked on a program for finding my voice, my style and the meaning that I felt compelled to express through making my marks on paper.

Following seven years of my hair on fire for my vision …‘suddenly’ …one day I noticed that my style was coming to meet me. I noticed that my impulse to express had birthed itself into itself and then came the da-da-da-da…desire to share.

I took a deep breath and went for a walk.

I lived without a phone. I walked the lane a few blocks to the phone booth across the street from the library.

This was going to take some nerve

The walk helped calm me. At the payphone I listened to multiple coins dropping into the metal box and then I carefully dialed the number of ‘the best gallery in the city’.

I was fueled by the idea that if I was going to be rejected I may as well start at the top.

I asked to speak with the gallery director. Yes, she would be happy to look at my work. The appointment was made.

Two weeks later I placed 12 sheets of 18 x 24″ 140# Arches paper, each a completed work, into the protected sleeve of my black presentation portfolio and zipped it up tight.

My boyfriend offers his beloved 1965 red Mustang convertible and I set off driving 30 miles to ‘the best gallery in the city’. I am on the verge of a panic attack as I pull open the heavy glass door making my way into the ‘inner sanctum’. I check in at the front desk and sit down. Thirty long minutes later I return to the receptionist…seems the gallery director double booked.

I drive home.

          I walk to the payphone.

                    I drop coins into the metal box.

                           I call.

                               I reschedule.

Two weeks later the Mustang stops moving within miles of ‘the best gallery in the city’.  I grab my portfolio and hail a taxi to take me the rest of the way. The director is welcoming, apologetic and completely real. I learn that day that she will always have the gift of putting me at ease.

With a very small window of time for her to view my work she spreads my paintings out on the carpeted gallery floor; there is a gallery talk scheduled within the same hour as my appointment and she seems genuinely interested in going beyond what’s needed when she asks if she can keep my portfolio and “show it to a couple of people.”

Next thing I know it’s Easter morning and my soon-to-be dear friend and benefactor is kneeling on my hardwood studio floor sifting through the large stack of paintings. I had been instructed by the director of ‘the best gallery in the city’ to “Let him look at everything. Don’t edit your work. Let him decide.”

One by one he sets a painting here and a painting there and one here and one there…I have no way of knowing what the piles represent to him but when he is finished he places his hand on one large stack and speaks to me for the first time beyond his initial hello, saying. “Call the gallery and have them draw up a contract. From this point forward I don’t want you to throw anything away. I don’t care if you’re visiting with friends at dinner and you draw on a napkin, I want ‘first right of refusal on everything you do’.” 

Thus began my long and mutually beneficial relationship with ‘the best gallery in the city.’

This chapter awarded me a trajectory. I had focus and dedication and I still marvel at how situations and circumstances conspired to support my vision.

This week as part of my Third Thursday memoir series I’m moving back in time to honor my unconventional foundations…this includes my program ‘Having Lunch with the Masters’.

Years before walking through the door of the ‘best gallery in the city’ and before meeting the collector who contracted with the gallery to purchase 108 of my completed paintings I began many disciplines and practices to develop my skills, one of these I called ‘Having Lunch with the Masters’.

As a young artist living on that quiet lane in a summer cottage a short walk to the Lake Erie shore I worked alone (boyfriend on weekends) without phone or car, no distractions, gardening and working in my little studio every day honing my focus.

Here sits the quaint mid century library on the shore of the lake housing an extensive art book collection. That collection fueled my desire to know the master artists by lunching with them each day for seven years. Here are a few of their whispers…

“…the essence of learning to see.
At first I did not understand but by stubbornly trying the closed door, it opened to me and revealed a new vista of experience…still to be explored, certainly, but all alight. Those who make the same effort can also learn access to fresh experience if they are unafraid of the new and strange, and determined to try.”

Paul Sachs
Modern Prints & Drawings

No one can explain how the notes of a Mozart melody, or the folds of a piece of Titian’s drapery, produce their essential effects. If you do not feel it, no one by reasoning can make you feel it.

John Ruskin

Let us go forth to study beautiful nature, let us try to free our minds from them (our illustrious predecessors) let us strive to express ourselves according to our personal temperaments. Time and reflection, moreover, little by little modify our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us…”

Cezanne

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This week: Notice where the possibility is ripe for growing your art/life

In what direction do you most want  to go?

What part of your art/life are you intent upon developing?

What are the structures that you have in place?

Do you trust your support system and capacity for growth and expansion?

How do you actively engage in midwifing your advancement?

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I am a working Heartist with more than thirty years of practice in supporting the creative best in each of us to come forth and shine. I invite you to experience the uplift of ‘Luna See’ and Lifecycle; time management tools for aligning with natural creative rhythms.

Travel with me into a realm of calm and renewed focus. Through our shared journey with my monthly newsletter ‘Luna See’ and my creative consult ‘Lifecycle’ you will discover and expand your ability to experience, express, create and contribute your deepest and wisest most authentic gifts to this unspeakably beautiful world.