As many of you know, my big project during the winter and spring a year ago was a group of twenty charcoal landscape drawings. They eventually formed the core of my book Snowy Fields, along with two essays, one by me, and another, about my work, by Michael Szpakowski. It's been a pleasure to send that book out into the world and to hear back from many of you with appreciative comments. I'm both grateful and encouraged by readers' reactions to both the artwork and the writing, since I haven't done a project like this before.
Some of you asked if any of the drawings would ever be for sale. I've decided to make most of them available following a small exhibition and talk in Hamilton, NY, on May 1. Some have already been spoken for, so if you're interested, please do let me know as soon as you can via email: cassandra dot pages at mailbox dot org. The grid above shows the drawings and their availability (red dot means unavailable). The drawings are signed and framed behind plexiglass with archival mattes, and are priced at $295.00, plus shipping.
I also have two oil paintings for sale that belong to the same series. This one is quite small:
Spring Thaw. Oil on board, 8" x 9.5". $325.00 framed.
And the other is larger, in a really beautiful gallery frame. (The color is more accurate in the top image.)
View of Chenango Valley, looking toward Sherburne from North Norwich. Oil on board, 12" x 16". $750.00 framed.
It's never particularly easy for me to decide to let my work go, especially when the pieces aren't prints but are one-of-a-kind originals. However, I'd much rather have my artwork find homes where it will be enjoyed than to have it sitting around in my storage drawers. I've tried to price these pieces fairly and reasonably so that more people will find them accessible. Shipping will be calculated depending on the destination but I'll do it as reasonably as possible.
The other very good thing about finishing a big project is that it clears creative space for new ideas. I'm not at all sure what will emerge next, but I plan to keep drawing and painting, staying open to inspiration without trying to force anything forward, confident that eventually the work will coalesce around a new idea, informed by what came before but not repeating it. Maybe Mediterranean, maybe Quebec...we'll see. I don't think the next body of work will be wintry, as much as I like the graphic qualities of snow. We are definitely ready for spring up here!
"Letting work go." I don't paint but I write, There is no intrinsic worth in the words; they are either stored on the hard disk or fed into a process which creates as many copies as I wish. The aim is, of course, dissemination but I find I don't have much talent for that. I make half-hearted stabs at publicity when I would prefer to be writing.
Once things were slightly different. With the typewriter I did end up with something that had great value - the typed MS - but only to me. And even then the uniqueness was vitiated in that grievous experience had taught me to make a carbon copy.
Also, the typed MS was the end-product of other typed versions, all of them imperfect according to my judgement. Theoretically I could have saved these and handed them out to those who had an interest in how prose develops. A very small audience indeed.
I seem to remember you have included in posts intermediate illustrations of paintings as WIP. But once you have progressed such works have only an electronic significance and /or instruction value to those interested in how art is produced. That said one of the greatest creative thrills I ever experienced (other than seeing, in Prague, rhe rehearsal/performance version of the score of one of LvB's symphonies) was the earlier draft of Eliot's Waste Land edited in pencil by Ezra Pound. At the British Museum. A genuine and highly valuable artefact. And such radical editing! Whole stanzas crossed out! Plus Eliot's honest admission that Pound was il miglior fabbro.
But you must sell your paintings. It is the logical conclusion of the creative urge. Cash may seem crass but it is one measure - however small and indirect - of ultimate value.
Posted by: Roderick Robinson | April 21, 2024 at 01:34 AM