Money, Oops, I mean Monet troubles

I found out an interesting factoid about Claude Monet just recently that might be of interest to fellow artists. Even though Monet went through an early period of rejection, his work soon began to sell fairly well. But then something happened. France had a recession, and voila, Monet was broke again. However, he survived the recession and in his later years became quite a wealthy man. Wealthy enough to set up that little house in Giverny, with the famous gardens and ponds. Anyway, the point is, even for a talent like Monet there could be some hard times. So fellow artist if your sales have slumped a bit in this current recession, buck up. You are only in the middle of the movie of your life and maybe, just maybe, if you perservere you will reach the success you have been looking for.

One of my oil paintings that was partially inspired by Monet:

Carol's Path

The Secret of Painting

We've all heard of the book "The Secret" which proposes to bring you everything you wish for in life, I am not sure if that secret works, but I am going to give a SECRET in this post that will practically guarantee you will create better paintings. I found it in an old out-of-print artbook called Creative Painting by Lenore Sherman. Are you ready? Here it is: "Painting is the visible expression of ideas held by the artist. It is at first a mental activity, then a physical expression. Therefore, if an artist has only a vague idea of his subject and a hazy notion as to the technique of painting it, then the painting will show this uncertainty." Did you grasp the importance of this? Without getting woo-woo about it, see the finished painting in your mind, before you start painting it. I read once about an artist who would just shut his eyes before his blank canvas and visualize a finished painting on it for about 15 minutes before touching brush to canvas. Try this out and see if it works for you.

Here is one of my recent paintings:

If you'd like to see more of my paintings, check out wwww.wworcesterart.com