Just one year ago I began this undertaking with absolutely no idea of whether my photographs would be of interest to any art gallery. Now, one year later, my work is currently on exhibit in a two person show at the gallery that has represented me as a painter for several years. I am having great success selling my work at another gallery a couple of hours away. I just signed a licensing deal with a company out of Atlanta to reproduce some of my paintings from a few years ago. I am in discussions with a very substantial gallery in a neighboring state to show and sell my work. I’m working on submitting my work to a very prestigious national publication, and I have at least some hope that it might be published. I’m also working on landing my first solo show at a very nice college gallery. And I am brimming with the confidence that all that validation has conferred upon me.
In addition to all these successes, I have managed to create a body of work this year that exceeds anything I have ever done before. I love this work, and I feel like it is speaking to me and for me in a way that nothing I have ever done before has. That work gives me almost complete confidence that I will do more solid work, that it’s just a matter of my devoting my time and attention to doing it. I now know, where I previously might have hoped, that I have the ability to do masterful work, work that speaks from the bottom of my heart and touches other people. I’ll insert here an image from that body of work just to give you an idea.
At the opening of my current show, I was treated to a tremendous outpouring of support from family and friends. I also had complete strangers come up to me and tell me how much they loved my work. A couple of them were art professors, whose opinions carry a lot of weight for me. I saw looks of pure admiration on people’s faces. I literally had my eyes opened for me. It occurred to me for the first time ever that I might actually have more ability than I had ever imaged I had. What a shame had I never had that thought before!
Now, having dared to say all of the above, I feel like I have to insert here that none of the above is meant to suggest that I now think I am something wonderful or that I am somehow uniquely talented or “special”. I don’t, at least not in the sense of having gotten a swollen head. I’m not at all comfortable with the idea of a big ego. I’m actually a very self-effacing kind of guy. What I mean to suggest by all of the above, is that by sticking my neck out and doing the best work I possibly could and presenting that work to a bunch of people as well as I possibly can, I have been blessed to receive all of this encouragement.
What I mean is that if you were to do the same thing that you might have the blessing of receiving all this encouragement as well. I’ve actually come to the point where I feel that any person who works seriously at their art could have this kind of experience if they apply themselves and give themselves a fighting chance to have it. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I believe that if you had what I’ve gotten in the last year, you would look at your work and your self differently and you would have a much better chance of developing your own work into the wonderful thing that it potentially is.
That is what I want to share with you all here. I hope you can hear me and take this to heart. I want you to have what I have begun to have; the feeling that I really have something to offer, something to say, and all of the ability I need in order to say it. And that, furthermore, there is an eager audience for my work and the possibility that for the first time in my 55 years, I might make my living doing what I have always wanted from the bottom of my heart to do.
I can not possibly tell you what that means to me. Or perhaps I can. I will at least try here in the weeks and months ahead, so that you may have the blessings that I am beginning to have.
