It's Fall, Y'all...and that means busy season!

 I look forward to fall every year.  Of course, part of that is relief--summers in Louisiana are brutal.  The heat plus the humidity will sap the strength right out of you in a matter of minutes.  I gave up on outdoor vendor events in the summer years ago.

But as people's thoughts turn from watermelons to pumpkins, the decorating bug sets in.  Fall through Christmas is the biggest time for selling decorations. 

And as an artist, painted decor items are my bread and butter. Sales make up for the other nine months of the year.  And an extra benefit--holiday traditions remain mostly the same from year to year.  You can still sell holiday decorative items painted last year or even the year before; they do not go out of style like many other items do.

I know, I know, someone out there is saying "painted decorations are not real art".  Fine.  I fail to see how putting my designs on a stretched canvas would change them.  I believe they are "real" art (and I price them accordingly!).  They are, however, art that sells much easier than canvas paintings.  Since this artist has to pay the electric company every month, I am going to create saleable items.  I will still paint on canvas. 

But I will also paint on small ornaments, shopping bags or as my husband says "anything that doesn't run away".  And I will cart it all to craft fairs, art fairs, and any other place where artists can sell their wares--because I love

showing my work almost as much as I love creating it.  I love meeting other creatives and getting inspired to try new things out in the studio!  

Is it art, or is it decorative?

 I have heard so many people saying the piece they were looking at was nice, but wasn't "real" art.  I have had that aimed at much of my work over the years.  The fact of the matter is that I began my artistic journey as a "decorative painter".  

I took a couple of brief recreational programs in my early 20's  through the local park system during the height of the bicentennial era's tole painting craze. I painted a few of that era's trademark daisies with strawberries, trying to exactly copy the pattern the teacher gave us.  None of them were particularly good, but I learned a little.  

I dabbled a bit over the years, usually under my mother's watchful eye.  She was a highly skilled decorative painter and active in the National Society of Tole and Decorative Painters ( which later became the Society of Decorative Painters).  She bemoaned my tendency to ignore the pattern and instructions, and literally rolled her eyes at my original items.  She sometimes did original items of her own (better than mine by far) but repeatedly refused to be referred to as an artist.  Real artists, she believed, were generally drunken degenerates, at high risk of sending packages containing their ears, and were inevitably suicidal.

Years later, when I became permanently disabled, I saw what should have been a disaster as a new beginning.  I could finally stay home and focus in my painting!  I joined the local chapter of the SDP, and rapidly began to acquire new skills. 

Color theory, brushstrokes, value, contrast...these and other things were my new tools and I worked to develop skill with them.  I studied technique using patterns and designs of others, but always took the next step and incorporated them into original designs.  

I hoarded "big" 16"x20" canvases, saving them for when I was skilled enough to not "waste" them.  When I finally got to that point, I really went to town! 

It was a short step from mini canvas panels to "just gimme a wall". 

At what point does the student become an artist?  I do not know.  I know that when I started painting purely from memories and imagination, I knew I was there.  I was able to share a vision of places that no longer exist, to capture moments out on the lake that for a brief moment were pure magic, to make statements even when I did not speak a word.  And the more I created, the stronger the urge to create became.

I look at anyone creating original work as a "real artist"--skill and experience levels of course vary--and I like some better than others. 

But I will never disparage a piece as not being "real art" just because it is small, or on a Christmas ornament, or painted on a strange surface or functional object.  Art itself began when primitive humans decorated their clay pots and cave walls, and it was the act of creation, as much as the finished results, that gave it added significance.

Artistic outlets take MANY forms

 I am primarily a visual artist.  That gives me a LOT of wiggle room!  Paints, colored pencils, pastels, collage, sculpture...every medium offers new challenges and rewards.

But my maternal grandmother was one of the greatest artists I ever knew.  As far as I know, she never drew, never held a paintbrush, never had any kind of art instruction.  But she created beauty in a dreary, drab world!

"Her Only Vanity"--a painting  of my grandmother's flower garden.  

She was one of a large family, married as a young teen, immediately began raising a large family of her own.  In rural Louisiana during the depression, the world was a dismal place.  Simply surviving took nearly every ounce of energy a person had.  But she made time to tend the most beautiful flower garden to be found for miles.  People would stop in the road and ask to take a picture.  She always had beautiful flowers in bloom, and in back always had fruits and vegetables growing in abundance.  And she crocheted, and sewed beautiful quilts from scrap fabric.  She did not simply survive--she created.  And she passed that creative drive on to many descendants, including me.

I cannot always put in time in my studio.  But instead if mowing a lawn in Louisiana's unbearable summer heat, I have turned the entire lawn into mulched beds.  I scavenged bricks for free to create winding paths through what was once flat grass that required a haircut at least once a week.

  I mixed perennials and annuals, planted flowers, veggies, and herbs, threw in a couple of scavenged trellises and statues...now my yard requires much less maintenance.  And we get a good deal of food out of it!  That garden us a constantly growing, changing art project in itself. And it is a creative outlet for me year round as well!

I think my grandmother sees it and smiles down in me when passers-by stop to look.  I share produce with my neighbors.  I have even given spare plants to complete strangers who stopped by to comment.  I am sharing my gift in multiple ways, and she always did the same.  My world is not affluent.  I will never be featured in a magazine.  But I am creating something unique. And am teaching MY granddaughter in it. 

Because the need to create is very strong in our family; we all begin to feel stagnant without some outlet for it in our lives.