There is a new product in my store, by demand of Laura, my website building partner. This was not an item, or even a painting I was planning on adding to the site, but I handed Laura a flash drive full of images and got a message later. "Why aren't we using this on your site? Or on a poster. Or a shirt. I want a shirt."
I created "Happiness is Fragile" about five years ago. I saw this dainty little tea cup in the store, and wanted it desperately, but I knew my children would destroy it. Even knowing it would end up broken, I couldn't help but purchase it. I had already envisioned this painting, and I sat down with my first cup of tea and my watercolors. It got cold by the time I was done, but it was worth it.
True to my beliefs, by the time it was scanned and transferred to the flash drive I would eventually give to Laura, the children had broken the pretty cup. But a funny thing happened when I uploaded the painting to Facebook. A friend immediately messaged me to say she wanted it. I'm pretty sure she said, "That's mine."
I tried to talk her out of it. It was something I had made to get it out of my head, and I wasn't remotely thinking about sales. It was a really odd size and would at the very least need custom matting, possibly custom framing. She was insistent. She wanted to buy it.
(And new artists, if you are reading this, my number one tip for you is to always make your art in standard frame sizes. Do not put barriers between your art and someone who wants to purchase it.)
A month or so later, she posted a video to Facebook of a film project she had been involved with. During her interview they asked her how she felt about happiness, and she said, "Happiness is fragile". Suddenly, I knew exactly why she hadn't been able to tear herself away from my little odd sized tea cup. We had been having the exact same thought, states apart. This little piece of art I created had connected with her.
You may have seen this seemingly completely opposite piece in my portfolio, and I wanted to talk about it for a moment, since we're on the subject of happiness.
I was sitting in my living room, listening to an art agent or possibly an artist, talking about the types of art companies were buying. She mentioned that "edgy" art had been having a moment, pre-pandemic, but that people were burnt out, spending less and less money, and companies weren't taking chances anymore. They wanted happy art, that they could sell easily.
I scribbled in the notebook I had next to me, in all caps, taking up several lines, "BE HAPPY." So, when I was given a mock design assignment to work with, I put together a poster version of "Bee Happy." It was sort of snarky in its intent. I was literally taking the agents' words and making happy art, to sell to people who just wanted to be surrounded with happy things.
I heard these kinds of things a lot in business classes. Make happy art, post a happy bio, keep it positive so that you don't drive people away. But then they would say, "Tell your story. People buy the artist, not the art." Well, which is it? Am I to be happy and positive or tell my story? Because my story didn't start out a happy one.
It's a weird switch, the art world has made recently. There was the previous horrible notion that artists should be starving and tortured, but I'm not sure that we're doing anything better to say that artists should be marketable and that the only thing we're selling is joy.