Hello

I'm reading a book called Perennial Seller by Ryan Holliday. So far it's a really excellent book. It's about the idea of creating and marketing work that will last more than 10 years, 50 years or even longer.

This is an idea that motivates me and was one of the primary reasons that I left my commercial illustration career to pursue fine art. I could sidebar here into a lot of different topics but I'll stay focused on creating work that lasts.

When you think of the authors, painters and musicians who we can name from the previous two centuries you won't come up with very many. Where there were thousands of people working, most of us can only list a handful of artists from the 19th century, depending on your age, you could list more people from the 20th. I'm often amazed at artists that I know well that young people I talk with have never heard of.

I’m interested in Mastery, especially in the area of visual art, drawing and painting. Over the last 20 years I have created a lot of music too. In that process I have achieved a modest level of mastery. The work I create in both mediums has the potential to last.

I want to talk about how we apply this 'perennial seller' idea to the creation of our own work. Several things need to be in place for an artist to create work that will last.

One, The artist must have mastery of the technical aspects of their craft. In the case of painting an artist needs to have a mastery of drawing, composition, color, brushwork, values, tonality and relative detail. There are lots more aspects to creating good paintings but those are the big strokes.

Two, aside from technical ability in all of these areas, to create work that is of lasting quality requires that the artist be 'inspired'. Inspiration would be a good topic for another blog post but as inspiration pertains to creating lasting work, an artist must be motivated by the desire to create either a feeling, an idea, something moving, philosophical import or any combination thereof . I think we could come up with some more good ones as well.

What is not the best operational or motivating factor would be creating work strictly for the pursuit of financial gain. There are some exceptions to this rule. There are artists that created lasting work that did so primarily for financial reasons, but I believe that underlying those commercial decisions had to be an artistic life dedicated to the pursuit of excellence and the creation of lasting work.

An artist like Alphonse Mucha comes to mind. He became famous for the commercial work he did in the style of Art Nouveau. He was not especially interested in doing commercial art. He was far more interested in historical painting. I won't get into the weeds with other examples. I want to stay focused on how we as artists can create lasting work.

You need technical ability and proper motivation to create something that is going to last. Unfortunately it may be the case for some artists that they satisfied these criteria but still remain unknown. We can't ever know if this is true as we won’t be alive in that (hopefully) distant future. What I believe is, that the art will speak for you when you are there anymore.

When I visualize the future and my work in it, in my minds eye, I see a painting of mine in some random place. How is it regarded? Is it beautiful to behold to random passersby? Does it evoke feelings? Does it resonate with their humanity? Is it Treasured! These are some of the criteria that I imagine a painting would need to have to be regarded well enough to be treated with ‘perennial seller’ type respect.

Whether people have eyes to see quality or not would be the topic of another blog post. I had a successful career as a commercial illustrator for 13 years and I feel the reason for my illustrations having commercial success was because I believed in the ability of laypeople to perceive something cool when I created them and I worked towards that and. If they walk by it, notice it and say 'that's cool' I have succeeded.

I don't work as a commercial artist anymore. What I'm trying to create with my art is designed to resonate with an audience of people that appreciate painting and music. When I consider the painters and musicians of the past that have inspired me, I do my best to stand on their shoulders as I attempt to create my own lasting work.

Take good care and stay out of trouble,

Mike

Perennial Sellers

AI

A new era…