If you are lucky, people will buy your art for the wrong reasons.

I have been working for a few weeks now on a mannequin which is collaged with hundreds of Zentangle designs. I spend from 5 to 45 minutes, approximately, on each 3.5" x 3.5" drawing, sometimes struggling to make the connected sections flow into each other. But then I discovered that in order to make the squares fit onto the curved surface of the mannequin, I often have to cut them into smaller bits, or score them to make them bend, in effect, eradicating major sections of the drawing. So all of the obsessive planning is for naught. This realization has offered me tremendous relief. I have come to understand that my master plan is merely a coping strategy that helps me get through the task, helps me get through the day. So much of our daily life revolves around perspective. This is how I see it.  From where I stand.  My point of view.  And I am trying desperately to open myself to something larger.  Ironically, my recent study of cubism has opened something inside myself that extends far beyond art.  It has made me see the necessity for seeing the world through the eyes of others.

I have also come to intimately understand the idea of "art for art's sake."  What I make each day is simply what I make each day. Whether or not anyone ever sees it or is influenced by it matters, but there are other things that matter more.  The significance is all about how it works in me, how it changes me, how it helps me express myself, allowing me to connect with others.

Walter Darby Bannard writes, "Art, like many things, can be used for whatever one wants to use it for, but the source of its value is aesthetic. It delivers a kind of pleasure which brings us something profound that we can’t put into words. This is what the phrase really means. It is as “human” as anything can be." (aphorismsforartists.com)

So am I a sellout?

Ah, but what about selling one's art? Is that a sell out? I also like what Bannard says about this: "Art is art. The art market is a fashion business. If the roulette wheel of fashion clicks into your number, great, but never confuse the two. Compromise to sell your art, but never compromise the art itself. If you do, you are no longer an artist, you are a manufacturer of decorative goods. That’s OK, if that’s what you want. Just be aware of the difference."

So, of course, I sell my art. This is my job. And I am one of the most fortunate people in the world to be able to work at something I love each day and get paid for it.

My husband always jokes that "we can't afford any Cheryl Hicks art!" And yet we seem to have a lot of my art on display. The photos below are of pieces that have not sold, are currently hanging in my house, or have hung there for extended periods in the past, or have been painted over to be replaced with a new idea.

I can't really say that I consider them to be the rejects. Usually the ones that don't sell are the ones that are too large or too personal or too obscure symbolically. This doesn't bother me. I try not to make a piece of art that I would not be happy to hang in my house. Emotionally, however, I am in no way attached to these pieces or to any of the art I have created. As soon as a piece is finished, I have already moved on to the next one, not because I have ceased caring, but mostly through impatience to start on a new idea.

Picasso famously said, "To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow, the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture."

I appreciate the truth behind this statement, but it is perhaps a bit too dramatic for me. I am more inclined to align myself with Leonardo, who said, "A work of art is never finished, it is abandoned." Bannard adds, "A work of art is a living accumulation of creative judgments. Each judgment is a reflection on, and change to the existing accumulation. It is never quite clear when a work is finished because it can only be finished when the artist can't find anything to improve. Sooner or later, however, it must be done with. Creation, by its nature, is never complete."