Nov. 22, 2012 — original post
The annual Arroyo Arts Association Discovery Tour celebrated it's 20th year last weekend, and it was my first time being a part of it.
On Sunday November 18th, over 100 artists gathered into 60 tour stops here in Northeast LA's Arroyo Seco neighborhood. Between 100-200 people stopped by my house to check out the art, and it was fun to meet a bunch of new people and introduce them to my art.
I've had gallery shows before, and I've held my own pop-up exhibition too, but it's always been a closely edited selection of paintings. Never before had I shown ALL of my paintings before, from my signature style of complex abstracts to my more experimental works that meditate on nature or texture, everything I've ever painted was on display and for sale.
It gave me great joy to see everything I'd worked on over the past 3 short, but productive years. The people I mentioned that timeline to were very surprised to hear I'd been painting for only 3 years, and quite frankly, so was I! I surprise myself even, I really don't know where it comes from, but once the paintbrush found my hand I've been obsessed ever since, and I'm just overflowing with more and more ideas.
My prints and my new notecard stationary were especially popular at the tour. Some people said they were going to send them, some were gifting them for holiday presents, and some collected art cards and were going to frame them for their own walls. It's interesting to see the variety of uses, as this is perhaps the first show I've displayed smaller paintings and prints at before. In the past, some people have suggested I paint bigger and bigger paintings, but I'm learning that the average but avid collectors don't have that much free space on their walls, so they are looking for smaller gems to feature instead.
So what I've learned for the future is to create more smaller paintings for these art tours and trade shows, alongside the larger paintings that make my spirit soar, and are generally more in demand from galleries.
For now I've got plenty of prints and notecard options available online at my Fine Art America store, with originals and small prints at my Etsy store. I'm getting ready to post holiday sales on selected paintings, just in time for the holidays, and stay tuned for listings for my new Abstract, Dancers, and Angel notecard sets, as pictured below.