Whats It Like To Paint For A Show

I did 3 shows this year. THREE! What was I thinking? I agreed to two one-woman shows last year, then a new gallery invited me to do a group one and I said yes. So I started my path very early.  After I fulfilled the last show, I swore not to do that again. One is enough! But it has worked out nicely, and I enjoyed it all. So, getting busy deciding the sizes, the colors and the flow of subject continuity, is a challenge. I try to do 1/3 small, 1/3 medium and the rest larger and a couple largest. Some horizontal, some square and just a couple vertical. It makes a great show to vary the sizes and choose a frame that is a constant. I chose a black chunky floater with either a gold or silver face on the floater. A few needed solid black so the same profile in all black was chosen. My regular Charleston, SC show is fun as that is my home city and I vary the subject matter to marsh, sky, water and a textural city feel. Water is a constant in my work and the blue and cool watery feelings are always popular. I know what will sell there from the gallerist's direction, so I try to use the same theme each year, varying the cool and warmth of the content. I find that temperature in a show is a must, equally cool paintings to equally warm paintings. The gallerist hangs the cools together and the warms together, an imaginary break between the two, equally flowing well.  I also try to know the decor each city seems to emote, some cities are feminine and some are masculine. This means color is thought out. We named the show "Modern Expressions" since it was so varied. When I did the Delaware show, I chose watery colors but strong patterns, some felt more masculine in content for the area than the Charleston show. The gallerist named it "Bending Form and Color." The last show was a landscape theme, woods, undulating hills and valleys, a fun theme so I called it "Landscape Vibrations." The gallerist asked for this subject matter content and I was happy to have the assignment. Since each painting had to have pattern, it was fun looking into the landscape's interior details rather than vastness. A wooded interior of a pond, or a clump of trees or a piece of water surrounded by a log and grass dis-order became a theme that ran rampant in my brain. Or, an atmospheric sky with a graphically shaped land mass. I kept thinking and thinking of more interior themes and once I started imagining the content, it flowed. What I find by doing the shows, it makes me really think of stretching the content and pushing the color. Some I push aside to where I place the malcontent paintings, because they did not make the mark for the consistency. You have to have the gems and jewels to sell the show out. I feel I am a better painter when I assign myself this theme and content, to really go after it by pushing myself to think it through. I also think that working on 10 at a time is a key factor to color balance and consistency. Having them spread out on tables and easels and working back and forth on multiple pieces improves flow. In subject content, I try to look at very small parts of a landscape and pump it up, making a simple cloud more dramatic or reflections more colorful than what I see. I always look at a subject a long time just as a plein air artist would do, but I exaggerate the simplicity toward abstraction. And since I am a palette knife painter, I keep texture on the forefront of what would make the best textural subject matter. It takes color theory and guts to try a red next to a pink, the right red and the right pink of course. So next year, when there will be a show (hopefully I will get asked again), but three (?), I hope I have the same energy and idea content. But, I know for a fact, when you get to work, your brain turns on and it keeps on churning. Creativity never stops when you love what you do. When you love what you do, you must get simple, get smart and get organized. It is not easy if you procrastinate, but if you get a theme and get a plan, you can do it!