Tending the Garden: Agricultural Art Marketing

I like to think of marketing as tending a garden.  Yes, the metaphor is a bit trite, but it fits.  You can't just Rototill up last year's garden and throw down a few seeds.  You've got to get out there with the hoe and pull out the dandelions and Johnson grass, cull the stunted plants and mound up the soil around the healthy ones.  Then you have to be vigilant for cutworms and - well, you get the picture.

Marketing workshops and new paintings is a lot like that.  (Only usually I get to do it at a desk with a cup of coffee and in the shade.)  You can't just design a website and place an expensive ad in a glossy magazine.  Marketing is a lot of work.  When I talk to professional artists, most agree that the bulk of their time is not spent painting but in seemingly-peripheral tasks like marketing.

There should be something similar to the USDA's Cooperative Extension Service for painters.

With that in mind, I leave you with the following painting while I go off to sharpen my hoe.  It's a painting I did over two sessions in the field plus a little studio time for tweaks.  This is a more muted palette than some of you have seen me use, but I was trying very hard to get the color I saw matched exactly.  Sedona's not as garish as you might think!

"Warrior" 12x24, oil, $1500

Available through Windrush Gallery (800-323-0155, info@windrushgallery.net )