Blogging from The Heart - Part 2.

April was a truly horrible month. Things got really ugly. How to deal with someone absolutely determined to rest control regardless of the cost to all around them was exceedingly difficult. The whole episode was so destructive. In the end my spam filters came in dead useful. 

What I need to do now is focus on the positives moving forward. 

I need to pursue a number of different ideas and see which one(s) comes out top in the coming months. When I'm feeling positive, I think there must be scope for some kind of online business. I just don't know what form it would take as yet. Look at Susannah! 

Friends and other artists say they think I'd make a good artists' agent. Trouble is most artists don't have the means to pay for me.  Yet in the job I've just left I thoroughly enjoyed working with artists in an advisory capacity, helping them focus on their strengths; honing in on what made them tick so that, for artists unused to selling themselves, I could assist as they wrote their first press release; suggest ways of increasing their social and business network; building their mailing list; I loved spotting other opportunities for them to sell their work; I loved collaborating.

I know I did a good job curating the eight exhibitions I was responsible for during my brief tenure. The positive feedback from both artists and customers alike before and after I left boosted my damaged self confidence. The artists reported significant rewards, not just in sales, but commissions, workshops and other enquiries. They felt I helped them learn something they could take away and apply in the future. Many artists went out of their way to tell me what a good job they thought I had been doing, after I left. 

The main major positive that came out of my time in the job however was working with David Hogarth, maker of leaded glass table lamps, to create table lamps and boxed sets of coasters using my images.

The success of this collaboration had set me thinking about how I can maximise the imagery I create through printmaking. The lamps and coasters are now in several galleries in the North East. I want to increase the number of outlets selectively and looking into e-commerce. My main barriers, which are not insurmountable, are packaging and transport - packaging glass lamps so they arrive in one piece and the associated costs of getting them to their destination. So many ideas its difficult to know where to start.

And there is more ...