Art New Year's Resolution

I don't usually make a New Year's Resolution because they are made to be broken. If I'm going to make changes, I start early like when I decide to make the change. I do not wait until January.

With that said, now that January and the New Year is a mere few hours away, I've been thinking about what I accomplished this year in the art field. I had my first solo art show at Baker College in Jackson Michigan, I entered a juried Ann Arbor Women Artists Association Spring show at the Ann Arbor District Library. One piece was chosen for the show. I continued to paint in spurts sometimes creating up to three works in one day. This year, I have been productive, or so I felt. So then if I were to make a New Years art resolution what would it be?

I want to have my work shown in a gallery this year and I want to sell a piece to someone other than family, not that I don't appreciate their fervor for and support of whatever measure of talent or interest in art I've been given, but when some stranger buys a piece of my art that will be the seal of approval I need to know it is worth continuing.

Then again, VanGough only sold one painting in his lifetime. The buyer was his brother Theo--family. How discouraging that must have been for him. My mother bought one of my photographs--a 20x30" size black and white picture of a Kentucky Tobacco farm. Even though she said it reminded her of one of the barns near where she grew up...mom doesn't count because she's my mother. My brother, Mitch, on the other hand, has excellent taste in art. He bought two oil pastel pieces--pomegrante and Apple #2. I gave him "The Three Sisters" oil painting I did. I didn't really like that painting, but he loved it. It was a landscape--plenty of green and brown grass, a stream and three little white dots at the top of the hill hidden among grass and bushes--the three homes of the three sisters. For him, it stirred an emotional response--three old women living close to each other sharing the land--something like that. For me, it was too bland--a failure of a painting. I'm glad he found an emotional treasure and story in the work.