You know how you have bad hair days sometimes? Me, sometimes I have “bad drawing days” ~ I can’t draw a bloody thing x nothing I draw looks right x everything I draw looks like a bad tattoo or one of those “delusional artist” pieces.

What do you do when you’re in a slump? 

I’m writing about this now because well, I’m kind of in the middle of one, so I guess I couldn’t help noticing a couple of other artists I know who’ve been in a slump recently, too.

So in this post I thought I’d go into what a slump is, exactly, for artists ~ what happens during a slump, what causes it to happen, and more importantly, what to do if and when you’re in one.
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​Not too long ago, I’d been getting enquiries about my work on paper ~ not the first of their kind in my somewhat long and modest practice.

Reminds me of when a famous artist back here once told me that if I wanted to be ‘taken seriously’ by collectors, I shouldn’t do work on paper. This was back in 2021, so I had already been practising for some time (and the funny thing was, I wasn’t even asking for his advice lol).

Throughout the years, I’ve understood how many collectors ~ in my corner of the planet, at least ~ tend to avoid works on paper. Many collectors regard art as an investment, and if diamonds are forever, so is a marble statue or say, an oil painting on canvas.

And because these collectors are pretty much the hand that feeds for many artists, if the collectors don’t want art on paper, then…  Anyway I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole; a Jedi’s gotta do what a Jedi’s gotta do to pay the bills.

But I would like to spend this month’s post on putting my insignificant word in for works on paper ~ and not just because a hefty chunk of my own work is. It’s just, if you’re a buyer or collector or, maybe have a certain opinion about work on paper (that you may not even know you have), I’m hoping to maybe get you to start thinking differently.

Here are the usual five main gripes I hear about work on paper and corresponding ‘counter-reasons’ for each of them.

I know I’m not the best artist, so to me it makes sense to ask for a little help every time I make something. Every time I do, I’m reminded of how Salieri (in that Wolfie movie, anyway) used to beg God to help him compose. Well, we all know what Salieri was ‘patron saint’ of, lol ~ so for me to do pretty much the same thing makes sense, too.

In any case, with Holy Week coming up as I write this, I thought I might share the patron saints I pray to for help as a sort of tiny x lame expression of thanks. Left on my own I doubt I would ever have been able to make anything good. If I mess things up x the work’s not up to scratch, that’s on me (I confess I can’t say I pray very attentively to them like 100% of the time) ^^;

Since I’m lazy, much of the information here comes from our good (albeit not entirely reliable) friend Wikipedia and my own memory (which is arguably even more unreliable ^o^) unless otherwise stated.

If I had a nickel for every time I ever heard someone mention storytelling vis-à-vis marketing (or leadership or business, education or whatever), I’d be the Count of Monte Cristo (or well Elon Musk I guess in this reality, lol).

Yet there’s something to be said for storytelling in art; personally I’ve always believed that every piece of art, regardless of format ~ painting or sculpture, music or whatever ~ says something ~ even if the artist didn’t really mean to.

Lately I’ve been hearing quite a bit about this or that artist having the potential to “grow”. What does that even mean, anyway? That said, it made me wonder whether I’ve grown as an artist myself.

Take the case of this one artist, who I don’t know personally. (Forgive me if you’ve heard this one.) I was speaking to a certain gallery manager (who was also an artist) not too long ago, and this manager was telling me about how this particular artist seemed to be fixated on a certain insect.
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​I don’t know about you, but 2023 was a real banner year for me ~ not. Just when you think things couldn’t get any worse, life kicks you in the sleeping bag and finds another way to make you remember your place in the universe, i.e. an insignificant, infinitesimal speck.

But while it’s easier to see inkblots on a clean page, it’s just as easy to see stars against the deep blackness of space. That’s what the Potatostars above are all about ~ finding even the smallest points of light in the darkness all around us (and even within ourselves) ~ and being able to draw even a little happiness from them.

As the year draws to a close, I’m going to focus on the latter and pick out just 10 (because there were more!) of the good things I can be thankful for from this past year, specifically those relating to my art practice.

The thing about paintings~mine for me, anyway~is how they remind me of what was going on with me at the time I was painting them. Unfortunately, that’s not always a good thing, but like *Sir Ulrich* said, we need to ‘take the bad with the good’ ☺️

I find it amazing how they remind me of things more vividly than any photo or journal or anything~the same goes for drawings or doodles in my notebooks. It’s a little bit scary, that way, and sometimes when I make things I wonder what the thing I’m making will remind me of, one day. With my luck, it’ll be everything, lol.

Anyway that’s what crossed my mind very recently when this nice new gallery very kindly invited me to join their opening exhibit. Being large, the gallery needed works of a size to match, and they needed them in a relative hurry.

Even if I chugged all the silver and blue cans in the world, there was no way I was going to be able to finish even one piece that I’d be able to live with showing in public.

Long story short, they’ve agreed to take on some pieces I did a whopping 16 years ago, and they’re asking me for a write up to go with them. So I figured I’d murder two avians with a single concretion and share the lowdown on the works from this old Romp with you.

​Last year I was in a group show called Breaking Barriers, to which I submitted the painting above (rather unimaginatively titled Breaking Tikbalang). I remember I arrived rather early at the opening, feeling very awkward because I didn’t really know anybody else there.

So there I was, floating around like a lemon, looking at all the other works when one of the other artists came up to me and asked me which piece was mine. Jillamonsters have zero social skills, so, *stutter-stutter*~ so the kindly gentleman looked around, saw a Georgia O’Keefe-esque painting of a flower, and asked me if that was it.

He seemed kind of surprised when I pointed at the horsey above. ‘Whoa!’ he said, or something like. I didn’t know what that meant, but I gathered he didn’t figure me for the type who would paint something like that. Must’ve been the stutter or the skirt. Anyhow.

In preparing for this month’s post I did a little looking around (i.e. Googling) and saw there didn’t seem to be a whole lot about inferring the personality of artists from their work. Can’t say I researched very thoroughly, or anything, of course, but all I seemed to see was about the personality of collectors based on the paintings in their, well, collection 😅 (Here’s a quiz if you like.)

So everything else you read here is based on, well, how I read into a painting~for what it’s worth. I’m not a psychologist or an art historian or a detective 😊 or anything like that. I’m just someone who likes to get to know people (in a detached, third-party, outside-looking in kind of way 😅 ) who just happens to have an art degree and paints, too. And someone who’s obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, lol.

Just thought I’d share in case it helps people look at art or, enhance their experience or appreciation of it. I’m talking here, of course, about visual art, but it miiight be applicable in sooome way to other art forms, too.

The customer is always right~or well, that’s how the saying goes, although I seem to remember the opposite posted here and there around the internet.

As a ‘baby copywriter’ almost 30 years ago, I was trained to do anything and everything to make the client happy. There was no such thing as going the extra mile because that mile was part of the trip, and customer delight, not satisfaction, was the be-all, end-all of our existence at the agency.

I get that. I really do. If I hadn’t learnt it at the agency, I would’ve learnt it at school before that, anyhow (indeed, one of my teachers owned the agency I got my first job at).

But does this apply to commissioned work from artists?
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In doing my homework for a client I was working on not too long ago, I came across this article (which actually had nothing to do with the client or what I was doing for them lol).

It was called 10 Reasons Why You Should Not Become an Architect by Michael Riscica, and though I am not an architect (although I’ve known my fair share both within and outside of my family), I could so totally relate.

Many of the items (if not all) on the list are so completely applicable to artists. After all, architecture is an art in its own right~and I could really feel that the author really dug deep when it was written.

So much so that 1. I felt like giving the author a hug after I read it, and 2. I felt like coming up with my own list. It had crossed my mind recently to write a sort of ‘open letter to aspiring artists’ in the same vein, but this is probably *neater*. Some of these reasons are adapted from the article, while some of them are so totally mine.
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