Two Winners!

I  monitor a mentoring class by Jason Horejs, Xanadu Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona. http://www.xanadugallery.com/home.php   He awarded a one year mentoring to Carolee Clark  http://www.caroleeclark.com/   and I signed on to audit the course. (read below) It has been super with so much gallery information and also insights into Carolee's work as a full time artist on her way to becoming famous.

I follow her blog and the other day she put up a small painting of some rooftops, yard, clothes on the line in her vivid happy style.  The painting is named, Creatively Casual.  Perfect I thought.  I really liked it.  Houses always draw me in and the bright colors add to the painting.  I have always wanted to paint clothes on the line, too, but never found or took the right photo reference.  I suggested to Gene that he get me an early birthday gift since Mother's day is gone.  My birthday is in September so he agreed!  (I'm sure he will forget and I will get another gift, right?)  I am also sure that if I wait, Carolee's work will become out of my price range.  At least I hope so.

At any rate, I ordered the painting on Daily Paintworks on a Thursday or Friday.  Carolee mailed it right away and it came well wrapped and safely on Monday or Tuesday.  It more than met my expectations.  Beautiful, colorful and cheery for my dining/kitchen area.  So a winner!

Here it is on the wall with one of my small paintings.  We don't have much wall space in that area.  I like the way it looks there.

I guess I saw the painting on Daily Paintworks first and I was doubly pleased to find what  she wrote about the painting.  She painted it from the Virtual Paintout from a scene in Chile.  We lived in Chile from 1978 - 1980 and just loved it.  So another connection.  The Virtual Paintout is a fun idea for artists, you paint from Google Map photos, if you care to see the other Chile paintings or join in here is the link to the main page, http://virtualpaintout.blogspot.com/  I'm not sure when the subject changes, but you paint around the world.  You can see it on her blog to look at a closeup here http://goo.gl/eJn0wW

A big surprise followed a couple of days later.  I opened my newsletter from Daily Paintworks and found that I won their weekly drawing for a painting by Gary Westlake from Canada.  Pink Lotus, is the painting.  I imagine I will put it just above Carolee's painting.  Very cool!  You can see it here
http://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/gary-westlake/pink-lotus/211083  and I will post the photo when it comes.

Daily Paintworks features original art and if you buy from them you can enter the drawings to win a painting by their featured artist for the week.  You can enter for 30 days or 4 drawings.  How cool that I won.  I had my art there for a while, but you really need to be a more frequent painter than I am at the moment so I decided to drop membership for a time.  It is a good place to place your paintings as they don't compete with photographs and prints.  Of course, as an artist you need to let people know where your art is on any on-line venue.  Not much chance of someone surfing around and finding your work among the millions out there.  Possible but not probable.

Gene and I won some tickets to a musical event last Friday, too.  Jennie used the tickets, said they had a good time. I was hoping that the winning would continue on to the Lottery, but no luck so far!

-----------------------------

The mentoring with Jason and Carolee has been great as I said.  I learned some new things and am able to see how Carolee has progressed in her artistic journey.  The sessions are mostly about getting into a gallery/galleries and the business side of art.  It does include info on websites, social media, etc., too.

Jason is going to do the same again for another artist this summer.  You can apply to be the mentor-ee or to audit the class here.    It was worth the money and I am joining again.

You can see and apply for the mentorship here:
http://www.xanadugallery.com/Mentorship/Index.php

I have some of my available paintings on the Xanadu website here
http://www.xanadugallery.com/2013/Artists/ArtistPage.php?ArtistID=4125

Jason also offers an inventory system, Art Tracker at a low cost.  It is called ArtSala and tracks your art, addresses, and much more.  http://www.xanadugallery.com/ArtTracker/Index.asp   It is very helpful and I may go to it later, but for now I have one I made on Bento.

If you don't keep an inventory, you should.  Every once in a while I look in my archives and am surprised at how many paintings I have there and it reminds me I don't have records of many more.  I didn't really start keeping track until about 1999 with just snapshots and a spreadsheet.  I updated my system when I revamped my website about 2006.  Since then I have numbered my art pieces and have a record of where they went.

As usual, this started out as a quick post to tell you about my painting and then .... the rest of the story!