Reflections from the road

 

When I used to sit in the Tiffany gallery on higher market Street in East Looe Cornwall , day in day out ....when I joined the ' team ' , the gallery was already the longest running independent gallery in South West Cornwall , Tom McCracken was the elusive watercolorist whose tenacity and perseverance in keeping the door open nigh on 364 days a year, a former royal doulton painter he and his wife moved down to Cornwall from one of the shire counties up north somewhere , he'd get up every day walk his beloved sheep dogs over the downs through the town and he would sit there and paint and paint and paint . " You can always paint your way out if the shit " he'd say ....and the man was a machine , in the 30 odd years the gallery was going he must hold sold tens of thousands of his little wet in wet watercolours , all depicting local scenes and things he loved .... jeez I don't even know what year it was but it was just at the end of the credit crunch ....just before the recession began , so what 2005 / 2006....give or take 

I don't think smart phones were really a contemporary accessory then 🤔 mad that they have become so interwoven in our lives that I honestly can't recall the point if origin without looking it up 🤔 

But I recall being sat there on a sunny summer's day and we had had a typical morning of ice cream scoffing McDonald's seeking degenerates come in and tell us that ' I could do better than that ' or worse ' they're very nice ...but we have already spent all our money up at the other gallery - that whistlefish gallery ' 

Now the whistle fish really was the bain of an otherwise quite idyllic existence , sitting by the sea painting a few pictures , even amid a recession ....sure not a shoddy way to while away a bit of time , unless of course some property investors suddenly decide to do the same thing just down the road ....just down every road in every town and village in the south west cheap prints in cheap plastic frames that under a perfectly pleasing aesthetic veneer retail by the bucket load and have to date wiped out over half of the little independent studio spaces and pokey little one man galleries that used to be such an interwoven aspect of the culture here and indeed the impression of the place and the lifestyle is what the marketeers kicked out in the mid eighties ....that ironically actually began the  slow gentrification and eventual asphyxiation of these places 

But on one of these mornings ....as such reflections were charging the conversation for the day ....I catch a glimpse of a guy at the shop window trying to get a picture of an image through the glass on his what must have then been a fairly basic camera phone , I shot up from the easel and out the door ' mate , I'm not sat here painting so you can have something to put on your social media ....' he stood his ground and said ' mate I'm just trying to find a signal for my phone ' ....we both looked at each and laughed  

See back then it was bloody hard work ....trying to make a living out of the retailing of luxury items to a largely uncultured demographic amid an international recession .....ha ha ha what am I saying , it hasn't gotten any easier from recession to recession it seems in the past ten years at least 

Now it took a hell of a lot for me to do what I did , I certainly don't regret it but I do find it a point if recurring reflection,  to say no more corporate contracts in fact no more architectural works at all ( unless I am heavily swayed by its ethical intent ) to just try to make a living out of the art ....and although I do produce the odd landscape or portrait or whatever ....the signature style of the original ' product ' has remained integral ,no prints , only original artworks - in fact there are now over 100 separate product lines in the ' catalogue ' and those that do try to follow this stuff will know the sheer scale of variety between say the signature paintings and a figure study in oils , the 101 reasons to choose a vocation in the creative industries and the scientific installations .....and now yes even bloody rocks ! Yep actual rocks for goodness sake 

Now this is where I am going to try to round up my point ...if indeed one can even be reached in this little window of diatribe 

So how do I price my work 😆 ....well when I started out down in Toms and my first little pop up initiatives I'd guage a painting at about a week's wage so around two hundred quid with room to manoeuvre .... That gave me a wage and some materials to do an additional painting 🤔 these days I try to factor an affordability ratio 🤔 now there is an inherent value increase because it's a twenty year body of work that has remained consistent throughout all that time ....

Now I look at the people fleeing war torn countries with personal belongings strapped to their backs and can genuinely relate to this state of imposed emergency transience 🤔 yes I've had to do it myself , and have at times such as this taken all pictures out if frames and rolled them up, grabbed some food and made my way out on foot .....so , for example if a painting was in fact rolled under my arm while I was fleeing a country under fire, then yes it's price has gone up a little 

All but a single painting in a series ....lost at sea , well then yes the price of the stand alone piece has increased incrementally 

I do by all rights consider myself a ' working class ' artisan ....that us I am happy to emulate toms lifestyle and paint for my supper so to speak , to not try to cash in on a single image in the tricky way of mass runs of  prints , but to just live humbly from my trade day to day week to week with no plan of retiring or vacationing from it . 

So these days I reckon a painting is roughly a sofa in cash value ....for most people it's a thing you stick on the wall because it sort of goes with the sofa and the rug , and makes the room feel more homely ....it's cool I can dig it 😆 I've spent enough time in the gallery floor to know 

You want to feel that you have spent enough that you can wrap it in bubble wrap and pop it in the garage , but you don't want to gamble the retirement on something as frivolous and temperamental as the arts .....again I've had this conversation over and over again , I can dig it 😆 

So between me and the customer we've basically hammered out an ' accessible ' price that is able to pique the interest of the ' serious ' collector ,..... about the cost of a sofa 

Now , well like I said now I am fricking mining 😆 and not great big industrial and commercial ventures ... But just ticking around carrying art about I have come across a silver vein here and a copper vein there ,a ridge of palaeozoic creatures or Jurassic coastal deposit

So that sort of means that my catalogue of roughly sofa priced paintings and product lines are now backed with a fucking silver standard 😆😆😆 

So what does that actually mean 🤔 

So Artby Valerio is my actual u.k company name the arts hole is my unofficial brand that us still inherently protected by intellectual property rights 

The paintings and the books I've written are effectively my stock ( you have seen me wince as I describe my diary pages as ' stock ' and my portfolio as a catalogue ) and you - the consumer base get to ' invest ' in something that isn't whistlefish prints - dodgy pharmaceuticals , bent political leanings , the bombing of a distant civilian population , or a very tired and over bloated property market 

.... As I sit here mulling over all the people that have actually supported my ongoing endeavours with fond reflections of friends and even adversaries ,the careful and the careless 

I wonder if as you think back on all the phones you have purchased , all the flights you have taken , .....all the revenue that you have willingly handed over to politicians and estate agents alike ,Netflix , sky ,and the national lottery .....and now as you stuff whatever you've got left after taxes into envelopes and send them asap out to a brand new militant front ..... 

....maybe , just maybe ..... Support the arts and the artists that are doing it , especially those doing it at great risk and great cost to themselves ...or carry in being a bunch of middle class mooks with a sponsorship deal for the end of the frickin world 

Just sayin x