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Sharing unique visions online since 1999. |
All original art is now on sale! News - updated November 16th. Remaining postcards and magnets now on CLEARANCE. Giclee prints ending soon. |
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F R E Q U E N T L Y A S K E D Q U E S T I O N S |
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You can click on the following quick links to visit a single topic, or just scroll down to review all frequently asked questions. Topics include: Materials, prints, certificate of authenticity, commissions, pricing, discounts, shopping, studio, inspiration, mental block, giving up, volume, other artists, art school, finding yourself, obscurity. |
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What kinds of materials do you use in your work? Can you recommend specific brands of paint / paper / brushes, etc.? I am not loyal to any one manufacturer. I buy paint based on the colors I need and who makes the best versions of those colors. The majority of my paint is made by Liquitex, but I also use paints by Golden, Daniel Smith, Lefranc & Bourgeois, Lascaux, Maimeri, Dick Blick, Utrecht, and M. Graham. If you do collect supplies from different manufacturers, you should be aware that they all use different binders and their paints often dry with different degrees of shine. As for supports, I like variety and will paint on just about anything. There are a wide variety of products available for artists these days. From boards to papers to canvases of all shapes, sizes, and thicknesses. Manufacturers will give you all sorts of reasons why their products are better, but the truth is that just about anything you paint on today will likely last longer than you or I will. When using water based media, I definitely prefer painting on a watercolor block as opposed to lose sheets. The sheets get less wavy that way. And I am a terrible abuser when it comes to brushes, so my method is to buy affordable brushes in massive quantities. Brushes are one area where you do get what you pay for. Do not buy the cheapest brushes you can find. Unless you want to spend all day picking brush hairs out of your paintings. Cheap brushes always fall apart. But I cannot recommend buying the really spendy brushes either. Unless you are a Virgo or are otherwise inclined to spend hours caring for your investment. Properly caring for brushes takes a lot of time and commitment. I pretty much go through ten to twelve brushes every week. Why don't you offer limited edition prints? Prints were initially offered in limited numbers because they were made by pushing metal or stone plates through high pressure rollers on printing presses and the plates would wear down over time. So, for instance, the first print in an edition would be sharper and clearer than the 300th print in an edition. Because the grooves in the plate that produced the lines on the print would be squished down over time. The edges of those grooves would soften and the lines would blur. So editions were numbered as a way of tracking how close a given print was to the artist's original vision. And also as a way of assessing value. Editions were limited because you could only pull so many prints off a given plate before the plate was useless. Today, virtually all prints - except those made by artists who work in print media - are created digitally. Even giclee prints are produced digitally. The first digital print of an image is indistinguishable from the 5000th print of an image. The image does not degrade over time. And there is no reason to number prints. Many artists still do number prints and do set an artificial limit on the number of prints they will issue from a given image. As far as I can tell, the only reason to do this would be as a gimmick to charge more money for your prints. Can you include a Certificate of Authenticity in my order? I am afraid I cannot include a COA with your purchase. I do not issue them. In my opinion, COA's are yet another gimmick used by many online artists to artificially inflate the value of their art. Traditionally, a provenance is included with recognized works of art by established artists when that work of art is sold through a gallery and the provenance is updated to include all owners down through time. You would expect to get a provenance if you were to purchase a Picasso or a Chagall for instance. And that provenance would trace the various owners who have possessed the painting since it originally sold from the first gallery to showed that work. All entries on the provenance would be authenticated by folks notarized to do such things. But there is no historical precedence for emerging or even established artists issuing their own COA's. And there is no governing body that authenticates these things. Basically anyone can issue a COA and it is meaningless. These certificates do not add value to your work. In the case of my own works of art, this ridiculously large website serves to authenticate all purchases. If you have any doubt whether a work of art is authentic, you need only look it up on my site to see if I did indeed produce that image. You can look pieces up by title here. Do you ever create commissioned work? For years, I declined requests for commissioned works of art. But I am now making commissioned pieces available for the first time in a decade! Please click here to learn more. I also offer a new program called Just for You. Please click here to view that information. What method do you use to price your work? That is a tough question. I price pieces according to several factors. I consider how many hours of labor have been invested. Also, how successful are the results? And how inspired is the image? How much of that special magic ingredient was included? And finally I try to consider that age old supply-and-demand idea. I want to make enough to live on and still price pieces in an affordable range so that you can enjoy original art. Do you ever offer your work at a discount? Yes! Often. I offer original pieces and prints on Ebay. And you can sometimes find a real steal there. I also have several sales on this site each year. The three main ones are the Holiday Sale in November, the Spring Sale in March, and the One-Day Freedom Sale on June 7th. But I usually have a few other "events" each year. The best way to save is to check the NEWS page frequently for information about upcoming sales. Or scroll to the bottom of any page on this site and add yourself to one of the emailing lists. How can I purchase the artwork I see here on FlyingGirl.com? The only way to purchase my artwork is through this site or on eBay. I quit offering my work through art galleries about five years ago so that I could focus on my website. I enjoy hearing directly from the folks who purchase my work and feel internet selling is more personal, more friendly, more fun, and a whole lot more satisfying. And it offers me a chance to reach a wider audience than traditional galleries do. Selling directly to my customers also allows me to explore all artistic avenues without concern for what my gallery rep considers appropriate. And it allows me to share my work at a price range that is affordable for regular folks (like me). Please click here to learn more about shopping on this site. Where do you work? Can I visit your studio? I work in a small studio in my home in St. Paul, MN. I thank you for your interest in my work, but unfortunately, I cannot invite you over to visit my studio. It is something of a private sanctuary for me and opening it up would make me feel really uncomfortable. Plus, I don't want to clean on a regular basis! If you are in the area and would like to review my work in person, by all means email me. I have a big portfolio case that is very portable and I need to get out more anyway. We could meet for coffee. (I do not really drink coffee, but it looks odd to write, "We could meet for water.") Where do your ideas come from? I wish I knew. My images feel as though they come through me rather than from me. Only on rare occasions do I sit down with a specific idea in mind and then manifest that vision. Mostly, I sit down with an idea - or with no idea - and I get something entirely unexpected. Many times I have planned a landscape and gotten an animal or planned an animal and gotten a person. My work is usually a total surprise to me! It keeps each day interesting. Neil Diamond has a song on his new album that includes lyrics which completely capture what it feels like when I make art. I am not a religious person, but I am deeply spiritual. And these words say it all for me.
"Singing for Him is like touching the sky ~ Neil Diamond, from the song Man of God Do you ever sit down to paint and nothing comes? How do you deal with that? Of course! First I get crabby and complain about all sorts of inconsequential things. Then I watch whatever garbage is on TV - this is about the only time I ever watch television, when I can't paint. Then eventually I paint anyway. I just figure whatever mess I make will be the under-painting beneath something really good. Once I have primed everything in site and covered whatever surfaces I have with paint, I quit and stay away from painting until I feel called back. Usually just moving the paint around and priming and such is enough to get things going. If not, I go to a movie! Do you ever start a piece that you just cannot finish? On a regular basis. I would say about once a month, I start a piece and try and try and try to pull it together before giving up and either painting over it entirely or throwing it away. Usually, these are the pieces that start in my head, where I am trying to create something I want rather than creating what I am given to create. How can you be SO prolific? Do you work all the time? Yes. All the time. I work constantly. I love my work and I am always trying and failing to find balance in my life. There are a million concerns that I regularly neglect so that I can paint, paint, paint. At this point I have pretty much lost all identity apart from my art. I try to cut myself some slack, though. I spent many years trying to be everything else but an artist. So if I need to spend a few years being nothing else, so be it. Are there other artists who have influenced your art? Many! I think authors and musicians and filmmakers have influenced me as much as visual artists, but for the sake of brevity, I will stick with just the visual (or somewhat visual) artists in my answer. Jenny Holzer is a contemporary conceptual artist who had a huge influence on me as a developing artist. Karen Finley is a performance artist whose work meant a lot to me when I was growing up. I saw many of Spalding Gray's pieces live and they really resonated. (I am still deeply saddened by his suicide and I miss him.) I also remember visiting art exhibits as a youngster that did not feel particularly meaningful to me at the time, but have clearly stuck in my psyche. Two of those were Jim Dine and Jennifer Bartlett. As an adult, the works I continue to learn the most from are those by Cezanne. Van Gogh has long been a favorite. So have Paul Klee, Diego Rivera, Norman Rockwell, Modigliani, Rembrandt, and Alice Neel. Also, I have enjoyed the work of architect and artist Frank Gehry, the sculpture of Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen and virtually everything by Wolf Kahn. Yes, my influences are far flung, I know. Where did you go to school? Can you recommend a good art school? I studied art at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio, the University of Minnesota, Macalester College and several other community art centers. I got my degree from the U of MN. Unfortunately, I cannot suggest any given school as THE ONE. I suggest visiting all of the art schools in your area and asking to sit in on actual classes in session. The most helpful program will be the one that teaches you real skills - color theory, composition, rendering, etc. - without trying to dictate your content or vision. I had some pretty awful art school experiences. I got a D in painting! Ha! Hard to remember that. Mainly I struggled in classes where the content was stressed. My art was deemed too political, too content driven, too heavy-handed, and too pedestrian. (My art was a little different back then.) I had some unfortunate teachers who wanted me to tell their stories and not my own. It took me several years of not making any art at all to remember that those teachers might be right about what makes good art to them and wrong about what makes good art to me. Fortunately, I also had many good teachers and learned lots of important skills that serve me well. How can I build my portfolio, find my voice, define my style, etc.? Just keep working. It takes time. I think the main thing separating artists who make a living from their art and folks who paint as a hobby is having the courage and strength to face ugliness on a regular basis. EVERY SINGLE ONE of my pieces was ugly before it came together. Some were REALLY ugly! And I almost always reach a place with my art where I just can't stand to look at it. The ugliness wears me down. But then I remember that I have seen similar messes before and I remember how faith and persistence carried me through the ugliness to something lovely. The way I measure my progress as an artist is the length of time it takes me to get from ugly to lovely and the ease with which I can shrug off the ugliness and keep going. It used to take me WEEKS of mucking about before I found a clear, true image among my many failed attempts. Now it usually takes me hours. I am getting better at listening to myself. And with each true piece that I create, I find it easier and easier to believe that the ugly work in front of me will also fine its way to beauty in time. And finally, I am fortunate to get this last question from time to time... I love your work, why aren't you famous? Why haven't I heard of you until now? I don't know. I know everything happens for a reason, though. And I know that two years ago, I was REALLY uncomfortable with being any kind of public figure at all - I am naturally a recluse - but I have been growing steadily more at peace with the notes and letters from total strangers who say they know me. It used to creep me out. I have had a hard time accepting that this art which I do not entirely understand and which I have so little control over is really my soul. And when I put my images on the internet or in a public space, I am inviting others to connect with me. It is a horribly vulnerable position to be in and one I have not had the courage to fully embrace until very recently. The vast majority of my life has always been spent on internal pursuits and I have had to practice hard at letting the external world in without allowing it to shatter me. I am slowly resolving my deep ambivalence about being rich and famous! As always, I thank you for your interest. Best wishes, M A R |
