Thanks for the Gift!

Commissions for the longest time were something I just couldn't bring myself to do, I felt they were a prostitution of my creativity. I look back now and laugh to some degree at how shallow and naive I was. Even the old masters did commissions and many of them would have starved to death without them. I must say right here I do not like the term "old masters" as in my opinion no one ever masters anything they only attain a certain level of expertise. The term also has the effect of making some contemporary artists feel as if they are in some way lesser. But that's another topic altogether and I'm not going to get into it any further in this blog.

I guess when I look at the old masters work much of it was religious in nature I have nothing against religion but I have a great deal of animosity towards censorship which the church was undeniable guilty of on many occasions. Some would say what if the church hadn't supported these artists perhaps there would have been no art at all. The sad fact about a lot of art is that the only reason it was ever created was to feed someones ego and that includes the church. Art that is borne totally on the whim of the artist is often times much more imaginative and interesting it doesn't necessarily have to be off the wall to be interesting and valid, Turner's landscapes are a classic example.

There were the patrons that would look at sketches that the artist had done and pick something that touched them in some way, and ask the artist to do a full scale piece. To my mind these were true art patrons they were not trying to feed their egos instead they were encouraging and supporting the artist in the purist form. God bless them!

Now I am going to take a different angle on commissions. While sitting in my studio one day I received a phone call from Ireland from a gentleman patron who had purchased one of my works that summer. He asked if I would be interested in a commission to paint his wife's dog. Maybe it was the growling coming from my stomach or perhaps when the gentleman explained why he wanted me to do this for his wife that started me to thinking differently about commission work. Well I thought my client could have patronized many artists but instead he trusted me to execute this work that would mean so much to his wife, that's quite an honour. The other thing was that here was a man that instead of buying his loved one just another commercialized Christmas gift, he had searched his soul to find something that his wife probably would adore, something with real meaning thought and love. How could I say no?

That little incident for some reason touched me more than my patron will ever know. His love for his wife had a profound effect on my attitude towards the reason I should or should not do commissions I realized even more so when I received a letter of thanks relating that his wife was moved to tears. I didn't think it was that bad. In all seriousness it is as far as I'm concerned my duty as a human being to make an effort to make this planet we live on a better place for my fellow man. I would like to thank that gentleman for the gift he gave me.