Sunday scribbles #4: Vernissage at home.

A new week after I sold my first paintings, and boy what a week it was. As you all know I have started this all up quite recently. One goal I set myself in the very beginning was to make at least one painting every week. That is to say, one painting I am happy with. A little sidenote, which already gave me a healthy portion of headaches in the figurative way of speaking. The words ‘at least’ are also quite important because it means that I do have weeks where I make two or three paintings. This brings me to the next part: a vernissage at home.

My girlfriend and I bought a house last year. Where we live, houses aren’t very cheap and in the past year the market exploded. So we were beyond thrilled that we were able to buy a house which has a lot of space. Yes, if things go well, the idea is to have children in the future. But right now, all our rooms upstairs are already taken, by both my arena and paintings. So all the space does come in handy. Making at least one painting every week for the past months has resulted in over thirty paintings by now. It was getting to the point where I had to be really creative to create some space to place them. The best idea to do so, is by getting rid of them. This sounds quite blunt, but whenever you have stuff which gets in your way in your house, this is an immediate humane reaction, even with stuff you love. So I came up with the idea of organizing a vernissage at home.

The next thing was to hope that people were actually going to buy some paintings. I was only sure of two paintings to be sold. That is to both my and my girlfriends parents. They like what I am doing and they are the kind of people that love to support projects of their beloved ones. So as I expected, they bought something, and mine even bought two paintings! I was beyond delighted to see that they did not just buy it to support me, but because they genuinly liked the pieces they bought. And this is something I did not expect. Bearing in mind the cost to make these pieces of art, I only wanted to sell some to get some breathing space. At first, I thought I would not care too much if people bought it to support me or not, but boy how wrong I was.

When holding the vernissage, I absolutely did not want people to buy something just to support me. I love my paintings way too much to have them being put in a room where noone gets to see them. What a pity it would be if noone could enjoy what I put on those canvases. They are made to be seen, made to make people wander in their mind, see something they make up themselves… Being abstract paintings, I adore how people see different stuff in them. Aside from paintings being sold at my vernissage, I loved how people talked about them. I was also astounded by how different the opinions were. Because I am still finding out my style, there were many different kinds of paintings. This resulted in one third being sold. Yes, one third! That is way more than I expected. Some are already hanging on walls and some have already been dropped off for their specific cadres. There is even one couple, known for never hanging something on their walls in the living room, who will put up a work there. Is there even a greater compliment?!

One reaction I won’t forget quite fast is the one of my cousin. I have one cousin with whom I have been very close with all my life and whom I share the big interest of ‘mens sana in corpore sano’ with. We both work out a lot and have always been living an active life. The kind of sports we do and workouts we get in do differ, but the mindset is exactly the same. Aside from this we also love the concept of trying out stuff and giving it our all. At our death beds we would hate to regret the stuff we didn’t do or were too scared of doing. So, this cousin also visited the vernissage. I invited him because I wanted to show what my new business is about. When he entered through our garage, which could have been baptized as my blue corner, he passed by Diving Phoenix and was blown away. I will try to recite his reaction: “Woooooow, WTF???!!! This one is SICK!!!!! What’s the price??”. I told him this was one of the more expensive ones because of the amount of paint that went in and the result. This was also one of the pieces I was most proud of. I told him the price and he immediately said he’ll buy it. As I said earlier it is nice to start making money, but mainly because if gives me the chance to buy more paint and more canvases, thus resulting in more playtime in the arena. Though it was his reaction that made really fucking happy.

There are more stories likes this, but since these are my Sunday Scribbles I am actively trying to not make them too long. I love writing this stuff down and sharing it with all of you. Maybe because these Sunday Scribbles follow the same principle I use in the arena and which I try to live by. Being that action generates inspiration. The other way around will seldom result in action. Before I get to my laptop I have only a slight idea what to write about. Of course I knew that I would write about my vernissage, but I had no idea where it would go. That is something I absolutely love when writing: creating a path you did not envision, and ending up enjoying more than you even thought.