Love that Finished Feeling

Hi again. Well, how do you like my blogs so far? I’m in that creative high that follows a finished painting. It’s actually a sort of hurdle to finish a painting, especially when you are a perfectionist about your artwork. In theory a painting is always finished and never finished. You always can look back at a painting and find something you could tweak or add to. Opposingly, abstract or minimalists artists say less is more. Also, when you are painting a commissioned piece, the collector is the boss. You hope and pray that your interpretation of what they asked for is the same as what they want. Many times, your client is not really certain what they want . Or they can asked for the impossible. I once had a restaurant owner ask me to paint a portrait of his business. The problem was he wanted me to portray the outside of the restaurant and the inside on the same canvas. RIGHT!!!! Needless to say that was a difficult commission. I ended up using my Olympic style to show sections of the outside walls as transparent in order to see the lively inside of the eatery.

I have used the Olympic style on everything from sports applications like the Olympic games to organizations themes like the Knights of Columbus. Their painting entitled “Rays of Faith” was presented to Pope John Paul II in the Vatican, in Rome. I have also used the style to portray family groupings, like the painting I did for my brother on the birth of his first born son. The style gives me more options for integrating different views of the same subject. It is also interesting to learn that other artists are now starting to imitate the style. They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. But, in the art world, it is called plagiarism. Maybe that sounds harsh. However, I worked very hard to develop the style just for the Olympics. It is what helped me win the competition and the prestige of being the first time only one artist was chosen to represent the whole Olympic Games. Additionally I was the first artist to represent both summer and winter Olympic Games.

It was quite an accomplishment. This may be egotistical, but I am quite proud of the achievement. I worked really hard. It took eight months to complete all twelve full size watercolor paintings. Just developing the style itself, deciding how the organize the images and building the compositions was a real difficult process. It is not just slapping the images down randomly.

It took three years to gather all my research photos and information together. I went to every sports event or practices available. You would not believe how many rolls of film I went through. The developing and printing costs were astronomical. It took a while to get the information from the Olympic Committee about how to submit artwork to the competition. My real goal was to be the 1st. artist to be the sole artist for the whole of the Olympic Games. This meant I had to cover every venue that would be included in that Game. I also wanted to break the record by painting for both summer and winter Games.

In order to win out over any other artist, I needed to make so no additional artist would be needed. So, I had to cover it all, both accepted sports and exhibition sports. To facilitate that many venues, it would be impossible to show that many images in one composition. I then had to decide how many paintings I needed. So, I separated all the sports into like categories of type of sport and venue. It worked out to be ten categories for summer and two for winter. The categories were Aquatics, including swimming, diving, water polo, racing etc. Next, Contact, including boxing, wrestling, judo etc. Equestrian, with dressage, stadium jumping events and field events. Other summer categories include divided court, team court, team field, marksmanship, track and field, gymnastics and watercraft. Winter sports were divided into two categories of snow and ice sports. That makes twelve in all. Fortunately, that also worked out for additional promotional marketing like calendars, note cards and other collector items.

I really enjoyed the work even though it was a huge project and a lot of work. I put my whole heart and soul into the project. I wrote all the business applications including the full business plan, compiled the painting research and marketing myself. I showed my business plan to the Small Businessmans Association director and was shocked by his response. I was all prepared to make corrections additions or editing to my document. Instead he said “This is the most complete plan I have seen. Who wrote your business plan?” I replied “I did.” He said, “I know you are the artist, but who wrote the business plan for you?” I repeated “I Did.” He said, “no, I mean this work,” holding up my plan. I said “Just because I am an artist it doesn’t mean I don’t have any business knowledge.” He sheepishly said “Oh, I didn’t mean to imply you were dumb.” I bet he thought twice before he judged someone’s intelligence again.

As I said at the beginning of this blog, You get a really great sense of accomplishment when you finish a painting. After each Olympic Painting, I got only a little high because I knew I still had the rest of the twelve to go. However, I got the real ecstasy when I got the call from the Olympic Committee Marketing Chairman and the President of the Olympic Committee that I had won the competition and I was the sole artist for the 1996 Olympic Games. This is another reason I like doing big projects especially charitable fundraising projects. Well, I apologize for my pride. But I hope you enjoyed my stroll through memory lane. Thank you for following my blog. Hope you keep reading.

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