How Do You Keep Growing? How Do You Keep Getting Better?

I am asked by a lot of artists about growth and pushing the envelope and am often "ragged on" for being the type of artist who would kick out koi drawing after koi drawing because they sell. But the truth is I am always pushing myself in one way or another.

First of all, I work crazy hours which would drive the regular artists insane (well if something else didn’t drive them there first) then on top of that I’m on tour, oh yeah, not just a “I’m going to do 5 shows this summer tour.” Nope, a full blown “rock star” type tour with tours dates every weekend coast to coast. Sure I appear to make koi fish and humming birds every other week since it pays the bills and lately more pet commissions to fill the biggest gallery in the world and 2 annexes.

But growth doesn’t always have to involve changing styles or subjects, it only means you have to do something new to you, and learn from it; grow from it. Ever since my days in an architecture firm I would always say “the day I don’t learn something is the day I quit” so I’m big into learning and trying new stuff. From trying new subjects to trying new media to trying to set up our booth in new ways to see how people flow within it, to hanging art up in different ways and places to see what’s the hot spot.

But you know me, and that’s not all this blog is about, we have tackled some pretty important other things one can do with art, such as labels and licensing. And giving our try into drawing children’s books. It is interesting to see how far my work has come. We went from drawing nothing but black, grey and white women on only paper which we would have to frame, to multiple colors on claybord and drawing mostly landscapes. In my long exploration into drawing circles I have added the dots in a circle (aboriginal borrowed style) which I learned to do while drawing a "drawing a day" many years ago. I went back to canvas and playing with markers and paints and switching between them all and having the most fun I have ever had making my art.

Even blogging here today is a push in a different direction, I have always wanted to be a writer and in some small way I am here writing my life away with out any restriction or hesitation. In my life I do exactly what I want to do, however I have to finish a sure selling humming bird before I try a new subject and if I want to do some crazy piece that I have no idea how its gonna come out it better have a koi in it so at least someone will love the fish enough to buy it. But that only means I have grown enough to be able to keep doing what we do and not have to go back to the daily grind of an 8 to 5 real day job. Sure we spend more time thinking about how the hell we are doing to pay this month's bills, but it never really seems like work.

The best growth for a successful art business is the kind that can’t be measured and happens organically without trying. The kind that you can only see after years and years of hard work looking back on how things used to be. We just work hard and we keep working no matter what, so if you wanna grow don’t actively try to grow like hanging from a bar so you can grow taller, wont happen, just do what you do and sure enough as your gonna get older your gonna get better. How do you do it? Do you set out to grow? Do you only notice growth after all the hard work is done? Do you even care?