Oh my, the World Wide Web!! What sort of club have you become? I mean, seriously, they will let us onto it. Not a very exclusive club. Reminds me of the words of Groucho Marx: I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member. Not that there’s anything wrong with my wife and me. We are a bit old for the club scene but otherwise we are cool. Now that we have a website, you can stick around a bit to find out what we are like.

To start with, we think of ourselves as artists not Artists. We make art not Art. This is not false modesty, we believe that we create genuine artwork, it is just that we know real professional Artists with years of study, experience and most of all amazing talents. We know what they bring to the table and we are not pretending to be them.  

We love to make art and I think that we have some things to say through our art. Not earth shattering messages but we hope to spread a bit of joy, beauty and good will. We have modest expectations in terms of how people will view what we create.

We plan to use this website to show the results of our creative effort. Communication is perhaps the most significant characteristic of humans. We all need to express ourselves and get feedback to learn and to grow.  Artists are the same, only possibly more so. There are rare exceptions but whether you are a performing artist, a writer or a visual artist, one way or another you need to feel the love, the applause and the knowledge that your creative efforts are getting through to someone.  I think that artists need an audience to communicate with, to engage imaginations and feelings.  Thank-you for being our audience.

That is a good enough reason to join this club and create a website but there is another reason. We use this website to sell our art. That is right, not only do we want to make art but we want to sell what we make. There is a significant reason for that. We have a small home and we will soon run out of space if we keep making artwork.

There is at least one other reason for this website and that is the need to know what people like and that we are doing enough to buy it and put it on the wall. We think of the website as part of a dialogue. As part of this process we will talk about art, art related things and other people’s art, not just our own. More so me than Diana, I want to create a dialogue about art and sometimes other things.  I am fascinated and curious about so many topics – art included. I tend to see connections, linkages, analogies maybe. It all fascinates me and I plan to blog – blog my mind, so to speak.  As a student of all, I end up being a master of none. That means I am going to be wrong sometimes. I hope not often but I am sure sometimes. This is my warning to you. 

At the same time, I hope that you find my opinions, observations and thoughts interesting.  If you are perplexed or actually need to fact check me then do so.  I look forward to the dialogue.

Some of our pieces are going on Etsy. It used to be a really good place for people like us to offer handmade original goods but it has gone corporate. Now if you offer something for sale, Etsy will show pictures of other things that your potential clients might like.  In itself that is not a problem but those things are probably made with a giant ink-jet printer about the size of our living room and the only handwork is lifting the pieces off the machine bed and putting them into boxes for shipping. So my complaint is that they are not sticking to their stated commitments regarding original, handmade goods. On the other hand, they do set some good standards in business, client relations, payment and shipping. I think that people can trust Etsy for that.  For those reasons we will use Etsy as a back end of our business and our clients will make purchases from us through Etsy.

So that is where we are.  I am going to blog and hopefully you will comment and from that we will have a dialogue.  I am looking forward to it.  Blog on!