This spring a woman who runs a new bookstore in Osterville found my
photographs of the Wianno Seniors on the web. Osterville is where
the shipyard is that designed and built the Wianno Seniors. They are
a really local class and were born in this little village.
So there is an 80 year love affair between those who summer in this
village and these boats.
And those who sail these boats are among the wealthiest class on the
mid-Cape, and include the Kennedy clan.
So the bookstore has been doing a pretty good bunch of sales of
enlargements and notecards already, despite that the season doesn't
really start until the kids get out of school.
Now here is a new wrinkle.
I was able to pay my RE taxes in May because of the bookstore's big
pre-season order. But a woman who paints in oils came by the
bookstore and contacted me about painting from the photographs. She
has just signed a 3-year lease for a gallery space down the street
from the bookstore.
We struck a deal, mindful of my relationship with the bookstore, that
she would pay me 15% of any sales she made of paintings that drew
from a portfolio of 40-odd sailing images that I prepared for her.
Her 4'x5' canvasses in wide gilt frames are priced at $2500 plus or
minus. She has a nice bay window in which she places one of her
large framed canvasses.
So I get a phone call this afternoon and it's the painter. She's
sold two of these big canvasses for around that price each. She's
ecstatic that she's sold the paintings, and she's ecstatic to be able
to tell me that she's sending me a check on Tuesday for almost the
same amount as I get in rent from my tenant every month. Or I can
come over and pick it up right now - a 25 minute drive one way.
Now this is the life, for someone whose net taxable income last year
was $6K, this could definitely be the life.
Not being a painter, but a photographer, a couple of questions come
to mind which I'd like to toss around with any of you who want to
talk about them.
The first is:
Why can't photographers get that kind of money for their work? Their
vision is just as essential to the success of the work, their skills
are different but equally disciplined and sophisticated. A fine
photograph can be printed that size and framed that luxuriously.
Next question:
How long can this woman go on painting from my images before she
wears out her audience? Is there an infinite market for the same
arrangment of sailboats, like in the image I put in the gallery this
week? Is there always going to be another rich person who wants a
grouping of sailboats heeling over and raising a nice bow wave for
$2500 smackeroos to hang on the wall in his penthouse office high
above Boston, or wherever?
I think of the painters who do what she's doing, Michael Keane
primarily, who are very successful. This guy is an honest painter,
not like that Thomas Kinkaide guy who's trying to sell his inkjet
prints for the same price that Keane sells his originals. Keane
gathers his own material, it's locked into his spirit. He's coming
from the same place I come from - the sea, boats, weather, beach,
dune - all part and parcel of his spirit. And my little Osterville
painter comes from there too, although she's not technically anywhere
near Keane.
So I'm slightly curious about whether she'll mature technically, or
whether she'll ultimate come apart because she's not capable of being
a Keane, sort of like I'm curious about whether I'll get as good as
the photographers I admire, and figure out how to be a successful as
they.
But mostly I'm curious about just how big the market is for this sort of art.
In this relationship I feel a bit like Gerald Moore, the accompanist
of three generations of Lieder singers, include Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau. Without Moore, most of the singers would not have
gone as far as they did. Without Dieter, Moore would have been the
best accompanist in the world of Lieder, but Lieder wouldn't have
become a major musical component of the classical music world in the
sunset years of classical music in our culture.
Do photographers make a living being accompanists?
--
Emily L. Ferguson
mailto:elf@xxxxxxxx
508-563-6822
New England landscapes, wooden boats and races, press photography
http://www.vsu.cape.com/~elf/
