BOOK SIGNING AT ASHEVILLE GALLERY OF ART
After lunch I went to a book signing by my friend Celia Miles. This is her 12th novel. She started writing novels late in life and has self published all of them. The cover of her book is taken from a painting by Sally Lordeon, who was part of the book signing and show at the Asheville Gallery of Art, a cooperative gallery run by the artists who exhibit there.
In a way exhibiting and selling paintings at a cooperative gallery or from a booth at an art fair and publishing your novel on your own are very similar. A number of artists sell printed copies of their paintings at a lower price than the original and in this way can sell 50 copies of the same painting. If you like to paint, if painting is what enriches your life, you can’t wait around to somehow come into favor and sell your paintings to rich collectors or museums. You need to do what you love to do because you love to do it and then see if you can make enough money by selling the paintings on your own to make a living, or better yet have enough income not to need to sell paintings.
The same is true of writing poems or stories or novels. I think you should write novels because writing novels makes you feel very alive. And then share them any way you can. And just as the ways of copying and printing a painting have become very good in the last fifty years so that you can’t tell the difference between the original and the copy, the ways of printing a bound book have become so easy and inexpensive that anyone can self publish what they write in a book form that is identical to the books printed by publishing houses, and at very little cost.
To make a living from painting pictures you have to somehow become well known and popular. Once you are an established painter you can make a living. But this is very hard to do and a lot of luck is involved and for the few people who do manage to do it it often happens after their death, too late. The example often given is Van Gogh who apparently sold only one painting during his lifetime. But the delight that he got from painting, the need to paint, was entirely unrelated to how popular he was or how much his paintings sold for. I don’t know Sally Lordeon but I am guessing that the same things is true for her. In her earlier life she earned a living doing technical writing that supported someone else’s goals. In fact she and Celia got to know each other when they collaborated on a college textbook on technical writing. But Sally always painted, I’m guessing, because she had to and now as a retired older woman she can dedicate herself to painting. The creative process of painting has just the same effect for her, I’m guessing, as it did for Van Gogh. It is also satisfying for her to have people drop by and admire her work and satisfying to have her painting on the cover of Celia Mile’s book.
And I’m guessing for Celia Miles the rewards are very much the same. She writes about things she loves, waterwheel driven mills and her childhood Appalachia and Scotland, where she has traveled often. It enriches her life.
Both artists demonstrate that what is important is not to be well known and not making money, but doing what makes you feel most alive. And yet those of us who are not artists confuse being well know or being honored with finding delight in creativity and think that if paintings are not in a museum or novels aren’t published by a big publishing house, which will only publish if they think the novels will make them money, are oblivious to the pleasure that being creative in our own way can enrich our lives. I salute Celia and Sally.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 