Again this week, a non-artistic topic. I am writing this on Wednesday as I may be busy on Thursday… Hasn’t this been a crazy winter? As I write this the sky outside is a dark ominous gray, it’s way above freezing and the wind is gusting. We have already had a short power cut this morning, you know, the kind that just forces you to reset all those blinking appliances! It’s been above freezing with bouts of very heavy rain for the last 24 hours but it’s supposed to get very cold this afternoon very fast, and I just hope we don’t get any freezing rain. Apparently they received substantial amounts overnight only about an hour away from us, where it didn’t get quite as warm! Then snow is in our forecast! You may recall we sold a small property recently in the US. Well, the paperwork finally came in after weeks of no news, and of course it has to be completed and notarized and sent back within 3 days! We had been told everything would be done through “e-signatures”, but I guess that was wrong! To make things even more fun, they moved the closing date up 2 days without telling us, and the document they emailed to us was full of errors, including considering us as US citizens even though they had our mailing address in Canada and I told her on the phone we were Canadians! And we are talking about legal documents here, prepared by people who do this for a living! So I sent back a list of corrections and questions and am waiting for them to send us a new document. We are also waiting for a phone call back from a notary we have used in the past to see if she can notarize the documents as a rush job. And the weather is menacing! I sure hope the phone rings soon and that the power stays on! I will update Thursday morning if I can!
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As an artist, I like to be able to sell my works. Not because I need to necessarily, but because it is a pleasant experience to know that what I do is appreciated enough for people to give me some of their hard-earned money, and also because if I don’t sell some of it, I will have to find a bigger house! Selling art, as I have said before, is not easy. It is not, like most goods or services, a question of finding what “problem” my “product” solves, and pointing out to my “customer” how well it does it! Selling art is an art in itself! I have been researching and trying various ways to market art, with not much success so far, but I am having fun trying! I have learned a lot and I like learning, so all is well. Of course, I would like to understand why people buy art. What attracts them to this or that piece? I have often asked the question, but few people have answered it. I suspect that’s because most people simply don’t know the answer. Buying art is often done with the heart, not the head! This week I had a very unusual experience. After many weeks away from my studio, I finally finished a watercolor painting I had started over 2 months ago. It was a bit larger than what I usually paint, and was a painting I had already done in a small format, as part of the daily challenges of World Watercolor Month in July 2021. It was an image I really liked, so I had decided to redo it in a much larger format. It turned out very well, and I posted a photo of it on my social media pages. It got a lot of very positive attention and comments, more than anything else I have ever posted! This could be because more people saw it because of my ongoing marketing efforts, but I can’t know. To my surprise, one of the first people who commented on it, who also happens to be one of my collectors, decided to buy it, within about 24 hours of it being up! Wow! That was a first! I was frankly astounded by the reaction to the painting. I wanted to know what it was about this painting that caused such a reaction, not hoping to find the “Holy Grail” that would cause all my future paintings to jump off the easel onto collectors’ walls (although that does have a certain appeal!!), but just to try to understand what people are looking for in a painting. I did ask the question and the most common answer, which matches the most common comment, is “It looks so real, I thought it was a photograph”. When you think of it, that is a strange reason to like a painting. Why not just get a photograph? But I guess (hope?) what people are saying is that they admire the ability of the artist to reproduce the details of an image accurately, because it is something they feel they themselves could never do. I assure you that nothing is further from the truth, as everything can be learned. I did, and there is no reason why you couldn't! It’s a good thing for me that people like the realistic style, because that’s what I like doing. It is also a mystery to me then that a lot, if not most, of the art that I see for sale (and selling!) at shows I participate in is not realistic, but abstract or impressionistic. I have tried to paint more like that, but it just does not come naturally. Perhaps it is something I can learn, but for now, I think I will stick to my own style and continue to paint what I like, hoping that I can find a collector who will like it too! What do you think? This week will be a non-art topic. I wanted to explain why I had closed the online store and was not able to paint for the past several weeks. Rest assured, everyone is safe and healthy, and life is slowly returning to normal. We returned last week from an 8 week trip to the U.S. We had planned for a shorter trip, we left before the Canadian government warned against any travel, and we had a good reason to travel, as we needed to go and get our small “snowbirding” property ready to put on the market. We bought this little property in 2012, while the real estate market was still near rock bottom. We had really no intention of buying at the time, but when we saw the prices we thought we could not afford not to! We used it well for almost 10 years, and of course had to leave in a rush when Covid hit in March 2020 and there was talk of closing the border. We had already decided before that happened that we would be selling when we came back, the cost of maintenance and the worry about the next hurricane, combined with the exhaustion of driving there and back, having taken most of the fun out of the experience. The growing unease at knowing that our good Canadian money, through taxes or other purchases, was funding administrations that we could not support also helped us in the decision. But who knew it would be almost 2 years before we could go back! We got there and started to sift through the accumulation of stuff that had managed to find its way into the closets and cupboards! The place was completely furnished when we bought it, and we had replaced some of the furniture over time. We liked to hunt for things in thrift stores and second-hand shops, so there was little emotional attachment to most of the “stuff”. We took a lot of things back to the charity shops from whence they came, and gave away a lot of the furniture to neighbors. We had established a “test” to determine if something was coming back home with us: 1) does it fit? 2) is it irreplaceable (or costly to replace)? and 3) does it have a sentimental value? Thanks to this set of rules, we managed to more easily part with things and bring back really only the essential. Well, mostly…. But the good news is that we are still in this “semi-purge” mood and are getting rid of some of our tons of stuff at home. It is a multi-year project!! Without boring you with the details, we managed to sell the place, not once, but twice! Three weeks after signing the offer, the first buyer announced that she had changed her mind. So we were back to square one, or maybe it was square zero! Thankfully we had not yet given away the furniture she had asked that we remove!! A few days later it was back on the market and another buyer was found. The curious thing is that in neither case did the buyer actually visit the property! Buying sight unseen is a new reality in Florida real estate! Great time for sellers! We are still waiting on the final papers to go through, but there should be no problems with this buyer. We hope! The last few days there and the trip home were very stressful. To re-enter Canada, in addition to being fully vaccinated, you also need to provide a negative result from a Covid test taken within 72 hours of your return. The drive takes us about 72 hours. So in order to leave some wiggle room for car problems or weather/traffic delays, that meant we had to get the test somewhere on the road. To get a test, you must book an appointment. This means that you must know where you will be at a certain date and time. Of course you must book the test several days ahead of time, so we had to decide when we would be leaving. As it is Winter, we had to look ahead to find a travel window that would include as little bad weather as possible! This is where a wonderful App that I found comes in! It is called Highway Weather. I am sure there are many similar good apps but this is the one I used. This wonderful App allows you to put in your origin and destination of course, but it also lets you plan your travel ahead of time, up to several days in fact (of course based on the current weather forecasts). Although it will suggest the best time for leaving, you can also use a slider to pretty much instantly recalculate the temperature, precipitation and warnings along your route. I highly recommend it. It is a little short on instructions so it takes a bit of fiddling to figure out the screen, but once you have it, it is a lifesaver! I didn’t use it “live” as I didn’t have US data, but I consulted it each evening in the hotels and the results were spot on. I highly recommend it! Another App we had to use that wasn’t so wonderful was the ArriveCan App. This is the App that the Canadian government requires you to use to re-enter Canada. I assume it can really make a difference in the time required to process a planeload of travelers at an airport, but honestly, it just seemed to be a lot of work for arrival by land, one car at a time. I had downloaded the App a few weeks before we left to familiarise myself with it, and of course, it stopped working on my phone. I tried to get help through email but it was useless. In their response, they basically suggested I do everything I had told them I had already done in my e-mail to them! Googling the issue told me many people were having the same problem, and after a while, I stopped caring, thinking I could always use my tablet if necessary. Eventually, the App started working again. My biggest issue with the App is that you can’t simulate a trip so you can try it all out and make sure you have everything you need. After you have used it for a real trip, you realize you probably could have done so, but it’s too late anyway! Finally, may I recommend the Flytrippers website. Started by a guy from Quebec, this site is full of money-saving tips and information mostly for flying, but that is where I found out that you could get your Covid tests for free in the US. We followed the tips and it worked like a charm! Maybe someday when (if?) we resume flying we will check out the rest of the site! So there you have it. Happy to be back, safe and sound, and looking forward to an early Spring? |
AuthorMy name is Claire Bureau. Archives
March 2023
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