Rats!

This weekend was quite the time for critters. Living in a rural/semirural desert area, one expects to see critters -- especially when they're encouraged to come around when people like us put food and water out for them.

Unfortunately, some critters are more welcome than others. Like ground squirrels. They can be pretty destructive.

So we invested in a "catch-'em-alive" trap so we could catch them and relocate those little varmints to other parts of the desert.

But we weren't prepared for the bees we saw for the first time yesterday! They took up residence under the roof where there was no piece of lumber to keep them out. $200 to have them removed this morning. They, like the ground squirrels, were taken to a rocky place out there where they can do what bees do in peace. They weren't Africanized and thus weren't dangerous, but they were too close to our front door and walkway.

Then there were the rats. The rats we have in the desert aren't like the disgusting Norway rats one finds in the cities. They're actually kind of cute!

They seem to like moving into a bale of Bermuda-grass hay that we use to add bedding material for our pet bunny and guinea piggy. But since that hay must stay clean, I caught the two rats and relocated them elsewhere.

Then, in the afternoon, we heard some faint "squeeks" coming from the bale, and my worst fears were confirmed: baby rats! They had fur but still had their eyes closed:

So, what do we do with them? I doubt they were old enough for us to take care of even if we had a way of doing so. I'm sure they were young enough so if we wanted to keep them as pets, they would have been perfectly socialized to life with humans.

But where does one get rat's milk? With two critters already keeping us busy, where would we put more critters (there were three babies)? I doubted Animal Control would want them. And I didn't have the heart to kill them myself.

So we thought about it, and -- as cruel as the Circle of Life can be, we decided to continue the Circle: we set out a shallow container and put the baby rats in it. For a roadrunner to find.

It didn't take long. The babies disappeared, one at a time, and thank God we didn't happen to see the roadrunner take them.

I hate stuff like this, and I wish we could have thought of an alternative. I hate killing, or being responsible for the killing of, animals, especially the cute ones. It literally sickens me. Sometimes the guilt is overwhelming. And it makes me hope there's a critter heaven someplace where beloved pets and wild animals alike go and spend eternity without fear of being attacked or harmed.

Is that too much to hope for?

Changes, Continued

Life this year has been so-o-o different from the life of the previous ten years. As I mentioned in a previous post, I decided not to continue as a professional artist; at least, not until I see a good reason to try it again.

So far this year, I've made almost no art. Instead, I'm spending a LOT of time teaching at the local community college: microbiology, zoology and a lab for a biology class intended for non-science majors.

Before, my days, nights, weekends and holidays were all about making and selling art...and that was it. Now, my days, nights, weekends and holidays are all about teaching and preparing to teach...and that's it. Next week is Spring Break, but it'll be no vacation for me. I've got lab books to grade and more lectures to prepare for.

I'm not complaining...well, not really, I guess. I'm certainly making more $$$ than I ever made from art.

But I'll have to admit: I'm looking forward to late May, when classes will be finished, the grades will be turned in, and I can collapse and sleep all summer. I know I'll miss my students: it's hard not to get at least a little emotionally attached.

But I'll be more prepared to teach those classes again in the future should the college want me to, and this summer I plan to make revisions and changes so the classes will be closer to what I want them to be.

And I expect to do more painting again. And (dare I push my luck?) pursue my other hobby/passion: model railroading.

The light is at the end of the tunnel. I've needed a break for a long time, and I'm totally expecting the break to come in late May.

I'm ready.

Into the Sunset

The time had come to make one of those decisions that changes one's life. They're always hard and sometimes sad, but necessary.

I decided it was time to give up the dream of making art as a business.

The art business never did make enough money for us to live on; in fact, we lost a LOT of money over the years. A sale here and a sale there just doesn't do it. After a couple of decades (literally), with one of those decades being full-time as an artist during this never-ending economic depression, it's time to stop the money leak. I've reached my "stop-loss": the gambler's term for the maximun amount one is willing to lose in the pursuit of riches.

I've gotten a lot of advice over the years from artists who say they're surviving just fine, although their income may have gone down somewhat over these last few years. Some of the advice was conflicting: "Keep your prices low until you get better established" vs. "You really otta double your prices."

In fact, I've taken a lot of the advice I've gotten, and ya know what? NONE of it made any difference, one way or the other!

The recession (or depression, as I call it) affected many artists badly; for me, however, sales dropped even before the housing bust. I saw sales decline when gasoline prices rose in the mid-2000's, supposedly because of the worldwide demand for oil, especially from emerging economies such as China's, and from every storm that blew through the Gulf of Mexico. It cost more for people to get around, so they stopped traveling to art shows or galleries. Those who still drove their cars just weren't buying.

On top of that, the galleries I used to be in had their own ideas about what I should paint -- paint BIG (something I never felt I was good at), and paint Tuscany scenes (Gallery A) or local desert scenes (Gallery B). There were a few sales, but now we have closets stuffed with large paintings. And no interested galleries.

In addition, buyers in California and Arizona -- even in the art mecca of Scottsdale -- want non-Southwest, impressionistic/expressionistic/abstract works that match the sofa or "tie the room together." In fact, I'm still amazed at how many people re-decorate their homes and save the art-buying for last. It's easier to switch out paint and furniture color than it is to find art that's truly meaningful to the buyer, regardless of the colors in the art. But then, maybe that just demonstrates the low priority people place on art.

I'm left with quite a mixture of emotions: sadness, anger, bitterness, disappointment, frustration. I know I can always re-enter the art market if/when things change. But I'm not counting on anything like that happening in my lifetime. For now, painting is a hobby that I'll work at when I can. I'll take my time, work when the mood strikes me, and produce works that are as close to perfect as I can make them, given the skills I have at that time. If I happen to sell any paintings, great; if not, well, the pieces will look wonderful on our own walls.

Meanwhile, I'm still a part-time instructor at the local community college, and I've applied for a full-time biology instructor position that recently opened. And I'm looking for a Plan C in case the college loses the funds to pay my wages and I become unemployed. Plan A (the art business) is finished.

So for now, I'm heading off into the sunset. If you happen to be one of my buyers, I say: thanks so much for fueling the dream. But the paint brushes and supplies have been put aside for now, and I'll revise my Website (which I still plan to keep online) to become a portfolio of my favorite paintings rather than a selling site.

Yo voy a Dios.

Flickering Flames

The Wiffee and I are fans of the CBS program, Sunday Morning. On today's program, they featured a story about Herb Albert (of Tijuana Brass fame) and his wiffee, singer Lani Hall.

They live on six acres in Malibu, CA, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Herb paints, sculpts, suppports music programs (as in the Harlem School of the Arts, or whatever the exact name is) and pretty much does whatever he wants. Hey -- they can afford it! He and Lani recorded an album together and will soon be touring the country in concert.

In many ways, Herb's life is quite similar to the life I envisioned when I began dreaming of an art career -- originally as a fine-arts photographer, then as a full-time painter. I never figured on achieving the fame or wealth that Herb has, but I thought we'd be able to live on my modest income and to reside wherever we wanted to -- not in Malibu, necessarily, but perhaps in the hi desert of CA or the Sonoran desert of southern AZ. (Well, OK, we do live in the CA hi desert, but this is hardly our dream home!)

That dream has been rapidly fading or, should I say, that flame is flickering madly, in danger of going out.

For years, I attended grad school, doing experients in microbiology that left me little time for anything else. Then I entered the working world where I worked full-time, commuted for hours on California's freeways, and worked on my art as much as possible. In between jobs, I worked full-time on art: days, nights, weekends, holidays. Then, in the last ten years, I considered my full-time job to be: professional artist, with the same hours I worked as the "between-jobs" artist.

And ya know -- I'm tired!

Sales have been mixed, but over the last few years during the recession, sales have been very low. I can't even speculate on when, or if, things will ever go back to "normal" -- whatever that is. Some of the other landscape artists I admire are struggling, too.

Now, mind you -- surviving, or even thriving -- financially as an artist is certainly possible. I know artists in that category, too. But most of their artwork has a noticable contemporary twist: VERY colorful, impressionistic/expressionistic and often not showing the grand views that I love. One rarely finds the type of art I enjoy at art festivals.

Even supposedly traditional art havens like Santa Fe and Scottsdale feature little of this style of painting. I must be part of a dinosaur generation that's becoming extinct.

I do, on occasion, see/hear rumors that the avant garde styles are becoming tiresome with buyers and that realism is making a comeback. Maybe so -- but not in MY part of the world, it ain't!

But we'll see. I haven't given up on the dream just yet. But the flame keeps flickering in the dusty winds of the hi desert.

Herb Albert -- my hat's off to you.

A Little Neoclassical

This is a painting I finished recently. It's based on a piece by 18th century French neoclassical painter Hubert Robert, who painted ancient Roman ruins overgrown with vegetation with the people of his time working, dancing and playing among the remains of antiquity.

One of my favorite paintings of all time is entitled "The Bathing Pool." My artwork is based on it, except I made it a moonlight scene.

I've considered painting more scenes like this, but it's one of those areas that I go back and forth about. sort of like doing dinosaur paintings: should I or shouldn't I? To sell, or to do it just for the fun of it?

Honestly, I can't decide. It's really too busy to do much painting right now, but it's something I can certainly think about!

The Desert Under a Moonrise

The latest completed painting (finished before Christmas 2010) is a small (8" x 10"/20cm x 25cm) piece showing a desert scene right after sundown and as the moon was rising.

We had a day like this a few months ago -- I believe it was in September 2010 -- and the experts have a special name for this kind of event, although I've forgotten what it was. One can still see the pink of the upper sky as the sun, now mostly below the horizon, illuminates the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the lower portion of the sky is blue as the earth casts its shadow, the bluish edge rising as it eventually overtakes the sunlit air. And the full moon rises over a magically-colored desert landscape.

I live for special times like these. They make me the artist that I am.

Colors of the Desert Skies

We've had some lightweight weather fronts moving through the hi desert lately. Temperatures went from freezing to springlike in a week's time!

The best part, however, have been the sunsets we've been getting. I've amassed a huge collection of photos with cloud of all kinds and colors, and I refer to them when the appropriate paintings present themselves. cloud pictures like these: