Here it is, by popular demand: The Uppity Chick Studio Art Blog.
You're probably wondering what tremendous skills you'll garner here that will propel your paintings to blinding success. Me too! As you've no doubt discovered, The Catapult Of Success is notoriously fickle.
A self made businessman once told me that if I had a $3,000 clothing allowance, rather than buy twenty outfits on sale, my best investment would be a single Chanel suit.
Eric B. Rhoads has said that artists must present themselves as successful in order to become successful. Think about the car you drive, he says. Think about the clothes you wear. If you ooze success, people will take you seriously. You're selling an image, a reputation. People are more apt to buy your artwork if they believe you're an investment. "Hmm, yes, I just acquired an original E.C. O'Connor. Really, darling, you should see it, it's brilliant."
Okay, look, here's the deal: Facades aren't my thing. I totally do NOT have a $3,000 clothing allowance. Mascara makes me nervous. For decades I drove a '91 Nissan 4wd pickup truck, manual transmission, primer gray on one side where the blue had corroded away, and I freakin' loved that thing. Now I have a Toyota Tacoma. Camping and painting gear fill the back - it's my mobile studio. I have boldly gone to places no white woman has gone before.
So all I can tell you is the truth. About me. About my art. About how I live.
Given a choice between a Chanel suit and a sweet desert road trip, I'd invest in the road trip. Every painting sale is validation.
Uppity Chick Studio World Headquarters is a 400 square foot, one room log cabin of admirable decrepitude. Hey, at least I have running water (didn't used to). Come winter, I'm buried. Come summer, I'm in heaven. Either way, the advantage of living in a small house is that there is no escape from my artwork. The paintings dominate my existence. For example, I have this nifty drying rack in my kitchen; recently I learned that it's called an oven, and other people actually use theirs to cook food! Crazy.
For some reason, people think I have more cats than I really do.
My cabin is one of several on a rambling property that served as an old hunting camp. It took a long time before proper grammar arrived in the west: "ONE BLOCKs horses Sportsman's Lodge CABINS " reads the sign nailed to an outbuilding. Charlton Heston lived here while filming The Mountain Men (no kidding). Now it's me, an eclectic array of neighbors, and various roaming wildlife.
By third world standards, it's perfectly opulent.
Silk purse? Sow's ear? Yes; both. If you're not happy with what you have, how can you be happy with more? Maybe one day it will be all the rage to have a decaying outhouse in the back yard. Maybe fleece and Smartwool will be haute couture. Maybe prestige will be measured by the distance cadmium red has traveled across one's possessions. When that day comes, The Catapult Of Success will be mine!
(Don't tell anyone, but I'm actually very well behaved. I have an image to cultivate, after all.)
