painting lessons

Just a note for those of you who might be looking for painting lessons this year. I teach an ongoing class at Zieglers for beginners through advanced. I teach demonstration style which is the way I learned years worth of technique in a very short time. ( forget the 4 years of piddling around in art school ) Anyways..... I am open to having some teens join the class in the summer so give me a call or better yet, make contact through this site. You may wish to check out a new web site for the portrait group that I belong to at portraitpainterswest.com. You can also check out more of my paintings and those of other great regonal artists at midwest-fine-art.com blogtopsites.com/arts/

Recent Shows

Hey Everyone,
It occured to me that some of you might live in the area and might be interested in this. I currently have a small show at Lolas down on Main and Brady. This is a portrait show. Lolas is a great place, wonderful food, music and staff..... and then of course, there is Lola :-)

My son, Dylan who is on tour this summer has left a show of his art work for us to remember him by while he is gone. His work can be seen at the very cool, Shades of Brown Coffee house on Peoria and 33rd. I have some of his abstracts in my ebay store as well. You can see if he will be in your town by going to his my space. He is touring with Mar. His band is The Doldrums....click on the link in this site to catch up with him.

Some Recent Paintings

Hi,
Here is the latest thing I have been working on with artists in the Oklahoma area. I don't know what it is like in the art world at large but around here we are asked to donate to a lot of fundraisers where there is no split with the artists. We have been banning together and agreeing to ask for a portion of the sales. Here is a copy of the letter we drafted several years ago. It was recently adopted by the Tulsa branch of Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition.

As artists we are asked many times through out the year to donate our work to various charities for use in fund raising. We love to be able to help our community in this way.

We would like to provide a way in which your charity will be able to make a greater profit using our artwork. We respectfully request that charities share a portion of the profits with the artist. In this way you will benefit in retaining a higher quality of work from the artist, which will bring a higher price at your auction or event. Keep in mind that our canvas and framing often takes up 25-30% of the cost of our painting. We would hope that you would choose to give back to the artist at least 40-60% of your sale.

When artists are asked to donate without a share of the profit it really puts us in a bind. Those of us who are struggling to make a living at this can’t afford to give away the piece that we can sell in a gallery but we also can’t afford to put pieces that aren’t quite gallery quality out in public. You also may not be aware that artists are unable to claim the value of their donation on their income taxes. We are only able to claim the cost of supplies used.

When charities split the profits with the artist every one wins. The artist is able to keep only their best work in circulation, benefactors get a quality piece of art, the charity makes a greater profit and may be able to get more than one piece from the artist.

It is for these reasons that members of Oklahoma Visual Artists Coalition will willingly donate to organizations that adopt these practices and we will also respectfully decline all offers where there is no split with the artist.