Art & Money

To me personally, art has always been about evolution. It is a way I get from A to Q and sometimes, to B. For evolution you need change and I like change.

One thing I feel needed changing above all else was the disconnect between art and money.

Now, you could even say that art and money live in two very different worlds and it is natural that there should be a disconnect, for art is about energy, about spirit and the soul, and money is about digging for roots and plastering the world in concrete and square buildings.

I feel that "the world of men" needs art, and I haven't met the artist yet who doesn't need any more money (I haven't met Damien Hurst, remind me to edit this article if ever I do!).

The way art is priced is bewildering, often incomprehensible and mostly bitterly unfair to the artists concerned.

It's difficult how to price your art without feeling sincerely hard done by, and the more of a "the real thing" artist you are, the more difficult it is because your art is precious beyond price.

Every artist has to figure out their own way of dealing with the ART VS MONEY confusions; I decided to use the magic of art and therefore created a painting or energy object or magic ritual that had a colourful canvas as the proof that I did it, called ...

An End To The Starving Artist.

And here it is.

An End To The Starving Artist, Mixed Media/Acrylics on Canvas, 30x40, SFX 2014

https://energyart.uk/love_storm.htm#End_To_The_Starving_Artist 

This gave me the idea of producing small paintings which I would be able to sell and people would be able to buy - little canvases that I called "cupcakes" and which sold, it is true, like hotcakes when they were put on sale.

An aside - I believe that the cupcakes are a bridge not just to selling art, but to BUYING ART. I reckon that 90% of those who gave me money for a cupcake, aka a real Silvia Hartmann original painting, had never bought a piece of original art before.

I think that if more "normal people" understood the joy of having an original work of art in their home, what that feels like, the comments it attracts and what it does for your life, the world would be the better for it.

And just think of all the "young artists" who are happy to sell their own cupcakes to get themselves started ... and how many more people would start collecting art if there was more of it out there, and readily available ...

And for me personally, the cupcakes are better than any business card. They're out there, doing their thing, my little energy ambassadors ... :-)

But back to making a bridge between art and money.

So here are the cupcakes:

23 Original Paintings, priced at £23 cash each.

And here's the money that was paid for each one.

I did sell my cupcakes for just over £500 in total, and I put the money in an oldfashioned leather pouch.

Here's me with my bag of gold!

Silvia Hartmann and a bag of money from the sale of art!

When I got home, I desired to create an image to commemorate the wonderful event which for me was a ritual to break a spell of the ages.

I love this image, it's a work of art in its own right!

"Art & Money" - Taken with my old glass Yashika lens in the sunshine, April 2014.

And that's it.

Artists should not starve. They should live, and have fun. They should be able to be playful and not sad, because sad artists, angry artists, desperate artists make sad art. They make angry art. They make desperate art.

For a better future, for a better world, society needs to learn to take much better care of their artists.

They are so important because their emotions is what creates EVERYTHING - from the clothes we wear, to the movies we watch, to the stories we listen to, the music we dance to, the very world we live in.

And I guess that's my final call for change - to embrace the artists and begin to respect them, to celebrate them.

Because when you do, that's when your own inner artist comes out of the dark, into the light, and our worlds will change forever.

Silvia Hartmann

April 10th, 2014