Sure, I understand that galleries want to represent quality artists, but they also want their artists to reflect an identifying signature style—something that holds the work together. Works that a collector could identify even without searching for the actual signature of the artist. As a young naive painter eager for gallery representation this is something I wasn’t aware of at the time.

I was 32 years old living in Coconut Grove, Florida. The gallery I wanted to get into was in the neighboring town of Coral Gables. When I had completed six strong paintings, I gathered them up and drove to the gallery. The gallery director slowly studied each of them and finally said, “I’m sorry James, but I afraid we won’t be able to represent you. You’re not yet a mature artist.” I was 32, and at that moment, bewildered. “May I ask what you mean by mature?" I asked. "Well, you’re a very good artist. Each one of these painting hold up on their own, but they don’t hold together as a group. You have a landscape, a portrait, a still life, urban scene, figure study, and a trompe l’oeil piece. That’s what I mean by ‘mature.’ Please come back with paintings that fit my requirement.”

Normally, it takes an artist an experimental, often frustrating period to find a signature style. Once I found that nitche, I was off and running. For the past 36 years I’ve been painting photorealistic, vintage neon roadsigns with very satifactory results. But after completing hundreds of these paintings, I yearned to try something fresh; a subject or style I’ve never attempted before. The problem was that the galleries representing me were only interested in my neon paintings. This was disappointing. I felt I was trapped and not allowed to find my fullest potential.

Recently, I watched a documentary hosted by the director and assistant director of a large museum. As they walked from painting to painting they commented about the artist or their style. When they came upon one painting, they stopped and the director said, “Thankfully this artist took a step away from his recognized works and began to experiment in new directions. Because he did, he’s now in every major museum in the world.”

The well known painter, Egon Schiel, had this to say on the subject: “The artist must, at all costs, be himself. He must be a creator. He must build the foundation of his new art himself without reference to tradition or the past.”

When Covid hit, wanting to avoid crowds I spent even more time in my studio painting, that’s when I decided to try something different. You might have noticed on my website a page labeled, Available Paintings. There you will find the first few steps I took outside the box. Initially, the first was series of Fauve works, next I painted a few Equine subjects posted on the same page. I knew the galleries representing me would not be interested. I painted them anyway. On another page labeled, Recent Paintings, are several more non-neon works.

I’m currently in the market for a quality gallery that likes some of these more recent subjects who would be willing to show them. In fact, if there was a particular painting they favored, I would be thrilled to paint additional pieces which reflected a similar style. These newer paintings still maintain a quality of painting I have developed over the years. I would ask the gallery to consider that point and allow the artist to express their fullest creativity.

 

“In the new renaissance, we get to start over. We get to re-invent ourselves as much as is necessary, without sticking to a particular path for too long if it doesn’t suit our creative needs. Our first job as artists, then, is to venture out, away from what we think we know in search of the new and unexplored. Great artists do this their entire lives, never staying stuck in a single style, even when it brings them wealth and fame. We must always be striving to re-invent ourselves, continuing to build on who we are and what we’ve done.”                                     —Real Artists Don't Starve, Jeff Goins