As an artist, I realize there is a missing element in my ongoing plan as a creative: I’ve made limited provision for business survival. Specifically, I’ve not pulled the trigger to release that first shot in the hunt for revenue. None of my web properties are set up to take orders or payments and no prices are attached to anything I’ve created.

Meanwhile however, I’ve invested in the actual machinery of art by having top quality supplies available and proper digital tools to obtain and process images for reproduction.

Currently I am limited to flat art, not having the room or equipment to produce sculpture as yet. Murals are possible, but I do not have a large enough studio space to stage them. That said, if you love my images and want a mural, the tools exist  to have a scaled image designed for and printed to fit your space and applied in place. I’ve not yet used them but expect to. That probably makes much more sense than a direct painted mural.

Someone who has forged on and passed this stage may be puzzled at the stall. After all, supplies must be replenished and bills must be paid. Costs must be recouped, and the poor little Lotus that I own still is not roadworthy, which alone is sufficient reason to want to make money.

I think that once the valve is turned on and business revenue begins to flow, it will be analogous to that moment when the infant physiology switches from mother’s circulatory and respiratory systems to the baby’s own. That event begins with the child held upside down naked and getting slapped. You see why I dread the transition, not knowing how true to the analogy life will really be in this.

I’ve come along. As a hobby artist I had the luxury of painting anything I felt like on any schedule with no expectation that I would ever have to part with what I created. That will not work any more.

In the past six years, I’ve done a range of projects that enables me to know what can be done and what will go poorly. Because of that, I’m sensibly rigid about my limitations so that I don’t try the impossible such as when I tried to build a family portrait for a couple using supplied photographs of their family.

Now, I accept that everything that isn’t sacred really does have a price. The price that the art fetches gives me a good idea how much or how little the creations are esteemed.

A very positive alteration in the switch from hobby artist to professional is the increased opportunity to excel. It does not hurt that more people can own something they love and can experience what it’s like to get to see one of these art works on one’s own wall day in and day out. They just get better as you live with them.

So I’m almost there, almost in the market place. It’s all for sale. I just have to make it easy to find me and to get the art work to where it’s wanted for the right price.

For those who think they’d like to own some of the existing work, samples are shown at www.fenimorecentral.artspan.com for now.  My URL is WWW.fenimorecentral.com and it will get you to me one way or another.

I do portraiture and similar work, particularly focusing on women and children. I may end up being the best source you could find for your pet portrait also.

I do machines. This means that if you love your car, your boat, your aircraft, or some other conveyance or mechanical thing, I’m the guy you want to paint that. You may want a simple image, or a painting that tells a story. If you have the means, you’re very likely to be able to own it. I am not a budget artist. My niche is in telling the story.  This means that so long as the compensation covers the required costs and effort, whether that be in time, travel, research, or exotic materials & dimensions, and you leave room for creative freedoms, then there is nothing you can not have painted subject to my accepting the commission. Somethings that people want painted will not be done by me and I won’t accept them all.

Landscapes fill the next great love in what I like to paint and draw. There is nothing like having a painting of some place that brought magic to your life.

In all cases, I have a system that works for me and delivers. To manage portraits, I need one, possibly two photo shoots with the subject(s). My aim is to show the subject well so that long after the event, the image speaks well for them.

I am not the guy you see when you want a drawing or painting of a photograph. Those can be had for less money on line from artists in China and even here in the U.S. and they’re probably faster. That said, there are special cases where it does make sense to work form an existing photo. Here are examples of what I’ve done.

 

There may be cases where it’s necessary to work only from existing photographs as in the creation of a memorial or a retrospective or when they record a time long passed.

 

 

 

 

 

Machines, particularly cars, are a serious joy for me, an unabashed car guy. You may have the same feelings about your air craft or watercraft and if you do and want it in a painting or detail drawing, you will not do better to go somewhere else. Try me. The same applies here as does the portraits. I must take photographs. If the painting requires a good deal of detail, I may need to come back for more pictures to make sure the depiction is right.

Sometimes I am the answer to the desperate question “what do you give someone who has everything they need?”

But of course, Grandpa loved his MG TD. Grandmother adored that rose garden. Uncle Bob loves his niece and nephew. As long as they have a person, place, machine  that they love, it can probably be painted or drawn.

Dennis Fenimore Artist