Red Friday

This is the last day of Poppytalk's Autumn Colour challenge and it's been kind of fun to take part! Next week I'll be back to normal posts, with some up-coming shows, and a little behind the scenes look at things, a good local etsy find and some goodies from the record collection!

So for the red portion of this post, I just received my Plywerk version of the painting above, called Red Stairwells, and I'm pretty impressed. The Plywerk print is actually the photograph of my painting, mounted to a bamboo frame. It's 11X16 and while it's a lot smaller and slightly cropped in than my original painting, there is something really lovely nice about it's format. It was kind of a trial run for me- a way to see whether 'prints' of my architectural paintings might be a good option. I've really wrestled with the whole 'print' idea for a long time because I feel so strongly about the original painting, the brush strokes, the quality of the painting the lighting etc. My work is so focused on being geared toward a gallery audience that I struggle with how it can relate or be accessible to my more average client. I've been in a number of gallery exhibits, but lets face it, the gallery has really taken a hit during this financial rut we've all been in, and it's pretty clear that artist need to fend for themselves and not rely on the gallery to make or break them!
Price point wise, I would sell this print for way less than the original and it would give clients the option of still owning one of my paintings without having to fork over bigger dollars or even find a large enough wall space to house the original (which in this paintings case is 40"X54"). Anyways, I'd love to hear thoughts about originals verses prints from other artists out there that use prints as a way to gain a wider audience. I'm still undecided about whether or not to print off a few more of these for my up-coming open studio sale: the Eastside Culture Crawl and would love some feedback! I'll try to photograph the Plywerk version so you can all see that later this week.