The process of letting a work of art go—be it one of my reverse hand painted glass chandeliers or be it an oil or watercolor painting of a tropical flower or a Hawaiian beach is challenging. It is challenging for me because I invest so much of my life’s energy into each work. When I was young, just out of college with my bachelors in Art from University of California, Santa Cruz, it was in my mind that I could paint two versions of the same painting. One I would sell and the other I would keep. Working with an art coach who specialized in professional aspects around an artist’s career helped me break that cycle in my mind.

This may seem like a very odd problem but we all know that all people have their quirks. And when you consider what an artist puts into their work in terms of time and thought, it’s actually quite easy to understand. Over the course of my career I have now sold a few hundred paintings—I have lost track and have no desire to count anymore. I simply create. Becoming a prolific artist was necessary in order to make a living. I had to learn to create a lot of oil and watercolor paintings in the years that I sold them through fine art festivals here in California. That is how artists live—it is very expensive to be in business as an artist, to buy materials and to take your work to market bet it galleries or festivals. Travel is still a huge expense for me. I’d like to point out that it’s far more expensive to create chandeliers than it ever was to create and sell ‘wall art’.

To get back to my point, becoming prolific helped me to slowly let go of my fears of knowing that I’ll never see that precious original again. There was a very specific point in time where I had created an over-sized watercolor for a client in Walnut Creek, California in which I can point to having broken that fear. I delivered the painting and realize that I was able to walk away and not look back. I loved that painting. Just recently I came across it in photos from the early part of my career in the early 2000s. It was a surprisingly good painting and I remember the entire process like it was yesterday.

The picture here is one of three tropical flower and parrot themed revers hand painted glass chandeliers that were created for one client. This is my favorite of the three. I took a lot of photos of this piece in order to preserve the memory. When my painted glass chandeliers leave my studio, the go to be packed and then travel on their way to their new home. As an artist, I know that I’ll never see these pieces again so I send them with ‘light’ and prosperity. I hope that my clients will receive the same joy from their reverse hand painted glass chandeliers as I did in creating them. That said, I now need to go up to my studio to move a large tropical flower oil painting towards completion…and yes, I’ll be photographing this time-consuming labor of love before it travels to Oregon!