Mark E Shellshear.

It was a crazy time in my Art career I had this battle going on inside my mind that bought me to a complete stand still. I would sit and think about doing a new series and always these thoughts would come and tell me that I will wreck my career, no one will buy them, stay with what you know, sounds quite silly now but it was a real struggle, it was only when I listened to my friend and got into that quiet place was I able to control these thoughts and become positive about what I was going to do. The good news is I did the series called, “ Rabbit proof fence” and they were all bought, so my inner negative voice was wrong, but what a struggle. Get rid of the negative self talk, there is enough people out there to criticise you without you doing it to yourself, find that quiet place, within and without and think. Allow the creative forces within you to flow, they will, they just want you to get past all the negativity, the noise and clutter. Turn off all the noise friends ...

I saw a post on an Artist group page where someone had decided to quit their day job and go full time painting and earning their living from their art and then wanted to know what all the others thought? I read all the encouraging comments about his great decision etc but I really only agreed with one comment and it said,                                 “ Can you get your job back?” In my business I get asked this question a lot by Artists believing that they have what it takes to earn a living from their art and the answer I give is always the same. Are you already selling more than you earn from your day job and if not, do not quit your day job. It does amaze me the blind optimism of some Artists, who always tell me about the thousands of likes they get on Facebook and all the encouraging comments they get, mainly fr...

Often we dismiss people who don’t like our Art even if they are not contentious or critical or rude, they just don’t get it. Maybe the fault is with us because we have not given them enough to understand what we are trying to say and without them understanding we have lost them. Like in this mornings video if the sculptor had given us a narrative to follow or made a video explaining his intent behind the piece and what he was trying to say with the piece, we may have been persuaded. If the cinder blocks had a pattern in how they were arranged and he had drawn it out and put it on the wall with an explanation, maybe it would have taken form and we would understand his intent rather then just a random mess. If someone is not understanding what we are saying in and through our Art, it is maybe because we have kept it a secret and have not explained what we were trying to do. We must care enough about our viewers to explain to them why we did what we did, even if it seems obv...