A Minor Celebrity in My Own World!

It's been an important couple of days. On Monday I received ten copies of my first self-published book Light Shadow Shape Form and by the end of the day I had sold a copy. In fact, I had sold two, although one of them was a PDF electronic copy but nevertheless that's two copies! But despite this minor success, two books do not make me JK Rowling.

And the reason I mention it, is that I wanted to share how rewarding this has been. And not rewarding because I have sold something for money, but simply that I produced something and somebody wanted it, and which if I'm honest, I’m still coming to terms with!

The process behind everything I produce can vary a great deal - paintings can be finished in half a day or a few weeks and in the instance of my book, the photographs have been produced over a period of three or four years. Getting these things to the point where I am happy to let them be seen by anyone other than myself if quite a milestone for many reasons, so, when I have managed to sell something, the feeling I have had on this hand full of occasions has been almost indescribable. Relief, joy, elation, fear, and a whole host of other feelings that come to the fore, but most of all, it is a feeling that I should continue this path because it is like finding a place of refuge.

It would be easy to consider the practice of an artist, casual or otherwise, to be largely focused on the artist and that it is all about them. But I have come to see in the last couple of years, that although this is inherently true to a degree, there also should be a focus on the people you want to see your work because in my case, the knowledge that someone will get pleasure from what I produce, is a large part of the enjoyment and without it there would be a little bit of a void yearning to be filled.