Commercial & Artistic Pathways - Can they Converge?
The struggle for any one artist to become known and accepted at times is not an easy one. I will freely admit that I seem to have gone about things arse about face. I don't know why I do this as I have done this rather a lot in my life & although I learn from my many mistakes, it is not the easiest path to tread; often because there are thickets of bewilderment surrounding me and I literally can't see the woods from the trees.
In my defence, living in Brittany has probably exacerbated this bad habit of mine. Setting up a bona-fide business and trying to become established are not easy tasks anyway. Trying to do this in a country which seems to have a perverse love-hate relationship of bureaucratic red-tape, in a very different culture & language, (some of this being legal so harder to understand); & with no real idea of how things are done, just the knowledge of someone else's hear-say is nigh-on impossible. Yet I have ploughed through all of the above & I am still doing so.
My artwork has generally been very detailed & as a result, these paintings are more expensive than something that is simpler but I have found it really difficult to get my head around this without becoming something that I am not. My art is used to get certain points across, I do not want to be a bland imitation of myself.
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| Eden; The Mermaid's Dream of Evolution Whilst Realising that she is both Goddess & Aquatic Ape. Trac Davies © |
This year I have been very lucky because, after meeting with another major obstacle, a French friend of mine offered to telephone the relevant bodies and discuss what needs to be done. I always feel like I am right at the start of this particular journey, even though I have been going for some years now. This is because as yet, every attempt of mine to set up so I can become established has gone spectacularly belly-up. I now know why this happened & this was because I have been really unwell for quite a few years & I have not been able to focus on what needed doing. In addition, I could not concentrate on reading my beloved French books & my French language just wasn't good enough.
Conversationally, I am usually not too bad but when dealing with authorities I freeze up. Their level of the French language is very much higher than mine is & this comes over in their manner towards me, which puts me on guard. I am a waffle-box in my own language but I have always been naturally wary when dealing with anyone in business, the employment office or other authorities that have to be dealt with. It is a natural wariness of someone who hates relying on others to help with paperwork or any aspect of their lives, but we have had to go to these people because any dossier in France is very complicated and we have become mired in complex paperwork and at times, haven't been able to sort it out. This rubs against the grain, I like to do these things myself and if I can't, I become very wary and defensive without realising it.
My friend was on the telephone for me for over an hour and set up a meeting for me, which she also attended. I am very grateful to her & realised that as she spoke to the relevant bodies & people, I had not been asking my questions in the right manner. This is where many of us English slip-up, there are many formalities to be observed and ways of asking things here and I just don't know them.
All I wanted to do was set up, was it really that difficult? Why was this not working? I actually already had some of the answers to these questions without realising it. When health issues raise its ugly head, quite often, concentration and memory retention become a thing of the past. It wasn't until I had an operation this year, that I realised how ill I had become. A good example of this is my books, everything I tried to read slipped past my eyes and I couldn't retain the information. In conversation, somebody would ask a question and I knew that I actually did know what was being asked, but I froze because I couldn't remember what I knew or how to respond. I have spoken to many French and English people about this and they have all said the same, if you are tired or ill, your adopted language fails dismally. However, it is very depressing when you go through this for a few years.
To cut a (very) long story short, the issue with becoming an artist in France is like the struggle for the equity card that you have in the UK. You can't set up without being established, but you can't become established before you set up & I have just spent the last 5 years, going around in ever-decreasing circles & becoming really ill & getting nowhere.
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| WIP The Breton Sea ou La Mer de Bretagne - Trac Davies© |
So what is the answer to this conundrum? If I was better off financially, the answer would be simple, but I do not have the funds that can pay taxes & social charges whether I have earned something or not. I COULD set up, but I need cash behind me & this depressingly similar scenario gets played out all over France, setting up here is really not that easy & if you are ill-prepared, you get stung big-time and can lose everything.
I discussed this with different people and thought about it, really thought about it and then made a decision. I am self-taught as a painter but if I retrained here, I could combine the two to set up as an auto-entrepreneur. An artist HAS to set up as a certain tax regime with the Maison des Artistes but there are ways of getting around this for people like me that are in reality just setting up & that is to become an artisan, making things that can be used in everyday use & are not for decorative purposes alone. Now I probably could have just cobbled something together but this also goes against the grain. I have decided to retrain in ceramics, it is something I have always wanted to do & after doing all the necessary things that needed to be done I am waiting on a decision. I will probably start next year in February and yes, this delays the business being set up but I do not want to just wing it and fail so I will be walking this new path, which will eventually go alongside the other one.
In trying to sort out things for this, I contacted many ceramists here because although I have a course lined up (once it has been rubber-stamped by the right bodies); I needed to talk to others and spend time with a ceramist discovering the work itself. Whilst doing this, I was contacted by one that asked if I would like to go to an exposition, which I did. I have been very alone here, no real contact with anyone in the art world & I am so glad I went because I met with many wonderful artists but also discovered that I can sell paintings in two markets a year without registering. I didn't know this and so will be attending just one because I didn't discover until early October & have had to crack on and churn a lot of abstracts out and this finally returns me to the point about selling out.
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| Birth of a Nebula. Trac Davies© |
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| 3. Under Different Oceans. Trac Davies© |
There isn't a lot of money in the rural area that I live in, so the paintings I have been creating for this Christmas market are smaller & not as detailed as some of the earlier works because nobody has the sort of money & it is the details that take so much longer. This has had me hurtling down avenues of thought regarding commerical lines & painting something that I am happy with, despite it not being what I usually create.
The point is there has to be a compromise, I have had to adjust my thinking for this market and was told what would sell for €60 here would be over €200 in Nantes! Many people just cannot afford a painting if the price is elevated, so small and simple abstract type paintings seemed to be the answer but I am still reflecting about I would do this, because after this first market which is rather like a trial run, next year I will do two larger markets.
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| Spatial awareness - Trac Davies© |
This is a real period of both discovery on what I can & cannot do and with real inner self-discovery. I will keep you updated on what the decision regarding the ceramics course is, if it is a No, well it will be back to the drawing board but I will keep painting & those doors will eventually open for me.
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| The Path of the Wandering Star - Trac Davies© |
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Trac Davies - Artist ©
