Flourish Art Gallery: The beginning

So I’m launching a website today. That’s a first. I had a travel blog once but that was long ago when I was but a wee one (at the tender age of 35) so this feels like a brand new adventure into the digital realm.

My thoughts thus far are these: I wish to start selling my Photoshop creations in order to pave the way for a physical gallery where I can then admire and sell all of this fantastic art that others have created and which I’ve been diligently collecting and storing for the past couple years. In the next 6 months to a year I wish to open a brick-and-mortar gallery that can house all my prints, paintings, sculptures, glass work, pottery, woodwork and other fascinating and beautiful trinkets that I’ve recently acquired and desperately want to show off. Then I’d like to hire someone to do the selling for me and travel around the world purchasing more art that I love and want others to love too. That’s the dream.

I have some nebulous and ever-evolving thoughts of how I’d like to design the space for a gallery and where I would want to be located but so far that’s all they are, ideas. Y’all can feel free to reach out if you have some suggestions about possible gallery spaces and eclectic design ideas you imagine would fit my aesthetic. I’ll happily catalogue those suggestions and mull them over at my leisure then add them to the hopper of strangeness that is my mind. I may even incorporate one of your marvelous ideas, yes, YOU. Just think of the dopamine rush!

I may soon add another piece to this website and start selling off some of my acquired art pieces. I can’t really buy more until I offload some. Alternatively, I could sell a ridiculous amount of my own prints. I’m shooting for option #2. I recently purchased myself a good DSLR camera. I hope to learn how to take excellent photos of my collected artworks so they look attractive and intriguing within the digital realm. I wish to do justice to the artists who have put so much of their time, effort and spirit into their creations. Where am I on this journey you ask? At the very beginning. Who wants to teach me how to take decent photos? Art first and foremost but also landscapes and portraits.

I love making digital collages and plan to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. One of the many things I find intriguing when working on my pieces is how much of the work can be considered mine. All of them are composed of multiple images that I purloin from the vast and lofty halls of the interwebs without any compunction. In other words, if I see any image I’d like to use, or even one I’m just curious about, I grab it.

The legalities of this behavior are somewhat variable but the gist is this, “When using collage in relation to the appropriation of elements of other artist's copyright works, it is important to stress that only limited and moderate amounts are allowed to be used without permission. In other words, not whole or substantial parts of others’ works can be used. However fragments can be ‘cut and pasted’ to create a new collaged or assembled work. It is important is to stress that such appropriations are permissible only if the use of the new work is fair.

So what is fair? Typical collages that use many different materials put together to create new visuals and meanings, are seen as transformative works. A work is “transformative” when the copyrighted material is “transformed in the creation of new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understanding.” -Garry Baker

So clearly that is my goal, to use pieces of others art to create some alternative vision that offers new insights to the viewer. I trust that’s what I’m doing. Now that I’m starting to sell these works as my own creations it’s opening a whole new kettle of fish. We shall see how it all pans out. I’m sure I’ll discuss the joys and tribulations of opening a gallery and learning an entirely new-to-me trade on this page. I’ll include other random thoughts and observations that occur to me. This blog may turn into a journal of sorts so be prepared to get weird. Thanks for appreciating my collages and admiring the rest of my art collection and thanks for coming along on this ride with me.