https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=sHXPu2UjIgQ
I have the great pleasure today of meeting for the first time, oddly enough, the illustrator of my new book, Beyond Order. This is Yulia Fogra, also known as Juliet. We’re going to use Yulia. Thank you. It’s very nice to meet you. Very nice to meet you. So I’m at Agora Gallery’s page. Yes. Which we’ll link into this. And there’s a number of images there. A tangerine, my mistake. A painting called Accepted. These are oil on canvas? Yep. And I haven’t seen them since before. They’re as good as I would expect, given your illustrations. And do you use any digital technology when you’re doing your oil paintings? No, not at all. So that’s, tell me a little bit about how you go about it. They’re beautiful. I was just trying to copy exactly what I see in the photograph. Those three cups, if you see only, were there cups? You would see it on my website. Cups is my favorite. Three cups coffee. Three cups of coffee. Cups. Oh, yes. There are close-ups, so you can see actually up close. They’re really enormous, those paintings. 48 by 30. And these are done from photographs? Yep. Wow. I made something similar to this one where you use squares. I redid a famous oil painting by, now I can’t remember his name, unfortunately. It’s a reclining nude and pixelated it in large cubes and then cut it out of Styrofoam foam core and layered it like my Maps of Meaning painting. I did about 10 of those when I was in my mid-20s and I haven’t done any since. These three at the bottom are very reminiscent of that. They’re, yeah, they’re really, they’re very intense. Have you been successful as a fine artist? No. Have you been able to make a living? No. No, well, it’s very difficult to make a living as a fine artist. I was able to spend everything I had in my savings. Yes. Uh-huh. Yeah. And these people asked for, they call Gisli prints. Yes. They print on canvas in special color, not just regular prints. Yeah, I’ve done some money, but not for living. Maybe for others. No. Have you been successful at selling your original images? No, not at all. And any idea why? I mean, apart from the general impossibility of doing that, right? It’s a very finite market and it’s extraordinarily difficult for a fine artist to make a living. It happens almost never. So it’s not surprising, but the images are very, are a very high quality, in my opinion. Thank you. That doesn’t necessitate success. I mean, part of the problem of being an artist is that you have to compete with the production of all artists living and dead. And it takes a long time to build a reputation. And you have to know how to, you have to know the gallery system and you have to be able to market yourself and you have to be able to sell yourself and, or someone else has to do it. Exactly. And I was not ready for that. I didn’t like the, I didn’t like this combination of words, selling yourself. I knew I had to sell myself and I didn’t want to do that. So I just… Well, you know, this is a good place for this discussion, I would say. It might be useful for people who are listening who are artistically inclined. It’s not the right thing. It’s not the right way to construe it as selling yourself. What you have to understand is that there’s no possible way of being successful if people don’t know who you are or what you’ve done. Because very few people buy art and so you have to communicate with a lot of people before you’ll get any interest that could be turned into revenue. And so you have to communicate. And obviously you have to communicate because you have to have a market. And it’s just as important to know how to communicate or perhaps even more important than it is to know how to produce things that are beautiful and of value. And if you think about it as communication, it’s less off-putting than if you think about it as selling yourself. It’s still a tremendous problem. I mean, no matter what you produce, regardless of its value, a huge part of the problem you’ll face trying to monetize it is communicating its existence. And artists are rarely, not only rarely trained in doing that, but are also frequently somewhat temperamentally disinclined to do it. Absolutely. So that’s a warning to all of you out there who are artistically inclined. If you want to make a living, especially independently, you had better be prepared to learn how to communicate with everything at your disposal and put as much effort into that if you can as into your art itself. That’s, again, that’s not necessary if all you want to do is produce art. But if you want to produce art and live, it’s necessary. I’ve listened to your lectures, yes. Yeah, yeah, well, it’s hard-won knowledge. I’ve produced items for sale, you know, prior to my books, say. And I thought they were quite useful. These programs I’ve developed with my colleagues to help people write a life plan that’s self-authoring and to assess their personality. But… The… It wasn’t until I was able to communicate with a very large number of people that those products became remotely successful, despite their quality, let’s say. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So can I ask you, just out of curiosity and don’t feel inclined to answer this, how many of your paintings have you sold? One. Two. How many? I’m sorry. The galleries still… I sold another two. Three. Three? Yeah, there was three. I was commissioned to do two. And does Agora Gallery still represent you? Do you have galleries that represent you? Oh, no, no, absolutely not. For one month only. For one month only, that was the show? Yeah. And people, but people can contact you through your website? Yes. Uh-huh. Every piece of information about me is on my website. Are the prices of your artworks on your website? No. Why not? I’m not saying they should be. I’m curious. I just think they shouldn’t. I think I should communicate with people first. That’s part of communication. I don’t have a set price. It depends.