Ten years ago I was doing larger sized automatic drawings- about 2×3 feet in size, on paper, ink and acrylic. I also made smaller sizes of ink on paper. I  took a bunch of pictures, had them printed on paper then bound them into a book. I made a few dozen of these. I sent them out to a bunch of galleries in the area. I received back dozens of rejection letters.

It was disheartening. I'd been both rejected and accepted into shows at that point. In several cases I'd have one piece accepted into the show and another rejected. I knew what I was doing might not be commercial enough.

What I realize now is that I hadn't matured as an artist enough. I was exploring themes that other young adults would be interested in but not the people who would be interested in buying.

After awhile I stopped even opening the rejection letters. I tossed them in a pile. Worse yet were the rejection letters that were clearly a form letter. After a few months of waiting and working the crappy over night job I"d taken to "not interfere" with my art, I opened all of them, they all sucked but one was less shitty than the others and it encouraged me to keep working. So I switched fromone crappy job to another job that was slightly less crappy but at least I got to work on art as part of the job.

I'd be a liar if I told you that the MASS of rejection letters wasn't crushing because it sucked in every way possible. As a result I put the automatic drawings on the back burner. I did them in a little sketchbook and never showed them to anyone. For years I'd draw them in sharpie on crap paper. It was just how it was.

Then I started to add color. I did them on little boards, in journals, and on canvas. I still rarely shared them. A few here and there woudl make their way to flickr. Response was…. Mixed.

These little images were about the subconcious process (still are) and sometimes they don't look like what people want. Sometimes they don't even look the way I want. I've adapted the process of them over time so that it fits more to the intuitive process and isn't limited.

A few weeks back I started to showthe process of how they are created on youtube. Response was for the first time largely positive. Time and place perhaps? I decided to throw caution to the wind and put a few up on etsy and artfire and see what would happen.

A bunch have sold, some people have contacted me about their favorites on youtube and those have sold. It feels good to have people like my work enough to purchase it, it's also totally unexpected and wonderful. The elated feeling I get when I pack a piece up, looking all professional in a mat and a KrystalSeal bag is like nothing else.

I can't express my gratitude well enough.

So here's a little song: