Feeling pressured to teach?
 

Since so many of you are such excellent painters, I am wondering if any of you are experiencing the same reaction from people who constantly ask you if you teach or offer workshops.

At the live shows I have participated in and from email - almost daily, I am asked that same question over and over. Initially, my answer was no - which was quickly met with looks of disgust as if I had just insulted them by refusing to divulge some well kept secret that would surely improve their lives if they only knew what I was keeping from them.

The truth of the matter is that I would like to teach, but I just don't have the time. I work full time at a software company (12 hours per day), have a family to take care of, have commissions waiting, and like to spend whatever spare time I have sculpting. If I could quit my job and teach, that would be great - but since my husband is unemployed, and has been for some time, that is not an option.

I have decided instead to write a book which I have been diligently working on since April. Now I answer that question with "No, but I am in the process of writing a book which will be available for download soon". I am just going to make it a PDF document (so far almost 200 pages) available from my site "Portrait Sculpture Simplified" and am debating whether or not to submit it to a publishing company (thoughts on this?).

To make a long story short, even this answer does not satisfy everyone as now I have people wanting me to send just the chapters that they are interested in - in unedited format. They can't wait x amount of months until the whole book is ready.

How do you handle people pressuring you for information?

People don't always get the answers they want. It's not up to us to please all the people all the time.

Good answer Michele.

I've felt the pressure and caved this summer with kid's lessons. As there is no art in the public school system here until a little bit in Junior High people were hounding me. I didn't want to, but I already had to cut back on my hours because the kids were home for the summer. This way I could take the kids with me to participate and have an excuse to be open at night, which usually got me a little more painting time. It worked out well, but I won't do it again unless I'm in the same situation next summer. I have just learned how to say no. I had people coming into town on vacations (this happened several times) and the grandmother would try to hire me to give lessons to the 3 or 4 grandkids for a few hours. Just another form of babysitting, it felt like. Hard to say no when it's such a small town and these are usually the affluent in town, but I'm not a daycare.

I feel for you Kim. Fortunately, I live in a big city and have been able to redirect the ones that write to me saying they will be in Phoenix on X-X date and would like to swing by for a few quick lessons. I send them the URL to the Scottsdale Artists school with a high recommendation.

They have high quality classes year round, but aren't easy to get into and require scheduling long in advance. Just because you are not a school doesn't mean you can just schedule a crash course lesson on the fly.