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Mike,
Nice to hear from you. A couple of things, it's not a big backlog, its 5 commissions and about 5 more that I am trying to pin down. One of them, I have been trying to photograph all summer. His mother is, well shall we say, a little disorganized. I have done one for her already, which she loved and she wants the other two sons done. So, I blame myself for not pushing the matter and getting those photos. Now shcool has started and his time is limited. A good business woman I am not.
I think another reason I have gotten these commissions is because I am around the clientele with the spendable income for portraits. Doctors and lawyers and I am in the Deep South. I live in a small town and haven't gotten one commission from here. They all come from the larger cities and the small affluent bedroom communities.
One mistake I've made that I won't do again involves the @#$%^%^ photographs. I let the mother of my next commission take about five of the best to help her decide which one she likes best. BIG MISTAKE! She likes them all and can't decide and has shown them to EVERYONE she knows to get their opinion. Of course, everyone has a different opinion and she is even more confused now then she was before. I have given her my opinion on which I want to paint. I will and let me repeat, I will never let those photos leave my hot little hands again. I have been waiting now for three weeks for a decision from her. The linen is stretched and primed and I wait and I wait. I will have to move on to yet another client if she doesn't come around. So you see, I make a lot of mistakes but I am learning.
As for the Kinkade types, I think they fall into two categories. Those that honestly love him and his work (I gave one of them a coffee table book of his last Christmas and she cried!) and those that buy the prints because they are popular and think, well, he is so popular and so many people buy them, I should get on the wagon. There is an artist in New Orleans who is painting red cats, ala the blue dog and cashing in and I don't begrudge him a penny of it. It is putting his kids through college (or whatever) his kids do.
You are right, there are some people who do want to learn and I can bore them to tears talking about art. We, as the sensitive people that we are, have to be clever enough to know the difference between the ones who are truly interested and the ones who are just being polite.
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