Oh Valerie,
I was hoping no one would ask. I did not renew my lease after six months.
I just went back and re-read the thread
Public Commentary which gives a bit of my experiences at the market. I wish I could have stayed, I really enjoyed it there. I felt like I gave it a pretty good shot. I worked there at least 3-4 hours a day almost every day. On the busy days I was usually there all day long. After a full six months I had received not one single commission. As I look back, I never even got close. Even my attempt at teaching a drawing class, first to children and then to anyone, did not meet with any success.
I've tried to analyze why I was not successful (in fact miserably unsuccessful), carefull to avoid the very obvious. I'm pretty sure I could have sold a lot of 16x20 oil portraits on linen for $100-$300. There were enough people who were genuinely interested, right up to the point where they discoverd how much an oil portrait cost. I think I could have done some portraits of dogs and cats, I got a lot of inquiries about that. But there seemed to be a disconnect with a guy, who would sit in this public place and do his work, and the amount of money that he was asking for the product.
I know there are many people who sit in public places and are successfully creating portraits of people on the spot. Twenty minute sketches for $25-$50. This is much different from what I was attempting. I was creating my work, painting in public, displaying my finished examples and asking 100 times that amount.
For this crowd, for this artist, for six months, it didn't work. Ultimately I had to give myself the boot. This was created in the one drawing class I gave to a 75 year old woman.
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