Feeling pressured to teach?

[Heidi Maiers]

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?

[Michele Rushworth]

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

[Kimberly Dow]

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.

[Heidi Maiers]

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.