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Category: Black Friday

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With first world problems come first-world responsibilities

Our workloads are tailored to the times we live in. None of us can balance a 21st century job and a 19th century lifestyle.

Hard drive and bubble wrap, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas, $435 framed or $348 unframed, shipping included.

I first glimpsed our new economic reality a year ago, when I damaged my laptop. I picked out a new Lenovo ThinkPad, and waited. And waited. After months of temporary delays, they announced that it was never, in fact, going to be available.

That scenario has played out, with variations, over and over. Even the simplest tasks are drawn out almost beyond endurance. I was in a fender-bender on October 18; the repair is tentatively promised for Christmas week. I ordered garage doors in mid-summer. They came last week, minus their openers.

Toilet paper and hiking boats, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas, $435 framed or $348 unframed, shipping included.

Last summer I looked at dishwashers and was told that I couldn’t get the model I wanted. Ever. But my local big box store is reliable. We ordered a new dishwasher and stove. On Monday, the dishwasher arrived. The delivery guys ripped out the old one, installed the new one, and decided that it was defective. They left us with a kitchen swimming in water and a storage cubby where a dishwasher is supposed to be.

That evening, our old stove self-immolated, with our best bean pot bubbling inside. Our kitchen has been reduced to a coffee bar. The irony, of course, is that we’ve been trying to remodel it for a year; we haven’t found a contractor.

Monkey toy and candy, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas, $435 framed or $348 unframed, shipping included.

“Be grateful that you have towels, indoor heat, indoor running water, and a washing machine,” a friend chided. She’s echoing those who have characterized our supply chain issues as ‘high class’ or ‘first-world’ problems.

With first world problems, of course, come first-world responsibilities. Automation didn’t free us to create leisure time. It freed us to increase productivity, creating the most robust economy in world history.

Blonde Santa, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas, $435 framed or $348 unframed, shipping included.

Women have always worked outside the home; they were, for the most part, servants. In 1939 there were as many domestic servants as employees of the railroads, coal mines, and automobile industry combined. It was not until World War II that the work life of women was modernized.

My own grandmother was one of these working women. During the Great Depression, she took a job that required she live in; my father was farmed out to her sisters.

Dish of butter, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas. Please don’t mention to my refrigerator that its mates have both died, lest it get ideas. $435 framed or $348 unframed, shipping included. 

Most servants were employed by middle class households. Before the ‘labor-saving devices’ of the 20th century, it was impossible to run a middle-class home on one person’s labors alone. Automation first eliminated the need for domestic servants, and ultimately freed all women to pursue careers.

People say we’re suffering a ‘labor shortage.’ My local Hannaford can’t hire people to stock its shelves, for example. But the population hasn’t changed significantly in the 20 months since COVID struck. Our economy is a vast and finely-tuned apparatus and we’ve somehow thrown a wrench into it.

I don’t normally shop on Black Friday, but I’ll be going out today. I want to see how we cope with shortages of everything. Will there be sales in an economy that can’t stock necessities? Will people be able to check out their purchases in stores without employees? Will my goddaughter find a tree skirt that looks good on her? It’s hard to say.

Meanwhile, you can always book a painting workshop, although Sea & Sky at Schoodic is almost sold out. The rest of them are here.

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Online holiday marketing for artists

What’s shifting in 2017 holiday marketing? A lot, especially with email.

Off Marshall Point, by Carol L. Douglas. This is for sale in Chrissy Pahucki’s new venture, pleinair.store.

If you sell paintings, you’re in retailing. And if you’re in retailing, you’ve probably learned by now that holiday sales are an important part of your business. While all retailing sees a jump during the holiday selling spree, the jewelry sector posts more than a quarter of its annual sales during the holidays. That’s important because jewelry sales and painting sales have much in common. They’re both luxury items, and their value is primarily aesthetic.

For a decade, seasonal spending outpaced the US economy, meaning we were concentrating our money more in that one-month period. Then, in 2016, something changed. Seasonal sales were down, except for automobiles and gasoline.
One year does not a trendline make, but I’ve noticed a few things this year. The absurd deals that created Black Friday culture weren’t in my Thanksgiving newspaper (which cost $4, by the way). Retailing is in a major meltdown right now, with bricks-and-mortar stores closing in the face of new consumer trends.
Tilt-a-Whirl, by Carol L. Douglas. This is for sale in Chrissy Pahucki’s new venture, pleinair.store.
But the thing that really hit home was the abuse of my in-box over the past week. I’ve been deleting a few hundred email ads a day without even opening them. I receive multiple, similar offers from the same vendors. They’re all companies I like and have purchased from, but they’ve created a wall between me and the emails I need to see. In other words, they’ve tipped email into a black hole as a marketing strategy.
How does an artist make his or her voice heard in that cacophony? The short answer is, we can’t. I’m only looking at mail from my close friends and business associates right now, so if you sent me a seasonal special offer, it was deleted without opening.
Glen Cove Surf, by Carol L. Douglas. This is for sale in Chrissy Pahucki’s new venture, pleinair.store.
Artists must watch retailing trends carefully. It’s not enough to understand what others are doing now, we have to understand what others plan to do. I watched a webinar recently about creating an email marketing funnel. This is an advertising concept that converts brand awareness to sales. Like every other one-person shop, I could be a lot better at it.
The presenter taught us how to collect email addresses and then qualify and refine information about the buyer. That was fine, but it ignores a basic reality: people sent and received 269 billion emails per day in 2017. With all that chatter—and it’s so much cheaper than snail mail—it’s almost impossible for your message to stand out with any clarity.
Marginal Way, by Carol L. Douglas. This is for sale in Chrissy Pahucki’s new venture, pleinair.store.
In the end, on-line sales will have created new and different problems from the ones they seemed to fix. As always, the muscle will lie with the big marketers that have the time and talent to tinker with new strategies, not with sole proprietors like us.
What’s a poor artist to do? First, realize we’re not alone in this. Every small retailer faces the same problem. From my vantage point, we do the same things we’ve always done: reach out to regular customers, create opportunities to buy, and carefully analyze the competition’s marketing strategy. Above all, we have to be open to new ideas, which is why I’m trying out Chrissy Pahucki’s new venture, pleinair.store.
And somehow, we need to find time to paint.
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Black Friday!

Dame’s Rocket, 11X14, unframed, is a great reminder of Spring.
Today is my Black Friday un-sale.  This runs from 2-9, at 410 Oakdale Drive, Rochester, NY 14618. It includes plein air and studio work, framed and unframed, along with prints and notecards—everything 25-50% off.
That is—of course—so much better than being at Wal-Mart at 0:dark:30 this morning to buy some electronic toy you won’t even want by the time Christmas rolls around.
Spring Foliage, 11X14, unframed, features Rochester’s lilacs.
Among my less-than-brilliant ides was having this event the day after having 20 people here for dinner the night before. But an angel in the form of my daughter Mary tidied and mopped the house in the wee hours of the morning, so it doesn’t look much worse than it usually does.
Plus, my tecchie kids are all home today, so they can figure out how to set up this Square credit card reader and make it work.

Durand Lake, 16X20. All these unframed works are 50% off.
Several people have asked me whether there are images online of these paintings. I’ve been kind of busy making pies, so I just got it started this morning. Here’s the album; I’ll be adding details as I can. No, it’s not set up for online commerce; you can call me or send me a text or email and we will finish the sale.
Happy shopping!

I will be teaching in Acadia National Park next August. Read all about it here, or download a brochure here.
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Queensboro Bridge

Queensboro Bridge approach, 9X12, oil on canvasboard.
Several years ago I got into painting under the Queensboro (59th Street) Bridge with my friend Kristin. This is a great painting location, because it has architecture, traffic, public seating, and a Starbucks with a restroom close by.
Under the Queensboro Bridge, 12X16, oil on canvasboard. 
I enjoy painting in Manhattan, and have sold a few paintings from my easel there, but I don’t paint there enough to have a body of work large enough for a dedicated show.  
Queensboro Bridge approach, 12X16, oil on canvasboard.
So it’s no surprise that these four paintings are going into my Black Friday un-sale this week. (In case you’ve missed it, this holiday un-sale is from 2-9 on Friday, November 29, 2014, at 410 Oakdale Drive, Rochester, NY 14618. It includes plein air and studio work, framed and unframed, along with prints and notecards—everything 25-50% off.)

Queensboro Bridge, oil on canvasboard.
Painting in New York City is different from painting in Rochester. There’s much more foot traffic and it’s far noisier. I am very extroverted, and I feed off its energy, but some painters would be annoyed at the constant interruptions.
I will be teaching in Acadia National Park next August. Read all about it here, or download a brochure here.
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The Er-i-e was a risin’

The Gasport lift bridge, 6X8, oil on canvasboard.
People frequently ask me if I ever work from photographs. Of course, since the winters in Rochester are long and cold. However, I almost never paint things from photographs that I haven’t investigated thoroughly in the field. Photographs really don’t interest me as a painting source.
Erie Canal at Gasport, 6X8, oil on canvasboard.
Photographs, of course, lie (or they wouldn’t be an art form). They change proportions, light, and color. Working from my own sketches gives me more reliable information about the atmospheric conditions, the angles, and—most importantly—the relative weight of things.
Erie Canal Bridge, 11X14, oil on canvasboard.
I spent yesterday flipping through and organizing field sketches in advance of Friday’s un-sale, and I noticed the many preparatory sketches I made for my painting, Low Bridge (Erie Canal at Gasport).

Erie Canal bridge, 6X8, oil on canvas
I was driving back and forth to Gasport at least once a week at the time. It was easy enough to keep my kit in my car and pull it out somewhere to paint for an hour. To me, these sketches are almost more interesting than the final painting (which I like very much). Their immediacy is what plein air painting is all about.
Towpath, 6X8, oil on canvasboard
I can almost always tell you something about the day on which I painted a plein air field sketch—who I was with, what the weather did, what odd thing happened—but I can almost never tell you things like that about studio paintings. (The exception, of course, being figure sessions.)
These field sketches are included in my Black Friday un-sale (details here).
The finished painting, Low Bridge (Erie Canal at Gasport) 40X30, Carol L. Douglas

I will be teaching in Acadia National Park next August. Message me if you want information about the coming year’s classes or this workshop.
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Three paintings gone to good homes

Adirondack Path, 14X18, by Carol L. Douglas
This weekend as I sorted and labeled paintings for what is likely to be my first, last and only Black Friday Sale, I kept an eye open for a painting suitable for a friend and colleague from North Carolina. I’ve known her for more than 25 years. Although we haven’t lived in the same city for a few decades, through the miracle of social media I’ve watched her take up painting and develop into a skilled artist in her own right.
Hudson sunset, 12X16, by Carol L. Douglas
One painting kept speaking to me as being appropriate for her: a sunset over the Hudson. This very rarely happens to me; I usually stay out of the process of selection anyway. I sent her a photo, she likes it. I know she’ll love the finished work, and it will be wending its way south this afternoon.
My brother and his three kids just arrived for Thanksgiving. This complicates my sorting-and-labeling project, since it has to be confined to my studio.
Evening squall at 12 Corners, oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas
Still, there was (barely) enough room for another couple to sort through the unframed works on my table and find two that they liked. The first—a picture of a snowsquall in downtown Brighton—was just on my blog last week. It is a reminder of all the times I’ve spent waiting for my kids in the loop at 12 Corners Middle School. The other was a reverie painted in the Adirondacks.
Today and tomorrow, I’ll concentrate on getting images of the work in this sale up in an online folder. Yes, I’m happy to ship them, but if you’re able to stop by on Friday afternoon, that would be even better. As I may have mentioned, there will be wine.

The holiday un-sale is from 2-9 on Friday, November 29, 2014, at 410 Oakdale Drive, Rochester, NY 14618. It includes plein air and studio work, framed and unframed, along with prints and notecards—everything 25-50% off.

I will be teaching in Acadia National Park next August. Read all about it here, or download a brochure here. 
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Holiday gift guide #2 (what you need is a painting)

About ten years ago, I realized I had purchased enough toys, appliances, and tchotchkes for a lifetime, and I gave up Christmas shopping. It’s not like anyone ever got sentimental over the PS3 game I bought, after all.
So when I decided to have a Black Friday sale of my paintings, I figured it’d better be an un-sale.
Evening squall at 12 Corners, oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas
It’ll be in my house. You can come over and buy nothing, if you want. Hang out on Clifford, talk to the family, drink wine. Or buy a painting. Or ten. It’s all good.
This holiday un-sale is from 2-9 on Friday, November 29, 2014, at 410 Oakdale Drive, Rochester, NY 14618. It includes plein air and studio work, framed and unframed, along with prints and notecards—everything 25-50% off.
This is a great opportu­nity to acquire an original work of art for a fraction of its gallery price. And did I mention there would be wine?

Can’t wait to see you on Black Friday!
I will be teaching in Acadia National Park next August. Message me if you want information about the coming year’s classes or this workshop.