Making Up For Lost Time

After the Grill House the next canvas up was of Peoria. Although I live here and have painted a lot of different scenes of the city it seems that sometimes the demand for Peoria art is surpassed by other places. I have found a larger group of people that what scenes for the larger cities ie: Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and even Vegas. So I have for the past year or so sort of put Peoria images on the back burner. Now that I have my new best art buddy, the wide format Epson 1800, that gives me the capability to produce my on giclees to sell at shows I've gone back to creating things for every town that I want to show in. Maybe it is the mid-western values that caused them to shun the originals, or maybe the price, but they flock to the browsing bin for prints. My prices on them don't hurt though, because also coming from the mid-west I know they are just cheap and looking for a deal. Cutting out the middle man has been a boon to business since I can sell the for what I was paying for them.

The scene that I picked out to do was of, the Spirit of Peoria, a paddle wheeler that has become a fixture on the riverfront. I finished it over the Christmas break an have since already put the prints into production. Just yesterday I dropped off the first framed and matted copies to the Peoria Art Guild gallery store and told them the price 13" x 13" black wood frame under glass out the door for $80.00 ( that means that I will receive $40.00 as the Art Guild gets half - don't even start we artists know it hurts ) . Their response was you are going to sell the hell out of these, I hope so.

The original is 48" x 48" and is being listed for $1500.00 - don't like the price - buy a print.