Y'all Know How I Love Goals!!

"Trinchera Morning"
Oil on Panel
8x10"
2008

I freaking love New Year’s! Not the whole New Year’s Eve party thing (I’d rather be asleep at midnight, honestly), but the whole idea that it’s a new YEAR, with a fresh, clean slate, and oodles of potential!

There’s something totally appealing to me about the idea of packaging my life into neat one-year long increments, and measuring my progress against time. I think it must be the analytical engineering side of me, ignoring the fact that sometime life is messy and that the most important things in life aren’t measurable.

So this year, I’m going to do my “resolutions” in two different ways. To satisfy the numbers-driven engineer in me, I’m going to set some goals for the year like I always do. These are things that I can measure and status and use to make me feel like I’m making progress. To satisfy the sensitive artist in me, I’m going to follow the suggestion of Christine Kane and choose a word to live by in 2009 (inspired by Lisa Call’s successful year in 2008).

So, I’ll start with the goals. Last year I made a commitment to status these here on the blog once per month throughout the year. It kept me on track but felt like overkill after a while, so this year I’m going to commit to reporting my status quarterly. Anyhow, in 2009 I would like to:

1. Get comfortable with working larger.

I really want to get to a point where larger paintings are a more important part of my studio output. At this point, I haven’t worked larger than 30x40”, but I really enjoyed the process of doing some larger paintings this summer. In 2009, I’d like to concentrate on getting more comfortable on a larger scale, and brushing up on all of the skills necessary to successfully complete a large painting from a small study. I’d like to complete at least 10 30x40” paintings, 2 36x48” paintings, and 1-2 40x60” paintings.

2. Find one out of state gallery to show my work.

This is pretty self-explanatory. I’m extremely grateful to be working with four galleries in Colorado right now, but that’s pretty much the upper limit of what I’m comfortable with in the state. Right now all of my galleries are in resort towns and sell mostly to tourist and second-home clientele, so I don’t feel as though they are competing with each other, but I don’t think I can do much more in Colorado without my galleries encroaching on each other. So, I need to expand my representation out of state. Specifically, I’d like to be able to place my work in one of the larger western art markets – Santa Fe, Jackson Hole, Scottsdale…

3. 10 commissions/studio sales.

I can’t even begin to express how thankful I am to have such great galleries representing my work, and pretty much every decision I make in this business begs the question, “Will this affect my gallery relationships?” As such, I don’t sell much from my studio (I’m not a natural salesperson), but I’ve realized this year that I really love the interaction that comes from working one-on-one with a loyal client, and that sometimes I miss out on that relationship when I’m depending 100% on my galleries to sell my work. So this year I’d like to increase my commission business, just to increase the amount that I get to work with collectors. I rarely do commissions through my galleries, so I think this is a way to increase studio business without stepping on toes, and simultaneously make my art business more people-oriented.

4. Increase my yearly profit 25% over 2008.

Self-explanatory. I have a dollar amount that I would like to reach this year which would be about 25% more than what I made in 2008. Ambitious, but achievable.

5. Branding - update website and associated materials.

I’d like to do a better job at branding my business this year. That’s going to entail an update of my website template/design by someone more qualified at design than me. I love using FineArtStudioOnline for my site, and intend to maintain my site through FASO, but I need to figure out a way to give it a facelift and some individuality (I can find tens of other artists using the same template as me) while maintaining the functionality that I love. Once this is done, I need to get business cards, letterhead, and notecards that match my site design.

6. Get/stay active!!

I don’t think I’m going to make any big fitness related goals this year. I live in the mountains now, and I just want to maintain enough of an active lifestyle that I get to be outdoors on a regular basis, and that I’m in shape enough to be enjoy skiing, snowshoeing, hiking, etc. without my fitness limiting me. So I’ll aim to workout a few times a week, but it’s nothing competitive.

So, those are my goals for 2009. Just enough to keep the engineer in me on track and happy!

For the side of me that knows that life is often more nebulous than all of my plans would have me believe, I’m choosing a word to live by in 2009, and that word is “open”. I thought long and hard about what I want this year to be about, and what I think has held me back in the past, and I came to the conclusion that I don’t want to be reserved in 2009 - I want to be open.

I want to be open to new experiences, new adventures, and big changes. I want to be open to God’s guidance in my life. And I want to be open to people and relationships. I want new people I meet to see me for who I am – present myself openly, rather than holding back like I so often do.

So, there it is – 2009 holds a lot of hope and possibility, and I plan to make it a good one!!