Over the years, many people have requested that I make posters of my paintings available for sale. I did do this many years ago, but I stopped for a variety of reasons. The printer I liked went out of business, and the whole enterprise took up a lot of my time. I had to physically bring transparencies of my paintings to the printer, pick up the prints and mail them myself. Now, of course, I can simply e-mail a file of my painting to the printer and have them print and ship to my buyers directly.
I like the idea of having my work available to people who either might not be able to afford an original work, or who might not want to deal with the care of one.
I decided to give it a try! I attended an Objectivist conference this summer and had an opportunity to display some prints and offer them for sale. I made two full-sized prints- one of ‘Japanese Basket and Wine Decanter,’ and one of ‘Wrinkled Paper, Greek Vase and Obsidian.’ I had them mounted on Gatorfoam (a kind of classy foam core), complete with hanging hardware. I’m usually very critical of the way that my work looks when reproduced. The limitations of photography are very frustrating. It’s very hard to keep details in the darks and the lights in the same print. You have to sacrifice one or the other. Since I try to paint the whole range of values, from lightest to darkest in my work, this is a big problem. However,after I accepted that they wouldn’t look perfect, I decided that they looked pretty good!
I think that I’ll offer prints of all of my paintings that I have good images of for sale. I’ll add a page to my web-site for orders. We’ll see how it goes!
Linda Mann Artist 