Painting for My Friend Damian and Silver Dollar Campaign

Only Look at This When Drinking 2018. Acrylic on poplar board, 96 x 48"

There are just a few patrons of the arts in my little town. Damian is one of them. We have an understanding. I ask to be paid one silver dollar for each painting he desires, and he makes sure to stop at the pawn shop before arriving to the studio. He picks out a painting, pays me my silver dollar, and we sit out back and sip moonshine bourbon to seal the deal.
It took me a few years to convince him to play my game. I also had to convince him not to give me money for this 8 foot long painting he “commissioned” me to make for the front piece of the bar he was building for his party room.
Damian is an artist of life, a unique human being whom I shall elaborate on in a future post.

Meanwhile, please read about my silver dollar idea for getting paid:

Repeatedly, I suffer bouts of intense self-doubt that usually presage a light epiphany of sorts. I get a new idea or a reaffirmation of a past philosophy, and all is set back right with the world. Always temporary though. Another self-doubt monster will invade my psyche in due time. It never fails to torment again and again.
For some unknown reason, the life of my great grandfather sprang into my mind this morning. Henry Throop lived in the central New York area all his life. He was born in 1880, raised in Lebanon, N.Y., attended Colgate Academy prep school, went to Cornell to study civil engineering, married, and settled in Syracuse, where he worked as a railroad engineer, and then on his own as independent engineer/contractor until his death in 1956.
I use his life often in writing and conversation to juxtapose today’s culture to the one of a hundred years ago. Was it a better time? Who knows? I can say with certainty that Henry was a very mature twenty-something year old. He kept a journal—observations and day to day experience for the most part, and also a seperate expense account book, showing where every penny went. Every single penny! This morning’s idea was to use this account book to revolutionize the way I intend to sell my work

My Silver Dollar Campaign

I have had it with business and art. It doesn’t work. The moment the painting gets offered, haggled, denied, etc, on the market exchange, the entire culture of the thing created gets violated. I lose all semblance of its original innocence as soon as the money door opens. Only once have I made a painting thinking about money, or a sale. Here it is:

Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12"

I was invited to a rock concert with some friends where there would be a section of the parking lot cordoned off for vendors. I painted this the night before, and had it sold before we finished putting up the tent.
It is stated in my great grandfather’s account book that on September 14, 1907, he purchased the following for one dollar:

2 loaves of bread
1 dozen cookies
toothpicks
paper
salt
chestnuts
peanuts
pound of butter
and a haircut...

A dollar in 1907 had the spending power of about $25 today, without the haircut (some small luxury to prove how contemporary economists always seem to get it wrong). So, about $40 today would buy these goods Henry bought in 1907 for a dollar.
One dollar.
I love the silver dollar because it has an ever changing value on the money market. For several years I have watched its value move between about $15 to $35. And it’s just a dollar! It also feels good in the hand, and I bet many of them in a small pouch attached to my belt (a lá Rimbaud), would feel even better.
Henry’s items listed are worth any one of my paintings. No one is buying the luxury items I have made available. So I have sweetened the pot in order to avoid the money exchange problem for the rest of my life.
I will amass silver coins!
From this day forward, any one of my paintings not hanging in a gallery can be bought for a silver dollar. Not what a silver dollar will buy, but exactly one, shiny silver dollar. I don’t want to barter anymore. I want to jingle coins in a pouch. I have set the value, and it is universal. Any size. Any painting not in a gallery. Of course, the buyer must pay for frame and also shipping on top of the silver dollar. I have some very big paintings. If they were purchased, I would have to charge a handling fee. (Quite a bit of work goes into hiring a tractor trailer to pick up at a residence). Frames, shipping and handling could be exchanged in paper currency, however, the painting itself—always just one silver dollar.
Please think about this, and spread the idea far and wide. There must be a painting of mine that someone likes for such a fair price. I am just so exhausted from these encounters with the self doubt monster. It’s time to kill the money.
Think of unique gifts for birthdays and holidays. I look forward to jingling real silver coins in a pouch.

Thanks for reading!

Ron