There’s a funny assumption that artists are supposed to sell everything.
After all, that’s the job, right? You make a painting, put it out into the world, hopefully someone falls in love with it, and then you say goodbye.
But I actually think one of the most important things an artist can do over the course of a career is occasionally say, this one stays with me.
We, as artists have always tried to keep at least one painting a year for ourselves. Sometimes it’s because the painting feels particularly important. Sometimes it marks a moment in our lives. Sometimes it represents a breakthrough in the studio.
And sometimes it’s simply because we love the damn thing and don’t want to sell it.
I think that’s reason enough.
There is also a practical side to keeping your own work that artists probably don’t talk about enough: if you believe in your career, keeping your work is a way of betting on yourself.
When an artist is young, their paintings might sell for hundreds or a few thousand dollars. Twenty or thirty years later, those same paintings may be worth considerably more. If you believe you’re going to keep painting, keep improving, keep exhibiting, and keep building an audience, then putting aside a few of your strongest paintings along the way is essentially creating your own little collection.
You’re nesting away pieces of your career.
And unlike almost any other investment, you get to live with them while you wait.
Over the years, Megan and I have occasionally sold paintings that we originally kept. Sometimes enough time has passed that we’re ready to let one go. Sometimes a collector connects deeply with something hanging in our house. And sometimes the value of the work has changed enough that selling it simply makes sense.
There’s something satisfying about that too. A painting you could have sold twenty years ago instead lived with you through a chunk of your life, and when it finally leaves, it reflects all of the work that happened in the years between.
But lately, what we keep has changed.
Now we have kids.
And suddenly the paintings that are hardest to part with are the ones of our children.
I suppose part of that is because those paintings aren’t just paintings anymore. They’re timestamps.
A painting of our daughter at six doesn’t only remind me of what she looked like at six. I remember who she was then. I remember what our house felt like, what she was interested in, the funny things she said, what we were all doing. Somehow all of that gets tangled up in the paint.
A painting takes so long to make that you spend weeks staring at that particular moment. You study the shape of your child’s face. You mix the color of their skin. You notice the way their hair catches the light. You spend hours thinking about them while trying to get some tiny passage right.
By the time the painting is finished, the moment has somehow become more firmly lodged in you.
And then, impossibly quickly, they get older.
So now when someone asks if one of those paintings is available, the answer is often no.
Maybe someday.
But probably not today.
Perhaps we’re still betting on ourselves by keeping them. Perhaps someday those paintings will be worth considerably more than they are now.
But I don’t think that’s really why we’re holding onto those particular ones.
I think we’re just trying to hold onto their childhood a little bit too.
And some things are worth more than whatever someone is willing to pay for them.
