How To Price A Painting
Recent Work by Ron Throop
This is my final push. I have a week to fill a gallery with lively human sounds, make PoH a household name in Central and Western N.Y., and raise enough money for an elementary school to build a particle physics laboratory in the basement. It’s a fool’s game—promotion. I had my first restaurant anxiety dream in a very long time. Years ago, line cook was my trade. Last night I dreamt a poorly prepped kitchen with many dupes hanging, sauce congealing under the heat lamp, and me, frantically wrapping scallops and bacon to order while the health inspectors stormed the kitchen unannounced. Not good! Perhaps these dreams should be expected because painters aren’t promoters, though the modern world makes its case over and over that we must become used car salespeople if we expect to sell a painting to buy more paints. Also, I began taping my mouth shut at bedtime back in April to stop the snoring and cure the onset of sleep apnea, which made my sleep deep, and dreams much more pronounced. (I recommend this routine to the mouth breathers. It works. Just a strip of surgical tape below the nose and across the lips, Charlie Chaplin style. No longer do I snore, get up to pee in the night, or choke on my own breath).
I hired a jazz band a month ago and have not heard back after reaching out last Thursday to finalize the details. I baked 10 dozen cookies while accounting in my head the cost and preparation/presentation of the additional 25+ pounds of hors d’oeuvres. Then there is the actual hanging of paintings, design and print of title cards, blurbs, the soon-to-be infamous equation that will upend the billionaire’s lie-infested art market. How do I arrange tables and chairs? Should there be a raffle to win a painting? Can I paint that prize before Tuesday? How much beer and wine? Isn’t bottled water the greatest hypocrisy for conservationist painters and international climate conferences? Welcome to 21st century Western CAD—Creative Anxiety Disorder. What have we become of ourselves? Did Picasso have a Lowes® nearby to purchase the LEDs that packed the necessary lumens punch? The Beat poets in the 1950s just passed around jugs of wine to a roomful of wannabe bohemians and read drunk poetry. Charcuterie was some fancy ass pet poodle name—not a trigger for hypertension and nervous fidgeting in the head.
After this exhibition I am going back into my pretend poverty of isolation. I will use these modern tools of expressive word processing and social media painting exhibitionism to distribute to all and sundry the outpouring of what floods inside me day after day. Take it or leave it. If you want the real thing without the fanfare, walk around back to the basement. Peek in the window. Notice how I keep one anxious eye on the 30 year old sump pump choking itself to death, and the other, always a day or two ahead of right where it should be.
Below are are some flyers to brush up on the concept of the show. I do hope you can make it out next Saturday night. We can have a good time supporting an old soul and a new school.
Meanwhile if any of you know the phone number for Rahul the saxophone player, please share!
Plug the address in your GPS. Just like Picasso did!
