This will be the first year I will get to claim some earnings from my paintings on my federal tax returns. I know, should have asked for payment in cash. What can I say? The checks I did cash amounted to $375 so far. $300 of that came from sales at my one-man show in July. The other $75 was from an honorarium from a show in Tulsa last December. So it was with some dismay that I read an article in a recent New Yorker about Elizabeth Peyton, a portraitist. Her works currently sell in the three hundred-thousand dollar range with re-sales going as high as one million dollars. Why so high? Well, Elizabeth can sure draw good. And she's classically trained with a degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York. But I think her big secret might be that she's a Proust fan. Never having read him, I have no idea what lucrative clues to portraiture might be contained in his prose. But you can bet your next tube of cadmium yellow I'm going to find out. I'll keep you posted.
By the way, the above featured portrait is part of Sandro and my trip to the mall. (It's for sale, Proust-lovers.)
