“Empathy” will always be the one that got away…
I painted these watecolour ellies back in 2016 in preparation for my first ever exhibition in the gorgeous National William Humphrey’s Art Gallery in my home town of Kimberley. I was literally just starting out as an almost-artist and still very much in my ‘salad days’ — green with inexperience! As is to be expected, naivety is usually (and hopefully!) followed by learning. Many lessons were fascinating and entertaining, while some were just plain sucky!
One such a lesson was learnt when “Empathy” sold the day before the exhibition opened. A couple of tourists were passing through the gallery during set-up, and fell in love with the artwork. Since they were on their way home across the water, the gallery made an exception and allowed them to take the painting immediately.
It was an awesome feeling - my first painting sold! - until I strolled through the artist’s work that was being exhibited alongside mine (or rather, I was exhibiting alongside her!). I was blown away by Jody Olën’s work and even more so by her character. She showed me real kindness! She also happened to impart a bit of knowledge (and therein lay my sucky lesson): If you don’t have your original artworks professionally scanned before they sell, you forfeit a lot of future potential. Potential to create fine art prints, for example.
Yes, there is nothing quite as special as an original artwork. After all, there will only ever be one of those! But, its price tag is not within everyone's reach and its exclusivity means less profit. Yup. Money is important, even though it leaves a sour taste in ones mouth, because your mama taught you it’s gauche to talk about it (what’s with that anyway?! Wouldn’t we all be better with our money stuff if we just talked about it openly and honestly? I digress — that’s a discussion for another day…).
It has taken me a long time to make peace with the fact that I am a business woman, not just an artist. If I want to keep doing what I love, it needs to be sustainable. And, setting the money aside for a moment — if I were to produce prints, there would be a little more happiness to go around!
I created 26 original paintings for that exhibition. My mom took me to her work at the Mc Gregor Museum where the art department had a scanner. I scanned the collection simply because I wanted to remember what they looked like, with absolutely no thought about their future potential. I still remember that I had to scan the larger pieces in two parts and later edit them together in Photoshop, because the scanner was so small!
During the exhibition, 13 of my 26 paintings sold. I admit, quite a few to my mom - haha! Thankfully, I could borrow hers and a few more from understanding, supportive friends-turned-collectors to have their originals scanned. If I didn’t do that, quite a few of my most popular artworks would not have been available as fine art prints today:
But sadly, there were a handful of gems that were never scanned and are forever lost. The most grieved is “Empathy”, that was on display for a single day, got snatched away to the Netherlands and was never heard from again…
A tad over-dramatic (do you expect any less from me?), but I do really harbour regrets about my elephants!
Even though I would never consider producing fine art prints using the sub-par scan that I have (because I take great pride in the EXCEPTIONAL quality of my fine art wildlife prints, and simply won’t settle for anything less!), I deem it good enough to feature in my not-just-another-calendar 2025 Wildlife Calendar. What a great way to revive this beautiful golden oldie, almost 10 years after it sold (and broke my heart).
So, here’s to you, dear elephants! Wherever you are, I hope you are still bringing joy to your home… And may you also bring joy to the many homes that will enjoy your presence in December 2025!
