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“If there’s something you really want to do, do it now.” Ann Rea, Fortune

"Sundown Vines December" Ann Rea

My latest series of Tim Mondavi’s Continuum vineyard has just been uploaded to annrea.com, where you can see the collection now.

My Naples, Florida patrons, who sponsored this series, have just acquired three of the field studies in addition to their commissioned custom large-scale painting. I’ve chosen “Sundown Vines December” as the basis for their canvas.  I’ll develop this image on a larger scale refining the color and composition.

I’m clearing the decks today so that I can devote my undivided attention to creating the final canvas.  I can’t wait to dive into the color and movement of this piece.

I was so heartened to receive Sandi’s response to working with me that I asked if I could share her message.  She agreed, “We are so happy.  You are the first artist with whom we have personally worked.  Although we knew Robert Rauschenberg and know some other contemporary artists, we have only collected prior works of art.  This has been special in many ways.”- Sandi Moran

Beyond the vineyards, the clear California light, and the interesting winemakers that I get to walk the land with, this kind of response from my collectors is what moves me.  I have met the most enthusiastic, appreciative, and delightful collectors over the years.  The finished product is not for me. It’s for them.  It just provides me with a vehicle to live my life’s passion and take this creative journey. I’m grateful to them.

Next I’ll be starting a series of the Russian River for collectors whose Healdsburg ranch runs along the Russian River.  From the top of Prichard Hill in Napa to the Sonoma Valley, inspired color is everywhere.  And I can’t wait to paint it.

Artist Ann Rea

When I met Wayne Thiebaud, a retrospective of his life’s work was traveling the nation’s major art institutions.  We were discussing my decision to commit myself to painting full time.  He mentioned that if I did this, aside from earning a living, I would always be challenged with one issue.  “What?” I asked.  Wayne said that “You’ll be challenged with the nagging thought that your work is not quite good enough.”  I replied.  “You feel this way?  Even with your national retrospective show and with the international acclaim and recognition you’ve received?  Really?”  I was surprised.  I thought, “I’d be on top of the world!”  He said, “Yes.  When I look at a Degas I think my work is just crap.”

Not long after this meeting Wayne Thiebaud wrote me a letter of recommendation.  I picked up the letter from his secretary and as soon as I was outside the door I ripped open the envelope.  As I read the letter aloud on November 19, 1999, my eyes welled with tears.

I am very pleased to recommend Ms. Rea as a practicing artist. She is an extraordinary candidate as she exemplifies a rare combination of very special qualities. Ann Rea has an engaging personal manner of working and relating to varying and challenging circumstances. She has a well-developed confidence and personal inner resources allowing her to use critical confrontation for positive results.

Ann Rea is intelligent and sensitive with a deep capacity for serious and sustained work. She is keen to share this talent I urge you to take her application seriously, and I highly recommend her as someone who can make significant contributions to the community through her art.

Sincerely,

Wayne Thiebaud

Ironically, now it didn’t matter what I thought or what art critics thought.  I had just received a teflon coating against negative criticism.  And I’ve not since suffered from this notion that my work is “not quite good enough.”   I don’t so much look at a painting as “better” than another. I look at each painting that I create as part of a bigger ever evolving effort.  My inner critic is essential, it helps me edit my work. But it must be kept in check.  I listened carefully to Wayne.  I’ll not allow my inner critic to undermine my confidence or prevent me from enjoying success.

Artist Ann Rea

I’m typing on my iMac after a huge data fire.  I’m still sifting through the charred remains of my intellectual property.  The digital images that I reproduce of my paintings are responsible for well over half of my annual income.

When I bought my shiny new iMac last year I thought that I was smart because I bought the computer system that they recommended to me at the Apple store.  I bought an external hard drive to store my huge image files and that hard drive contained another drive that would mirror my data, two backups.

But one morning I was getting ready to print one of my images and my hard drive was not in my finder window.  What?!

Here’s what happened. Despite what they sold me, they did NOT configure the external hard drive correctly. I only had one drive and it was fried.

After a whole lot of valuable time, I’m still discovering what creative assets have been lost, and maybe forever.

Fortunately, most of the unformatted images were backed up on CD but each one has to be painstakingly reformatted to print.  And that’s time that I could be spending painting or selling.

To the credit of the Apple Store on Chestnut they tried their best to make it right.  One of their Geniuses even walked me through setting my system back up after he had clocked out.

What now?  I do have an external hard drive, with two drives, configured properly.  And in case a tsunami comes roaring through my window off of the Pacific Ocean, I’ll be backing up to Mozy, an online data storage site.  For $4.95 per month, I have unlimited storage, which I’ll need for my huge .tiff files.

Learn from my pain.  Take the simple steps necessary to safe guard your files.

Artist Ann Rea

I returned from Hawaii to a wall of emails but with a refreshed and renewed perspective.  And again was reminded again of why I chose this artistic path.  I received a phone call last week from a couple of newlyweds, literally married all of two days.  They were traveling through San Francisco and they wanted to set up a private studio appointment in advance.  They had been following me for two and half years and now they wanted to celebrate their marriage with one of my original oil paintings, their first.  How flattering and fun!

Now I had to ask if they were interested in acquiring an original oil painting or collecting an Exclusive Edition fine art print.  “We can probably only afford a print”, the bride said.

I replied.  “Well, just so that you know, my price range for original oil paintings starts at only $600 and goes to over $36,000, and there are several price points in between.  I’m not sure of your art budget, but I recommend acquiring an original oil painting.  And my private studio appointments are only open to collectors investing in originals.  You can collect my prints on-line. And because my Exclusive Edition fine art prints are made to order there’s nothing to see here.”

“Oh, well we’d like to see the originals then!”  I displayed my best works within their price range before they arrived at the beach.  This couple was really lovely.  Apparently they watched my story on “Fine Living” and had been following my career for over two years.  They walked away from my private live/work studio the proud owners a framed original oil painting, the last one in the Gloria Ferrer series.  And they left me with a big hug and a bottle of Chardonnay from the wedding reception.

I just love doing business as an artist.

Artist Ann Rea

Last Friday I met an account representative from a very successful publishing company at an art reception.  He was very interested in the prospect of licensing my images for reproduction.  His company would have full license to reproduce and to market my images in any way that they see fit.  That includes reproducing my images on canvas.  I have always founds this tacky.  Why reproduce a painting on canvas?  It’s not a painting, it’s a reproduction.  These reproductions belong on paper.  The frequent reply, “it looks like a painting.”  But it’s not!  Ugh!

Anyway. The return to me would be a 10% royalty.  Passive income I would welcome.  But the short-term gain would not serve my long-term aim, and that it is to build my brand and to open my own galleries.  And if I’m building a brand, then I can’t dilute it by licensing without maintaining control over the reproduction of my intellectual property.

I was also tempted last month when I chatted with a well-respected licensing agent; she was actually the licensing agent for the creator of Dilbert.  By the way, licensing for a cartoonist is much more appropriate.

This experienced licensing agent advised me that licensing of wine related images was in demand more than any other category.  Again, passive and immediate income, tempting.  Very tempting.  But these are my creations and this is my brand, Ann Rea, Inc.

This week I just received a second judgment that a former client was ordered to pay me for her willful copyright infringement.  I licensed my image for her wine label, but only her wine label.  Not the shabby sidewalk sign she created from sampling my image nor the electronic use of my image on her lame website.  It was an exhausting, but unfortunately a necessary fight.

I think that I’ll let this fine gentlemen know that although I appreciate his enthusiasm my answer is no. It’s taken my entire life to create my images and I put everything on the line to start this business. The images and the brand are mine, all mine.

This month, January, marks my fifth year in business, my decision to paint full time.  What inspired me to do this?  A number of things led me down this extraordinary path.  But if I had to name a single person who inspired me to make this decision, it was a coworker I met when I was suffering from anxiety and working as a corporate consultant, her name was Angela.

Angela and I worked together on the same very politically charged government account as project management consultants.  When I think about it, I can’t even believe that I forced myself to work each day.  I found the work so incredibly boring and the management was dreadful.

Angela and I worked with a young, insecure, and power hungry consultant from New York. We were quite sure that she was sleeping with the boss. Ick!  And so we’d break the tension by laughing and making jokes.

Angela was one month older than me and she was recovering from stage four breast cancer treatments.  Her black hair framed her attractive face in a short-cropped curl.  I always wanted curly hair.  She told me that hers used to be straight too but that it was very common when women lost their hair from chemotherapy for it to grow back in curly.  This made me pause and I became thankful for my hair just the way it was.

Angela and I both were both deeply dissatisfied with our jobs.  I wanted to paint and I learned that Angela always wanted to be an interior designer. Unbeknownst to Angela, I looked at her one-day and thought, “why the hell don’t we just do it, why are we staying here?”

Angela and I moved on to different project management gigs. Hers to Hawaii and mine to San Francisco where I had an episode with a self proclaimed born again Christian manager.  One day he actually cornered me into my v-shaped cubicle at PG&E.  I woke up the next morning with a different resolve.

I could not again drive for 45 minutes, park, wait for the ferry, and sail into the financial district for yet another hour, one more day, not one more day of my remaining life.  I decided to quit, to find a way to paint, to live the life I was given, and to develop the talent that Wayne Thiebaud himself recognized.

I’m blessed to have another year ahead and I’m going to make it the very best that I can.  And I look forward to dedicating my first book to Angela.

Artist Ann Rea

Each time I create a new series, my work progresses.  Sometimes the development of a new body of work simply causes subtle shifts in my visual perception. Or a new body of work can be the catalyst for the development of a new technique.  More importantly, the more I paint, the more my confidence and ability increases.

And even if I encounter frustration along the way, I always experience a deep sense of satisfaction once I complete a new body of work.  This satisfaction is what drives me creatively, not the paintings themselves.  Someone else, my patrons, will be enjoying the paintings for years to come.  The paintings will be gone.

But even though I have to release my paintings, their creation will inform the next body of work – whatever that may be.  The next inspiration is the great unknown; it could be my next inclination or something that pops into my head.

Where does that next inspiration come from?  It could come from a trip to the De Young art museum on the weekend where some work of art strikes my fancy.  It could be my admiration of a technique or an emotional quality that I see in a piece of art on the museum’s walls.

My experience is that my inspiration comes from my perspiration.

I’m reminded of a book that I just read, Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers: The Story of Success.”  Gladwell describes what sets apart people who are successful.

“In his book, he describes that becoming successful is a mixture of opportunity and how much you take advantage of that opportunity. This opportunity knocks as a result of an individual’s circumstance, environment, social status, even culture and religion.”

“In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years… ”

I’m not sure if I’ve reached 10,000 hours of painting yet but I’m getting damn close.

Artist Ann Rea

Occasionally I’m asked, “Who are your art partons?“  I’m fortunate to say that I have a growing list of collectors and celebrities across the US, Canada, and Europe, including, Bob Proctor, host of the movie The Secret.  And I have an increasing number of art patrons in England.  Maybe they sense my dual citizenship?

My list of patrons goes on but this describes a few; architects, interior and graphic designers, CEOs, wineries, winery and vineyard owners, entrepreneurs, attorneys, physicians, sales executives, stay at home mothers, and marketing folks.  Really my patrons come from all walks of life and socio-economic positions.

One of my first steady collectors was a divorced mother of three; she did not have an art budget.  But she came from a highly aesthetically minded and accomplished family.  Her father was a respected landscape architect and she was an interior designer with a background in textile design and a recent degree in architecture from UC Berkeley. UC Berkeley has a rigorous and competitive architectural degree program.

She saw a black and white image of my painting in the Davis Enterprise announcing one of my first art receptions hosted by the Davis Communicare Health Clinic.  She phoned Communicare so that she could contact me.  She asked if we could meet before my art reception so that she could preview the collection before anything was sold.  To my delight she purchased the painting featured in the Davis Enterprise before the reception.  She then went on to acquire seven or more of my paintings.

This patron’s early enthusiastic support created a foundation of confidence that has led me in this direction.  Each time a new patron comes into my life I feel supported and grateful that they are helping me follow my bliss.

Artist Ann Rea

Recently I met a young couple at a wine tasting event where I was a featured guest.  They were very drawn to my work and so we began to chat.  I came to find out that they had just purchased a day spa in Marin and that they where looking for an interior designer to help them with their remodel.

She explained that the spa really needed to be transformed into a beautiful and serene environment in order to function but they didn’t have unlimited funds.  So they were looking for an experience interior designer who could work within a budget.  It just so happened that a friend of mine, Rebecca, was standing beside me. Rebecca is an interior designer with over 25 years experience. How fortuitous?

Rebecca just began the renovation plans for the day spa.  So naturally I asked what the plans were for fine art.  Rebecca replied that they had very little budget and none for art.  What?!

What is going to most immediately help create the “beautiful and serene environment” that this client is looking for?  Is it the cabinets?  The floor finish?  Or the art?  Needless to say we are now developing an art proposal that fits within the overall budget by mixing a custom large-scale Exclusive Edition feature fine art print with small custom original charcoal sketches.

Even if there is a very limited budget, you know that we all find something to put on our walls.  And if the interior designer is not involved in the art selection it’s most likely not going to be in line with the overall design concept. And that results in a simple design misstep or a tragic design flaw.

Art is not an afterthought. It is most often the focal point of a room and it has more value and impact visually, and emotionally, than any other piece of furnishing, fixture, or finish, and unlike the other design aspects it can increase in value.

Art and accessories should comprise approximately 30% of the overall design budget.

Why leave it to chance? As my design motto states “start with the art.”

Artist Ann Rea

I received several inquiries about the “unveiling parties” on my website.  What’s an “unveiling party?” It sounds a little naughty.  It’s really just a big fat excuse to throw a party, gather friends and colleagues, and to make a toast, or two.

When art patrons commission me to create an original work of art exclusively for them, they eagerly anticipate its completion.  So when their painting is completed and installed its cause for celebration.  And a toast, of course!

Most often my patrons will throw an art “unveiling party”, where they gather and host their friends and colleagues and me.  We celebrate and toast to the unveiling of the painting that was created exclusively for them and to its inspiration.

Can we host an “unveiling party” if our painting is a custom commissioned piece?  Certainly!  We don’t need an excuse to celebrate.

One of my patrons is the chief council at his law firm and they host monthly mixers.  He asked if he could host an art reception for me at their monthly mixer.  My patron said that he wanted to enliven his meetings with a display of my brilliant oil paintings and to inspire the environment.  And he was quite sure that several of his colleagues would also appreciate my work and become collectors.

So certainly, when my calendar permits, I welcome these invitations.

The next question, is there a cost?  The answer, only applicable travel expenses for distant destinations.

If you’re interested in in gathering a few friends or colleagues together and hosting an art reception please call 415-387-2224.