Thank you so much for your lovely comments about my work, you are so kind! The borders are what keep me interested. I have been drawing & painting horses my entire life so they are easy for me - but the borders - ahhhh! The borders usually take more time than the subject. It’s also really fun to decide which part of the horse comes out of the border. Keeps my imagination in overdrive!

I truly do not know how this competitive thing between artists happened. One thing I always say to myself when I see a successful artist is wow how wonderful for them and silently bless them. I do this because while they could appear successful to me (because of my own personal definition of success) they could actually be very unhappy and not think they are successful by their definition!

I will be really interested in reading your follow up post. Thanks for making me think - and PS - I love your work too, your Cowgirl painting is fabulous.

Okay first I must say I “love” your work. Your use of border elements makes your it truly unique. I actually said “wow” when you web page opened. Stunning!

Thanks for commenting as well. I wonder how it got to be a competitive thing in the art business. I mean do dentists look at other dentists and rate themselves by the success of their peers?

Thanks again. I will be doing a follow-up in the somewhat near future. I want to survey a few of my artists friends as well.

I also think that what comes around goes around. Everything you put out always come back to you. If you are mean &selfish & petty & jealous you are not going to get very far and will be living a pretty unhappy life and will not find success. I get great pleasure in encouraging and helping another person get ahead in life, and to reach whatever their idea of success is. Ultimately we are all in this together!

Like you I believe that someone else’s success had no bearing on my success.

I am intrigues by this topic. I got a couple of emails regarding the post and II will wait a bit to see if anyone else has anything they want to share and will probably do a follow-up post.

My definition of success is much the same as yours. However, as I pursued a career other than art most of my life because I did not believe or was not willing to risk failure in my ability to make a living in art, my now late start sometimes causes me to define success in art simply as making a connection with it, regardless of income. I also define it as getting better and working on regularly, whether or not a connection is made.

Because their success actually expands my market.

The more people take up novelwriting, the more readers there are. The more market there is for books. So while I pound my serious career and get ready to send my edited novels out to pro publishers, I’m also hanging out at Nanowrimo every year cheering on every beginner that crosses my path.

The net result is that I’m happier in life with more friends and, I think, more success in terms of selling my books than if I was fiercely competitive. When people buy art it’s because they know the artist. There are too many brilliant artists I don’t know out there for me to connect just on the painting. Most of the time it’s because I follow that artist and then they do something that’s just too tempting, while I’ve just paid up my last one.

So now I’m in the process of paying off one painting — but I read your blog and someday I’ll at least have one of your prints, maybe a commission, because I love your cats. You’ll do a big cat at a time when I’m between makiing payments on something good and wind up next in line.