Lipstick On. Prepared For Battle.

My husband and I have been binge watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Last night’s episode where Abe exploded about the opulence and excess of Midge having an entire room dedicated to her dresses reminded me of one of my best friends from Parsons. She had a sweet three bedroom village apartment (in New York City) that her parents gifted her, only requiring her to have a roommate for safety reasons. So of course she had the biggest bedroom, the roommate the smallest and her shoes lived in the best bedroom in the house. Yes, you read that correctly, an entire room for her shoes! She was a fashion major at Parsons, so of course, an entire room for shoes made perfect sense.
Oh my, how I loved that girl! She was able to get up and get ready for school in 7 minutes flat after a wild night of clubbing! She said the secret was to not fall asleep on the makeup. I don’t know how she did it, but she looked fresh and phenomenal in record time. She was amazing, completely crazy and I absolutely adored her! Sad to say, we lost touch after my son was born. I had postpartum depression and unfortunately cut people from my life. As much as I missed her, I didn’t try very hard to reconnect again because I was never really the same person again. Our lives had grown in completely different directions and I’m afraid my new house frau existence shamed me into silence.
Anyway, long story short, I was thinking of her and her hilarious mother this morning on the treadmill. For some reason Kathy’s voice popped into my head announcing: “Put your Lipstick on Ladies and Prepare for Battle!” Honestly, I have no idea if she actually said that but it was so like her, I had a fit of giggles. After spending two weeks on a whirlwind trip to London and Paris with Julie and her mom, I came home with countless gems of wisdom from that incredibly sassy woman. Examples being, never weigh more than your age, which I failed miserably at, don’t marry him, he’s swarthy, never trust a bow legged woman and always know your best feature and accent it. I am so thankful I didn’t marry that pirate, but I still have no idea what my best feature is? I do recall she said her best feature was her shoulders because she still proudly retained her "swimmers physique". Well deserved confidence I might add because of course she was still stunning and stylish.
Um, so what was the point of this post you ask? Well, I was feeling fairly bummed out yesterday afternoon after doing a search for my flower images in the Fine Art America database. I don’t normally do that to myself because I am fully aware of the futility of this act but sometimes the inner sadist kicks in. Apparently that’s what happened after I wrote yesterday’s Floravased post. It suddenly dawned on me that while my new works might now show up yet, that I already had more than a hundred really good floral paintings available for sale. I had anticipated seeing at least some of them... but Shocker! Not one of my flower paintings showed up in the top 100 pages.
The explanation for this of course is that I am not properly marketing my work. I haven’t contacted my friends and family, I haven’t stepped back into the local gallery scene or entered any contests and I have not posted a single image on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. However I do sporadically post to Pinterest, I do have good keywords and descriptions for most of the work and I do attempt to participate in the FAA community when I can. It has been suggested that the likes, favorites and comments do provide incremental status. However I can’t possibly devote the time needed to garner the significant amount that would make a difference. Anyway I can’t even imagine what ridiculously large amount I would need to surpass those images that have been grandfathered to the front of the line since 2010. OMG! Don’t even get me started on the filthy basement nudes ranking in front of my stunning sourdough bread photographs, not a loaf of bread in sight! How do snapshots of naked skanks even remotely qualify as Bread? Where were the keyword police for those revolting pictures? Anyway… as you can see from my vivid description, the whole thing is a frustrating situation; a catch 22, no exposure equals no sales, no sales equals no FAA ranking. If you want to sell online, you have to be the one to sell online! Duh, we all know this but it is hard to kill that dream of some super amazing entity swooping in and doing all the dirty work for you.
Picture this; they say to imagine FAA as an enormous warehouse full of brown cardboard boxes housing your works (that and the work of another 500,000 artists!). No one can see what’s in the boxes unless you bring them into your section of the warehouse and open up your boxes to show them your work. So as a Fine Art America print on demand artist, it is my job (not theirs) to suit up and bring those potential buyers in. My mission, since I’m not interested in pounding Instagram, Facebook and Twitter 300 times a day, is to stick with the plan and continue on with the slow version of social media, the blog. A successful marketing campaign will entail writing individual posts about each and every one of my painting series. I’ve known this, I’ve stated it here repeatedly, I’ve made some headway, but I just haven’t really dug in. It's daunting. But, after detoxifying some rage and frustration on the treadmill, I am much more prepared to face this mission like a lady; with dignity, refinement and grace. Who am I kidding? As Susie says to Mrs. Maisel before the show, “Tit’s up” and in the possibly imagined words of the great sequined Kathy K “Put your Lipstick on Ladies and Prepare for Battle!”

Best of luck to you in your future battles! For more Art and Information on Amy E. Fraser go to Aefraser.com