Pivotal Event #2 “Can we buy a painting?”

There was no plan in my mind about where my painting was going in those early days–it was purely an undeniable need to unburden my heart and mind by expressing my feelings through colour. There was no particular style I was trying to create or follow. I experimented with dripping and splattering paint and sometimes I scratched away the surface of the paint to show what was beneath. I had a few small old brushes, but I wanted to paint bigger so I used whatever tools I could find or make, borrowing implements from the kitchen and using scrapers from the garage.

A few months after I arrived in the city, I found work at a wonderful coffee shop (Turk’s Coffee Bar on Commercial Drive). One day at work I got a phone call from my boyfriend. “Some friends from out of town are over at the house and they saw your paintings. They want to know if they can buy the red one with the yellow and black dots. How much do you charge?”

They want to buy one of my paintings? “Yes, yes! Of course they can. But I have no idea what to charge. Maybe, let’s say something between two and three hundred dollars if that’s okay with them? Or whatever?” When I arrived home there was a cheque waiting for me for $250.00. Huge.

Photo above: City Series 09, the first painting I sold, circa 2005