“You’ve got to have a really good product, and your product has to always be getting better. So always, always painting before marketing.” — Kathleen Dunphy
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In the episode of The FASO Show that aired live on August 13th, Kathleen Dunphy offered a refreshingly unsentimental account of artistic growth. Talent matters, but talent without disciplined work remains unrealized. Marketing matters, but marketing cannot rescue weak work. Success matters, but success can become creatively dangerous when an artist begins producing only what other people expect.
In this episode you’ll learn:
1. How a serious art career begins when desire acquires practical structure.
2. How no class can replace the hours an artist must spend alone with the work.
3. Why painting consistently and receiving honest critiques are essential for artistic growth.
4. How burnout begins when production crowds out discovery.
5. How a disciplined schedule should follow the artist’s natural rhythms.
6. How simpler materials can produce more sophisticated decisions.
7. How marketing should amplify artistic quality rather than distract from it.
8. How prices should rise with evidence of professional momentum.
9. How artists should study conventions without surrendering to them.
Kathleen Dunphy was our latest guest on The FASO Show program. As a paid subscriber, we are happy to provide not only the video replay but the full transcript of the insightful session with Kathleen below. Please keep in mind the transcripts are generated by AI so there may be some typos.
Creatively,
Clint Watson
FASOFounder & Creativity Fanatic
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Transcript:
Olya Konell 00:00
Welcome everybody to the FASO Show. This is where we feature a different artist every month, and either have a conversation or do a demo, or they will teach you something. Today’s FASO Show is going to be featuring Kathleen Dunphy, and she’s going to be answering your questions. So everybody, welcome Kathleen. I’ll bring her on the screen here in just a second. I also have Angela Agosto with me, and she’s our artist relations director. And you all know her, I’m sure. She’s she will know all the Faso stuff. If you have any questions about that, so really, really quickly, so this is brought to you by Faso. If if anyone is new and doesn’t know what Faso is, you can visit faso.com. We we are basically a a website building tool for artists. So artists can create an account and create their own artist website, and it’s designed to be plug and play for artists. We’re actually going to share Kathleen’s link. If anybody wants to try Faso through Kathleen’s affiliate link, you can actually get it for $99 for the first year. And there’s always the free trial option as well. If you are just want to learn about art marketing and want some inspiration, you can subscribe to the Faso Way newsletter, and we’ll actually be posting the recording here. So the recording will be live; it’ll be available for everyone. If one of you has to leave, just make sure you know. Since you’re here, you’re going to get it via email, and you can go over to the show section, and we will have it posted here. So, and I don’t have any other announcements besides that, so I’m going to go ahead and bring bring Kathleen and Angela on. Welcome, and yeah, I’m excited to get started, Kathleen. Before we dive into, so we had a lot of questions submitted by the audience members in advance, so we’re going to go through those. But we’re also going to be prioritizing your guys’s live questions. So if you have a question that you did not get to submit, you can drop it into the Q and A box or in the chat. But the Q and A box ensures that we don’t, you know, we don’t miss it. We’ll try to get all of them. If we miss any, I apologize in advance, and if you have to leave early, you can always catch the recording after submitting your question. So, but before we kind of go into all of that, Kathleen, give us a quick little: Who are you? What do you do for anyone that doesn’t know you?
Kathleen Dunphy 02:36
Well, I’m Kathleen Dunphy. I’m a full-time artist. I have been since the 1990. 1996 or seven, which seems like yesterday, but has actually been quite a while, hasn’t it? I live in Northern California. I’m in a little town called Murphy’s, about halfway between Tahoe and Yosemite. I paint or draw or do something art-wise, pretty much every day, every weekday. And I have been a-I was one of the first. It was like I was telling Olya before we started. I told Clint Watson from FASO, the the founder of Fazo. I told him he can’t call me his oldest artist, but he can call me the artist that he’s been with the longest, or one of the longest. So I was one of the first people that got a Faso website, and that was 25 years ago. So it’s been quite a while that I’ve been with Faso, and really appreciate this opportunity to talk to everybody today. So thank you.
Olya Konell 03:35
Yeah, no, we appreciate you, and for you know the one thing that makes me proud of Faso is Faso was built by art lovers and artists because everybody either has an art hobby here, has is married to an artist, or in some way, shape, or form, you know, there’s some connection. So we get really excited about you know making things work well, and we get excited about our artists. So, but yes, guys, put your questions in the Q and A. I see a couple more pop. I see them popping in, but I’m going to go ahead and and just pull up the first one that we have. So this one was submitted by Duke. It’s I love this question. What was the one moment in your journey where you know where you knew it was time to be a full time artist, and what was it that made that that possible start?
Kathleen Dunphy 04:30
Well, you know, I should have been an artist. I mean, I guess you. I guess it’s something that you’re either born being or not. I don’t think I don’t think artists are made. I think they’re born, and it’s a matter of whether you get to express that or not, and I should have been doing it from you know day one, but I kind of had a disjointed art careers or art learning sessions and art education. I ended up drawing a lot in high school and went to. Community college and majored in art and loved it. And then met my husband when I was 19, and we ended up moving with the military. And I just had to start making money. I had to start getting a job where I could actually have an income. And so art ended up really being pushed to the side from the time I was about probably 21 until I was about 36, and during that time, I I was a floral designer and special events planner. So I still did something very creative, and I had my own business doing that first in California, where I did all the flowers for University of California at Davis for all their special events and things, and then being in the military, we moved overseas, and I went to we went to Germany, and I ended up doing all the flowers for Ramstein Air Force Base.
Olya Konell 05:50
Wow!
Kathleen Dunphy 05:51
And it’s a NATO base, so it was there was a lot going on, a lot of very formal military events that were happening, like hail and farewell, what they call for when people retire and other special events, it was a really really busy job. But I always knew in the back of my head that even though it was busy and it was you know exciting and all of that, it really wasn’t making art. And there was this I there were German generals that lived on the base along with the military or the American generals, and I would do all the flowers for their houses, and so there was a special Christmas event for this one German generals, and his wife was there, and I had finished doing everything, and you know the whole house was like decorated to the hilt, all this you know extra stuff put around, and his this this woman said to me, and I’ll never forget it. You know, in her charming German accent, she goes, “Ah, Kathleen, she said, “You’re an artist, and I was like, “Ah, I am. Am I playing with flowers? You know, I know she meant it as a compliment, and I was so depressed after that. I was like, “Oh my gosh, why am I wasting my life? You know. So, but I was like, well, you know, got to have the jobs, and then we got transferred again, and we got transferred to Alaska, and somewhere in my life, there’s still a stack of business cards that says Kathleen Dunphy, florist, Chugach, Alaska, where we were living. But then when I started, you know, getting all this stuff ready to start a new business and figuring out wholesalers and how to deliver and 20 below, and all the other things that happen when you’re in Alaska. I realized my heart really wasn’t in it, and so my husband asked me what it was that I really wanted to do, and I told him that I really, really wanted to be an artist. And fortunately, we had saved up money from, or I had saved up money from my business in order to start a new business, and so we had a little cushion. And so I just started drawing, and I had always heard, “Draw what you love, and I love dogs, and so I started drawing dogs, and I I would put the drawings up in vet clinics in the area, and would get commissions from that, and started doing these colored pencil drawings that took like 40 hours, and I would charge $200, and I felt like I was a millionaire. But it was the start, so that was when, when probably when the first person called me to answer your question more directly, when the first person called me who had seen my work. That was when I was like, it was like magic. It was like, oh my gosh, somebody saw this and actually is willing to pay. I don’t care if they want to pay $5 for it. They’re willing to pay for it, and that was the encouragement that I needed. And then from there, there were several very quick steps that happened, both good luck and also just really putting myself out there that enabled me to start in galleries. And but it took that it kind of took the. It was really comfortable to have a job where I knew I’d be making money. You know what they call the golden handcuffs, right? And into a position like that where you know you’re going to be making money. You’re successful. People need you. Need what you do. It would have been really hard to have just said, “I’m going to stop doing that, if I hadn’t had the the incentive of moving someplace where it was just so hard to do that. So moving to Alaska was the best thing that could have happened to us, and but there were several months where I was like, “Oh my God, what am I going to do? You know, this is just impossible. But sometimes you need a little bit of I don’t want to say trauma, but a little bit hardship to make you take the step to do the thing that you really need to do, but that otherwise you wouldn’t do because your life is too comfortable otherwise.
Olya Konell 09:40
Yeah, you know, and there’s there’s a quote, and I’m gonna butcher it, but something about like your current situation has to become more uncomfortable than the discomfort of taking the first step, and then we as human beings are more prone to do it. It’s true for many things in life, I think, because I can force you to do what you really. Love to kind of look inward and be like, okay, do I really want to struggle and try to do a floral, you know, business in Alaska,
Angela Agosto 10:06
And then also that you were blessed that your husband was like, what do you want to do? Like, I know,
Olya Konell 10:11
I know.
Kathleen Dunphy 10:12
That’s, I mean, thank you, Randy, 1000 million times over his support. And without, I mean, we all, anybody who’s in the art world, we all know it is not an easy business to begin. It’s not like all of a sudden everybody’s like, “Oh, you have something I want to buy, you know. It’s it’s not like you know, you drive down the road with a van that says Kathleen Dunphy Paintings and people yeah phone number to call you like they do the plumber. You know, I mean it’s that and support. You know, have the the financial backing of having saved money during my my business, so that I could say, okay, I can go ahead and just dive into this and not have to worry. That’s really important. But then also have somebody say, you can do this. Just keep going.
Olya Konell 10:54
Yeah, really
Kathleen Dunphy 10:56
hard. And times when you get rejected, and times when you know it’s just not working. You know, physically the way that you paint isn’t working. To have somebody say, “Just keep going, just keep going, you know, we all need a cheerleader in our lives and somebody that has faith in us. At least one person who has faith in us.
Olya Konell 11:14
It only takes one. It’s so true. Yeah,
Kathleen Dunphy 11:17
yeah, and somebody who listens when you’re like, “I want to pull my hair out, and they’ve heard it 8000 times, and they and they they don’t get impatient with you for that. They realize that that’s part of the struggle, you know. So that’s it’s hugely hugely important, and I can’t thank my husband enough for that.
Olya Konell 11:32
I love that.
Angela Agosto 11:33
That’s such an amazing story. I
Olya Konell 11:34
I love that somebody’s I have somebody saying yes, my husband exactly like that, and then Lay says, “Thank you for saying artists are born. I had I and some of my family are proof of that, so I love that.
Kathleen Dunphy 11:50
You know, it’s like we all kind of have. I don’t know if you all are like this, but it sure does seem like in a family we all have a role that we play. You know what I mean? There’s like the one that’s like the the peacekeeper, and there’s the radical, you know, and then the artist, you know, and I was always the one that was drawing and you know chalk on the sidewalk and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I’m natural memories are doing things like that. Yeah, and I, I mean, I think I think anyone can learn artistic skills. You know, anybody, it’s like learning. I don’t know, learning to knit. I shouldn’t say that because I’m going to offend somebody who knits. But it’s it’s like it’s like learning a craft. There’s a certain amount that you can learn, but then I think above and beyond that, there’s there’s just a certain proclivity that you need to have to take it to another level, you know. People ask all the time, “Do you think do you think it’s talent, or do you think you know it’s luck, or what is it? I think it it’s a combination of a lot of things. I think there has to be an element of that that just burning desire and genetic like pre programming that you have to have. But then it takes a whole heck of a lot of hard work to take that to the to the level that you need to be to become a professional or successful artist.
Angela Agosto 13:06
And I wanted to ask you during that time, I guess it was about 15 years from you said you stopped from 21 to like 36 painting. During that 15 years when you were doing your floral business, did you still continue to draw or you know do any kind of art to keep it going?
Kathleen Dunphy 13:20
Anything. I didn’t do anything.
Angela Agosto 13:23
You, didn’t? I’m
Olya Konell 13:24
like,
Kathleen Dunphy 13:24
I don’t have a whole lot of regrets in life, but it’s like, what an idiot! Why didn’t I at least keep a sketchbook? You know, I just was such a busy time in life. It was like we were newly married and we were trying to make it, and silly things like drawing. I just didn’t didn’t feel like I had time to do. Mom used to she talked to me on the phone. She’d be like, “Have you done any drawing lately? And I’d be like, “Mom, I have this important job. What are you talking about? Kind of mad at her, but like at the back of my head, I’m like, “Oh God, I know she’s right. You know, I should be doing something. But it, I, I hadn’t gotten to the point in my artistic development before that, where I was disciplined enough to keep a sketchbook and have a regular practice. I, you know, I was 1920, I had to be in a class to really produce anything, you know. And I was only used to that classroom type of habit. And once school ended, it was like, “Yay, school’s over! I knocked to work. And I hadn’t, I just didn’t have the discipline yet, you know. I guess you know. I always say, kind of my mantra is, you can’t, you can’t complain about your past if you’re happy with your present. So I’m not going to complain. I’m not going to say I shouldn’t have taken those years off. But boy, there’s times when I think, damn, if I had just stuck with it, you know.
Angela Agosto 14:39
But the thing, like you said, that when you went to Alaska and then you were able to put you know after getting settled and everything you were able to put some pieces in in a veterinary clinic so you must have like was it hard for you to kind of since you said you didn’t paint I was thinking that maybe you might have been sketching or something in those 15 years was it hard to kind of get back to it and kind of like improve your skill enough to get into. You know, hey, can I hang this in your clinic?
Kathleen Dunphy 15:01
I think I was so ready. You know, I was probably in my mind painting and drawing for 15 years, and finally it just came out. You know, it’s not like the first drawing I did was perfect, but I remember the first drawing I did was of my father-in-law’s German Shepherd. I wish I I know I have it somewhere, somewhere buried with and all this junk in here, and it looked like him, the dog, and I was like, “Wow, that like, and my husband. He’s like, “That like really looks good. You should do more of those. And I think it was just, I was just really excited, and I really, I was really ready. And it didn’t. It didn’t take a huge amount of time. I spent. I mean, that’s all I did. Once I decided I was going to do that, it was like that was
Olya Konell 15:48
brilliant!
Kathleen Dunphy 15:50
Yeah, it was like forget everything else. I mean, I would draw all day long. I would, and you know, it was lonely to a certain extent. You know, and at the end of the day, I’d get out and ski like crazy, or take my dogs out for a run, or something, just to get outside. But it was just-it was kind of a monastic life. It was just what I did. But I knew that’s what I felt like even then. I felt like I’m catching up for lost time. Yeah, 15 years that I got to cram into as fast as I can of learning and of development, and nothing’s going to stop me. This is my one chance, and I, you know, I knew it’s either going to work or I’m get those flowers out again, and I, so I was really, really determined.
Olya Konell 16:30
The power of going all in, and actually, there’s a question from Kathy that I think this segues beautifully into that she just submitted, which is, I’m going to read the entire question for context. So I’m 60 years old and re-entering the art world after my husband passed away after a long battle with cancer. Kathy, my condolences. It’s hard. I work a full-time job in wealth management, but have been away from serious painting for a long time. Kind of like Kathy, I had a success early on as a wildlife artist, but I’ve expanded and no longer want to limit my field. I’ve taken the last three years to study and improve my art. Now I’m ready to begin really getting serious about being a full-time artist. I joined the OPA. What is the best thing for me to do next?
Kathleen Dunphy 17:14
Paint like crazy. You know, I mean, the answer to so many questions is paint like crazy? You know, there’s a, there is a lonely part to the art career, and it’s. I always say it’s you and God and the easel, and you just have to put the hours in. You know, we we we and I say we, including myself for sure. We want to take the class that’s going to be like, ta-da! Now you’re an artist. You know, we’re finally I figured it out, and there are great teachers out there that can give you great information, and that’s a wonderful thing. But no matter how good all of that is, you have to take that back, you have to digest it, and you have to turn it into who you are, which is unique from any class that you’ve taken, and that takes doing a lot of it, and Kathy, it sounds like you’re doing exactly what you need to do. It sounds like you’re painting a lot. You’re focused. You’re determined, and you’re not limiting yourself, which I think is a really good thing. I think it’s too easy to say, “I think wildlife sells, so let me do wildlife. Explore everything, even if you only sell wildlife. It’s going to be like cross training to go out and do plein air painting or whatever else it is that you do, but I know that’s kind of a vague answer to say paint. But but honestly, try to get as many hours in as you can behind the easel, and then if you can find a person who and like an educated critique, you know it’s funny because my husband is my best critiquer, and he always has been ever since the day one. And he’s not an artist; he’s way on the other side of the brain, so he doesn’t have the words for it. Like he’s not going to say your values are off. He’s going to say it looks pale, and I’m going to go, “What the heck does that mean? But then it’s like, okay, pale. That would mean oh, does it need to be darker? And he’s like, “Yeah, yeah, that’s what it is. I’m like, “Okay, the values are off. So he can give me a very honest critique of my work, not in art terms, but in a way that I know he’s not lying to me to make me feel better. So you need to find somebody who can give you that. If the person has an art background, that can be better sometimes, but sometimes somebody with an art background is going to tell you how they would do it. Somebody without that is just going to say, “I don’t like it. Great for this. Kids will walk and go, “What’s that? And you’re like, “It’s a horse. But but it’s a really pure and honest critique from a kid, and so a lot of times getting these critiques from non-art people can be really good because they’re not bringing the baggage of, oh, you have you have two items in there and you’re supposed to have three because there have to be odd numbers all the time. Well, that’s not actually true, but that’s something we’ve been told. So sometimes critiques from art people can be not as good as critiques from non-art people. On the other hand, finding a good you know, I Craig Nelson from the Academy of Art University was was my mentor at the academy, and I cannot even tell you how great his critiques were. So also, you know, if you can find a really good person to look at your work and give you input, yeah, it’s really important. But but I guess what I’m saying is, don’t don’t just always look for another artist to do that.
Olya Konell 20:23
Yeah, I think maybe would it would it be would it I’m digesting it would it be helpful to find it like if you find somebody that you admire and want to head in that direction, you like their style, you like their their you know how they they do things, then obviously advice from them will help you get closer to that. Would make the most sense, right?
Kathleen Dunphy 20:44
It does. It does. You know, one of the things that can be hard, though, is is sometimes you get a lot of emails from people, and sometimes you get emails with images attached. You know, can you give me some input? And it can be hard to have enough time to give a true critique to somebody. You know, so it’s it’s like yes, approach those people, but if if you don’t get exactly what you’re looking for, and I’m speaking for myself, it’s it’s just because sometimes it’s really hard. You know, it’s have enough time to really sit down and say, okay, start here and work on this, and then think about this, and then think about that, and and especially if you’re just seeing one or one or two paintings from them, as opposed to like being in their studio and seeing what they’ve done, or being in a classroom with them and seeing what they’ve done.
Angela Agosto 21:28
So maybe this is where somebody who teaches or who critiques already has that establishment, already has that time. And sometimes you know you do have to pay, or I’ve heard some other artists say you can exchange a service. You know, like I’ll do your social media at this time, and if you could critique this, yeah, exactly.
Kathleen Dunphy 21:43
The art world is a great world. Yeah, yeah, it’s how a lot of us get by. There’s a lot of things where where it’s yeah, it’s not just cash that that you can for.
Olya Konell 21:52
And the value of taking a workshop from the artist that you want to critique from, because if you’re going to be there painting live with them, they’re going to come over and they’ll correct you and give you advice, so yeah, and
Kathleen Dunphy 22:02
you know, online workshops are great, and you know, I don’t want to discount those at all, and they they open up opportunities that that otherwise you can’t get. You know, you could study with somebody in Brazil that you’d never get a chance to, but there is something about being in person.
Olya Konell 22:14
Yeah,
Kathleen Dunphy 22:15
no, there, I yeah, I get I like it better because I get to know the the artists individually. I get to know their personality. I get to know how to critique them. You know, some people, some people you can just say, “Oh, come on, fix that line. And other people, let’s talk about that line. You know, I mean, that’s not that one’s bad and one’s good. It’s just that we’re all different, and and how people learn is different. Some people, I need to take the brush and show them. Other people, I just need to explain, and and the verbal part works better, you know. So I think I think in-person workshops should never go away without so much zoomability, you know.
Olya Konell 22:54
100% plus color looks so different on camera than it does in real life. So it’s really hard to critique that accurately. Yeah, yeah.
Angela Agosto 23:01
Plus, you can walk up behind them and see what they’re doing, and maybe how you know they’re holding, or you know, yeah.
Kathleen Dunphy 23:06
We don’t know. That’s always the best. Yeah, and what they’re doing is like that’s what
Angela Agosto 23:12
Awe, okay.
Olya Konell 23:12
Yeah. Adrian’s question kind I would say Adrian’s question kind of piggybacks on your answer, which is paint, just paint as much as you can. So Adrian says, “Hi, I’m curious if you have a painting schedule. Do you get burnouts? If so, how do you manage that and keep painting? So painting a lot, managing burnout.
Kathleen Dunphy 23:32
So burnout is real. We were talking about this a little bit before we started the show. It is very easy as you go through this career to get busy, you know, and to see all these opportunities that are out there. It’s like there’s a planner event and there’s a local show and then there’s the OPA national show and there’s the this and there’s the that and then the gallery needs this and then I’m a commissioner over here and I got that, and these are good problems to have, definitely good problems to have. However, you can get to the point where all you’re doing is filling frames, and I’ve been there where it’s like I have six paintings to do for this show, so they better be small because I’m just like cramming right now to try to get everything done. And you can get to the point where you’re not really doing what it is you want to do; you’re doing what everybody else wants you to do, and and I know we all have different financial reasons for doing things. So if if that works for you, that’s great, do it. But there’s also a part of you that is unique, and that nobody else can paint like you, no matter who you are. And if you never get the chance to really find out what that is, then you’ve wasted all of this time of learning to just produce something for other people. So, backing up a little bit sometimes from some of these shows, if you can financially, and even if you think you can’t financially, because I think the results of. Your work are going to be better and enable you to get into better shows, get into better galleries, and charge more money for your for for your paintings. A lot of times, when something is successful, like when I first started painting, I painted a lot of cows because cows sold, you know, and it was like one cow after another, and my husband used to joke with me. It was like I’d be doing a street scene or something. He said, “Ah, just have a cow walking down the middle of the road, and it’ll
Olya Konell 25:27
sell.
Kathleen Dunphy 25:29
And I got to the point where I really didn’t want to paint a cow, and my cow paintings got worse and worse and worse because I wasn’t as excited about it. So that can happen, you know. It’s like if you’re known for your boats, then by the 57th vote, who cares? You know, you art you could paint it in your sleep, and to me, the exciting thing about painting is going. I have no idea how to paint this, so let me see if I can figure it out, and that excitement will show in your painting. So now I forgot what the question was. Oh no, yeah,
Olya Konell 26:00
burnout schedule.
Kathleen Dunphy 26:01
So, with burnout, for one thing, try to back off a little bit from obligations if you can, and then find the thing that you love the absolute most about painting, the absolute most, and find time to do that. So, let’s say it’s drawing, then just get in and do as many drawings as you can for an hour every morning, just say this is my time. I don’t. Nobody’s going to see this. Nobody’s even going to know I’m doing it. But I’m going to get my cup of coffee and I’m going to draw and I’m going to lose myself for an hour in that. And then I’ll go back to the things that I have, you know, the gallery’s waiting for or whatever. Or for me, also plein air. If I can get outside, it’s like oh, I just feel myself sigh, and and the stress goes away, and it’s like oh, I’m outdoors again, and that really fills my cup. So find the thing that you love the most and budget the time for it, because it will pay you back in spades. Because otherwise, sometimes you’re just digging this hole that you cannot get out of because you’re burned out and you’re just like I have to finish this daggone painting and I can’t and you have to step away from it. Give yourself the thing that feeds you and then come back and you’ll finish it in no time. So really, really spend some time thinking about what it is that you love.
Olya Konell 27:17
Yeah, and I love what you just said. It will pay you back in spades, it’s like it’s almost like there’s this quote in business: you have to spend money to make money. You have to spend time to to make money, you know, to get better. To yeah, so it the same logic,
Angela Agosto 27:33
Yeah. And then when you said fill your cup, that’s true. You have to fill. I mean, I always say fill the well, so that you’re in a good place, absolutely, because what’s the burnout or what’s blocking you is the stress of whatever else is going on that you have to get through.
Kathleen Dunphy 27:48
And I get so mad at myself sometimes. Sometimes it’s like, why am I stressing out over this? There’s like a war over in Ukraine. You know, who cares about a painting? But it’s it’s your life. It’s your day to day life. It’s your if you care a lot, then you’re going to feel stressed. You know, I care a lot about this. I put a lot into it, and so because of that, I have to make sure that I don’t get into these positions where I just the stress is overwhelming, and and I can totally freeze. I mean, I can get to the point where I couldn’t put one brushstroke down, and I hate that feeling. And it’s like flight’s coming. I need to have 30 paintings for the show, and I’ve got like one that I can stand, and the rest I’m embarrassed of, and ah, and I’m kind of getting sweaty just talking about that
Olya Konell 28:30
enough
Kathleen Dunphy 28:31
times that it’s just it’s it’s I’m like I’m just not going to do that anymore.
Olya Konell 28:36
Yeah,
Kathleen Dunphy 28:36
as we were talking about beforehand, I’m backing off from a lot of the shows and a lot of the obligations, so I can find out what it is I want to do.
Olya Konell 28:42
Yeah, I love how these questions are lining up because this next one kind of piggybacks on, you know, and this is from one that was submitted on your answer as far as like what’s worth it. So Jenny asks which art organizations are worth joining in your opinion. So if you are going to budget time to be a part of these things, you know. You know she has OPA, LPA, PA, you know all those things.
Kathleen Dunphy 29:07
I think I think art organizations are great. They are a terrific way for education and for opportunities to show your work. There are a lot of them out there. I would say first start with something very local, you know. So if you are in Cincinnati, find the local Cincinnati Art League or whatever, and and and join that and do local shows or just or just local opportunities to learn. For me, the California Art Club is just terrific. They have they have chapters all over the state that have different painting events, and so if if I wanted to paint like down at the coast, I could I could see what the California Art Club Coastal Chapter is doing or Monterey chapter, whatever it’s called, is doing. They have one in San Francisco. They have one in Sacramento. So they’re all over the place. And then they have their annual gold medal show. They have tons of opportunities for other shows, both both virtual and in person shows. I think Laguna Plein Air Painters is is is sort of in the same vein as that. It’s a little bit smaller organization, but but still, I think it’s a great organization. I think the Oil Painters of America is great. The what is it? Yeah, American Impressionist Society is a really good one. If you are an animal artist, the Society of Animal Artists is is a great organization to be involved in. The Portrait Society. I I’m a believer in joining as many as you can afford to join, because there’s so many opportunities that come from them. And I know there’s dues and there’s memberships and all of that, but I always feel like that’s money well spent. You know what is it like? Maybe $100 sometimes for some of them, $50 for others, and with that you get newsletters, you get information, you find out what’s going on, you see what people are doing. There’s competitions. It’s it. I think it’s just it’s it’s money you should budget because it’s really well spent. I’m kind of vaguely answering your question, I’m sort of saying join them all, but but the ones that I mentioned, especially California Art Club, La Papa, OPA, AIS, Sight of Ann Wallers, all the other side of it. Yeah, those are those are ones that I belong to that I think are are really important.
Olya Konell 31:16
And I I do like your answer as far as prioritizing. If you’re just starting out, start with your local ones, then go out, then go out, and you know it’s. I I like that thought process as your budget allows.
Kathleen Dunphy 31:26
Yeah, you know,
Olya Konell 31:28
and as as you grow as an artist, there’s and I’m now we’re not really in any particular order, but I saw this question. I just thought it was interesting. Barbara writes in the chat. I’ve been painting about 20 years. Have been have taken a few good workshops, and only now do I seem to see which of my works are approaching how I’d like to be painting. How do I erase my older work from the internet, or and is that even important?
Kathleen Dunphy 31:56
How do we erase anything on the internet? You know, in that video, send me something. I’m like, really? I forgot all about that. I don’t know how to erase from the internet. To be honest, I tend to be a little bit of a forward-moving person, so I I try not to worry about that. If you know, when I do see those paintings, I go, well, I’ve improved, haven’t I? You know, life has not. I’ve I’ve I’ve gained some ground. You know, or sometimes I look at them. It’s like, dang, that’s a pretty good painting for the the point of my development that I was at. We can’t change our past, right? It is what it is. It happened. We did what we did, and I think you just have to say those were steps along the way, and just make sure you you have a website that’s updated and that you are letting the world know that you have that website, so that they go to the right place to see your work. You know, if otherwise, if they’re just googling and finding an old painting of yours from some show that was years ago, if you have a good website that you maintain, it’s going to show up at the top of the search. So that’s the best way to keep keep your work, you know, the fresh work, the new work, in front of people and social media, of course, too.
Olya Konell 33:02
Yeah, and you know, I have seen artists present, you know, like this is where I started and this is where I am now. This is my art journey, and that’s a part of their story. So I think it’s, it’s how you. I love the response of like looking forward, not looking back, and and because we can spend a lot of energy looking back, and we can’t change it, right?
Kathleen Dunphy 33:20
Exactly, exactly. You do the best with you. You can at the time, you know. And yeah,
Angela Agosto 33:25
Plus sometimes you can see like what did they do during that time? How did they get better? What schools did they go? What workshops did they do? Or if they teach, okay, I want to learn because this person was once like me, and now
Kathleen Dunphy 33:35
yeah, exactly, exactly.
Olya Konell 33:37
Yeah, I have a painting question. I’m jumping around here because I want to get a little bit of everything, and then we’re going to go back and make sure we grab things we miss. But Daniel previously submitted a question where he says, “I noted that one of your many assets in painting is your ability to create colors that look like the colors in your reference and to maintain the harmony of the painting. Is there an exercise that you use to maintain this ability which you want to share?
Kathleen Dunphy 34:01
Sure. You know, when I first started painting, I used every single color that there was. You know, I felt, and I used to feel like if I could just buy the right color, then I would be a good painter. And I have this cabinet right over there that probably has 300 tubes of paint in it, and I use six now.
Olya Konell 34:24
Wow!
Kathleen Dunphy 34:25
So I what I ended up doing is I I took a workshop with Scott Christianson back in the early 2000 s, and he at the time he was using a pretty limited palette, and then from that I kind of changed a few things, eliminated a couple things, and I ended up with a palette that I’ve been using for every painting, except occasionally, I use this Orn palette. I’ll get back to that in a second. But for every painting that you’re going to see of mine, whether it’s a still life or whether it’s a portrait or an animal or landscape, since about 2006. So I launched a blog on my website. It explains my palette, but just to go over it quickly. I use titanium white, cadmium yellow, lemon, permanent red, medium, ultramarine blue, deep, Naples yellow, deep, and cold gray, and they’re all Rembrandt colors. And the only reason I say that is because colors vary a lot between brands. And I found with those, I get so with the red, yellow, and blue, you know, just those three colors and white, you get an inherent harmony. I don’t have to worry that there’s going to be like a a foreign color in there that doesn’t harmonize with everything because pretty much, you know, a lot of colors all have a little bit of every one of the primaries in them, right? So it’s it’s pretty rare that it’s just like red with nothing else or yellow with nothing else. So there’s an inherent harmony that comes with that, and I really found that with that, I could get the colors I wanted. And in order to get those colors, to get a little bit more specific as to how how I got those colors. Wait a second, I’m kind of going ahead of myself. So I also have the cold gray and the Naples yellow. Those I call my cheater colors, and they’re just colors that I found made my life a little bit easier, and were colors that I really liked. So I added those to my palette. So I have the primaries and then the two cheaters. So to get the colors, there’s a couple of things that you can do. They’re really good exercises. One is, you know, like I said before, paint a lot. The other is if you take a book of of some artist that you love, and then have you ever seen those plastic sleeves? They’re made by ClearBags.com. It’s like a sleeve that you can put over a painting that you’re going to sell unframed. I put the the whole book in that sleeve, and then I look at a painting that I like in the book, and I mix the paint and then I paint it right on top of that sleeve to see if I’ve matched that color.
Angela Agosto 36:45
Oh wow!
Kathleen Dunphy 36:45
And it’s amazing how often I’m like so far off you wouldn’t believe it because
Olya Konell 36:50
it looks one way on
Kathleen Dunphy 36:51
the palette, but then when you put it down on the thing, it’s it’s not. I’m not as close as I think I am. So then you take that and you remix and you remix and you try it again, and you try it again, and you try it again, and finally you go. That’s what it was. I shouldn’t have put so much white in, or whatever. And and that is a great exercise to do. And those clear bags are cheap; you can get them for next to nothing. So that’s a good exercise. And then if you find that there’s a particular color family that you’re having a hard time with, try to set up like a really simple still life of that color family, like all greens, all reds, all yellows, and then paint a still life from life, and just really try to concentrate on that one color family to try to get your brain around how to mix the colors for that. But I truly think that having a limited palette, for me at least, and I know, I mean, there’s there’s a million artists out there that could paint circles around me that use 50 colors and do a great job with it, but for me, it simplified things enough that I could truly understand color. You know, before it was just like I understood the name of the tube that I needed, and now it’s like I know that this needs to be warmer, so I have to put some yellow and a little bit of red in it in order to get it warmer, or it’s the value is too dark, so I need to add a little bit of white to it. But that makes it kind of chalky, so maybe I’ll use Naples yellow, and that makes it nice and warm and lighter, you know. So it’s it’s like when there’s too many choices, it gets too confusing. And if I only have one blue, there’s only one way to cool it down. And some of the colors are not going to be exactly what I’m looking at. I mean, the definition by definition, a limited palette is limiting, right? There’s going to be certain colors I can’t get. You know, cerulean blue. I just can’t. I can come close, but I can get the right value, and I can get the right temperature. And we all know it’s value first and color second, right? If the values are correct, then your painting is going to look correct. So you know, you think of those like Ansel Adams black and white photographs. We don’t need any color to know what the subject matter is, and it’s the same in painting. If you get your values right, then your subject’s going to look right. And so get your values first, and then get closer and closer with practice to the exact local color that you’re seeing.
Olya Konell 39:08
Yeah, I and I love that that that activity. That’s actually such a great idea, and also just made me think because if you in your case because you also paint outside, you’re doing a lot of plein air, it’s easier to bring a limited palette with you, and then you can transition right back into the studio, and you’re able to recreate the same look in both environments. And so, and if you think about it, a printer is just like three colors, and it kind of figures it out, you know. Yeah, yeah.
Kathleen Dunphy 39:37
The hard thing is you go into the art store, and oh my God, those colors are gorgeous! You know
Olya Konell 39:42
they are. It’s like candy, and it’s or you know,
Kathleen Dunphy 39:45
you know. Yeah, I don’t want to sound too set in my ways. I mean, there’s times when I think maybe I should expand my palette, and every now and then, you know, I’ll get some sample of some just insanely beautiful color, and I’ll squeeze it out, and I, you know, I’ll if what happens usually is I’ll start by using. It a little bit, and then I forget that I have it on my palette, and I finish the painting, and I realize I hardly even touch that color. So you know, again, I don’t want to say I’ll never change my palette, but I’m content. You know, I don’t feel like anything’s missing. You know, I will say I did say that I’ve used that for every painting that I’ve done. There’s a red vase up behind me. I have some still life vases up there that are red glass, and I love love painting that. And I cannot get that red with the permanent red medium. So with that, I will add alizarin because I need that local color. So that’s that’s the only. And it’s not like a sin, you know. You can go ahead and do it. You know, have anything on your palette you want. What matters is how it ends up, right? I’ve never, ever, ever had anybody other than an artist ask me what colors I use to paint a painting. I’ve never had a, yeah, never had an collector ask what color. But the but so occasionally I will use that alizarin crimson for that. So if like if I were painting a cobalt blue vase, I don’t have cobalt, so I would have to put cobalt on my palette if that was what my goal was. If it was just to make it look realistic, I can do that. It just won’t be the exact color, but if I want that exact color, then I’m going to have to grab that that particular color out of my 300 tubes that I have over there, but but otherwise I can still make it look realistic. And then the Zorn palette, which I’m sure you all are familiar with. It’s Anders Zorn who used white. No, I’m going to blank on it. The yellow, yellow ochre, Cadmium red and ivory black, and those were his. That’s all used, and it sounds impossible, but it’s really fun to work with. It really teaches you about color temperatures. I found that it’s hard to use that on a really sunny day. It’s best for an overcast day or for a still life, but it’s it’s a really fun palette to play around with too.
Angela Agosto 42:01
Yeah, and I think it’s encouraging what you said about the limited palette because some artists think, oh, it’s not in my budget. I can’t paint with oils because it’s going to be expensive to have. But if you have a limited, you know, palette, then you don’t have to worry about your budget. You can do this. You don’t let that be something that deters you.
Kathleen Dunphy 42:19
Exactly, and I use the same palette for or similar palette for gouache. For my gouache paintings, they the first thing that I got was a from M Graham the paint company. They it was a kit. It was a gouache kit, and it was like red, yellow, blue, white, and black. I’m like, okay, that’ll work. And I’ve stuck with that ever since. So it’s it’s slightly different. You know, I don’t have Naples yellow, and I use black, but I again I don’t want 1000 different tubes of paint and all this complication. I just want it really simple. I feel like the simpler your materials, the better, because then you can really concentrate on your your painting, your outcome, and not have to fumble around so much with all your materials.
Olya Konell 42:58
Yeah, no, that’s that’s that’s really good. And I actually have a gouache question that just popped up. I’m new to gouache, and I’ve already used up my tube of white Holbein Permanent G. Sorry, 630. The chemical components are not listed. I use titanium zinc in my oil work, or my eyes are having a hard time seeing my my screen. I can’t say it. Or bury for transparency, but gouache is about coverage. So, what white do you recommend? Please describe the differences between primary white or permanent white.
Kathleen Dunphy 43:28
Ooh, I don’t know. I don’t. I don’t. People ask me all the time, “What is the chemical? I have no idea. I am not the person to ask about that. I use titanium white for my for my oil painting, and I use titanium white for my gouache. So I’m sure there are many many other people who have the answer to that question, but I’m it was like white works for me, and I’m sure that there are other whites that that could give me different qualities that I haven’t played around it yet, so
Olya Konell 44:01
no, that that’s I appreciate that that that answer. I mean that makes sense. And Adrian asked, do you premix your paint or mix as you go?
Kathleen Dunphy 44:10
Good question. I I so for my oil paint, I premix, and I do that for a couple different reasons. I found that one of my problems is I kind of get too excited when I start painting, if I just like, especially plein air painting, if I drive to a spot, jump out of the car, and start painting, it’s a mess because I haven’t had a chance to really think about what I’m doing. And then also, it it it makes my palette not feel so limited if I have those pre mixed puddles, and it enables me to use more paint. I’m sure none of you have ever just mixed some puddle of paint, and then you like thin it down and thin it down and thin it down because you you don’t want to stop and make that mixture or
Olya Konell 44:50
mix it again. Yeah.
Kathleen Dunphy 44:51
So if you if you just do some nice big puddles, then you have this. You feel very wealthy in paint. You know you can you can just put it down and use it and and. Though it although it takes you know a couple minutes before you start painting, it saves you so much time once you start painting because you’re not stopping to to mix colors as you go along. It also it it just ends up being also this transition time of thinking before painting. You know where I can just kind of settle down and say okay, let me think about these colors, let me think about these values, and then by the time I pick up my brush, my brain is much more in art mode and less in like chaos mode that it can be in sometimes.
Olya Konell 45:27
Yeah, no, that’s such that’s really good advice. The um we have so many great questions, so I’m gonna start peppering you with them. What’s an average day week scheduled look like for you? Your studio time, plein air time, art, business time, and I saw another question from someone else asking something similar. You know, like how do you, you know, we understand structuring is important, but like, what does your structure look like?
Kathleen Dunphy 45:52
I would say before the past year, I was much more structured. Going back to the fact that I said I’ve kind of been backing off from shows a little bit, but I think structure is really important. I think especially starting your career, structure is really important. My week, I consider this my job, and everybody in my life knows this is my job, and I think that’s really important. I mean, how many people have you said I’m an artist, and they go, “Oh, that’s nice. So what do you do? You know, you do really. You know, do you do you have a you work in a bank? You know, you can’t really be an artist. Nobody’s really an artist. Or they think that because you’re an artist, you can like go have coffee, or you can go have lunch, or you know go to the beach for the day, or whatever. It’s like I’m working today, and even my sister, I remember telling her I was working. She’s like, “Where are you working now? I’m like, “I’m in the studio. I’m working. Sorry, Mary, you’re tuned in here. But it, it, you have to treat this as your job. You’re a professional, and if you’re a professional in any job, you’re going to have hours that you clock in, and those hours are sacred, and I am a morning person. And I know if I do it in the morning, I’m going to get it done. If I wait till the afternoon, life comes in and everything gets messed up, and I never get it done. So in general, I am in the studio by the very latest 8o’clock, usually earlier than that. I start out every day drawing because it is that transition time, kind of like mixing paint. It’s that transition time between real life, of the hectic morning and get everything done so I can get in the studio, and then the actual settling into painting or drawing. So I start with sketching, and I sketch from life, and I sketch my dogs. And the reason I do that is years ago, I don’t know if you all know the artist Don Demers. He’s an incredible seascape artist and marine artist in general, boats and all that. And he was over at my studio, and I was complaining that you know we live up in a tiny town, and there’s there’s very little opportunity or zero opportunity to to draw from life and like a figure drawing kind of thing, and he looked and he said, “You got your you got your models sitting right over there. Why don’t you draw your dogs? And I was like, “You’re brilliant! And probably 15 years ago, and I’ve done it every day since. And it’s it’s such a I love doing it. It connects me to my animals for one thing, and it it’s very meditative. I when I’m drawing, I feel like a little kid with a chalk on the sidewalk again. You know, where it’s I’m just the world shuts down, and I can concentrate on that and do something that I love that nobody’s ever going to see. It’s just for me. I can play around with different tools to do that, and because it’s a live model, of course that’s better than drawing from photographs. But you know, I could be drawing. I did a whole series with my left hand. Did that. I’ve done my feet. You know, if I’m traveling, sometimes pop my feet up on the bed and sketch in the hotel room. You know, or or something like that. I think drawing from life is infinitely. I know drawing from life is infinitely better than drawing from photographs. Even if you’re drawing your coffee cup, it doesn’t matter. It’s just eye hand eye coordination. Nobody’s going to see these but you. So that’s how I start my day, and then from there I go into whatever. If it’s a studio day, it’s whatever project I’m working on. I kind of almost hesitate to say that, but whatever idea I’m working on, whether that’s working on an oil painting or working on a drawing, I kind of like to have both going. I love having a drawing going because I can pick it up and put it down and not worry about things drying out or you know brushes that need to be cleaned. Once I start on an oil painting, I kind of get pretty focused on that and stay with that until it’s done, and then and then switch over to the to the drawing, but the drawing is nice sometimes, like in the evenings or just you know 15 minutes of time. I can come in and work a little bit on that, and I do that until about I don’t know one or two in the afternoon, and then I take a break for lunch, and then my ideal days would be to then go out and paint outside after that. But you know, life comes in, and there’s other things that need to be done. So a lot of times by 2o’clock, my brain is kind of full of art, and I have other things that I need to do. So I try to get out of the studio and do the other things. But but in a perfect world where I didn’t have to go grocery shopping and go to the bank and do all this other stuff, it would be an afternoon session of painting outside, just as a way to kind of clear my head and reconnect.
Olya Konell 50:25
Yeah, and I I like that you are stacking your day based on what works best for you. You’re a morning person, so to the person that asked the the question and everybody listening, some of us are night people, so you want to just listen to when when you’re best because I’m I’m similar to to you I am clearest in the morning, I’m most focused in the in the morning, and then yeah by two 3o’clock.
Kathleen Dunphy 50:53
I used to try to push through that, and actually you know sometimes if I’m working on a really big painting and it’s it’s like two and I have to stop for lunch before I pass out, I’ll have lunch and then I’ll come. I’ll I’ll give myself a little bit of break. I’ll go outside or just read for a while or something, and then I’ll come back in for another hour or so. But I’m never as on as I was in the morning. But then sometimes, I mean, it’s a balance, right? Sometimes it’s like that energy of the first day of working on a painting. You know, I don’t want that day to end until the painting’s done because you know it’s never the same when you come back to it the next day. It’s that first day excitement. So I try to get as much done as I can the first day on a painting. But I have found a lot of times it’s diminishing returns if I just keep going and keep going and keep going. And I’m, you know, at some point it’s a lot of brain power to be doing what we do, and it’s exhausting.
Olya Konell 51:43
Yeah,
Kathleen Dunphy 51:44
and it can. I I find that I just there’s other people that I know. I know that Joe Joe McGirl can work hours in studio and and maintain that same level of exactitude that he has to do that. So a lot of it is just finding your your you know rhythms, finding what works best for you, and then capitalizing on that.
Angela Agosto 52:07
Yeah,
Olya Konell 52:07
yeah, so so so helpful. So I’m looking around here. I want to ask a couple kind of business side questions too. So for artists that so I’ll start with this. And for artists just beginning to sell their work, what do you suggest they do to get noticed and reach a wider audience?
Kathleen Dunphy 52:27
You guys are going to hate me for this. Paint a lot. Paint more. It’s easy, and I’ve done this myself: is to put the cart before the horse. But you gotta have really good product, and your product has to always be getting better. So always, always painting before marketing. That said, to get your work out there, we live in a world of social media, for better for worse. You know, back in the day when I was first starting with Clint, you had to find a gallery to do anything because God, I sound like I’m 150 years old, but there was no internet or very little internet, you know. So there wasn’t there wasn’t this social media, and there wasn’t this ability for everybody in the world to see your work. But for free, everybody can see your work. So don’t don’t not do social media to use double negative. Do it because it’s a great, inexpensive way or free way for people to see your work. Just don’t get too wrapped up in
Olya Konell 53:27
it. Yes,
Kathleen Dunphy 53:28
post a video, then run away. Don’t sit there and go, “Oh my God, did they like it? If they didn’t, what am I going to do? It’s too much of a deadly rabbit hole to go down. So, but use it because it’s there. Take advantage of it. Start for the physical world. Start with local shows to get your work out there. Find the local galleries, find the local events, the local fairs, the local what do they call them? Co-op galleries. Start small and local, and then from there, as you get a reputation, as you get bullet points on your resume where you can say I have been in this show, I have done this, I got a award in this local show. That’s when you can then start taking, start broadening out your ripples and saying, okay, the next ripple out from this this center that I’m in here is the is the bigger gallery that’s in the larger town next to me, and I’m going to go talk to them and see what they say. International shows, enter the OPA, enter California Art Club, do the BoldBrush the monthly. That’s what’s still called, right? The monthly competition. Do these online shows are great. You don’t have to pay. I mean, you you pay to get in, but then you don’t have to pay to ship and pay return shipping and all that kind of stuff. So do as many online shows as you can. And again, start with the ones that are you know a little less national and are you know shoot for the stars. You never know. And go. It depends on your budget. If you have the budget, go ahead and shoot for the stars. Otherwise, start local and then work your way up to that. But take advantage of the. Opportunities. Keep your ears open. You know, be ready to jump when an opportunity comes along. If you don’t mind painting in front of people, then do some of these plenary events. If you hate it, don’t do it. I found out quickly that I hated it,
Olya Konell 55:17
so I,
Kathleen Dunphy 55:18
and that’s okay. Used to feel like you had to be able to do that to be a good artist, but then I realized I couldn’t stand it, so it just isn’t me. But a lot of people love it, and it’s it’s a great great way to meet people, and it’s that’s the one thing I really miss about it is is meeting everybody and being around the other artists. So there’s they’re a great way to get your work out there.
Olya Konell 55:40
Yeah. So I love your, you know, I love this message. A lot of artists get hung up on one or the other, just online and all the computer stuff, or just in real. I mean, you really, you know, paint and you know, post and run, and then focus on the real world. And I and I I love how you worded that because start local and work out because I think sometimes, and we see this a lot in the questions. Like you don’t, there’s so many things, and you don’t know where to start. So you start with the simplest that you could do quickly, and then the closest, and then just like you said, work out, work out. Yeah, that’s so good. There’s, and I artists always ask about pricing, so this kind of goes along with that, but one question was talk about pricing. You know how you’ve raised prices from first having gallery representation, or like when you first started, you talked about like being in Alaska and you know your pet portraits. Obviously, your pricing has has evolved. Yeah, and so what effect does do prices have on sales and professional recognition, or are they a reflection of your maybe professional you know recognition? Anyway, how do artists figure that out? Like
Kathleen Dunphy 56:51
that is that is such a hard question. Yeah, you know, I took the attitude when I first started, and and I think this is still good advice. Go look around at people that are similar to you, similar style of work, similar point in their career. If you’re just starting out, go to one of the local galleries, see what the average price is. You know, not what the guy is who’s selling a bunch, and not the brand new person who just started, but see what the average is. Then come down a little bit lower than that to get started, and then every award, every event, every moment of well, bullet point on your resume. I’ll say that again. Every time you get one of those, that’s when your prices go up. So if you have been entering the OPA for years and you haven’t gotten in, and then you do, you can’t change the price on the painting that you entered, right? But the next time after that, you can say, “Well, I get to bump my prices up by a couple $100, 10% whatever it is. I don’t, I can’t even tell you what that math is, but I get to bump my prices up because I’ve gotten this recognition, and I feel like that justifies that, you know. And that’s the attitude that I’ve taken. Some galleries-that’s pretty rare, though. Galleries. I was-I was just going to say some galleries will want you to increase your prices. That happened to me one time, but that’s one time out of millions of interactions. If if your prices, art is such a weird thing, you know. None of us needs it, and we can all say, “Oh, we need art, but really, to survive, none of us needs it. So there is not a value we can put on it, except for what somebody’s willing to pay, right? So it’s so weird, you know. You go into some of these galleries and you look at some of this work, and you go really, you know, or like you go into the. I’m talking about like the, you know, the big auction houses and things, and these people that are paying millions of dollars for like a gold plated urinal, and you go, what? What are you talking about? You know, sorry, I could talk about that for a long time, but you know, it’s it’s like this, it’s this smoke and mirrors. Sometimes, you know. Yeah. And so, to answer your question, I think you have to have the solid reasons that you can show somebody. I’ve gotten in this show. I’m in this gallery. I’ve had this award. I had an article written about me. You know, these little steps like that that you bump up prices little by little, and then after a point, it’s just like it’s been a year or so. I can, I think I can increase it. You know, it happens. You don’t want to decrease your prices because if somebody bought a painting for $1,000, you don’t want somebody else. You don’t want that person to see that somebody else got a painting of that same size later that year for $800. You know that’s not they’re going to feel like they got ripped off. So you need to keep your prices the same everywhere, whether it’s whether you’re selling them, whether the gallery’s selling them, whether they’re in a show or whether they’re online, and then you just have to. To take a guess, I mean, I hate to say it, but that’s that’s how I’ve done it. You just take a guess and you say, I think I’m at the point where I can raise the prices, and then sometimes you get it wrong. Sometimes you go, well, might have gone too fast with that, but it’s the chance you take, and and then you just say, okay, I have to kind of wait until inflation catches Or whatever, you know, and and and good galleries will want you to increase your prices. You know, good galleries. I I would like to think I’m not a collector. I mean, I I buy art, but I’m not. I can’t call myself an art collector. But I I would like to think that if somebody buys my work, and then later they see that my work is selling for more. They’re going to feel like they made a good investment.
Olya Konell 1:00:44
Investment. You know, if
Kathleen Dunphy 1:00:45
they bought my work 20 years ago and it’s the exact same price that it was 20 years ago, then you know maybe yay for them they can buy it again. But I don’t know. I would like for them to go, wow. You know, I’m glad I got that when I did because now it’s worth so much. You know, all of her other work is selling for so much more, you know.
Angela Agosto 1:01:01
Yeah, the value’s up now on everything, and I think what you said is important. Like if you’ve accomplished something, especially if you’ve added to your website, you update your CV with OPA on this. I, you know, all these things, then it they can kind of have a reference. Like, oh, they she raised her prices because you know she’s now in all these things, right?
Kathleen Dunphy 1:01:22
Exactly, and and let the world know. You know, if yeah, find an OPA, tell them, put it on Facebook. Got it.
Angela Agosto 1:01:28
Yeah.
Kathleen Dunphy 1:01:29
I mean, it’s it’s it’s hard. You know, I think for the most part, as artists, we’re like, oh God, I don’t want anybody to look at me. You know, and we are. You know, we’re not. We live in these caves and do these paintings. We don’t go out into the big world as much, you know. And and can be hard to say. I did this, and I want you to know I did this. But if you don’t, then the only person knows is your husband, and you know maybe the UPS man who drops
Olya Konell 1:01:56
off.
Kathleen Dunphy 1:01:57
So you have to have to just and don’t be arrogant, but to say, by the way, this painting got an award, and then people they’re like, “Wow, that’s great! That’s you know her. She’s he’s really doing it. You know he’s people are recognizing that he’s improved, or he’s achieved something in his work, and I think that’s important. You know, it’s important to send out your newsletters. Those are the people. Those are those are the people because they have taken the time to get on your website, and then they’ve taken the time to write down their email address and send it to you. So those people are tell
Olya Konell 1:02:32
them don’t miss.
Kathleen Dunphy 1:02:34
They’re the ones that that really you know everybody they they particularly count. Also
Olya Konell 1:02:39
just a also kind of a a pricing thought. Something that, because I’m not a full time artist, I’m a hobby artist. But something I’ve observed from my own life experiences, like there are so many hours and days and art supplies. There’s so much of our heart and finances that artists invest for years, and so the the idea that we have this opportunity to increase price with these mile markers, these accolades that we finally are able to earn, it’s like a retroactive repayment and also keeping up with inflation. But like my husband, sometimes you know, like I’m-I have two sides of my brain. I’m very analytical, but I’m also creative. So I sat down and I spread cheated out. You know, when I was first getting into the whole art thing, and I was like, “Is this even going to pan out? Like by this year, I have to be here to retro. You know what I mean? I did the math once. Don’t do it. It’s not going to. It’s not going to build your morale. No, and
Kathleen Dunphy 1:03:42
it’s if you ever, you know, sometimes people saying, “Well, I spent so much time on this painting, you know, I should get more money for it. I’m like, “Yeah, someday you should, you know. I mean, yeah, but it’s like, yeah, you should, but you’re not going to, you know. Then the next time you’re going to spend 45 minutes on it, and it’s going to sell right away, and you’re going to go. Oh, I hope nobody knows. I just spent 45 minutes on that one. But
Olya Konell 1:04:07
in years,
Kathleen Dunphy 1:04:08
able to do it in 45 minutes. Yes, you know. And people, you know, when you’re out planner painting, people always come up and they’re like, oh, well, that’s great. How much is it? How long did it take you? And then they do the math and they’re like, oh my god, you must be a billionaire. And it’s like, no, you don’t get. You don’t see the stacks sitting around here of the stuff that I throw out. You don’t see tremendous, you know,
Olya Konell 1:04:26
and years of unpaid or invest. Yeah. So it really, if you think about it in that, then the goal always is to how can I grow? How can I in in in increase and and exactly
Kathleen Dunphy 1:04:39
exactly and honestly, I mean, don’t spend tons of time thinking about pricing.
Olya Konell 1:04:46
Yeah,
Kathleen Dunphy 1:04:47
spend tons of time thinking about getting better.
Olya Konell 1:04:49
I love that. I
Kathleen Dunphy 1:04:50
mean, it it is so it’s so easy to get caught up in the in the in the, you know, everything I do have to market, and I don’t want to throw this out. You’re going to throw a painting out. Heck yes, I’m going to throw a painting out. I mean, you think about any other creative endeavor. You think about rough drafts for a novel. You think about people playing scales on the piano. You know, do they get paid for playing a scale? No. But is every every time they sit down to the piano a performance? No. Do we get paid for every painting? No. Is every painting we do something that we sell? No,
Olya Konell 1:05:23
no.
Kathleen Dunphy 1:05:23
And you just have to look at it that way. You can’t. There are. I mean, I don’t even want to know how much money I’ve thrown out in supplies of of things that just didn’t meet my standard. And I don’t want people to see that stuff. I’m like, let’s get rid of that. And and that’s okay because it leads to the next thing, but you can’t market everything. You can’t get paid for everything. It’s just not realistic.
Olya Konell 1:05:48
Yeah.
Kathleen Dunphy 1:05:49
At least not in my world. Maybe there’s some artists out there who every time they sit down they do something great and they get paid for it. I’m sure there are, but I think the vast majority of us have to do a heck of a lot of work to get one that works. So yeah. No,
Olya Konell 1:06:00
I I that that’s such good advice. This one is kind of a unique question. I’m gonna throw it out here. What do you view as the strongest trends in art for the next few years?
Kathleen Dunphy 1:06:12
Oh, wow! I’m probably the wrong one. Not to. I kind of just live here in the studio. It seems it seems to me like realism has kind of come to the fore again, but then again, you know, you see these auctions, like I was just talking about. It’s like go figure. The one thing I can say is, it doesn’t matter. Yeah, because if you try to chase whatever the trend is, it will have changed by the time you get good enough in that, and you’re not going to be happy with it anyway. So, do what you do and make what you do the next trend. I you do something really unique. Maybe everybody’s going, “Whoa, never seen that work. Everybody’s paying attention. They’re like, “Hey, let’s start looking at this again. If you just try to find what it is and then follow that, that’s. that’s a dangerous route to take. It’s a fickle consumer world, you know. Especially now with the internet, shiny thing over here and shiny thing over there, and suddenly that thing over here doesn’t even exist anymore because we’ve already gone on to the 5 million other things that have come through in our feed. So I I don’t know why you asked that question, but if the question was to know where you should go with your work, I would say just go with your heart. Yeah, don’t worry about the trends. If you’re just curious as to where I think the art world is going, it seems to me like it’s going a little more in in the realism way. But I don’t I don’t know for sure. Yeah,
Olya Konell 1:07:39
because you you see what you are exposing, you know what you’re into, what you’re exposed to. Those are the things that catch your attention. But I love the advice: don’t chase, don’t chase the trend. Focus on like forging your path, and maybe you will start the next trend. So well,
Kathleen Dunphy 1:07:54
somebody said me one time a few years, maybe 10 years ago. Oh, wildlife is dead. Don’t do wildlife. And I’m like, I don’t really care. No, it’s
Olya Konell 1:08:03
moving. It’s running over there. You
Kathleen Dunphy 1:08:06
know, it’s like, but but to a certain extent, I mean, there used Wildlife Art Magazine. There used to all this stuff, and for a while there, wildlife was not the thing that people wanted. But I really love animals, so I was going to keep doing it. You know, so it’s just that kind of thing, you know. There’s, there’s, you know, all of a sudden it’ll seem like there’s portraits everywhere, you know, and and that’s a great thing. Good, wonderful. Wonder what the next thing is going to be, you know, because it’s not going to last for long. It’ll be something else that catches the the public eye or some trend that sort of shifts us over this way for a while.
Angela Agosto 1:08:38
And I feel everything has an audience. You just have to find the audience.
Kathleen Dunphy 1:08:41
Yes, exactly. It does. It does. I mean, it’s big world out there with a lot of people with different tastes. So,
Olya Konell 1:08:46
oh yeah, there’s a one from Maureen that I. It’s kind of a technical one. Kathleen, do you use any of do do you use any of the grids available to plan your compositions before you start painting?
Kathleen Dunphy 1:08:59
Good question. So I always start my painting with with thumbnail sketches to figure out my design, and that’s my time to just kind of call it thinking out loud, where I’m just kind of taking a pencil and kind of you know I usually do like continuous line drawing to kind of feel what I want to do. I’m kind of hair drawing now, and then from there I’ll like do lines around it to crop it down to different sizes to see what I like with that. I don’t like I don’t like formulas. So in other words, like the golden mean, the one through two thirds idea, or God bless him, he’s an amazing artist. Ed was an amazing artist. Edgar Payne with all of his little design ideas that he has, you know the what do they call it the oh there’s all the blanking on the on the names of the different design principles that you can you can compose using. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I feel like there’s a lot of ways to compose a painting that don’t fall into a particular. Particular formula or a particular set of rules. So I don’t, I don’t say to myself, I want to make sure to have something right at that intersection of the golden mean in this painting. I just try to have a painting that feels like it is balanced and emphasizes the things I want to emphasize in the scene. That said, I’ve also studied all of that stuff, so maybe maybe it becomes a little bit more innate after you’ve studied. But I think we can box ourselves in a little bit too much. You know, I mean, how many times we heard never put anything in the middle of a painting? Well, you can if you know how to compensate for that. If you add some diagonals, if you, you know, change this and that, yeah, or you know, never have the anything. I always say never have anything too close to the edge. Yes, all my students out there, I have said that, but occasionally you can do that if you compensate for that with it with other elements of the design. So to answer your question, I don’t. Sometimes I will take my thumbnail after I’ve finished it, and I will draw a physical grid over top of it, and then I’ll take that grid and I’ll put that corresponding size on my canvas that I’m going to use, and then I’ll draw my thumbnail onto the bigger canvas because it just saves time. That way, it’s just sizing up exactly what I’ve already figured out. Or if I’m outside painting, I’ll do in my in my sketchbook. I’ll put a little.on the midpoint of the top of the drawing, the midpoint of the bottom of the drawing, and left and right, and then center. And then I’ll put those four dots on my canvas. Actually, five when you include the top. Yeah, and then that helps me transpose my thumbnail onto the canvas.
Olya Konell 1:11:43
Yeah, and that’s more like directional orientation. So you’re putting things in the right place. But that’s a good point that you made. That it’s possible that you’ve trained your eye by studying those things. So now you’re kind of understanding what balance looks like.
Kathleen Dunphy 1:11:56
But but I don’t I don’t. But you don’t intentionally sure that you know, if I’m doing the S curve, that this is here. It’s more like, oh, I like the way that road goes back. Yeah, the way it leads your eye back in or something, as opposed following a formula.
Olya Konell 1:12:10
Yeah, I. That’s really good advice. So to not overthink
Kathleen Dunphy 1:12:15
it. Yeah,
Olya Konell 1:12:16
gosh, we still have so many, so many different ones. A really quick one: Do you wear gloves while you paint? Are you concerned about toxic elements of any of the paints or solvents?
Kathleen Dunphy 1:12:28
Oh, I should. I should. I know. I hate wearing gloves because because I use my finger a lot when I paint, and I I don’t like that hand cream stuff. I try so in the studio. I always wear a glove on my left hand because I’m right-handed and I clean my brushes with my left hand. And by the time you know you have a paper towel and the terp can get on you there, I don’t like the feeling of paint on my hands. I don’t. So I have baby wipes that I’m using constantly to wipe it off in my hands. If you can stand it, please wear gloves. You know, and if you have not started oil painting yet, start with water soluble oils because then you won’t have to worry about all those toxins. I wish I had years ago. I’m kind of set in my ways now, so I don’t really. Yeah. I keep saying, oh, one of these days I have, of course, probably two or three sets of, you know, the complete Cobra line that I should just try because it’s right there. But it, you know, it’s one more complication of things that one of these days I will. But try try water mixable and then really try to use some kind of a glove or you know what I mean by that hand cream, that barrier cream they call it that you put on. It just it’s sticky a lot of times for me,
Olya Konell 1:13:43
yeah.
Kathleen Dunphy 1:13:44
But at least on on your non dominant hand for when you’re cleaning your brushes.
Olya Konell 1:13:48
Good advice. Yeah, there’s a comment that somebody made that I kind of liked when we were talking about how long did it take you to. Gary says when people see my painting in plein air and ask me how long did it take you to do that, usually tell them about 40
Kathleen Dunphy 1:14:05
years. There you go. That’s a
Olya Konell 1:14:07
really good answer.
Kathleen Dunphy 1:14:08
Good answer. Yep.
Olya Konell 1:14:09
Yeah. And then while we’re talking about paint and painting and technique, can you walk through how you do complicated grasses such as in the background of the white geese, do you start dark, let it dry, layer on?
Kathleen Dunphy 1:14:27
Yes, the answer. Yes, I start. I start dark and I layer a lot of times. So, so in oil painting, almost always I start from dark to light. So, and with that, I start from thin to thick. So, with that particular one, and do I don’t that painting’s gone. Do you do you have that picture of that one anywhere? It should be on my website on the yeah.
Olya Konell 1:14:50
I’m gonna on your homepage.
Kathleen Dunphy 1:14:52
Go no, I don’t think it’s on the homepage anymore. If you go to
Olya Konell 1:14:55
art micro artwork animal, and is it the winter
Kathleen Dunphy 1:14:58
forage the oh this one. That one in the upper right hand corner, yeah. So I started that background thin dark paint, which on my palette the darkest dark I can make is the ultramarine blue plus red. It looks black almost by the time you mix that. So I did a thin, almost not really a wash because it was it was opaque enough to cover, and but but I used a lot of Gamsol in that so that it would evaporate and start to set up, and then from there I used thicker paint and just layered the the brushstrokes over top of that. Sometimes picking up a little bit of that dark so that it could kind of really look like it was kind of bending back into the to the shadows. So that was the first day, and then with that one, I let it dry, and then I came back and oiled up using a little bit of like a either either sometimes I’ll just use a little bit of solvent on it, or I’ll use a little bit of linseed oil plus solvent mix in to bring the darks out, you know how the darks dry, kind of chalky. It’ll bring the richness back in the darks, and then, or sometimes I’ll use liquid for that. I’ll just put a layer of liquid on, and then I can, when I have a barrier like that on top of the painting that I’ve already done, if I do another mark and it’s not in the right place, I can wipe it off very easily, and it doesn’t affect the paint that’s underneath that’s already dry. So I went back a few times with that, maybe adding a few more darks, and then adding a few more lights, and then I added a couple more geese. So it was a lot of anytime there’s a lot of texture or a lot of depth to a painting. A lot of times, it it is several different times of going back to work on the painting until I get to the point where I feel like it has the right level of three dimensionality.
Olya Konell 1:16:51
Yeah, and then what I love about like on on on on the Faso sites, you can click the zoom and you can actually see the texture. Like I love that I can see the I don’t know if you guys can see that on the head of the duck next to the back all of the white like you can actually see it which is pretty pretty cool
Angela Agosto 1:17:09
water by the feet looks really pretty on that one
Olya Konell 1:17:11
yeah yeah on the
Kathleen Dunphy 1:17:13
other end you know adding some of that thicker paint because it’s not just the the value of the paint itself that makes but also the fact that it sticks out a little bit, so the light that’s hitting the painting is
Olya Konell 1:17:24
reflecting
Kathleen Dunphy 1:17:25
it up, so it’s going to be more even brighter.
Olya Konell 1:17:28
Yeah, which I’ve seen some cool stuff about that. How you make your mark can influence. Yeah, like you said, the 3d dimensionality. Gosh, we’ve we’ve answered a lot Of the different, we’ve gone over the different categories. There’s one. I don’t know if you want to go back to this, but Julie says, “Can you tell us more? Because she wanted to hear more about your your process of work life as you were transitioning from selling colored pencil pet portraits to creating and selling larger paintings of landscapes and wildlife with with with oils. So how did that transition look look like?
Kathleen Dunphy 1:18:06
Oh, well, I like I said, I started the the in Alaska doing that, and then after we’d been in Alaska for four years, we got transferred again. By then, I was in a gallery in Alaska and was doing mostly still lifes, even though I was in Alaska. Can you believe that?
Olya Konell 1:18:25
Wow!
Kathleen Dunphy 1:18:26
But the light changes really fast in Alaska, even faster than down here. But anyway, so we came back to California, and I realized I really didn’t have an education, and so I I took my portfolio down to the Academy of Art University, and I got a scholarship to for the summer study grant there. So I that that was really what taught me that really leveled up my work because I was I was right at the point where I had enough of a basis to learn, but I needed to take it to the next step. And the academy was incredible. Craig Nelson, Brian Blood were the two people that probably were the biggest influence on me. With that, Brian was my first plein air teacher, and it was great. We would go all over San Francisco, and I didn’t. I thought I was going to be a figure painter. That was really what I wanted to do. And then I walked into a plein air class, and I was like, “What was I thinking? This is incredible. This
Angela Agosto 1:19:18
is what I. We’ve had Brian Blood on the floor with Lori Kersey. I think he was her teacher too, and then of course he married her.
Kathleen Dunphy 1:19:25
Yeah, yeah, they were both down there when I was. Lori was there too when I was. It was just great. It was it was all art all the time, and everybody around you was in the same position doing all art all the time. So I would I lived in Davis, and I would take the train into the city four days a week, and it was like a three-hour train ride down and back. And it was the best. I was. I remember thinking, I feel so alive right now. It’s like every brain cell in my body is working. But that really helped me to get you know to answer. Mine’s a, I think the one I have right now is a Nikon, and I only shoot under natural light. I don’t have any place in this entire house where I can make everything dark. I used to have a garage at the house that we lived at years ago that I could close everything and be totally dark, and I could take two lights and you know cross the the beams of the light across, and you know pain in the neck, but it was it worked enough. But now what I do, guys are gonna laugh. But what I do is I, we have a front porch that has a has an awning over it, and on sunny days I go out under the awning and I lay them flat on our deck and I stand over it like that, and I lay them flat because if I have them standing up, I get glare no matter what I do. And I have I go under the awning because otherwise I get too much of a blue influence from the sky. If you live someplace that’s overcast, you are so lucky because on an overcast day you get much truer color. So I will move it around to different spots on the deck, and then I’ll come in. I’ll download the photos and I’ll look at them on Photoshop to see how close they came. And whichever one came the closest to the actual color, that’s the one that I use. I do not change the color in Photoshop. I every now and then, but very very rarely, I will change the the brightness on Photoshop. If it doesn’t look good in the raw, I mean the initial format that I took, I go out and I shoot it again, and I try to move it around to the point where I can do it. The only I occasionally will use the I don’t even know what it’s called the little thing that looks like a band aid. If there’s a piece of a glare or like a piece of dirt that got on it that I didn’t realize it was right in the sky. You know, I might use that, but I don’t take it into Photoshop and try to make it look prettier because everybody’s computer is a little bit different, and because you just need. I really feel like the more you fool with it, the farther away you get from the original, it’s like oh, it would have been better if I had made it warmer, or would have been better if I had painted it brighter, or whatever. So that’s how I do that. I do crop, of course, and then straighten sometimes with some of the the tools that they have to take something that’s a little bit torqued and make it a square, but not too much, or else it distorts the actual image itself. I save it as a TIFF because somebody told me once that every time you open a JPEG, you you lose some of the integrity of it, which is now that I say that probably sounds really stupid. So anyway, I save I save one as a TIFF because it’s a really large format, really high high resolution, and then I save a JPEG and the highest JPEG resolution I can get, and then I usually save a lower resolution JPEG to put on websites and online.
Olya Konell 1:27:48
So so useful. No, thank you for breaking that down. And I know we’ve kept you past past your time, and your puppies are probably mom. We need to go. Your models are ready
Angela Agosto 1:27:58
to go.
Kathleen Dunphy 1:27:59
Yeah. Now she’s soft. She won’t come over. I was going to let her have her moment of fame here talking.
Olya Konell 1:28:04
I first of all
Kathleen Dunphy 1:28:08
never figure out ever again.
Olya Konell 1:28:09
Thank you so much for letting us just pepper you with so many questions, and we appreciate
Kathleen Dunphy 1:28:15
participating and and asking these questions. And it’s great, you know. It’s I feel like I had great people when I was coming up, you know, that were willing to share their knowledge. So I’m I’m happy to you know pay it back. So
Olya Konell 1:28:28
no, we we really appreciate it. And and and guys, there’s um one thing I forgot to mention. I know that not all of you are in close enough proximity to maybe attend an in-person workshop, which we’ve shared the links to Kathleen’s events and stuff, but she has one coming up in September that anyone can join. It’s online. The sign up will be available in starting in September. Remind me the
Angela Agosto 1:28:50
oh
Olya Konell 1:28:51
sorry, it’s in November, but the sign up starts in September. Yeah,
Angela Agosto 1:28:55
and I did share the links.
Olya Konell 1:28:56
Yeah, so we shared the links. If you miss the links, we we you’ll have them in the recording when it goes out, and if you want to share anything with Kathleen, I’m going to give you guys a few sec few seconds. Go ahead and drop it in the chat. I’ll pass your messages on to her because I’ve seen a couple that are for Kathleen, so I will send them to you after the. We could probably go on and on and on and on because there’s like I’m sorry
Kathleen Dunphy 1:29:19
for the questions we did get to answer. Yeah,
Olya Konell 1:29:21
and we’re so sorry, but we will, you know, go find her on Instagram. Go find her on Facebook. Ask her questions about things that you see that she shares. You know, start that conversation. I think you know, and some somebody Lou says, “Thank you for your time. I will definitely consider the workshop in no in November, yeah, that one’s nice because it’s online. Anyone can join, and there’s no limitations on how many people can, I think, sign up. So,
Kathleen Dunphy 1:29:49
and then in-person workshop. I still have two seats in that one in last week in October up here. Last
Olya Konell 1:29:56
week, okay,
Angela Agosto 1:29:56
yeah, I did share that one as well.
Olya Konell 1:29:59
Gosh, thank you. So much everybody for staying for tuning in. Thank you again, Kathleen.
Angela Agosto 1:30:05
Kathleen, thank you!
Olya Konell 1:30:07
This was so much fun. So yeah, I will pass all the messages on to you after I’ll shoot you an email, and then we will have the recording next week. Somebody asks again: recording will be so FASO members will get it first in the Faso. When you log into your Faso dashboard, you can access the the I can’t talk the FASO marketing circle, and then there’s a video library in there. And then after that, either at the end of the week or the following week, everybody, you know, on our on our website, that we’ll share the link. Subscribe to the newsletter, the the FASO way. It will go out and it will stay there, and y’all can share it and you can go rewatch it. So if you missed anything, so thank you, thank you. Yeah, bye everybody. Take care. Go get painting. Yeah, exactly.
