Why I Dumped Prints

I built a successful part of my business and then realized I didn't actually want it.

So, I dumped prints.

Which is kind of wild, because prints have been part of my business since 2020. They sold. People loved them. They made my artwork accessible to people who weren't ready to buy an original. From the outside, there wasn't necessarily a reason to stop.

But there was one pretty important reason:

I didn't want to do it anymore.

And if I'm being completely truthful, I'm not sure I ever really did.

Prints started because I needed money.

In 2020, I had rent to pay and I was trying to make it happen own. I didn't have any financial backing but potentially $1,000 that I had saved before being laid off in September 2020.

Prints seemed like the obvious answer. Take one painting, reproduce it, sell it over and over again.

Brilliant!

So I launched prints.

And for six years, they became part of Cooper Art and Abode.

But something I've realized about myself over those six years is that I am a prolific painter.

I paint about one painting a week. And if I'm not painting regularly, I become mentally unstable.

I'm kidding.

Kind of.

Painting is genuinely where I find my groundedness. It's where I process my life. It's where I feel most like myself.

Give me a giant canvas and several uninterrupted hours and I am thrilled.

Give me emails, spreadsheets, inventory, packaging, vendor logistics and a stack of prints that need to be signed?

I would rather be painting.

At some point, I realized I was staying busy for the sake of being busy.

One of my main print vendors unexpectedly closed this May.

Suddenly, something that had worked fairly seamlessly didn't anymore.

I could move everything to a local printer. But then I'm driving around Bend, picking up prints, signing prints, organizing prints, delivering prints...

And at some point I had this realization:

Why am I running around town doing all of this to sell a $30 print?

Not because there's anything wrong with selling a $30 print.

But because I don't actually want to build a business around selling thousands of them.

I looked into hiring someone to take this part of the business over. The margins just aren't there unless I double down, increase volume and become a much, much larger print seller.

And that's when the answer became ridiculously obvious.

That's not my dream.

My dream is to make incredible paintings.

That's it.

I want to make bespoke, original paintings that completely transform a room.

I want to create collections that have something to say.

I want to spend more time thinking, feeling, noticing, experimenting and painting.

I want my commissions to get more of me.

I want to push my work further than I've ever pushed it before.

And I want to stop building parts of my business simply because someone somewhere decided that successful artists are supposed to have them.

Before 2020, I sold originals.

Somewhere along the way, I built more and more around that simple thing until I found myself running a retail business alongside being an artist.

And I've realized:

I don't want to run a busy business. I want to run a meaningful one.

There's another piece of this that's more personal.

For the last several years, my husband has helped me tremendously behind the scenes.

And we've also learned that working with your spouse is really hard.

We've had to take a serious look at what was happening behind the scenes of our business and our marriage and recognize that intertwining everything wasn't always healthy for us.

So we're untangling some of it.

He doesn't need to run my print business.

And I don't need to build a business that requires him to.

There is something incredibly freeing about realizing that.

So, are accessible pieces disappearing forever?

No.

I'm still planning my annual calendar this fall.

I'm exploring a membership for next year that could include something small each month: a mini print, postcard, card or something else entirely.

I'm also talking with a puzzle company about potentially licensing my artwork so that they can make and fulfill the puzzles and I can simply point you toward them.

I'm actually really excited about finding ways for my artwork to exist beyond original paintings.

I just don't necessarily need to manufacture, manage, fulfill and sell all of those things myself.

There's a difference.

I'm claiming my artistic territory.

That's what this change really feels like.

I'm stepping away from the idea that growth automatically means

more products, more inventory, more sales, more SKUs, more things to manage.

Maybe growth can mean less.

Maybe it means going deeper.

Maybe it means making fewer things and making them incredible.

Maybe it means building a business around the life I actually want instead of building a life around the business I've accidentally created.

This year has already felt like such a strange collision of beginnings and endings. Grief and celebration. Things closing while completely new things seem to be opening at the exact same time.

It feels very Eclipse.

And strangely, this feels like part of it too.

If you had told stressed-out 2020 me, desperately trying to pay rent, that I would launch prints, successfully sell them for six years and then voluntarily shut that part of my business down?

I would have thought you were crazy.

But here we are.

I'm trusting it.

I'm painting.

And I'm really excited about what comes next.