I remember visiting a Pier 1 Imports store a few years ago, I was shopping for some items for my kitchen. As I got on the line to pay, I noticed the couple in front of me, holding some mass produced image on canvas, I think it might have been some clouds, or some sort of generic and safely pleasant image. As an artist, it really bugged me that they were buying some generic image as a decoration with probably not a whole lot of thought about it other than “this is nice.” That’s fine, I don’t mean to put down the idea of having something nice to look at, but I so desperately wanted to tap them on the shoulder and say: “hey, I’m an artist, and I’d be happy to sell you an original work of art for the same price that you’re about to pay for that print on canvas.”
Maybe one needs to have a certain mentality, but why buy something that thousands of other people might have, when you can buy something unique, original, and belonging only to you? The original art can still be pleasant to look at, but chances are it’s going to be a conversation starter as opposed to something that hangs on the wall like background music.
(On a side note, the images above are AI generated, no people with poor taste were harmed in the making of this blog post)
