Paintings created: 64
Paintings that found new homes: 60
Murals painted: 0
Wine labels designed with wife: 1
Festivals participated in: 15
Festivals canceled due to COVID: 0 (hooray!)
Years we’ve known Ivan: 9
Years we’ve known Orin: 6
Years betrothed: 11
Pieces of art Orin sold: 42
Books Ivan read: 89
Children raised right: 0
Children raised wrong: 0
Children raised “good-enough”": 2
Gallons of maple syrup made from our trees: 2
Mustaches worn: 1
Mustaches appreciated by wife: 0
Spanish lessons taken: 53
Nights spent in a tent: 5
T-Ball teams coached: 1
Catalytic converters that broke down while driving: 1
Catalytic converters stolen from our new car while on vacation: 1
Foreign countries visited: 1
Times left speechless by Gaudi: 8

2022 Festival Season Commences | March | Glenn, MI

I’ve always wanted to be prolific. Some of my favorite artists (Picasso, Dali) are known for their huge bodies of work that they produced over their lifetime and I’ve always admired their continued productivity. And while I’ve felt semblances of producing at a high level, I knew that I hadn’t fully gotten there. Not even close. But I figured that if I kept on the path and kept my brushes to the grindstone, a breakthrough would come. Well this past year, it finally did.

In 2021, I completed 25 paintings. This was pretty standard and felt like an accomplishment. This past year, I finished 64. Sixty. Four. I stayed loose. I didn’t pain over minute details or second guess my instincts. I grew confident in my strokes and clear in my vision for the work. I became prolific.

This quote from Andy Warhol perfectly illustrates the quieting of self-doubt and the resulting productivity that I was able to keep up: “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”

So I made even more art. Before I could look at a newly finished piece and start criticizing its minor imperfections and “could-haves”, I started a new one.

The resulting body of work was received well. Sixty of those 64 paintings found new homes. Part of this success was a change in an approach to our inventory. In the past, we always tried to have a myriad of sizes of originals available to fit in any space. This year, we simplified and stuck to four main sizes, with the majority of my efforts devoted to creating a whole army of 6”x24” paintings (41, to be exact). This tall, slender panel fits my characters well, is easy to find a spot for on the wall, and is friendly on the pocketbook.

From my perspective, this size is a lot of fun to play with. There’s something less intimidating about a smaller panel and I was able to experiment more than I would have allowed myself to with larger works. I just kept cranking them out and they continued to fly off the walls. It was a great year and felt damn good.

We took part in 15 festivals this year, with the majority of them close to our home in Michigan. If you stuck a pin in Glenn (“Ouch!”, exclaims Glenn) and drew a 200-mile circle in all directions, you would encompass 10 of the 15 shows. The outliers were in Texas, Memphis, and Louisville. It was nice to not drive so much and I think the added time at home helped me create more.

We didn’t paint a single mural. We applied to a few opportunities and a couple certainly seemed like they would bear fruit, but in the end, it wasn’t in the cards for 2022. This coming year may prove to produce more mural fruit, but let’s not count the chickens before they cluck.

Overall, it was a good year. The kids are both in school now, which means Ash and I have a little more time to figure out our ever-evolving plans in life and art without having to stop to get Orin a snack. We’ve become a soccer family, as both our kids have loved learning the sport and we found ourselves football fanatics during the World Cup (Vamos Argentina!). We try to find clarity in our path ahead, with one path leading abroad and one keeping us anchored in Michigan. Perhaps there is a middle road we haven’t discovered yet.

All in all, we feel grateful for another year steering this art vessel through uncharted waters and the chance to be captains of our ship. Our little swashbucklers didn’t get scurvy, nobody had to walk the plank, and we got to sail through some very stunning straits. We so appreciate all of you welcoming us into your harbors and bringing our art into your homes.

May your holiday season be fruitful and your 2023 be a grand adventure!

Love,
Tyler, Ashley, Ivan and Orin
The Voorhees Art Collective