Why such a new images site when there are already so many around?
In short, because this site is actually meant more for myself then for you – unless you’re a very special kind of person: this is a place where I can show off my favorite pictures and share the pleasure they give me with someone who likes them as I do.
Let me add some context to clarify: I’m manically fond of painting and graphic arts, and am selling quite satisfactorily my images on the best stock agencies – all in all pretty nice images (if I do say so myself 🙂 ), but mostly… ordinary.
Why? Well, as already mentioned on a blog post, when you go fishing you put a worm on the hook: not that you like worms, but it’s the fish that has to like it, not you. And selling pictures isn’t much different: you must please the buyer, and for statistical reasons precious few buyers are out of the ordinary.
Which poses a problem though: to gag the artist child inside me is a very hard job. She keeps crying out that she wants to play with colors, light, shapes, fantasy, nonsenses, impossibilities… and I, the grownup Luisa, am to weak to tell her no.
Which results in plenty of rubbish that finds its just way to the bin, but also in several precious pictures – little marketable as not ordinary enough – that I like a lot without even understanding why, and I would really detest to give them away for a few pennies.
What the hell shall I do with them??? The walls of our home are already teeming with bookshelves, gadgets, drawings, trinkets, paintings, and adding even a single stamp there would be an ordeal.
And it would be such a pity to leave them forgotten to collect dust in a drawer, in the basement, or in some old hard drive.
So what?
Elementary, my dear Watson… :-)))
What do I find here?
In principle you’ll meet with carefully selected images most of which you couldn’t find elsewhere: not on the web, not on a flea market, not on the sidewalk peddled by a clochard dressed in rags.
All created by me with various tools: digital painting, cameras, pen drawing, and more recently also AI – the latter always heavily postprocessed and modified to achieve some special light effect or to give the work an atmosphere that even a sophisticated AI couldn’t provide (or occasionally also to remove some supernumerary finger, but don’t tell it anyone ;-D )
Another genre you’ll find here is a choice of engravings carefully scanned from my collection of ancient books and retouched to my satisfaction. Those you could actually find elsewhere, unlikely but possibly in some respectable dusty old tome, stained with mold and eroded by time, while mine are as perfect as I could (re)make them.
So all you want here is to show off and I cannot buy your works, right?
Wrong: in principle this isn’t a commercial site, but it’s so difficult to resist the flattery of someone who likes one of my works so much that he or she wishes to part with a few small bills to have it. That’s one of the rewards of the artist: money is hardly the best measurement unit of appreciation but sometimes it comes close enough 😉
There’s a catch though: if you’re hungry and short on time you just stop at McDonalds, order cheesburger and coke, eat, pay your bill and leave fed and reasonably satisfied. But if you want to have a romantic dinner with your sweetheart you go to a good restaurant, chat briefly and amicably with the maitre d’ about what you should order, nibble at the specialties you’ve been served, sip your wine, enjoy every moment of the sweet company and the precious evening.
Well, even if my prices are suspiciously affordable, I’m not McDonalds… 😉
All you may have here cash&carry is the image(s) of your choice printed on the best quality paper, in a limited choice of formats, shipped at your address. Only in this way I can minimize the time and toil it would take me and thus, so to speak, offer you a fine steak at the price barely higher than that of a hamburger. Which by no means rules out the possibility of a friendly mail exchange, quite the contrary!
Else, if you want it in any other form, we get in touch and consider together how I can best meet your wishes: instead of hanging it in your study or living room, you want to use it on the internet, or to illustrate a book of yours, or to decorate a flyer? Would you like to have it as a digital image to print by yourself? Do you need worldwide exclusivity?
There are many possibilities. And, inevitably, also some limits that you may find better specified here (together with the humanly unavoidable – though heavily humanized – legal mumbo-jumbo).
