One down, 51 to go

Winter Light ©2010 Karen Mathison Schmidt
16 x 20 x 3/8 • acrylic on heavy duty artist’s board
• dovetail slot in back for hanging flush against wall
• sides painted dark umber
• gloss varnish

Scroll down for close-up details!

$250 • PURCHASE this fauve landscape painting

Even though technically this is the first day of the 2nd week of the new year, I’ve decided to post three official professional goals for the year, the better to hold myself accountable for achieving them.

KAREN’S OFFICIAL PROFESSIONAL GOAL NO. 1 FOR 2010:

52 finished paintings

I was looking back over my Just the Paintings blog, and I see that I completed 22 paintings in 2007 (there are 26 posts for that year, but four of those paintings were done before I started blogging), 28 in 2008, and 41 in 2009. So, in keeping with this trend, and this being my first full year as a full-time painter, and considering the fact that I’m doing more painting in formats larger than 6 x 6 inches, I’ve decided to set a goal of 52 finished paintings by December 31, 2010. It’s definitely do-able, but I will have to keep up a steady pace to git ’er done!

KAREN’S OFFICIAL PROFESSIONAL GOAL NO. 2 FOR 2010:

New website design.

Right now I’m using the website service provider Vistaprint, which is great, and I highly recommend it, but now I want to design a website from scratch so I can make it look exactly the way I want. I’ve downloaded a 30-day trial version of Sandvox - my inner design geek is very excited about this. We’ll see how it goes.

KAREN’S OFFICIAL PROFESSIONAL GOAL NO. 3 FOR 2010:

Get my art into a real brick-n-mortar gallery.

There are a lot of possibilities in this region. I’m really going to get serious about this art thing.

So there are my professional goals for 2010.

I’m brewing a couple of five-year goals as well ... I may share those down the line, but right now they’re in the brainstorming phase.