Cara and I have been doing these paintings for about a year now. We've sold a lot of work and we've had the pleasure of doing a lot of commissions for people. We have been working as full-time artists for a few years now and the works on this site have been a great side-project for us.
The reality of this work is that it is not sustainable. That is to say, for the amount of time that goes into each piece, we are making a bit below minimum wage. Another reality of this work is that it is very likely that in the near future, we will no longer be producing paintings of this sort. (That said, we do plan to keep making new works at least through the end of this year.)
Despite those factors, we love doing these works as we really, truly love craft beer. We very much appreciate all of the people who have spent hard-earned money on these pieces, as they have enabled us to continue scraping by as artists for another year. While this may go without saying, this has never been a cynical attempt at making money for us. There are some fundamental contradictions in creating fine art of this sort, as we are pricing the works as low as possible, but to the average person - that "low price" is still a significant amount of money.
All of that said, it has recently come to our attention that someone is attempting to imitate our work in bulk, by farming the painting out to artists in the Philippines and offering to pay the artists what would amount to something like 50 cents an hour to create "40 to 50" paintings (
see Craigslist ad here -
imgur link if ad is gone). It would appear that this person saw what we are doing and saw that there was money in it, without thinking about how much work and passion was involved. We don't mind a bit of competition and if someone could do what we are doing better and cheaper, so be it. But this clearly is not that. I attempted to contact the person who posted the ad to see if I was mistaken, but received no response. It is our opinion that if these farmed-out works are produced, they would be a cynical exploitation of second-world artists and would very likely be a bad, insincere facsimile of the works we produce.
Thanks again to everyone that has supported and promoted our work, especially those that have bought and commissioned paintings to put in their home, brewery, or pub.
Cheers!
Cara & Louie
