Have you sold anything?

The most frequent question people ask me on the street is, have I sold a painting recently, followed by how much? Normally I say something stupid, but I have a new "theory".

So my answer now is, "Galleries do that part of the business". If they ask me what galleries, i'll make them do part of the work and ask them "what galleries do u go to?" [i.e. they don't go to galleries, they have no interest in painting, and the questions are really a put down ... but i don't want to judge so i continue]. Depending on the answer, my next response will be, "well search galleries on the internet ... Pollock has paintings like mine, so google galleries and Pollock, and send them email asking them if they could sell my paintings."

Now IF the person goes thru all this, really i'm feeling a bit guilty, but the normal response at this point is "that's way too much money" ... so my response to this is, "go to flickr and download one of my pictures, print it, mark it up with a pen, and I will sign it for free as a augmented original." After all, the point of my work is that the observer creates, and if they've done that much work, I'll augment it. [this is a general ongoing offer btw]