(3.5 minute read)

Why I planted 500 varieties of Irises and how an introverted artist (me) who can't cook ended up owning and running a tea house and tourist centre, complete with display gardens. And what I learned and how it relates to an art career.

In 1996 I had a bus tour come out from the city to tour my studio. One person stayed to look at and purchase art, while the rest wondered through my studio and out into our yard and farm. So instead of thinking I needed more people interested in art (my art in particular), I focused on getting more people to visit. Kind of like lots of likes on Instagram.

Iris Awakening 6 x 6" acrylic

First better gardens.

We live in the country, 20 miles from the edge of the city and three miles off the highway. Irises are my husband's favourite flower, they bloom in June, which would be a nice start to the summer traffic. So, I planted 500 varieties of bearded iris.

Yes, more people came, but many of them said how much they would like a Tea House. Right - now that I'm too busy to paint in the summer, why not turn my studio, which was the old farmhouse, into a Tea House. Our friends from the city came out and helped us build a screened porch on my studio that would be where clients sipped tea, which became lunches and fancy desserts. I had to learn about Canada's food safety regulations and permits. I also needed to learn about plants, as now it was important to have display gardens with more than irises. This led to setting up shelves with lights to start seedlings in the basement of my studio, which lead to building a green house on the side of my studio.

We now needed a one-day event to start the season off. My friend, a music teacher, and I decided an Iris Festival would be perfect. She arranged for musicians and music students to play at scheduled times at all the different gardens, so as you walked from one garden to the next the music from one garden would fade out and the music at the next garden would fade in. This actually worked. And thanks to my wonderful family and friends and the amazing women running the tea house it was all a great success.

Except... I didn't have time to paint and ended up selling the crafts others made and found out paintings are not a good fit for a tea house art gallery. And we were open 7 days a week, no down time. Plus, the time I was spending gardening and doing paperwork, neither of which were my passion, was taking its toll. The winters ended up with me ordering, starting and growing thousands of plants and the spring was planting them. The falls were preparing our gardens for the next year.

I ran the display gardens for 3 years and the tea house for two. I was definitely going into burn out mode, and the endeavour wasn't paying for itself, so we closed. As it turned out, as my mother-in-law became sick and I needed to drive to the next community to help out most of that summer.

The lessons I learned. Be really clear not only on your goals but also clear of the intentions behind the  goals. Keep checking to see if the new idea is a straight line to that goal or are there elements that will distract you. And when doing a cash flow, is there enough projected income to pay you a salary, so if you need to hire someone to take over one of your jobs, like pulling weeds or framing and shipping paintings, you can hire and pay someone. And if you're spending the majority of your time and energy doing something that is not your passion, you risk burn out. I was working 80 hours weeks for free. But what a learning experience it all was! My apologies for yelling, it really was an valuable  experience.

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I've studied art and artists for over 50 years. And on and off during that time worked as a professional artist. Some subjects I'm planning to write about: my experiences and things I learned, artists I admire and why, my new paintings, inspirations, techniques, etc. and answering or finding answers to any questions you might have.

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