Scarlet Quince Ramblings

I mailed a letter to the Escher Foundation about three weeks ago since I can’t reach them by email or fax, and asked them to send me an email to let me know that they got the letter. So far, nothing.

Someone recently suggested several works by artist Jim Daly, who primarily paints nostalgic pictures of children playing. He has a web site which shows a bunch of pictures available for licensing but my email bounced and the fax machine doesn’t answer. I wonder if the mailing address is any good? I realize that a lot of people pay someone to set up a web site for them and then it’s never maintained again but it’s SO frustrating.

I regularly get requests for Jack Vettriano’s work (“The Singing Butler”, “Dance Me to the End of Love”) but the gallery that represents him says that he won’t license his work for cross stitch. I asked them to point my web site out to him so he could see that this is not typical cross stitch but they didn’t dignify that with an answer. I suppose if I was paying someone to see that I was not bothered, I’d like them to see that I wasn’t bothered (but then I usually leave the sound up for TV commercials in case there’s a product I’m interested in, so I don’t really see myself having someone else do my filtering for me).

Another piece we’ve been turned down on is Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”. I’m amazed at how many people have asked for that. I understand that his estate has decided that the ubiquitousness of the image is cheapening it (a little late, since it’s on everything from posters to mouse pads).

The Rene Magritte estate won’t give permission to use his works either. They are copyrighted for another 29 years so that pretty much takes care of that.

Today I emailed off for permission to use several pieces by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. It doesn’t take very long to ask the question but it will probably be months before I get an answer (and I will have to follow up in a couple of weeks, if past experience is any guide, to ask the Artists Rights Society rep if she saw the previous email, and then she will ask me to send it again). And I don’t know how good the chances are of getting permission at affordable rates, either.