Art is Life

As a (half-assed) self-representing artist on ebay, I constantly watch the listings for what's popular and who's hot. Debra Hurd started small and got big in a hurry (by listing intelligently and persistently, and because her art has the refined, gallery-worthy feel of pieces that are destined to increase in value), and though I enjoy her newer, more colorful palette-knife oils, I absolutely adore the earliest works she offered on ebay, most of which depicted jazz musicians in blue-lit rooms, rainy cityscapes, and wooded parks at dusk. This piece, titled Crossing, may very well be my favorite painting by a contemporary artist. Her work almost always moves for hundreds of dollars (sometimes over a thousand), and it's rare to see an artist consistently rank so high on the dollar scale on ebay. Her work always feels so comforting to me, even though I usually don't enjoy textured oils (and boy, does she lay it on thick). They exude a little benign mystery and a boundless energy. When I watched it rain one afternoon in New York City this June I thought, "Wow. It's just like she said it would be." Take a look at what she has listed now.