Rugby League, I love the sport and have done ever since my Grandad would carry me to the Featherstone Rovers Games on his shoulders, I think i was 5 at the time and they are memories i'll sherish for a lifetime. I've always helped out the game where i can and have provided artwork to many SL and National League clubs over the years at kind of mates rates, as even from being very small I've always thought the game got the short end of the stick as far as media coverage was concerned compared to anything that anyone well spoken followed- like Football, Rugby union, Tennis, Golf, Cricket etc. ( I'm an ex coalminer and someone with a posh voice even shut my pit down! or was he American?)
So after being contacted last year by firstly a Charity claiming to raise funds for injured players and then Warrington Wolves I began to think i may have the chance to earn a modest living doing the job i love within the sport I have followed all my life and hoped to supply as many SL clubs as possible with my artwork, as retail sales items and Sponsors Presentations. what more can a man ask from life? plus helping raise funds for the injured guys added evenmore a sence of pride and worthyness to the task. I thought my artwork would add something to the game, as my passion for the game i feel is evident in every RL piece i create and i hoped it would add something substantial and collectable which would become a part of it's history and value. It may still do so given time. I guess it's all about finding the right people who see where im coming from and the possibilities involved.
I must admit it's been the worst year long experience of my life.
The Charity saga- A guy phones me out of the blue and asks if i could create him some artwork of past GB Legends like Billy Boston, Alex Murphy etc. he told me the story of the charity and how they raised money to help people who were injured whilst playing the Greatest Game. So i instantly agreed to help, what could i say apart from yes, it was a real honour for me to be able to help in this way. We came to agreement where i get 20% of sales of Ltd edition prints.
done correctly it would make them around 80k per year.
Everything is running smoothly untill I notice one of the prints for sale on ebay with a £65. bid on it, the artwork was framed atrociously so i contacted the charity, bearing in mind id offered to frame the prints for far less than he was paying anyhow so i expected a pro job on them, not the cheap looking bingo prize he'd turned them into. I knew if everything was done to spec the prints would easily raise £150. i wanted to help the charity all round but my plea for improvement fell on deaf ears, untill one day the guy calls and tells me the deals off and im not getting paid. It was unbeleivable how guy just switched off totally, like id interfered with "he who shal not be questioned"! no converse no anything, no money most importantly as id invested 3 months work into this venture.
There wasnt enough money in the job for the legal people to be interested, plus i'd failed to draw up a contract, which eats me to the core daily. But i never thought this would happen with a charity, i managed to get a few of the original pieces back but the sneaky so and so switched a few for prints. How come I have no lawful protection against things like that and most worryingly of all was how come no one within the game at any leve was interested in my plight.
No comments:
Post a Comment