Sorry, Dad. I Specialize in Cigarettes and Vintage Ashtrays Now

I can hear it already. But stick with me, because there’s something in here for every artist wondering what on earth they should be painting.

I specialize in cigarettes and vintage ashtrays now. Not landscapes. Not barns at golden hour. Ashtrays. Amber glass ones, heavy cut-crystal ones, the chunky ceramic kind that used to sit on your grandmother’s coffee table. And I love it. It’s fun, and honestly, it’s kind of easy. A little like painting the back of my own hand.

The Girl Who Bought the Cigarettes

My mom smoked everywhere. The kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, the car. When I was seven, I’d walk up to the Becker’s counter and buy her cigarettes while she waited outside in the car in her housecoat, watching. So these things are familiar to me. Good or bad, they carry a warmth. Or maybe it’s the time they belong to that feels warm, a time that’s quietly slipping away.

When I went looking for vintage ashtrays recently at my local Value Village and the pawn shop, I found exactly two. Two. And they were stylish. That scarcity told me something.

When Smoking Was Stylish

Here’s the part I have the most fun with. There was an era when a cigarette went with a glass of red wine and ruby lipstick, not a plastic ashtray and jogging pants. I love painting that. Beautiful women smoking, usually at a bar, lit like they own the place. It’s glamour and smoke and a little bit of danger, all the things today’s world has scrubbed clean.

I haven’t even run the keyword searches on this kind of art yet (that’s coming, and I’ll report back). But my gut says there’s a market out there for the analogue, the nostalgic, the slightly raunchy. People miss it.

Shiny Things, It Turns Out

So how did I fall into this niche? I’ve always been fond of vintage everything, mostly clothes. But somewhere in my mid-40s I started appreciating the rest of it. Shiny things. Colourful things. And vintage ashtrays are all of that at once. Amber and smoky grey, ruby glass that catches the light, brass with a bit of tarnish, cut crystal with those heavy geometric edges. Go look at the listings on eBay sometime. They’re tiny sculptures.

A few months back I painted a single cigarette burning in a cheap plastic ashtray, almost as a joke. It sold. It got more attention than I expected, so I painted another, this time in a gorgeous ashtray, and voila. Honestly, I could paint these for the rest of my life and be happy.

There’s a Collector for Your Grilled Cheese

Here’s why I’m telling you all this, and it isn’t to sell you on ashtrays. It’s to nudge you toward your own thing.

Finding your niche as an artist isn’t about chasing whatever’s trending. Right now it feels like half of Canada is painting landscapes, and they’re lovely, but there are hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Meanwhile the field is wide open for whatever weird, specific thing you actually adore. Cereal boxes. Diner desserts. Retro toasters. I promise you there is someone out there searching for a painting of a grilled cheese sandwich right now.

Your niche doesn’t have to be respectable. Mine certainly isn’t. Painting a bad habit from the good old days is about as far from tasteful as it gets. But it’s simply what I know, and I happen to adore a beautiful ashtray and a woman smoking in style. That’s the whole trick. Pick the thing that’s so familiar to you it’s almost boring, the thing you could talk about forever, and lean all the way in.

Report Back Coming Soon

The bonus is what it does for your visibility. When you go narrow, you stop competing with everyone and start being the person people find when they search for that oddly specific thing. Fewer competitors, more devoted fans.

I’ll check my analytics in a few weeks and let you know how many searches this stuff actually gets. Who knows. Painting a bad habit from a prettier era might just end up paying a few bills.

So. What’s your ashtray?