Art Marketing
ART MARKETING--TO MARKET OR NOT TO MARKET
With over fifty years teaching experience, I have seen many of my students' skills and talents develop through my art classes. At the end of the classes, and especially in the advanced classes, when they are flushed with success and eager to be part of the art world, the topic of marketing their art work is often discussed.
Art Marketing is a topic not all students want to deal with. Characteristically,outgoing students are eager to approach a gallery with their work. There are some students who are reluctant to show their work, feeling they feel are not ready to expose their creative endeavors to the public, I respect their feelings.
Art is very personal. Development of artistic skills and techniques is an intimate experience. The soul of an artist is represented by their artwork. So, it is no wonder that some students reply, "I'm just really not ready to show my work," or "Maybe next year," or "It's not important to me right now."
For those students that are interested in marketing their art work I give some guidelines for finding a good venue for their initial exposure. My main emphasis is to keep going in spite of the many challenges they will face.
A DIALOG WITH YOUR WORK
It is important to have a direction toward development of your artwork and to keep that development alive. The very act of creativity can be dulled or detoured by presupposing future works. Creative dialogue at its best is organic in growth and changes with each successive work which causes an adjustment in direction: a revelation, an inspiration that alters the creative path. Your creative work has a life of its own which grows and is nourished by communication with its creator--which is you.
BECOMING AN ASSEMBLY LINE
Your work sells! You have a successful and profitable "niche" market and buyers look for your same style year. The market will always be best for your artwork that remains pretty much the same as it guarantees its reliable value. It is regrettable, however, that many artists in this creative stasis, refuse to develop their full capabilities of creating new and innovative methods, styles and images from their expertise. They may be forever tied to the intrinsic values of their work. That said, having stayed in a particular style myself and reaped modest rewards, I have reliably changed directions many times and ventured into new territory to explore different images and skills. With that shift I saw reduced sales and my "fans" diminished.
ARE YOU A SURVIVOR?
Financial consultants can help your money problems. Consignment stores can supply good, used clothing, shoes and other useful items. Maybe you can find a roofer who will set up a payment schedule for the repair work. This will help you to survive and encourage your hopes and positive attitude which may have tanked for you with the stock market and the recession of 2008 and never from which you may not have quite fully recovered.
We've all gone a bit far thinking that running fast and acting quickly will help us become more solvent. That may happen in the movies but in a pandemic and challenging economy we are running for cover--back to our porches, back to dinners at night around the dining room table, back to short-distance driving, buying cheaper products and looking for sales and low-priced items in the grocery store. And the art market has taken a hit also.
And from my own experience I can say that surviving as an artist, even a part time artist, takes courage, confidence and determination. It helps to be able to show your work in a gallery or some other type venue, like your church, Kiwanis club, community art center or even periodic tag sales.
Presenting your artwork to others makes you aware of their responses, and although we all seek compliments and encouragement, even negative responses are useful to see ourselves as others see us.
I have an obligation to the first viewer--myself, and I try as best I can to be in close alignment with my creative abilities and inspirations in that personal relationship. The "second circle" of friends and other viewer' s response is important, but it does not determine how I research and develop my own art work.
Website hosts which display your artwork and introduce you to the global community can provide Paypal purchasing or contact links to pricing and purchasing. Websites like these are especially helpful for beginning artists interested in launching display of their artwork online. Consider purchasing a domain that describes yourself, you venue and content and link to social media like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc. Many website hosts offer extra services for promoting and monetizing for extra fees.
I also have, over the years, had several websites displaying and monetizing my artwork. With my Gallery on this website I can easily update it with new work so it is always my most current representation of what I am working on.
QR codes on the artwork labels permit viewers to scan with a QR scan app and purchase directly. I find that although it is very convenient to be able to pay for the artwork and then take it off the wall, not many do it. Perhaps they are uncomfortable with that type of purchase.
Please view my website Gallery link below and the other links I have had for my previous artwork. They may help you envision your art online and encourage you to place your art on the Internet with a website platform.
Go to my Gallery on this website!
n the past I have had my artwork on several websites. Seacoast is an example representing my previous coastal theme artwork online, most of which is no longer available, but serves as an archive of past work.
I encourage my students and you, as well, to review the many website offerings online to see which one is right for you.
Click here to view my Seacoast Online Gallery.
How do you market your art? Do you want to? Do you have other strategies than those listed here? Are you successful in selling your artwork? Do you find marketing your art to be a real challenge? Contact me! I welcome your comments, suggestions and questions!
Real Feedback
I work for a Recreation & Parks Department and I was online searching for some art projects to use for our summer day camp program (and secretly for myself to satisfy the little artist in me!) I look forward to taking some of your online lessons.
Deb
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I'm 50 and going to retire soon. I always wanted to be able to draw so now is the time. I saw your website and you sent me the classes link.What you said about my work I sent you was right on!
Much improved, I'm hummin'!
Mac B, Toledo, Ohio
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Hello, I have been drawing portraits lately and feel your crosshatching method has been very helpful! My shading has improved immensely!I will work on the line drawing as soon as I have time! Rose
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My eight year old son likes to draw. You sent me the drawing lessons and I am helping him with them. We are having fun and hey, guess what, I'm learning to draw too!
Helga V, Sweden
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You said everybody can draw, even if they can't draw a straight line. So I am working on how you told me to do the still life and really am having fun! Just want you to know I'm drawing and shading and love it!
Millie
Quotes from famous artists from Artquotes.net:
"It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture." Paul Cezanne
"I am out to introduce a psychic shock into my painting, one that is always motivated by pictorial reasoning: that is to say, a fourth dimension." Marc Chagall
"At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since." Salvador Dali
"One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself." "Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master." Leonardo da Vinci
"Cezanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting." Henri Matisse
"Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment." Claude Monet
"Every good painter paints what he is."Jackson Pollock
"Practise what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know." Rembrandt van Rijn
"The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting." Vincent Van Gogh
"Why do people think artists are special? It's just another job."
"Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches." Andy Warhol
"I had reservations about making art a business, but I got over it."
"There are not only more people collecting, there are more people collecting for the wrong reasons, basically as the latest get rich quick scheme. They buy art like lottery tickets." Mary Boone (art collector and gallery owner)
"Warhol turned to photographs of stars, as the Renaissance turned to antiquities, to find images of gods." David Sylvester (art critic)