Artists! 5 essential goals for art success in 2020 : A backside kicking list.
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Selling Your Art Is Your Duty! – A Passionate Plea From The Heart…
A few weeks back I received an intriguing email from Martin Stellar. He had a particular {and traumatic} life experience to draw on which had taught him a very important lesson about art marketing. I will leave him to share this vitally important lesson with you in this guest post. Thanks Martin…
If you signed up to Helen’s ebook series (which you totally should), you’ll have read about the elephant in the room: That strange aversion to selling that so many artisans and creatives live with.
I agree with Helen’s teaching: She says that we needn’t feel anything negative when it comes to selling or marketing our art, but I want to make an even stronger point:
As an artist, it’s not enough to just accept sales, selling and marketing as a necessary part of the artist’s life.
You need to understand that selling your art is your moral and ethical duty.
Yep, I really said that.
And I have a good reason for it too:
As an artist, you owe it to the world to get mighty comfortable with marketing and selling, and to get at least moderately good at it.
Because you make a difference. You make the world a more beautiful place.
Your work, your daily toil and your innermost creativity: all of that conspires to bring more beauty to the world, one print; one canvass or one photo at a time.
If you’re an artist, you believe in the art you create (no matter how deep down that may be, hidden by a public mask of insecurity).
If you didn’t believe in your art, you wouldn’t live how you live and make what you make.
And if you believe in your art, you owe it to the world to sell as much of it as you possibly can.
Sidenote: My editor tells me I should talk about sharing your art, instead of selling – she makes a good point, but I believe selling is the single best way to share your art.
Anyway: If your art can improve a house, a room, a face or a street… bring something beautiful or meaningful into the world… Then OF COURSE you should sell it. Tons of it, if you can.
All this is of course a generously grandiloquent way to look at things.
After all, we don’t all create deeply inspired one-off pieces
I can understand that if your business is, say, selling printed t-shirts of your own design, you might not feel that you contribute as much as someone who creates unique life-size sculptures.
But think again.
Your t-shirts also add to the total.
People buy them because it gives them pleasure, they enjoy owning and wearing them, they like to be seen wearing them and so on.
I’d say that with each t-shirt sold, you just added a bit of happiness or enjoyment to someone’s life. Right? Right.
It really makes no difference what you make, how many, how big they are, how much they cost.
If you consider yourself an artist that inherently means that you make things that are meant to enhance the world
Now tell me, don’t you think this not only justifies and necessitates, but even obliges you as an artist to find as many people as you can who will buy what you make?
Should it not be your mission to make people’s lives a bit better with your art, as often as you can?
I’d say so.
It’s your duty to sell (read: share) your art.
You make the world better, more meaningful and more beautiful. Each time you create, you do the world a favour.
Each time you sell, doubly so.
What do I know?
Now, you might wonder where I get the nerve to come at you with all this high-faluting pomp and circumstance.
After all, I’m not even an artist myself. I couldn’t draw a stick-figure to save my life.
No, my genetic makeup is similar, but not quite the same: I’m what’s known as an artisan.
Specifically, I’m a bespoke tailor. Or used to be, before I became a marketing writer.
It’s a long story, but the short of it is that I used to have my own tailoring company, in which I myself created high end bespoke suits, fully handmade.
For a while I ran a blog and I ranked nicely on Google, just below Savile Row tailors, and I was getting a decent reputation on several forums.
Prices were also up there with Savile Row, and I was getting some sales.
At some point my father passed away, and I ended up with a sizeable inheritance that I decided to invest in my business.
Things looked like I was set for success.
But all that money, (all 120,000 pounds of it. Ouch.), I lost over the course of five years.
Here’s why my tailoring business tanked, forcing me to change careers:
I refused to really come to terms with the (very high) intrinsic value of what I created with my own two hands
Until the end, when I ran that company into the ground, I always approached the marketing and sales of it all as if it were a necessary evil.
And the only reason for that, I realise now, is that I didn’t value my stuff the way I should have.
The way you should value your stuff. Which I’m guessing you might not really do, just like me, back then.
And you may take all this as literally as you like (hint: the more literally you take it, the more your sales will soar).
You see, aside from the fact that creating a suit is in itself creating a piece of art (provided you do it by hand like bespoke tailors ought to), there is the value to the customer, and in that sense art and artisanry are very similar.
In both situations, the value to the customer sort of has no limits
You would be amazed by what people are willing to pay. Trust me, I’m a marketer (these days), and I know exactly how much the right people are willing to pay for art.
Or for my suits for that matter. Because that was the amazing thing I discovered: You can charge literally anything you want, and you’ll have people buying it.
It gets even better: the higher your prices, the more eager people will be to buy
That’s something I hope Helen will allow me to explain at a later point. Provided of course that she’d like to have me tell more of the story of how a young tailor had a chance and blew it.
For now, I just really want to hope that you see my point, because you so much deserve to live with the confident (and slighty bold) attitude I’ve been describing.
What you do makes a difference. Make it happen more, make a bigger difference.
Even if it’s one printed mug at a time.
You’re an artist
It’s your nature to create beauty
You’re an artist
It’s your duty to sell the beauty you create
Martin Stellar is technically a copywriter and marketing consultant, but really he’s one of those people who can’t help trying to motivate and inspire people, given half a chance. He blogs at www.martinstellar.com, where much motivating and inspiring takes place, and he’s usually good fun on twitter.
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How NOT To Be A Starving Artist { The 3 crucial tips that will help you sell your Art}
Being a starving artist sounds delightfully romantic, I know, but if you’ve ever actually been there you know that cold clenching feeling that makes you wonder if you shouldn’t have listened to your parents and studied engineering. Fortunately that doesn’t have to be the solution. If you aren’t making any money as an artist then you can usually solve it by addressing the following common problems.
You Aren’t Selling Yourself
Artists are often artists because they don’t want to talk to other people. Unfortunately, that’s simply not how it works. A freelance artist is a small business, and that means marketing. Putting your art on ebay or Etsy isn’t going to generate a lot of interest compared to real, hands on marketing. Go to local events to display your work, talk to small business owners (bar and restaurant owners specifically) and get them to post your work on their walls. If there are no events in your area, you can start your own (gasp!). It’s actually not as crazy as it sounds, simply round up a few other artists in your area, research cheap (or free) possible venues. Any place with a dance floor has enough room to work with, and business owners will be happy to accommodate you if you can convince them that you can bring in business.
Your Art Isn’t Original Enough
If you find you’re already doing all of the marketing that you could be it’s time to turn around and look at your work. Are you being original? Can a potential customer go elsewhere and find something in the same style, with similar content? What’s your own response to it? Does it make you sad, amused, or terrified? If you don’t have much of a response to your own work, then the odds are good that no one else does either. You have a chance to say something in a way that no one has ever said it before, it’s a shame to waste that chance.
If you used to do fairly well, but just can’t get past a creative block that has you doing essentially the same thing over and over again, resulting in a boring, one sided portfolio, you can check out another post that I wrote on dealing with that issue
Your Prices Are Wrong
What if you’re working all the time, and your art is selling, but you’re barely making ends meet? Clients are constantly hounding you and reminding you that they can find someone else to do the same work more cheaply, or try to get you to rework or modify work repeatedly. This one is as simple as it sounds. Raise your prices, perhaps even double them. Your work costs whatever you charge, period. If you don’t think it’s worth more, go back and read the earlier paragraph. You don’t want people buying your work just because it’s the cheapest around; you want them to buy it because they love your work. People being bullied and cowed into working for criminally low prices are the biggest reason that new artists so often find themselves in huge financial trouble, and the answer is simply to unapologetically charge what you’re worth.
Edward Stuart is an art and decoration enthusiast as well as an online publisher for Canvas Art. He frequently blogs on the topics of art, art history, design, and home decor.
This post was written by a guest writer. if you would like to write a guest post for us please get in contact with your topic ideas.
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Low Budget Studio – Incredible Photos of Your Art
Chris Garrett, photographer and large format printing expert, shares some ways that you can create professional quality photographs, of your art or subjects, with very little equipment or expense, in your own home.
I have spent so much time limiting myself to outdoor photography because I didn’t have access to a studio. Without the right lighting and backdrop, it’s difficult to get the high quality photographs I wanted. What I didn’t realize was that it is very simple to create a studio to use either inside or outside and get amazing results. Most of what I needed I already had and what I didn’t was very inexpensive compared to all brand new equipment. Whether you’re looking to move your photography indoors or to capture the nuance and quality of another type of art on film, these tips can help you to achieve professional photographs in your home or workspace.
What you can use:
- Two ladders
- An 8 ft. pole works great
- Clamps
- Various colors of sheets (make sure your colors are very rich, not faded from washing)
- Foam boards (for reflecting light)
- Your choice of lighting (natural light works very well)
Setting up your space.
If you are working indoors, you just need the room to set up. Moving furniture temporarily works, using the garage is great, but you should try to position it to where you have access to some natural light. When using the white foam board as a light reflecting tool, you can manipulate it to do pretty much anything you want.
So place the ladders on each end of the set. Use the pole to rest between them on the tallest rung. Clamp your sheets to the pole and lay one on the ground if you want a solid backdrop. Your set should be in the prime lighting location if you are doing them outdoors, so basically you don’t want to have your subject facing the sun or you will get squinting or watering of the eyes. Use the foam board to reflect and manipulate the light in your favor. If you are in a dark area, making your own soft boxes will give you some great results, many use a flood lamp that can be moved around or even use a flashlight behind your props for some backlighting.
You can also try substituting a silver car shade for the white foam board, but they will produce a much harsher light and may cause shadows. The white board makes the light softer and more diffused. The best way to get great at this is to practice. You should be able to take amazing photos with hardly any Photoshop time.
So, it is easy to say that you don’t have to have a dedicated space in your home to use a studio set up. You may need an assistant until you figure out your own way of doing things. But this is a great alternative to spending a fortune that you may not have on equipment that works in the same way. Play around with it and create photos that people will want to hang on their wall or use for customized wallpaper as a mural. No one will know you haven’t been doing this forever!
For me, this is a set up that works and is portable if I need it to be. Feel free to make your own modifications, but just don’t be afraid of studio photography. It does get really hard to do pictures in the middle of winter when your client wants family portraits and there is a foot of snow outside. Get away from being a seasonal photographer and be ready to shoot anytime on any day!
Chris Garrett is a large format printing expert and freelance writer for the custom printed wallpaper expert Megaprint.com. He frequently blogs on the topics of design and printing.
Photo credit Alexis Godschalk @ photo.net & Tackorama
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3 Great Local Networking Ideas for Artists {Plus A Common Mistake You MUST Avoid}
Guest writer Edward Stuart has some useful ideas to help artists market their work locally.
Let’s talk about how to sell your work.
While we definitely want to encourage people to market themselves over the web and build networks that take advantage of its global nature, the advent of long-distance internet marketing has left many of the newer, non-established entrants into the art world behind. That is not, of course, because younger artists don’t know how to work on the internet, quite the contrary, rather it’s because they’ve left behind and forgotten traditional, yet very effective, marketing methods that secure a more steady (though generally drearier) income locally. Local, in-person communication is vital for building a steady flow of commissions.
Let’s take a look at a few important strategies…
For Graphic Designers: The Phone Book
No, you’re not going to try your hand at telemarketing. Go into the Yellow Pages and find your local screen printing and embroidery shops. Call them up and ask them if they’d be willing to refer clients in need of an artist to you in exchange for a referral fee. These people talk to small business owners, school clubs, and private people in need of graphic design work every single day.
Ideally you’ll get the shops to display some of your best portfolio pieces to inspire their customers to make use of you. Once you’re working with someone on a t-shirt design you have a foot in the door and can work with them to redesign their logo, website, or other tasks in your realm of expertise like designing fliers for their marketing efforts.
For Fine Artists: Cafes and Bars
If your expertise lies more in the fine-art realm you’ll need to get your art out in front of an audience, and preferably in a setting in which they’re inclined to spend money. Conveniently supporting local businesses and artists is a surging trend all over the country, meaning that bars and cafes in your area are most likely looking for good local artwork to put on their walls as cheaply as possible.
Simply call them up and offer to hang your work on their walls (with price tags!). If a patron wants to buy a piece they can pay the business and the business pays you. To generate more interest you can also visit the various establishments regularly, make friends with the regulars, and sketch out concepts in full view of the other patrons. The crowd you’ll automatically draw (heh, get it?) will help to generate interest, and any friends you make will enthusiastically point out that they know the artist who drew that thing on the wall over there to everyone else that comes in.
For Illustrators: The Local Writing Community
What if you’re an illustrator? Your art isn’t fancy enough to hang on the wall, and you don’t go around designing logos or webpages. Don’t worry! We’ve got you covered. Think about all the people who’ve ever told you that they’re “writing a novel”, “writing a children’s book”, or “writing a screen play”. There are many more people who are going to attempt to get their written work published (or will self-publish!) than there are good artists to make quality illustrations for their work. Obviously not everyone needs, wants, or can afford illustrations, but if you can find where writers hang out you’ll inevitably find work.
Get on the internet, and instead of just checking how your own social media marketing is going, go and spend some time googling for writing clubs in your area. Contact their members, attend their meetings, make friends with them, and show them why you looked them up.
IMPORTANT – Don’t make this common mistake ~ When working with individuals rather than businesses remember not to work for free. It’s easy to slip into idealism when an aspiring writer promises you a cut of future profits, but at the end of the day their work is not guaranteed to succeed, and you’ll have put the work in for pure idealism’s sake, which won’t put food on your table.
Edward Stuart is an art and decoration enthusiast as well as an online publisher for Canvas Art. He frequently blogs on the topics of art, art history, design, and home decor.
Image courtesy of Tack-O-Rama
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Did You Know Facebook Is Hiding Your Posts? Important – What You Need To Know About Promoted Posts
Facebook has become an important part of social media promotion for artists over the past few years. Many artists have come to rely on Facebook for the majority of their promotion, using it as their main web presence. However, big changes at Facebook recently will impact on the usefulness of Facebook for your art business now and into the future.
The worrying thing is that these changes have been introduced “under the radar” and so many artists will not be aware that anything is amiss. This is a quick overview post to explain what is going on and to offer some suggestions.
What is happening?
Over the past few months, the amount of people a Facebook post will reach has been being “turned down”. Messages are now seen by a smaller proportion of your Facebook page fans. According to various sources, messages now only reach around 15-20% of people who signed up to your Facebook page. But coincidentally, Facebook have a solution to help you reach those fans…
Head of advertising at Facebook, Gokul Rajaram, explains:
“Organically, you get anywhere from 15 percent to 20 percent of your fans, that you reach organically. In order to reach the remaining 80 to 85 percent, sponsoring posts is important.”
So, if you want to reach all the people who signed up to your page, as you did previously, you now need to pay Facebook to promote the post or the large majority of your fans will never see it.
Or as Richard Metzger writing on the Dangerous Minds blog puts it…
“In other words, through “Sponsored Stories,” brands, agencies and artists are now charged to reach their own fans—the whole reason for having a page—because those pages have suddenly stopped working.”
What are Sponsored Stories?
If you run a Facebook page you may have started to notice a little drop down “promote” menu appearing under some stories you post. Basically if you want to promote the post to be seen by everyone you are charged a fee depending on how many fans you have. This can vary between around $7 to $200 for a large fan base. This is PER POST so if you post a few times a day it will soon add up.
Why are Facebook doing this?
Facebook have hit hard times recently. After their much trumpeted launch on the stock market, shares plummeted in value as people began to realise that Facebook, for all it’s billions of users is hard to monetize. It’s advertising platform doesn’t work as well as Google ads because people primarily aren’t on Facebook to search for things to buy. Therefore Facebook now has to come up with a new way to make money and this is made all the more urgent by the fact that it now has a panicky set of shareholders at it’s back demanding it make them some money and fast! It has to work out new ways to make that money and it’s biggest commodity is YOU…
What does this mean for me and the future?
I think that the fact that Facebook has now changed it’s direction away from an advertising based monetizing model and turned its focus on ways to get money from it’s users is a significant development and sea change. We have all come to rely on Facebook as a FREE platform but it probably isn’t going to stay that way, at least for business users. There may be other ways that Facebook will be able to charge for full access in the future. Its fair enough that Facebook should want to charge for their services but as artists we often dont have the money to pay what they demand.
What should I do?
I think this is a definite warning sign to reduce your dependency on Facebook.
If you read these posts below you will know that I advocate having your own website.
10 Crucial Reasons why every artist needs their own hub website
The Best Website to Sell Art Online – The Truth
That way YOU are in control and no one can suddenly start to charge you for reaching the fans you spent your own time collecting. If you own your own domain name and website you are in control.
The steps you need to take in the future
We all love using Facebook for keeping up with our friends and you can still use it but it pays to have a plan B “just in case” for your art business. I think that Facebook’s recent changes mean that it is time to ensure that you are not left being solely reliant on Facebook for promoting your work. That way you are not left in a situation where you are forced to pay and have more control over how you interact with the people who like your art.
These steps will help you regain some control.
Step 1
{nb – this workaround may not be the best solution – see comments below. If anyone knows of a good way around this please add to comments – thanks}
Alert your fans to the issue and help them to see more of your posts. Ask them to do the following.
- Go to your page.
- Hover your mouse over where it says “LIKED” and click on “ADD TO INTERESTS LISTS”
- This will help your fans to be alerted to more of your posts without you having to pay to promote them.
Step 2
Move away from Facebook as your main promotional platform. Still use it but just don’t be solely reliant on it.
- Ensure you have your own website under your own domain name
For help with setting up your own site see this page Artists Websites | Getting it right {without stress} - Concentrate on building your own email list
What is your crucial secret weapon for selling art? : Lessons from “The Apprentice”
How to start your Artists Newsletter in 6 easy-peasy steps – A practical guide - Once you have your website and mailing list set up, try and migrate as many of your fans from your Facebook page to your website as possible. For example, you could run a competition on your website for one of your paintings, but people have to visit your site and sign up to your mailing list to enter. Keep promoting this on Facebook and you will be able to get some of your Facebook audience onto your website mailing list. You can then interact with them however you choose and are no longer totally dependent on the Facebook platform.
Have you paid Facebook to promote your work via a sponsored post? Would you do so? What do you think of these changes? Share with us in the comments.
External sources
Facebook – I want my friends back – Dangerous Minds
Broken on Purpose: Why Getting It Wrong Pays More Than Getting It Right – New York Observer
Facebook: Pay to promote your posts for garage sales, parties – CNET
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An Artist’s Guide To Crafting a USP That Sells
A guest post by Andrianes Pinantoan
USP is short for unique selling proposition.
A USP is what makes you unique in the marketplace. It’s a strategic consideration I think every artist needs to get right. Why?
Because the success of every tactic you’re going to implement to sell your art, be it SEO, TV advertising, social media or even good ol’ face to face pitch, will depend on how good your USP is.
Here’s an example: Walmart, as you may already know, is known for their low prices. Every piece of communication that comes out of their marketing department stresses that USP. So if you’re looking to buy something for cheap, guess who you’ll go to?
Of course, that’s not to say that being “the cheapest of them all” is a good USP – that kind of positioning is difficult to maintain and you need to move an enormous amount of products to hit your profit goal.
Most artists I know of, instead, try to serve everyone and anyone who will have them. What that does is dilute not only your brand, but also your focus. For example, when you could have been engineering a marketing campaign to reach your desired market, you’re busy doing customer service with current clients.
How important is that kind of focus? Check out this study.
What Makes Someone Successful?
In 2009, two researchers, Timothy Judge and Charlice Hurst, published a 2 decade long study looking at factors of what makes a person successful. They looked at pretty much everything: family income, neighbourhood, parent’s education, the kid’s school grades, etc.
What they found corresponds with other studies of its kind. Well-to-do families with educated parents produce children who are more likely to succeed when they graduate. And those who graduate near or at the top of their classes are more likely to be better compensated.
But there’s a small subset of people who seem to defy the odds. These people are the typical American entrepreneur story: they came from nowhere, had nothing, but went on to change the world.
What Judge and Hurst found is that these people have one thing in common: the belief that their decisions shape their future – that belief in turn, allows them to make decisive decisions.
The Importance of Decisive Decisions
Now you may wonder why I told you of that study. Well, here it is: when you decide on a USP, you’re going to have to cut out certain segments of the market that you may be perfectly capable of serving.
The people Judge and Hurst found are really good at this. Because they make decisive decisions, they are able to quit pursuing other tempting, viable opportunities – an ability arguably just as important as being able to choose the right segment to pursue.
For example, Bill Gates dropped out of college to build Microsoft and Steve Jobs to build Apple. So did Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. I’m sure you can think of a few more stories similar in nature.
It’s uncanny how all of them didn’t take the more “sensible” road of doing it part-time – an option most of us would have taken due to our inability to make decisive decisions.
It’s almost as if they subconsciously realize the amount of focus it would take to take a fledgling operation to the behemoth they are now.
Crafting a USP That Sells
The effectiveness of a USP, therefore, is only as good as the amount of focus you put into it.
Now the question is what should you focus on? If you have ever attended a marketing lecture in a university, they’d tell you there are only 3 ways: compete on price, quality and value. Not very useful, is it?
So I read half a dozen books on the subject and here are 5 ideas I derived:
1.Culture
Culture is a word I like to use to refer to a business’ story. If you’re an artist with a small business, make sure you use your story to your advantage. Why did you start this business? How did you go about it? What obstacles did you have to conquer?
Storytelling is one of the best ways to sell. Check out this great example from Dodocase.
2.Personality
As an artist, people don’t buy your products. They buy YOU. (For large corporations, people buy their brands.)
So don’t be shy. Record a video, do a podcast, and write with personality. And most definitely show a portrait of yourself on your website and any social media presence. If you try to hide behind a brand, you’ll end up competing with businesses that literally have 100x your marketing budget.
After all, what can be more unique than you are?
3.Customer service
If the media is your main source of business tips, you’d think that the public only cares about price. But nothing can be more wrong. Not even in this economy. If anything, we demand better customer service – and most of us are willing to pay for it.
Take Zappos, for example. You can find the shoes they sell in a few clicks of the mouse, but people continue to buy from them, despite the higher price, due to their reputation for great customer service.
If you’re going down this route, I suggest you read Tony Hsieh’s book, Delivering Happiness. Remember, customer service is an investment: it’s going to cost you when you get started.
4.Changing the game
Do you remember M&M’s old tagline that goes, “Melts in your mouth, not your hand?” Isn’t it strange that a chocolate company didn’t advertise how awesome the chocolates they are selling tastes?
Because they know it’s a losing game. So they changed the criteria in which people buy chocolates. Suddenly it’s no longer just about how awesome a chocolate tastes, it’s also about whether or not it melts in your hands. And M&M won.
As an artist, you can draw attention to the materials you use (does your handcrafted bag last longer?), or your process (do you mix violin with jazz?) or even your guarantee (do stand by your product for life?)
What can you think of that can change the game?
5.Pick up a cause
This will not only set you apart from the crowd, it also has the potential to boost your sales if done right. Leverage what your customers are passionate about.
For example, if your primary customers are new mothers, supporting a cause to end child abuse, reduce infant or maternal mortality rate, is almost a guaranteed way for you to rally them to your side.
Of course, there are multiple ways for you to “support” this cause. Some companies simply “donate” a portion of their proceeds, which is a bad idea because know that money is coming right out of their pockets. They will assume you’ve increased your price just for the donations – whether that’s true or not is irrelevant.
A better way to do it is to volunteer your and your employee’s time in a local charitable organization. Document the experience and create a marketing campaign out of it. The more you’re involved, the more you’ll get out of it.
Which is why it matters how passionate you are with the cause you want to pick up. Don’t do it simply for a marketing campaign. People can tell. It’s like a bank trying to convince you they care about home ownership.
One last tip: if you run a local business, ally yourself with a local charitable organization. You won’t believe how effective this is as a USP.
So there, 5 ways to stand out of the crowd. Do you have any other ideas I missed out?
Andrianes Pinantoan is part of the team behind Open Colleges’ Business Courses When not working, he can be found blogging about psychology at Cerebral Hacks
Photocredit : Watercolour Girl image by Lorra Elena
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The Road To Success – Are You On It?
A little while back I wrote about the difficulty of learning a new skill and how you would have to navigate what Seth Godin calls “The Dip”. The bit of your journey where the initial optimism and excitement of what you are trying to learn wears off and you are faced with the steep and harsh climb up the cliff face of learning towards mastery. This is the bit thats unforgiving and just not that much fun. You have to dig deep and pull through it to get to the other side.
At the moment I am struggling to learn THE most difficult art related skill I have ever faced. Therefore I wanted to share with you the following WONDERFUL image which beautifully illustrates the struggle we all face when trying to learn new skills or improve our current ones.
I don’t know the artist of this image or when it dates from. I found it on the wall of a tattooists in Louisiana. Thats all I know, but a picture speaks a thousand words.
If you are struggling with your own journey, take a look and share it. Hopefully it will help you find your own path…
Please click the blurry image below to see it in all it’s full size glory…
The Road To Success
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The one in which I confess I LIKE Thomas Kinkade…
Thomas Kinkade, one of the most prolific and successful artist in modern history is dead and right now I would like to stand up and confess that I like his work…
I think somehow it reminds me of the Christmas cards of my childhood featuring cosily lit victorian coaching inns generously sprinkled with silver glitter, a prancing coach and four pulling up outside bringing laughing travellers home for the holidays. The light eminating from inside the Inn beckoning you in to curl up by the fireside with a large dog and a hearty Pickwickian Christmas dinner. A glimpse of a warm friendly interior. A safely comforting feel.
No doubt millions of others got the same sense of cosy safety in an increasingly insane world. An idealised and beautiful landscape where nothing went wrong. Kinkade managed to hit the perfect emotional spot with millions of people, an estimated 1 in 20 American homes owning one of his images. If Kinkade’s work makes people feel a spot of calm or happiness where is the harm in that? He knew his audience perfectly and knew what made them feel good.
But I shouldnt need to “confess” to this should I ?. What is so terrible about liking the work of a popular artist? Why do I neel nervous about typing this?
Who says which art I should like ?
Art dictatorship and the taste police.
I also confess I have a softspot for artists who get up the nose of the art establishment… Despite his immense popularity in the eyes of his millions of fans Kinkade attracted an enormous amount of vitriol from the “taste police” in the art world.
The sheer hatred unleashed on him {and other “not-proper-artists”} by art critics is shocking to read. It reminds me of school kids bitching about and bullying the unpopular kid behind the bike sheds. Many of those same critics are now writing articles praising Kinkades understanding of art marketing and subtly reversing away from their previous nastiness in the light of his death.
Kincade appeared to be able to laugh off the criticisms but it seems sad that his brother believes his losing battle with alcohol was probably precipitated by the constant attacks by the art establishment on him and his work which he took more to heart than he showed.
Scottish artist Jack Vettriano attracts similar criticism. Here he is described in The Guardian newspaper.
“Vettriano is not even an artist. He just happens to be popular, with “ordinary people” who buy reproductions of his pseudo-1930s scenes of high-heeled women and monkey-suited men, and celebrities who fork out for the originals of these toneless, textureless, brainless slick corpses of paintings. “
I don’t personally love Vettrianos work enough to want to own it. However, I will defend to the death the right of anyone to be able to buy it without being made to feel like a brain dead idiot with the style and taste of a wombat.
Can the internet democratise art?
The art establishment has had everything it’s own way for a long long time. This has created a dictatorship where people are afraid to be seen to like the “wrong” art. Fledgling interest in collecting art can be paralyzed by the fear of making a “mistake”. Art galleries become intimidating “no-go” areas for fear of being made to look ignorant.
This increases the perception of art as being something “not for us” by many people and this can’t be a good thing for the majority of artists when more people need to be encouraged to buy art. The massive majority of potential new art buyers are outside the New York art scene and even the gallery system itself.
However, the good news is that with the increasing prevelance of art on the internet, collectors can find the kind of art that they like and the falsely dictated notions of “good” or “bad” taste in art are becoming fast outmoded.
There is a movement towards a democratisation of the art world. People can look online and find the kind of art that appeals to them rather than what they are told they CAN like by a sneering critic. They can then safely buy the art online without being judged or made to feel uncomfortable.
Viva la Revolución!
So it is time to be proud of the art you like… no matter if it is “critic approved” or not. Don’t let anyone tell you what you can and can’t like…
So… Just for the record I LOVE LOVE LOVE the work of Vladimir Tretchikoff, famous for his popular prints of exotic beauties which graced every UK front room in the 1960s and 70’s. – dismissed with scorn in his time and now viewed as modern classics.
Wayne Hemingway, in his book Just Above The Mantelpiece says of Tretchikoff “He achieved everything that Andy Warhol stated he wanted to do but could never achieve because of his coolness.” The line between the two artists is very fine.
I also have a soft spot for Bob Ross and his fabulous “happy little clouds” and Norman Rockwell – once described as Kitsch – now viewed as classic American art.
The Last Word
The last word should go to art critic Louis Leroy describing a painting of a sunrise over water…
“A preliminary drawing for a wallpaper pattern is more highly finished than this seascape,”
The artist he was pouring scorn on was one Claude Monet…
Hmmm…
Which artists do you like that you “aren’t supposed to” ? Stand proud and share with us in the comments.
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We Need Your Opinion – Enterprising Artist’s Survey
Opportunities for artists have changed radically over the last 10 years or so.
Widespread use of the internet has begun a process of democratisation of the artworld as never before. New opportunities have been tempered by new challenges. It is a huge sea-change which has altered the art landscape forever. More and more artists are finding that it IS possible to make a living from their creativity. You no LONGER have to starve for your art…
What is less clear is that how do we fit into this new landscape as artists?
HOW are people doing? WHAT are they doing? WHERE are they going? Just HOW is it all panning out for YOU?
Introducing The Enterprising Artists Survey.
To get a little more of an idea, Artonomy has partnered with www.rightbrainrockstar.com to create The Enterprising Artists Survey.
Your opinion and experience counts…
We need YOUR EXPERIENCE to understand what is going on.
In return for 10 minutes of your time filling out the survey, you will be emailed the summarized results and get a more detailed picture of today’s entrepreneurial art landscape.
So please help us by completing the survey here
Thank You
Artonomy & Right Brain Rockstar