See More of Guido Frick’s art by clicking here.

Wouldn’t You Love to work with a website hosting company that actually promotes their artists?

As you can see, at FASO, we actually do, and,
we are the only website host we know of that does.

Click the button below to start working
with an art website host that actually cares about art.

Get Started with FASO for Free

Your Inner Circle

Art Critic Jerry Saltz (@jerrysaltz) was interviewed a few years ago by Vulture Magazine in which he was asked about his rules of making it as an artist: How to be an Artist: 33 rules to take you from clueless amateur to generational talent (or at least help you live life a little more creatively).

I encourage you to read the entire Vulture article, but, for the moment, let’s take a closer look at Saltz’ rule number 22:

Lesson 22: It Takes Only a Few People to Make a Career

Exactly how many? Let’s count.

Dealers? You need only one dealer — someone who believes in you, supports you emotionally, pays you promptly, doesn’t play too many mind games; who’ll be honest with you about your crappy or great art, who does as much as possible to spread your work out there and try to make money from it, too. This dealer doesn’t have to be in New York.

Collectors? You need only five or six collectors who will buy your work from time to time and over the years, who really get what you’re up to, who are willing to go through the ups and downs, who don’t say, “Make them like this.” Each of these six collectors might talk to six other collectors about your work. Even if you have only six collectors, that’s enough for you to make enough money to have enough time to make your work.

Critics? It would be nice to have two or as many as three critics who seem to get what you’re doing. It would be best if these critics were of your generation, not geezers like me.

Curators? It would be nice to have one or two curators of your generation or a little older who would put you in shows from time to time.

That’s it! Twelve people. Surely your crappy art can fake out 12 stupid people! I’ve seen it done with only three or four supporters. I’ve seen it done with one!

I’ve written before about this same idea. The fact is, that it takes a scary small number of “superfans” to make it in the art business. In our Circles of Art Marketing Framework, I call these people your “Inner Circle.”

So let’s talk about your most valuable collectors and supporters, aka your “Inner Circle.”

Your goal with your inner circle is to re-connect with these people personally until they purchase again or promote you to others.  And, while not technically a business goal, you will probably become friends with many people that are in your inner circle.  By “connect personally”, I mean (mostly) personal texts, emails, phone calls, etc.  Not newsletters or other mass broadcasting methods.

You’ve probably heard of Kevin Kelley’s idea of “1000 True Fans:”

To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only a thousand true fans. A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. These diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing; they will buy the hardback and paperback and audible versions of your book; they will purchase your next figurine sight unseen; they will pay for the “best-of” DVD version of your free youtube channel; they will come to your chef’s table once a month. If you have roughly a thousand of true fans like this (also known as super fans), you can make a living — if you are content to make a living but not a fortune.

Kevin’s essay made shockwaves across the Internet as it crystallized, in many creators’ minds, for the first time the following thought:  “that’s doable.”

For the first time, creators of all types saw an achievable path to make a living from their art.  And moreover, one that did not rely on any gatekeepers’ permission. 

But, I'll let you in on a little secret.

In visual art, you don’t even need 1,000 true fans (which I’ll call collectors from here on it).  You probably only need 100 and perhaps even less.  That’s partially because art, in the form of originals anyway, usually sells for much higher price points, and the fact that art collectors tend to purchase multiple originals of the same artist over time.

It takes a scary small number of the right people to make a substantial number of art sales.

When I was in the gallery business, I remember sold out shows that were sold out to only a dozen or so people. You read that correctly: 12 people could make or break an entire show.  

I was one of our gallery's 2 main salespeople.  However, I'm also a computer programmer.  So one day, I wrote a database query to calculate my total sales for the year.  I noticed the same customer names appeared many times.  So I re-phrased the query to total the sales by customer.  I was shocked.  Don't hold me to the exact numbers, but something like 80% of my personal sales were from less than 20 people...not 20% but 20 people.  

I had not yet conceived the Circles of Art Marketing or the term “Inner Circle.”  But intuitively, I realized, these people were the ones I was the closest to.  They were my inner circle.  They were the ones who were most interested in what I had to sell and, importantly, they trusted me to help guide them in their art collecting.  I was friends with many of them.

I started lavishing a whole lot more attention on those 20 people.  My goal with new customers became to determine if they were "worthy" to be in the "top 20".  And my sales went up.  

Who are your 20 people?

If you know who they are, write them a personal note, pick up the phone, or have a private little get together with them.  If you don't know who they are, well, you should, and you've got some work to do.

Those 20 people (and I’m just using 20 as an example now, it could be 10, or 100, or more, or even as few as 5 or 6 as Saltz said in the quote at the top of the article) make up what we are calling your Inner Circle.  These are collectors who have purchased multiple pieces from you, or students who have taken numerous classes or workshops from you.  These are the people you give the opportunity to purchase your new art first, before anyone else has seen it.  For these 20 people, you know their names, their addresses, their phone numbers, what type(s) of your works they like (and are most likely to purchase) and possibly their kids names and their birthdays.  

These are the people that you send handwritten notes to, who you text when you have an upcoming show, and who you send personal emails to say, “I just finished this painting, I think it’s up your alley, and I’m showing it to you before anyone else.”  

In the Inner Circle you don’t use any automated or bulk  marketing methods. If you have an email “newsletter” for these people, it is smaller, more personal and much more exclusive than your regular newsletter.  These are people whom you know personally and you communicate with them personally.  (Although they are also in your audience so will receive your broader marketing as well).

Maintaining these personal connections with your inner circle is so powerful because one of the things people love, especially in luxury goods, is exclusivity. 

And who doesn't want to feel special and part of an exclusive club?

Leave a comment

Clintavo’s Curated Corner

Here are a few pieces that caught my eye this week:

With the ongoing drama regarding the American Eagle Ad ad featuring Sydney Sweeny, this seemed timely:

I love cats and I love Yael Marmon’s art, how could I pass this one up?

A cool, evocative landscape with nice composition. I’d love to be in Provence in the morning.

Looking for Great Art!

If you know of a great piece of real visual art (no AI art) that we should consider for future illustration of our articles or to feature in Clintavo’s Curated Corner, please click the button below and leave a sentence or two explaining what you like about the piece with a link to it on the web (please do not send via email as we are much less likely to see or respond to those, thank you):

Leave a comment

Become a paid subscriber

Methods of Re-Creation (Part V)

We’ve been exploring ideas regarding inspiring your Muse. We normally think of a Muse as a force, or being, or a part of our subconscious that delivers inspiration from the Mystery to us.  But it’s not a one-way flow from Muse to Artist.  You are in a relationship with your Muse and your job is to inspire each other.  If you find that your creative wellspring has run dry, that you can no longer hear the Muse’s whisper, and that you can no longer bring forth ideas from the Mystery, you may have been neglecting to properly nourish your Muse.  

This series is exploring ways to to just that - to re-create your Muse and yourself so she will, once again, grace your studio, writing desk, or dance space and start inspiring you.

We started our exploration into The Muse a few weeks ago. And, for the next few weeks, I’ll outline ways that I’ve been able to bring my Muse, along with joy back into my life.

If you missed any of the previous articles you can catch up by clicking the article name below:

1. The Muse

2. Ignoring Your Daemon Unleashes a Demon

3. Breathing Life Into Your Muse

4. Methods of Re-Creation - Part I
   (Journaling, Nature, Creative Play)

5. Methods of Re-Creation — Part II
   (Meditation, Reading, Meditative Living)

6. Methods of Re-Creation — Part III
   (Noticing, Gratitude, Music)

7. Methods of Re-Creation — Part IV
   (Get out of Character)
   
   

On to today’s post:

Hobbies

Those of you who are my age or older may remember hobbies. Remember how, prior to the internet, we all did things just for fun? We engaged in various hobbies for the sheer enjoyment of the activity.  

This was before we were expected to “hustle” and “monetize” everything we did.  It was before we were expected to post everything we did and thought on social media.

And, guess what? 

I still do that:  I play guitar, at a relatively accomplished level, for the love of it.  After my creative burnout, I rekindled my love of this hobby. And I will never “monetize” it. I will never form a band (other than simply for fun.) I will never turn it into work.  And I never post videos of myself playing on social media.  If you do it because you must, it’s work.  If you do it because you want to, it’s play.  Don’t turn your play into work.

Rush’s words, “Emotional feedback on a timeless wavelength, Bearing a gift beyond price,” apply not only when listening to music, but also when creating it!  Hobbies “bear gifts beyond price.” What hobbies can you undertake to reconnect with The Sovereign Artist Within?

This piece is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, The Sovereign Artist.

Inside of each of us lies a divine force - The Sovereign Artist within - a remarkable force to bring joy, peace, creativity and love back into our lives. This approach to the creative process saved me, and it can save you too, perhaps it can save us all. Connecting with The Sovereign Artist manifests as an explosion of creativity, peace, and quiet inner joy. It transforms the artist into a reflection of itself - sovereign, free, joyful and loving. If that is of interest, please click the button below to join the book’s waitlist.

Join the Sovereign Artist Waitlist

Creatively,

Clintavo
Create Wonder
Sum Ergo Creo

FASO Loves Hope Reis’ oil paintings!

See More of Hope Reis’ art by clicking here.

Wouldn’t You Love to work with a website hosting company that actually promotes their artists?

As you can see, at FASO, we actually do, and,
we are the only website host we know of that does.

Click the button below to start working
with an art website host that actually cares about art.

Get Started with FASO for Free

Become a paid subscriber

Methods of Re-Creation (Part IV)

We’ve been exploring ideas regarding inspiring your Muse. We normally think of a Muse as a force, or being, or a part of our subconscious that delivers inspiration from the Mystery to us.  But it’s not a one-way flow from Muse to Artist.  You are in a relationship with your Muse and your job is to inspire each other.  If you find that your creative wellspring has run dry, that you can no longer hear the Muse’s whisper, and that you can no longer bring forth ideas from the Mystery, you may have been neglecting to properly nourish your Muse.  

This series is exploring ways to to just that - to re-create your Muse and yourself so she will, once again, grace your studio, writing desk, or dance space and start inspiring you.

We started our exploration into The Muse a few weeks ago. And, for the next few weeks, I’ll outline ways that I’ve been able to bring my Muse, along with joy back into my life.

If you missed any of the previous articles you can catch up by clicking the article name below:

1. The Muse

2. Ignoring Your Daemon Unleashes a Demon

3. Breathing Life Into Your Muse

4. Methods of Re-Creation - Part I
   (Journaling, Nature, Creative Play)

5. Methods of Re-Creation — Part II
   (Meditation, Reading, Meditative Living)

6. Methods of Re-Creation — Part III
   (Noticing, Gratitude, Music)
   
   

On to today’s post:

Get Out of Character

Do something you wouldn’t normally do, get “out of character,” create an alter ego and become a full, free, and sovereign human being! Shake things up! This can have a profound psychological effect. 

For me, this “getting out of character” involved growing my hair out (I’ve since cut it). For most of my life I’ve been a businessperson: buttoned up, clean cut, nicely dressed, and short hair. After my creativity burned out (and partly because of the lockdowns and the difficulty of reliably scheduling a haircut), I simply threw caution to the wind and grew my hair out and dressed like a beach bum until someone referred to me, while wearing a Hawaiian shirt, as “Hawaiian Jesus.” I wore a baseball cap when I went for my morning runs. I looked like Forest Gump when I ran. Some of you have probably seen my hair in our webinars or on The BoldBrush Show and wondered, “Who is this hippie?”

It felt good to do something different. If felt free. It felt slightly defiant. It felt like a clean break with the past and a “new me,” facing the future, creatively and suddenly things were alive with possibilities again. It also helped me look the part as a newly converted meditator and “tree hugger” so it kind of fit with my new “persona.”

Like Samson, I drew strength from this act — not physically, but in my soul, creatively. It was a small act against society’s programming that has since led me to see through that indoctrination and programming in many areas of my life.

I didn’t realize all these things at the time, but looking back, I can clearly see my soul was yearning for something different and it all started with this small act. Now, many years later, I feel well and am steadily walking the path of creativity, and I have cut my hair, not so much out of obligation, but I’ve realized the realities of taking care of long hair.  I’d rather be spending my time creating than caring for hair. I feel for anyone with long hair —it’s a lot of work! I also learned that sometimes, if you have long hair, you accidentally eat your hair, lol.

To be clear,  I’m not saying to grow (or shave) your hair, I’m just saying to mix it up. If you are struggling creatively and a crazy urge pops in your mind, perhaps, just perhaps, do it!

This piece is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, The Sovereign Artist.

Inside of each of us lies a divine force - The Sovereign Artist within - a remarkable force to bring joy, peace, creativity and love back into our lives. This approach to the creative process saved me, and it can save you too, perhaps it can save us all. Connecting with The Sovereign Artist manifests as an explosion of creativity, peace, and quiet inner joy. It transforms the artist into a reflection of itself - sovereign, free, joyful and loving. If that is of interest, please click the button below to join the book’s waitlist.

Join the Sovereign Artist Waitlist

Creatively,

Clintavo
Sum Ergo Creo

FASO Loves Hope Reis’ oil paintings!

See More of Hope Reis’ art by clicking here.

Wouldn’t You Love to work with a website hosting company that actually promotes their artists?

As you can see, at FASO, we actually do, and,
we are the only website host we know of that does.

Click the button below to start working
with an art website host that actually cares about art.

Get Started with FASO for Free

Become a paid subscriber

Methods of Re-Creation (Part III)

We’ve been exploring ideas regarding inspiring your Muse. We normally think of a Muse as a force, or being, or a part of our subconscious that delivers inspiration from the Mystery to us.  But it’s not a one-way flow from Muse to Artist.  You are in a relationship with your Muse and your job is to inspire each other.  If you find that your creative wellspring has run dry, that you can no longer hear the Muse’s whisper, and that you can no longer bring forth ideas from the Mystery, you may have been neglecting to properly nourish your Muse.  

This series is exploring ways to to just that - to re-create your Muse and yourself so she will, once again, grace your studio, writing desk, or dance space and start inspiring you.

We started our exploration into The Muse a few weeks ago. And, for the next few weeks, I’ll outline ways that I’ve been able to bring my Muse, along with joy back into my life.

If you missed any of the previous articles you can catch up by clicking the article name below:

1. The Muse

2. Ignoring Your Daemon Unleashes a Demon

3. Breathing Life Into Your Muse

4. Methods of Re-Creation - Part I
   (Journaling, Nature, Creative Play)

5. Methods of Re-Creation — Part II
   (Meditation, Reading, Meditative Living)
   

On to today’s post:

Noticing

“The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of.” — Leonardo DaVinci

The longer I live, and the more I attempt to create, I believe the following is the essence of  being an artist: simply to notice.

Notice more. Notice beauty. Notice goodness.  Notice truth.  Notice what others ignore.  And, especially notice what is interesting bout those small moments that most people miss. What do you notice that most people don't? Every single moment presents infinite beauty and infinite fascination. But most people, most of the time, miss it all.

So, to be an artist, do this: don't miss it all. Notice it. Cultivate awareness. That is what I am attempting to do in my life: to be aware of the transcendent truth and beauty in all of the universe's small moments, so that I may somehow, via my writing, my work, my music or somehow, in my own life, reflect the beauty of creation back to the universe in a small way. And in that small way, contribute to the beauty of creation. I wrote about this more fully in Noticing, The Meaning of Life.

Gratitude

Many wiser souls than me have enlightened us about the power of gratitude. The way I finally brought gratitude regularly into my life is my own form of a “gratitude journal.”

I keep it simple, and I keep the bar super-low to ensure that I’ll actually do it daily. If the process was too complicated, I would blow it off.  

What I do is this: I simply try to write about something good every day. It doesn't matter what, specifically, but I notice, and record just one good thing.  As an example, here are my gratitude entries for 2023. Most of the entries are only one or two sentences, small enough to fit in a tweet (I originally started the practice on Twitter, so got in the habit if keeping each entry short).  It’s not a time consuming practice at all. Surely you can write one simple sentence about a good moment today.  It can even be as simple as, “I’m alive.”

Sometimes,  particular moment stands out.  More often, I mentally review each day to uncover at least one (although more than one is fine!) single joyful, inspiring, meaningful, wondrous slice of time where, no matter what other problems or challenges have endarkened my soul, I recall one moment in which the light of creation reached me.

If one lived for 30,000 days, one could live, and perhaps even remember 30,000 good, inspiring moments in a lifetime. Is that enough? It seems like possibly it would be. 30,000 joyful moments adds up to a joyful life, doesn’t it? I wrote further about this practice here.

Music

Music, like all art, creates magic. Music is inspiring. Music is powerful.

Here’s how the band Rush described music in Spirit of Radio: 

Emotional feedback on a timeless wavelength, Bearing a gift beyond price. — Rush

Music is always uplifting, but to truly reap the benefits for your creative soul, it helps to occasionally go old school — don’t just have music on the background, but make listening to music the primary activity.

Remember how we used to sit with a vinyl record and simply listen? Perhaps while we perused the album art? Today, too many of us only play music as a background to our lives, as we scroll our phones or drive. But music, just like your art, deserves to be the center of attention from time to time. You can still do that today! Just put on your favorite streaming service, crank it up, put your phone down, close your eyes, and be transported to another universe where you receive emotional feedback on a timeless wavelength bearing a priceless gift.

Music costs even less today than when Rush wrote those lyrics. So you have no excuse. I wrote about one such evening of listening to music, and how it restored my soul, here.

This piece is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, The Sovereign Artist.

Inside of each of us lies a divine force - The Sovereign Artist within - a remarkable force to bring joy, peace, creativity and love back into our lives. This approach to the creative process saved me, and it can save you too, perhaps it can save us all. Connecting with The Sovereign Artist manifests as an explosion of creativity, peace, and quiet inner joy. It transforms the artist into a reflection of itself - sovereign, free, joyful and loving. If that is of interest, please click the button below to join the book’s waitlist.

Join the Sovereign Artist Waitlist

Creatively,

Clintavo
Sum Ergo Creo

FASO Loves Hope Reis’ oil paintings!

See More of Hope Reis’ art by clicking here.

Wouldn’t You Love to work with a website hosting company that actually promotes their artists?

As you can see, at FASO, we actually do, and,
we are the only website host we know of that does.

Click the button below to start working
with an art website host that actually cares about art.

Get Started with FASO for Free

Become a paid subscriber

Methods of Re-Creation (Part II)

We’ve been exploring ideas regarding inspiring your Muse. We normally think of a Muse as a force, or being, or a part of our subconscious that delivers inspiration from the Mystery to us.  But it’s not a one-way flow from Muse to Artist.  You are in a relationship with your Muse and your job is to inspire each other.  If you find that your creative wellspring has run dry, that you can no longer hear the Muse’s whisper, and that you can no longer bring forth ideas from the Mystery, you may have been neglecting to properly nourish your Muse.  

This series is exploring ways to to just that - to re-create your Muse and yourself so she will, once again, grace your studio, writing desk, or dance space and start inspiring you.

We started our exploration into The Muse a few weeks ago. And, for the next few weeks, I’ll outline ways that I’ve been able to bring my Muse, along with joy back into my life.

If you missed any of the previous articles you can catch up by clicking the article name below:

1. The Muse

2. Ignoring Your Daemon Unleashes a Demon

3. Breathing Life Into Your Muse

4. Methods of Re-Creation - Part I
   (Journaling, Nature, Creative Play)
   

On to today’s post:

Meditation

Meditation, what can I say about meditation? Meditation is the primary undertaking that brought me back creatively, as well as opened a path to renewed joy. Meditation opened a crack in the dark shell that had encased my soul. Meditation opened the “eye within the I” inside of me.

Mediation is a a kind of workout for your mind that also, when you do it long enough, brings creative and spiritual rewards.  Meditation is refreshing.  Meditation, I have come to believe, when one experiences meditative joy, processes and destroys the negativity and trauma that we experience on a day to day basis and allows that negativity to dissipate and be released from our bodies.  That is why when people start meditating, things often seem to get worse before they get better — all the stored negativity starts coming out in big chunks.  But eventually, it gets better and then meditating daily “clears out” the little bit of negativity we build up each day.

Think of it this way: Sleep restores your body's ability to function physically.  Similarly, meditation restores your soul’s ability to function creatively.  Meditation may seem like a "waste of time," but, if you want to be creative, it is a necessary “waste of time,” just as sleep in a necessary “waste” of time if you want to function at your peak physical or mental capability.

Meditation, however,  takes time.  So, even though I emphasize devotion over discipline, meditation does require discipline in the beginning. You have to commit to many weeks to even months (I committed to an hour a day for 90 days when I started).  Meditation feels weird and boring at first, but, once you do it regularly for a few weeks, things start to change and amazing experiences appear. I was quite fortunate to experience a very intense spiritual experience extremely early in my meditative journey (and more intense than most I’ve had since). That experience hooked me, but the process does take time. Meditation is the slowest of these techniques for re-creation, but, in my opinion, it is also the most powerful.

I highly recommend meditating, but I also recommend combining it with other techniques I’m listing here. Don’t limit yourself to just one! One easy and powerful technique is to meditate outside - that’s a great way to both meditate and connect with (and notice) the sublime qualities of nature.

Reading Fiction

There are few things in life as luxurious and as fulfilling as a lazy Sunday spent reading a great book, and I recently indulged myself by reading Moby Dick, which, amazingly, I had never read.  I think we underrate the power of fiction, and especially classic fiction in the modern world.  

We've become a rational, nihilistic, free-market society driven (mostly) by commercial interests.  These interests will, if we're not careful, eat up everything in sight.  Commerce will even eat up our souls if we allow them inside of us by giving them too much of our sacred attention – if we pay attention to them.  If there is an almighty dollar to be made, then someone will try to make it.

Reading has been reduced (for most who still read) to reading non-fiction to become “more productive.”  People want to be more efficient.  However, The Artists — us — we are the alchemists of the modern world.  We don’t need to be more efficient.  We need to be more effective; more effective at creativity.  The Muse becomes creative in proportion to the creative nutrition contained in the ideas you feed her — and those ideas are not found in “how to” books - they are found in magical worlds of fantasy, in future civilizations, in mysteries, in horror stories, and in love stories.  Those nourishing ideas are found in the “lies” of fiction which, often, are the places we find the deepest truths.  Those ideas are found in books — real books — fiction.

Fiction seeds our mind palace — a place where Muses visit, and sometimes live. 

The realm of my mind palace is a chapel of creativity.  Ceilings have been painted by elven Michaelangelos, hidden doors lead to hidden passages containing the wondrous treasure of adventure into secret places unknown.  Old maps, orreries, and astrological timepieces live side by side with computer screens, and technological marvels as yet un-invented. My holographic and android companions have befriended dwarven acquaintances.  We have, together, delved deep into the earth seeking riches beyond mithril and have escaped via wormholes to galaxies that existed a long time ago and far, far away.  

Everyone must build their own mind palace – a place where they can retreat into magical solitude – at least everyone who wishes to remain sane, for where else can you turn if you truly wish to see alchemy work and desire for the mundane to become the magical?  The only way to share part of one's mind palace with another is Art.  And one major way to truly seed your mind palace is by reading great fiction.

Self-Awareness and Meditative Living

Meditation helps with self awareness.  Awareness is another word for consciousness and consciousness is another word for your true self, your essence, what I’ve been calling The Sovereign Artist Within. 

Meditative living, on the other hand, is an attempt to be meditative in all daily acts. It is more difficult, in the beginning, than regular sitting meditation, but it gets easier over time.

When referring to this idea, some people use the term “mindful.” But that is a misnomer to me. Your mind is what gets in the way of meditative states, with its incessant thinking, and yammering and worrying. You don’t want peace of mind, you want peace from mind.

Being “mindful” is all the rage these days.  And while people who use the term ‘mindful’ are referring to what I’m calling “meditative living,” I feel that “Mind full” goes the wrong direction.

What you’re going for is “mind empty” and “soul full.”

Soulful.

Live Soulfully, not mindfully.  Zen isn’t thinking about God while washing the dishes.  Zen is turning the act of washing the dishes into worship, by giving the present act the full attention of your soul.

In a meditative life, you go through tasks observing and noticing but not “thinking” on a logical level. In other words, the internal narrative stops and you become fully present. 

I keep telling my wife that I want to do the dishes each night because I actually enjoy it now! She thinks I’m joking. But (when I’m living soulfully), the feel of the water, the reflecting light off the dishes, and the drops of water bouncing off the dishes! The experience is amazing! She still thinks I’m full of it. And I am! I’m full of something called consciousness (but she thinks it’s something else!, lol).

In any case, when in a meditative state like this, everything is okay and there’s nothing to worry about, life simply flows easily. You feel the flow of the current — the current moment.  It is being “in the zone” not just when creating, but when doing everything and, through the alchemy of meditative living, every act becomes an act of creation.  In fact, it is in these states, and often when washing dishes that I have my most creative ideas!

This piece is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, The Sovereign Artist.

Inside of each of us lies a divine force - The Sovereign Artist within - a remarkable force to bring joy, peace, creativity and love back into our lives. This approach to the creative process saved me, and it can save you too, perhaps it can save us all. Connecting with The Sovereign Artist manifests as an explosion of creativity, peace, and quiet inner joy. It transforms the artist into a reflection of itself - sovereign, free, joyful and loving. If that is of interest, please click the button below to join the book’s waitlist.

Join the Sovereign Artist Waitlist

Creatively,

Clintavo
Sum Ergo Creo

FASO Loves Hope Reis’ oil paintings!

See More of Hope Reis’ art by clicking here.

Wouldn’t You Love to work with a website hosting company that actually promotes their artists?

As you can see, at FASO, we actually do, and,
we are the only website host we know of that does.

Click the button below to start working
with an art website host that actually cares about art.

Get Started with FASO for Free

Become a paid subscriber

Methods of Re-Creation

We’ve been exploring ideas regarding inspiring your Muse. We normally think of a Muse as a force, or being, or a part of our subconscious that delivers inspiration from the Mystery to us.  But it’s not a one-way flow from Muse to Artist.  You are in a relationship with your Muse and your job is to inspire each other.  If you find that your creative wellspring has run dry, that you can no longer hear the Muse’s whisper, and that you can no longer bring forth ideas from the Mystery, you may have been neglecting to properly nourish your Muse.  

This series is exploring ways to to just that - to re-create your Muse and yourself so she will, once again, grace your studio, writing desk, or dance space and start inspiring you.

We started our exploration into The Muse a few weeks ago. And, for the next few weeks, I’ll outline ways that I’ve been able to bring my Muse, along with joy back into my life.

If you missed any of the previous articles you can catch up by clicking the article name below:

1. The Muse

2. Ignoring Your Daemon Unleashes a Demon

3. Breathing Life Into Your Muse
   

“Crash and Burn” Journaling

I journal almost daily and most often I utilize a method I call “Crash and Burn.” The name is intended to remind me that the quality of what I write doesn’t matter — only that I do it. I don’t recall where I learned of this idea, but I didn’t invent it. The rules for “Crash and Burn” are simple: you start writing and you are not allowed to stop for at least five minutes (although I frequently write for ten or twenty minutes).  No editing.  And no stopping to think. If you can’t think of what to write next, then simply write, “I can’t think of anything…blah blah, but I still can’t think of anything.”  And keep writing variations of that until something starts to flow.  The only inviolate rule is that you can’t stop writing (or typing in my case):  You must keep the pen or fingers moving. 

I often “seed” these sessions with something I see in the room, or an idea that pops in my head. For example, I might start with something like this: “I’m noticing that my iphone screen has a small crack in it. I recall that crack happened when a lady bumped into me on our last vacation, and she turned out to be a really nice person. In fact, we had drinks with her and talked about…… Anyway, cracks on phones are a bit like scars aren’t they, and we all get scars both mental and physical in this life…..” 

I just typed that on the fly while, free form, while working on this chapter.  And you can already see that it’s going in a direction that could quickly get deeply philosophical. So any “seed” can lead you in unusual and deep directions.  Don’t try to preconceived anything, just start writing.  If it doesn’t bear fruit today, it might tomorrow.  And if you do this daily, you will have tons of great material soon enough.

Many of my Crash and Burn sessions, with much editing, have become the Reflections on my personal Substack blog. However, as I write them, they are not intended to be shared, and simply exist to open the flow between me and my creative source.  This practice is nearly identical to the practice of Morning Pages found in seminal book, The Artist’s Way, although I don’t force myself to do them at any particular time of day (and I often find my creativity peaks later in the day and not necessarily first thing in the morning.)

Nature

When you immerse yourself in and appreciate nature you automatically move closer to your true being of creativity, especially when you allow yourself the freedom to simply enjoy the small, and the big, wonders that surround you every day. 

I have been inspired on walks in the park, walks through the neighborhood, by sitting in my back yard and listening to the birds, by watching the sunrise, and by watching the sunset. Even something as simple as taking out the garbage can be inspiring if you pay attention! 

As I cart the trash bin to the curb, I’ll see a butterfly flit by, a hummingbird materializes to drink and then disappears again, or I’ll listen to the symphony of cicadas. There are so many amazing things all around us! More on this under Noticing below.

Creative Play

This is a major method of re-creation. Creatives require play. In many ways, art is play. I allow myself to play as much as reasonably possible, to the point that, if I feel stress overwhelming me, I’ll sometimes blow off  work responsibilities (temporarily) and simply do what I want instead. 

I’ve called this practice Artful Procrastination.  But here’s the interesting thing — play points to what your True Essence wants you to do. It points to your true calling. Often, when I allow myself to play, the results of that time pays huge tangible dividends down the road. What seems like “wasting time” often, later in your career or business, turns out to be the most important thing you could have done.

Did you know FASO Artist Webites started as a toy project that I piddled with on nights and weekends? That’s right, the website builder that thousands of artists rely upon today started as play! 

This book, The Sovereign Artist, started as creative play!  The seeds of it were planted years ago in my journaled explorations about the nature of creativity and spirituality.  I was exploring ideas in an attempt to bring myself back from severe burnout:  It worked.  

Do not ignore or underestimate the power of play! It blows away discipline every day. (Discipline is extremely useful for short sprints, but will lead to burn out if you rely upon it for too long). 

Please be aware that what you consider play at one stage of your journey may become draining or required work at another stage, so you may have to change your play activities over time. 

While creating FASO, all the programing and dreaming up of new features to add was exhilarating play for me, but as the service matured and became relied upon for an ever increasing audience, eventually it became required work and my “play time” today does not consist of programming, but of other activities.  Use your play time to explore new directions.

To illustrate: when I first started coding FASO, the play time spent programming seemed like a waste of time when compared to my gallery director and sales duties.  Yet eventually those programming efforts became my required “duties.”  Then, writing about creativity and other topics became play for me.  And now, those playful musings have revealed themselves to be important to our commercial endeavors! And, I suspect, these writings, in the long term, may be even more important than what I was doing before! 

The play you do at each level of your work will likely reveal itself as being the driving force that leads you to a much higher level and a more important calling! Our deep inspired curiosities are resonant signal that lead us home to our true callings.  But even if play doesn’t lead us to higher callings, it is necessary for fun, joy and sanity.  I can’t wait to see where today’s play time takes me tomorrow!

This piece is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, The Sovereign Artist.

Inside of each of us lies a divine force - The Sovereign Artist within - a remarkable force to bring joy, peace, creativity and love back into our lives. This approach to the creative process saved me, and it can save you too, perhaps it can save us all. Connecting with The Sovereign Artist manifests as an explosion of creativity, peace, and quiet inner joy. It transforms the artist into a reflection of itself - sovereign, free, joyful and loving. If that is of interest, please click the button below to join the book’s waitlist.

Join the Sovereign Artist Waitlist

Creatively,

Clintavo
Sum Ergo Creo

FASO Loves Hope Reis’ oil paintings!

See More of Hope Reis’ art by clicking here.

Wouldn’t You Love to work with a website hosting company that actually promotes their artists?

As you can see, at FASO, we actually do, and,
we are the only website host we know of that does.

Click the button below to start working
with an art website host that actually cares about art.

Get Started with FASO for Free

Become a paid subscriber

Sacred Solitude

We’ve discussed that the heart of creativity involves following your deep inspired curiosity  and divine inspiration, that spark of soul fire that is, striving, through you to share something, to share its story.  You’re attempting to bring into being something extraordinary, filtered through you, that the world has never before seen.  And to truly achieve this, you must enter that divine state of flow and play in the eddies the creative waters swirl around you.

That means your creative time is sacred and must be protected.  Interruptions kill the flow state and the flow state is necessary to produce extraordinary work. I truly believe interruptions are the most dangerous thing an artist faces.  Your family may mean well when they pop in and ask you what you want for lunch, but they may knock you out of an inspired state that you can’t get back into. The Muse is private and for you alone, and may flee if another person gets involved, you have to protect her when in the first stages of creation.  Constant interruptions, especially, are dangerous because your energy starts getting diverted to the wrong things and may leave you depleted and tired when it’s time to create.

True art often requires long stretches of uninterrupted creative time in your studio, so you must set limits to protect your creative time. 

An artist must have downtime, time to do nothing. Defending our right to such time takes courage, conviction, and resiliency. Such time, space, and quiet will strike our family and friends as a withdrawal from them. It is. 

— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

You must protect your creative time the same way.  If you don't, you will struggle to master your craft and produce enough sale-able work. Nearly all of the great creatives I know treat their studio time like a 9-5 job, and those regular hours, rain or shine, inspired or not, are set aside and sacred for painting and painting only.

I'll illustrate with a story:  Many years ago, my wife and I vacationed in Taos and spent a couple of days out at Wanda and Kevin Macpherson's place. They live in a beautiful cabin-inspired home halfway between Taos and Angel Fire.  The views from every window are stunning.  It's a perfect vacation spot.  The only downside is that it's so far out that the pizza guy refuses to deliver, although Kevin once tried to convince him to meet us halfway (it didn’t work).

The first morning, during breakfast, Kevin politely, but firmly told us that while he realized that we were on vacation....that he wasn't. He explained that he would be working in his studio until 5:00 pm and asked us to please not interrupt him unless it was an emergency.  His studio is a separate building within walking distance of the main house.

Since I was in the gallery business at the time, I completely understood, especially since I knew he was working on new pieces for an upcoming show at my gallery.  Kevin is the consummate professional and knows what he needs to do, so we wished him well and told him we would see him at dinner.

My wife and I spent the morning biking through the mountains around his house.  About 10:30 am, we arrived back at the house and realized we had locked ourselves out without a key. Wanda had gone into town. What should we do?

We stood outside Kevin's studio door for more than 30 minutes debating on whether or not being locked out constituted an "emergency"......

It would be easy to let things slide.  After all, we were only in Taos for two days.  A less diligent artist might have just thought "I can catch up on my painting after they leave."  But, while I feel sure Kevin would have loved to have taken off a few hours and "played" with us, he protected his creative time because he knows, as a consummate professional, that creative time is sacred.  It is holy.  It is set apart.

And if you want to produce enough masterful, inspired works, which is what it takes to be successful, you must be just as diligent and protective of your creative time as Kevin is of his.

In this particular case, we lucked out.  As we stood there debating if the situation was an "emergency", Kevin opened the studio door.  He was heading over to the house anyway.....whew!

Do whatever you must to protect your creative time.

“You have to be very selfish to be original.” – Miles Davis

This piece is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, The Sovereign Artist. Inside of each of us lies a divine force - The Sovereign Artist within - a remarkable force to bring joy, peace, creativity and love back into our lives. This approach to the creative process saved me, and it can save you too, perhaps it can save us all. Connecting with The Sovereign Artist manifests as an explosion of creativity, peace, and quiet inner joy. It transforms the artist into a reflection of itself - sovereign, free, joyful and loving. If that is of interest, please click the button below to join the book’s waitlist.

Join the Sovereign Artist Waitlist

Creatively,

Clintavo
Sum Ergo Creo

FASO Loves Hope Reis’ oil paintings!

See More of Hope Reis’ art by clicking here.

Wouldn’t You Love to work with a website hosting company that actually promotes their artists?

As you can see, at FASO, we actually do, and,
we are the only website host we know of that does.

Click the button below to start working
with an art website host that actually cares about art.

Get Started with FASO for Free

Read more

Please note, the terms creative essence, your truth, inner self, The Sovereign Artist, creative self, true self, etc, all refer to the same thing - the deepest, truest, most authentic version of yourself, your creative self, which happens when your soul is in harmony with the universe and your true creative drive.

Last time, I wrote about the dark time I experienced burnout, losing my creative drive, and the slow process of slowly opening up my soul fire again. This is a danger every artist faces and there are many things you can do not only to discover your true self, your essence, but also to reconnect with what I call The Sovereign Artist within. Even if you are creatively healthy at this moment, these methods are important to remain connected with your true self. As always, these are just ideas and guidance and you may mix and match them as you like or, you may even find your own ways, not listed here, to remain a creative child at heart. Please note, these categories overlap in several ways, for example, “Nature” and “Noticing” are highly correlated, as are “Mediation” and “Solitude.” There are endless ways to make this work with your own personality and predilections.

Here are the methods I have successfully utilized to reconnect and remain connected to The Creative Source of my essence, my true self, The Sovereign Artist within.

“Crash and Burn” Journaling

I journal almost daily and I often utilize a method called “Crash and Burn.” The name is intended to remind me that the quality of what I write doesn’t matter - only that I do it. I don’t recall where I learned of this idea, but I didn’t invent it. The rules for “Crash and Burn” are simple: you start writing and you are not allowed to stop for at least five minutes (although I frequently write for ten or twenty minutes). No editing. And no stopping to think. You are allowed to write, “I can’t think of anything…blah blah, but I still can’t think of anything” but you can’t stop writing (or typing in my case). You must keep the pen or fingers moving. I often “seed” these sessions with something I see in the room, or an idea that pops in my head.. For example, I’ll say, “I’m noticing that my iphone screen has a small crack in it. I recall that crack happened when a lady bumped into me on our last vacation, and she turned out to be a really nice person. In fact, we had drinks with her and talked about…… Anyway, cracks on phones are a bit like scars aren’t they, and we all get scars both mental and physical in this life…..” I just typed that on the fly while working on this article, free form. And you can already see that it’s going in a direction that could quickly get deeply philosophical. So any “seed” can lead you in unusual and deep directions. Many of my Crash and Burn sessions, with much editing, have become the Reflections on my personal Substack blog. However, as I write them, they are not intended to be shared, and simply exist to open the flow between you and your creative source. They are quite similar to the idea of Morning Pages found in seminal book, The Artist’s Way.

Nature

When you immerse yourself in and appreciate nature you are closer to your true Self, especially when you allow yourself the freedom to simply enjoy the small, and the big wonders that are around you every day. I have been inspired on walks in the park, walks through the neighborhood, by sitting in my back yard and listening to the birds, by watching the sun rise, by watching the sun set. Even something as simple as taking out the garbage can be inspiring if you pay attention! As I take the trash to the curb, I’ll see a butterfly flit by, a hummingbird materializes to drink and then disappears again, I listen to the symphony of cicadas. There are so many amazing things all around us! More on this under Noticing below.

Solitude

Artists require solitude. To simply create artwork requires some level of solitude, of course, interruptions are deadly to great work. But solitude is required for creative recharge as well. Sometimes, I just need to go be in silence with my thoughts. Sit with yourself in solitude, without a TV, without a phone and allow the creativity inside you to well up to the surface. Your small self will fade connect with your creative Self will emerge. Boredom has a way of forcing us to be creative. After you practice this for a while, you’ll never be bored again. Bring back daydreaming! More on solitude below in meditation.

Creative Play

This is a huge one. Creatives require play. In many ways, art is play. I allow myself to play as much as I can, to the point that if I feel the stress of work demands overwhelming me, I’ll sometimes blow them all off (temporarily) and simply do what I want instead. I’ve called it Artful Procrastination. Here’s the interesting thing - play points to what your True Essence wants you to do. It points to your true calling. Often, when I allow myself to play, it pays huge dividends down the road. What seems like “wasting time” often, later in your career or business, turns out to be the most important thing you could have done.

Did you know FASO started as a toy project that I did on the weekends when I owned an art gallery? That’s right, the website builder that thousands of artists rely upon today started as play! As did everything I’ve been writing about creativity and art marketing, including this very article you are reading now. Do not ignore the power of play! It blows away discipline every day. (Although discipline is extremely useful for short sprints, but will burn you out long term if you rely only on the force of your willpower, which discipline relies upon). Be aware that what you consider play at one stage of your journey may become draining or required work at another stage, so you may have to change your play activities over time. While creating FASO, all the programing and dreaming up of new features to add was exhilarating play for me, but as the service matured and became relied upon for an ever increasing audience, eventually it became required work and my “play time” now isn’t programming and adding features (though I still do that), but it is other activities.

To illustrate: when I first started coding FASO, it seemed like a waste of time when compared to my gallery director and sales duties, and those very activities are, today, my required “duties.” At that point, writing about creativity and connecting with your creative essence were play for me! But those writings eventually revealed themselves to be important to our commercial endeavors! And, I think, even more important than what we were doing before! The play you do at each level of your work often will eventually reveal itself as being the driving force to take you to a much higher level and more important calling! I can’t wait to see where today’s play time takes me tomorrow!

Meditation

Meditation, what can I say about meditation? Meditation is what brought me back creatively, as well as opened a path to renewed joy. Meditation opened a crack in the dark shell that had encased my soul. Meditation opened the “eye within the I” inside of me.

Mediation is a workout for your mind that also, when you do it long enough, brings creative and spiritual rewards.

It takes time though, and so this is a place discipline is useful in the beginning. Meditation feels weird and boring at first, but once you do it for a few weeks, things start to change and amazing experiences appear. I was fortunate to experience a very intense spiritual experience quite early in my meditative journey (and more intense than most I’ve had since) that hooked me, but it does take time. Meditation is the slowest of these techniques, but also the most powerful (for me).

I highly recommend meditating but also combining it with other techniques I’m listing here. Don’t limit yourself to just one! One easy powerful technique is to meditate outside - it’s a great way to both meditate and connect and notice the sublime qualities of nature.

Self Awareness and Meditative Living

Meditation helps with self awareness. Awareness is another word for consciousness and this consciousness is another word for your true self, your essence, what I’ve been calling The Sovereign Artist Within. Meditative living, on the other hand, is an attempt to be meditative in all daily acts. It is more difficult, in the beginning, than regular sitting meditation, but it gets easier over time.

Some people use the term “mindful.” But that is a misnomer to me. Your mind is what gets in the way of meditative states, with its incessant thinking, and yammering and worrying. You don’t want peace of mind, you want peace from mind.

Being mindful is all the rage.

“Mind full” is the wrong direction.

What you’re going for is “mind empty” and “soul full.”

Soulful.

Live Soulfully, not mindfully.

In a meditative life, you go through tasks observing and noticing but not “thinking” on a logical level. In other words, the internal narrative stops and you become fully present. I keep telling my wife that I want to do the dishes each night because I actually enjoy it now! She thinks I’m joking. But (when I’m living soulfully), the feel of the water, the reflecting light off the dishes, and the drops of water bouncing off the dishes! It’s amazing! She still thinks I’m full of it. And I am! I’m full of something called consciousness (but she thinks it’s something else! lol).

When in a meditative state like this, everything is OK and there’s nothing to worry about, life just flows easily. In fact, it is in these states, and often when washing dishes that I have my most creative ideas!

Noticing

The longer I live, and the more I attempt to create, I believe the following is the essence of art, and the essence of being an artist: simply to notice.

Notice more. Notice beauty. And especially notice what is interesting in small moments that most people miss. What do you notice that most people don't? Every moment presents infinite beauty. Infinite interest. But most of the time, most people miss it all.

So, to be an artist, do this: don't miss it all. Notice it. Cultivate awareness. This is what I am attempting to do in my life: to be aware of the beauty in all of the universe's small moments, so that I may somehow, via my writing, my work, my music or somehow, in my own life, reflect that beauty of creation back at the universe in a small way. And in that small way, be part of creation. I wrote about this more fully in Noticing, The Meaning of Life.

Gratitude

Many wiser souls than me have enlightened us about the power of gratitude. The way I finally brought gratitude regularly into my life is my own form of a “gratitude journal.”

I keep it simple, and I keep the bar super-low so I’ll actually do it. What I do is this: I try to write about something good every day. It doesn't matter what, specifically, but I notice, and record just one good thing. Here are my gratitude in public entries for 2023. Most of the entries are only one or two sentences, small enough to fit in a tweet (I started the practice on Twitter), so it’s not a time consuming practice at all. Surely you can write one sentence about a good moment today.

To give you an idea, here are a few random entries I’ve posted to Twitter lately (the full thread is here):

I look back over each day to uncover at least one (although more than one is fine!) single joyful, inspiring, meaningful, wondrous slice of time where, no matter what other problems or challenges darken my soul, the light of creation reached me.

If one lived for 30,000 days, one could live, and perhaps even remember 30,000 good, inspiring moments in a lifetime. Is that enough? It seems like possibly it would be. 30,000 joyful moments adds up to a joyful life, doesn’t it? I wrote further about this practice here.

Music

Music, like all art, creates magic. Music is inspiring. Music is powerful.

Here’s how the band Rush describes music in Spirit of Radio: Emotional feedback on a timeless wavelength, Bearing a gift beyond price.

Music is always uplifting, but to truly reap the benefits to your creative soul, it helps to occasionally go old school - make listening to music the primary activity.

Remember how we used to sit with a vinyl record and simply listen? Perhaps while we perused the album art? Today, too many of us only play music as a background to our lives, as we scroll our phones and drive. But music, just like your art deserves to be the center of attention from time to time. You can still do that today! Just put on your favorite streaming service, crank it up, and put your phone down, close your eyes, and be transported to another universe, receive the emotional feedback on a time less wavelength bearing a priceless gift.

Music costs even less today than when Rush wrote those lyrics. So you have no excuse. I wrote about one such evening of listening to music, and how it restored my soul, here.

Get Out of Character

Do something you wouldn’t normally do. Get “out of character” and become a full, free, sovereign human being! Shake things up! This can have a profound psychological effect. For me, this was growing my hair out. I’ve always been in business, buttoned up, clean cut, short hair. After my creativity burned out (and partly because of lockdowns and the difficulty of reliably scheduling a haircut) I just threw caution to the wind and grew my hair out until someone referred to me while wearing a Hawaiian shirt as “Hawaiian Jesus.” I would wear a baseball cap to run. I looked like Forest Gump when I ran. Some of you have probably seen my hair in our webinars or on The BoldBrush Show and wondered “who is this hippie?”

It felt good to do something different. If felt free. It felt defiant. It felt like a clean break with the past and a “new me” facing the future, creatively and alive again. Like Samson, I drew strength from this act — not physically, but in my soul, creatively. It was a small act against society’s programming that has led me to see through that programming in all areas.

I didn’t realize all these things at the time, but looking back, I can clearly see my soul was yearning for something different and it started with this small act. Now, three years later since I started growing it, I feel well and on the path to creativity again, and I’m ready to cut my hair (and also, I’ve realized the realities of taking care of long hair, lol. I feel for anyone with long hair. It’s a lot of work.) I’m not saying to grow (or shave) your hair, I’m just saying mix it up. If you are struggling creatively and a crazy urge pops in your mind, perhaps, just perhaps do it!

Hobbies

Those of you who are my age may remember hobbies. Remember how, prior to the internet, we all did things for fun? For the sheer enjoyment of the activity? Before we were expected to “hustle” and “monetize” everything we did? Before we were expected to post everything on social media? Guess what? I still do that. I play guitar, at a relatively accomplished level, for the love of it. After my creative burnout, I rekindled my love of this hobby. And I will never “monetize” it. I will never form a band (other than simply for fun.) I will never turn it into work. Because Rush’s words apply not only to listening to music, but also to creating it: hobbies “bear gifts beyond price.” What hobbies can you undertake to reconnect with The Sovereign Artist Within?

There you have it! Ten simple practices to save your creative soul. Pick a few of your favorites, or invent your own! This list is by no means exhaustive and I’m sure there are countless other things you could do to restore yourself (like travel). Let us know in the comments what things you do to stay connected to The Sovereign Artist Within. I look forward to learning more great ideas from you.

Creatively,

Clint Watson, writer.

PS - I am using the symbol of a fleur-di-lis to represent the deep truth at the center of us all, what I call “The Sovereign Artist.” The Tao which can be named, after all, is not the true Tao, so I’ve opted to use a symbol instead. This symbol reflects what you are in your deepest self - free and sovereign over yourself. The fleur-de-lis stood as a symbol of the king's divinely approved right to rule and, when you connect to this power of the divine, you are granted the power to rule over yourself. The red fleur-di-lis is the famous symbol of the most artistic city in history, Florence which, in latin, means flowering. Through this process you will flower in to your truest, most free, sovereign self. And you will be unstoppable.

FASO Loves Carl Bretzke’s oil paintings!

See More of Carl Bretzke’s art by clicking here.

Wouldn’t You Love to work with a website hosting company that actually promotes their artists?

As you can see, at FASO, we actually do, and,
we are the only website host we know of that does.

Click the button below to start working
with an art website host that actually cares about art.

Get Started with FASO for Free

In mid-2021 I had a “nervous breakdown.”  My creative well went dry.  I was depleted. Classic burnout.  I never thought such a thing would happen to me, but I had called upon my reserves without being connected deeply to my true artistic self.  I had forced unconnected creativity for a year and a half to get our company and our software service through the pandemic.

During that time, we, as a company, and me, personally, shipped at a furious pace.  We sprinted constantly for months to keep up with the (suddenly changed) needs and demands of our customers, but, not heeding my own recommendations (which to be fair, I had not written yet) or the warning signs of my own mind and body, I maintained that pace at a terrible price to my creative soul.  And my body eventually caught up and forcibly made me stop. So I stopped. By “stopped”, I mean stop working.  Everything.  All of it.  For about two months.  And once I slowly started coming back (at a much more sane pace), it took nearly another year for me to find joy in work again.

I now know that I burned out because I became disconnected from my true artistic self, The Sovereign Artist within, the creator inside, my creative self, my true self, my soul, god, the source, the Tao, the mystery, the force, yin & yang, magic, consciousness, vibrational energy, or whatever else you want to call it. For it doesn’t matter what you call it. It doesn’t matter if you believe in it. It only matters that you connect to it. Of course, I didn’t know any of this at them time.

I’ve been reluctant to share this publicly for a few reasons: embarrassment, fear of being seen as weak, but mostly because it seems like a petty little problem given the real life-and-death problems people faced during the Covid years. We all lost people we loved. So “boo who” for the sensitive little creative who lost his artistic way. At least that’s what the Resistance in my mind whispered to me.

But (deep breath), I’m sharing it now, before I chicken out, because I now realize this is what happens to a blocked artist and the only way back from it is to connect with The Sovereign Artist Within.  Perhaps, I can help a few other lost artistic souls reconnect to the source of creativity and find joy once again.

I’ve been referring to this central piece of “connecting your soul to the source” as “Your Truth” in our previous articles.  But “Your Truth” never really quite captured the idea that I’m trying to get across here.  What I’m trying to express is that you must connect with your true artistic self.  That is, you must connect with The Sovereign Artist within.  If you don’t, all creativity will come with a price, and eventually you’ll pay that price, as I did.  As I still am.  All creativity, just like all magic, requires a price to be paid.  However, if you are connected to “The Sovereign Artist”, the price is paid by an unlimited universal energy source and that good energy brings you joy.  If you shut that source out, you will pay the price directly, mentally and, eventually, as I did, physically.

In the end, all of us artists have the same core truth.  And that core truth is this: what I call “The Sovereign Artist” lives at the center of your soul.

The Sovereign Artist is the source of our creativity.  It is unfettered fun and play.  It is the joy of life.  It revels in watching a butterfly land on a leaf.  And it inspires us to say or create something about the beauty of the universe all around us. It is grateful. It is magic. It is “the force” from Star Wars.  It is the Creator.  It is God for those that believe in a god, though it matters not what you believe about it.  It will work for you whether you believe in it or not.  Creation is not something that happened.  Creation is something that is happening and, if you tap into this creative well, it is something that is supposed to be happening through you.  You need only get your false self out of the way.  Once you tap into this source of THE Sovereign Artist, you will BE a soverign artist.  You will be free.  You will be creative.  You will find joy.  Even if your external circumstances have not changed at all, your inner world will suddenly be full of light, energy, freedom, joy and possibility.

Did you ever paint a painting and simply “lose your self” in the flow?  “It practically painted itself!” artists say all the time.  That’s what tapping into The Sovereign Artist feels like.  “You” are gone and are in harmony with the universe when you are in such a flow state.  You are channeling the Source.  

So the “formula” for finding your way back to your True Artist Self is this:

Your true artistic self = [The Sovereign Artist Within] PLUS [uniqueness] PLUS [serendipity] MINUS [societal programming]

To reconnect with your true artistic self there are four pieces to this formula:

1.  The Sovereign Artist Within
This is the never-ending force of the universe and you don’t have to do a thing to it except uncover it and notice it within you. Know thyself.

2.  Your Uniqueness
This is your unique way of thinking and seeing the world.  Your likes and dislikes, the real ones, not things you’ve been programmed by society to “believe.”  Often you can recall your uniqueness when you think about the things you did for play when you were a child.  For example, I drew a lot, I oil painted a lot, and I made fun computer programs, a lot.  Wow, that sounds a lot like the business I’m in now, doesn’t it?  If you allow yourself some fun, your uniqueness will automatically shine.  Your uniqueness is like a filter that the unchanging source of the universe shines through.  We are all created completely unique as the universe experiences creativity in all its different  forms.  After all, the True Sovereign Artist is in the process of creating everything possible.

3. Openness to Serendipity
The Sovereign Artist will help you once you start the process of reconnecting.  Opportunities will fall in your lap.  New directions you hadn’t thought of will appear.  I suddenly found and joined a writers group. What a surprise that was to me! You can call it coincidence.  You can call it synchronicity.  You can call it answered prayers.  It doesn’t matter at all what you call it. You don’t even have to believe in it.  It only matters that you remain open to new possibilities and directions when they appear.  Don’t allow your small self’s preconceived notions of what “should” happen blind you to the opportunities that are happening.  You are likely being nudged for a reason.

4.  Your Programming  
You have been programmed by society, your friends, your family, your obligations, etc.  And this is the place that we usually have to do the most “inner work” to see through these falsities.  You might not even know (yet) that they are false. You have to uncover and remove guilt, fear, apathy, and anger to get back to truth.  You will get excited about something and then think, “I could never do that.”  You must let go of such thinking and, truly letting go, well, unfortunately it can take a long time to lose all of it.  But you will see progress rapidly if you are sincere in walking the path.  In essence, reconnecting with The Sovereign Artist isn’t about adding anything.  It’s about removing and seeing through your false beliefs that keep you separated from all that you could be.

How did I find my way back to my true artistic self you might wonder?

Once you become disconnecting to the Source, you must undergo a rite of passage to find your way back. And the only rite of passage that works is an ancient one. To be reborn you must undergo the universal and sacred rite of passage: death and resurrection. Only once you “die” and are reborn will you regain the connection to the sovereign artist. You have to spend your time in the desert.

So, after my breakdown, I took a, somewhat forced, sabbatical to “find myself.”  I had no clue what that meant.  I had never taken time off work other than vacations (and the last one had been years prior) and so I just, well, I didn’t call it this then, but I guess I “played.”

I started meditating.  I journaled daily.  I wrote down my thoughts, my feelings, things I thought might interest me to explore.  I wrote a song.  I played guitar.  I started going to the neighborhood pool and floating in the water watching clouds overhead.  I played guitar some more.  I sat outside in the back yard.  Sometimes I meditated outside.  I went for walks.  I watched sunsets.  I watched sunrises.  I started running.  I pet neighborhood cats and dogs.  I meditated some more.  I wrote in my journal some more.  I started a new blog.  I started following writers online that I found interesting and inspiring.  I made some new friends.  I connected with people online that had nothing to do with tech and software.  I journaled some more.  I started writing down things I was grateful for.  I journaled.  I played.  And I prayed.

At the time, I had not ever read a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.  But, I read it this past week and, as those of you who have read it already know, you can see that I was a classic “blocked creative” and I unwittingly recreated for myself the process outlined in The Artist’s Way.

I’ve been amazed as I’ve read through the book The Artist’s Way that every symptom listed about blocked creatives, I had.  And everything she suggests doing to reconnect to what she calls your “creative self” are the very things I did, and continued doing for the past two years.  The things I am still doing.  Oh yeah, I should probably mention that - this is a lifelong process.  Not something you “do”, heal, and then stop.  If you stop, you’ll get irritable again, you’ll get disconnected again.  It’s a way of living, which is why creating art creates magic. We are the people who still believe in such nonsense.

In fact, The Artist’s Way is so close to what I’ve spent the past year writing about, I wonder if I should continue writing my forthcoming book or simply point you all to The Artist’s Way instead.  But then I tell myself, that’s my doubt and fear talking, that’s The Resistance. And there is, perhaps, some value for the world, for creatives, in my need to express similar ideas through MY uniqueness. My filter. There must be because it’s what The Sovereign Artist keeps pushing me toward.

Reconnecting with The Sovereign Artist within can take time, especially time to see the fruits in your own work.

But the process of healing starts as soon as you intend to connect with The Sovereign Artist. The Sovereign Artist wants to connect with you.  The Sovereign Artist wants to create through you.  It is the purpose of everything.

So, what does this process of reconnection look like?

That’s what I’ll get into in the next article but, for now, I would recommend following the ideas in The Artist’s Way, particularly the two main, and most powerful tools Ms. Cameron discusses:  Morning Pages and The Artist Date.

The Morning Pages are a form of journaling about how you feel.  And they will help you uncover and eliminate the false programming of society.  They will help you uncover what you truly want and not what you pretend you want because it’s what society actually wants from you.

The Artist Date is a weekly date with yourself where you do fun, creative activities to reactivate your sense of wonder.

Those two activities, you’ll see, if you compare them to the list above of the activities I undertook during my “sabbatical” are essentially what I did.  I just called them something else.

I uncovered a lot in the (ongoing) process.  For example, one of the things I uncovered about my true artistic self is this:  I am a writer.  That isn’t how I made my living, and it’s certainly not what our customers expected from me.  But, once I removed expectations and fear, and experimented with new directions it became crystal clear.  I am a writer, I always have been, and I’d been suppressing that truth.  No wonder I had a breakdown! I now even write fiction.

So, for now, if you’re trying to align all the “Circles of Art Marketing” we’ve been discussing and something feels “off”, then I suggest that you  journal every morning, and allow yourself some play time.  The kingdom of heaven is there, you know, within you.  You just have to see it again.

Creatively,

Clint Watson, writer.

PS - I am using the symbol of a fleur-di-lis to represent the deep truth at the center of us all, what I call “The Sovereign Artist.” The Tao which can be named, after all, is not the true Tao, so I’ve opted to use a symbol instead. This symbol reflects what you are in your deepest self - free and sovereign over yourself. The fleur-de-lis stood as a symbol of the king's divinely approved right to rule and, when you connect to this power of the divine, you are granted the power to rule over yourself. The red fleur-di-lis is the famous symbol of the most artistic city in history, Florence which, in latin, means flowering. Through this process you will flower in to your truest, most free, sovereign self. And you will be unstoppable.

FASO Loves Carl Bretzke’s oil paintings!

See More of Carl Bretzke’s art by clicking here.

Wouldn’t You Love to work with a website hosting company that actually promotes their artists?

As you can see, at FASO, we actually do, and,
we are the only website host we know of that does.

Click the button below to start working
with an art website host that actually cares about art.

Get Started with FASO for Free

Creatively,

Clint Watson
BoldBrush Founder & Creativity Fanatic

PS - This email may be too long for some email programs. We suggest you watch/read it on the web by clicking the button below

Read or Watch on the Web

Olya Konell  00:00

So welcome to BoldBrush LIVE. Today, we have an exciting pair of guests, Kathie and Buddy Odom. And I have Angela with me today. And Angela is our artist, relations director. And Clint isn't able to join us today. But he will be at one of our upcoming webinars. So we're excited to have a discussion today focusing on, you know, getting stuff done, you know, art and marketing, but specifically on, you know, working with another person that, you know, can help us execute our marketing tasks. If you have questions throughout the webinar, please feel free to use the q&a option at the bottom of your zoom window, you can put your questions in there at any time, we'll do our best to try to get through them. And then if it's a specific question for for Kathie or buddy, I will go ahead and forward them on if we don't get to it to them. So that way they can connect with you afterwards, we'll be sharing some links. So you know, if you need to get if you miss a link in the chat, and you are, you know, forget to copy it. After the webinar, we will have the recording available next week. So if you are a FASO or BoldBrush member, you're going to be able to log into your account. And you'll be able to access your account from the bulk access the recording from the BoldBrush circle of marketing. If you're not a FASO, or BoldBrush, or BoldBrush member, you can still get the recording for free, you just have to make sure you're subscribed to either the free or paid version of the BoldBrush letter, which is just our newsletter. And this newsletter, we send out basically tips and educational stuff about how to about creativity, marketing, your art, you know, stuff like that. But you want to make sure you subscribe to that, by the end of the weekend. And the link for that is found in the email that you clicked on, you know, to join this webinar, if you go back to that email, it'll say recording, and then I'll have the link on how to do that. If you're a FASO BoldBrush member, you don't need to do anything. It's already available through logging into your account. So a few basic kind of little announcements, and then we'll dive right in. So I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. So this is the boldbrush.com. website. This is where we share our newsletter. And then for members, this is the BoldBrush circle of marketing if you're new, available by clicking on the marketing tab from your account, for anybody that doesn't know who BoldBrush is just a quick little blurb about who we are, we offer basically, solutions for artists. And so we offer education, inspirational content, we connect artists with other artists, we offer apps and media, we have free resources, which is the BoldBrush Show podcast, the BoldBrush Letter newsletter, this webinar that we do for free every month. And then we also have the BoldBrush contest, which is an art contest that you can enter for that I think it's first time is free, right Angela, or it's free to do this.

Angela Agosto  03:05

So if you're not, if you're not a FASO member, it's free for everybody the first time if you're a FASO member, depending on your plan, you'll get 2, 3, 4 depending on which plan you're on free entries every month. And

Olya Konell  03:17

what's cool about the BoldBrush contests is a lot of galleries actually look at that. And then they will actually that's we we've actually talked to various artists and gallery owners and they look at the contest who the winners are who the end who who entered. So it's definitely a great opportunity just to get your art out there, specifically to people that are in the art space. For products we offer websites. So we are a tech company we offer Fine Art Studio Online FASO, we have our own websites. And we also offer artful Squarespace by a FASO, which is a you can get Squarespace under our umbrella. For the best plan that is discounted at a lower price. You also get free, you know, ability to have a free email account and do all of that it's all included, you get access to all of our marketing resources. So if you're already a Squarespace member, you can actually bring your site under our umbrella. If you have questions on that, just shoot us an email. And that will help with your pricing and giving you these additional marketing benefits that you would not get just by going directly to squarespace.com. And we again, on our website, you'll find everything else that we have. So feel free to check it out. Yeah, Angela, we'll go ahead and share some links. So let's dive into the fun stuff. All right, welcome. This is Kathie Odom and her husband, Buddy. And they Cathy is an artist. You could see her beautiful artwork behind her. And I'm going to let Cathy to introduce herself and just give us a brief overview. Tell us a little bit about yourself

Kathie Odom  04:59

where Hello, I'm Kathie Odom. I live in East Tennessee and I paint. I started late to the game, as I say it, it started when I was 50 years old, I was an art major that kind of put everything away except for created jobs. But as far as doing my own work a little bit before that was given a birthday present at age 50. And it was an old painting class and it included plein air painting, and I've been hooked ever since. And I think that we pretty much developed a career out of it. You can have a second why. And I'm proof of that for sure. A whole lot younger to

Olya Konell  05:57

Oh, god. Yeah, age is just a number age is just a number that we it's all in our head. Yeah, but so this is what I love about your story is we have a lot of people that are like, Oh, it's too late for me. I'm already in my 40s I'm in my 50s I'm you know, it's not it is absolutely not. And and you are absolutely evidence of that, that if this is something that you love to do, you can absolutely turn it into a career. So. So briefly, before we kind of dive into the other questions, I would like to kind of feature Well, first of all, you just got back from Europe and did a lot of painting. And you have a lot of stuff on the calendar for this year. So I have your website up behind me you have workshops, and we'll share the link. So if you are having to leave early, we'll share these links once we'll share them at the end, and then we'll have them with the recording. But if you want to join a workshop, or you want to see what workshops are available, there's that anything you want to mention specifically about your events and workshops.

Kathie Odom  07:08

Well, I do think there's one spot black, maybe two for the Spain trip this fall. And I would love for somebody to hop on that. But we are really excited about that trip. Buddy and I are going a little bit early so we can feast on Sir Roy. Yeah. And then we're gonna go pain and Costa Brava with a lot of great friends. So

Olya Konell  07:35

Wow. And I want to mention something I've always wondered. So when artists do these getaway trips to paint a you technically turn it into a business event. So you get to write off stuff, right?

Buddy Odom  07:52

Government of the United States of America allows us to write that off. That's correct.

Olya Konell  07:57

Data. Awesome. That is just so cool,

Angela Agosto  08:00

I would say and the artists going can also as well, because it's sort of a continuing education for them, or it's to enhance their own art.

Olya Konell  08:09

So if you have Wow. Wow, that is really cool. What a perk to be an artist as you can. So for anybody listening, hey, if you have a trip you want to make find a way to turn it into an event of some sort, get some people to join you. And you could Wow, that's fantastic.

Buddy Odom  08:33

Yeah, one quick thing, or why we're on our workshops tab. You need to hear our voices to get used to our accent before we get even deeper here. But but we started this last spring just a couple of months ago at an event called home week with Kathie. So it is a it is a workshop slash paint out. It's a little bit it's less intense on the workshop. But it's an it's a few more people. And we're going to do that again. Next year just hasn't been posted and it will fill up. It'll be in the spring and may we may also do one in the fall. And it's one week here where everything is included lodging, every meal, every everything and it's for five nights, and it will be here at our place in East Tennessee. Immediately and every one of those folks is there. They're coming right back. So the only way to know when we announced this watch this people. The only way to know when we announced this is to get Cathy's newsletter that comes out every month. And it will be announced on the newsletter first. So if you have not signed up for the newsletter, that's how you do it right there.

Olya Konell  09:40

That's awesome. And I love and I want to highlight what you're doing right now for anybody. For anybody listening your special announcements, and your exciting news should go to your newsletter subscribers first and I know that we are we talk about new the importance of a newsletter a lot, but Kathie and Buddy are going to tell us It truly how important it is because they're, they're using it. And it's it's proving success successful. So we've, so yes, we are sharing the link to the newsletter. We have information on workshops. And then also one more thing, you have a book and I've had somebody email me they loved your book. So you've written a book, let the art speak, book by Kathie. And so we'll share the link to that. If anybody has the book, let us know. Back to Kathie and Buddy, you have a unique arrangement. Kathie's the artist, buddy, you are the business manager, the marketing manager, you kind of word the other hats that are typically need to be worn by someone. And so I'd really like to ask Kathie, how did you decide which business and marketing tasks to delegate to? Buddy? Can you walk us through this process? Or how did this all come about? You know, when you first decided that, this is the way it's going to be? Well, you

Kathie Odom  11:01

know, we we have done life together now for almost 43 years. It has gone from me being a support person for Buddy. And it's pretty much flipped. Now. He's a support person, and what I'm involved in, and it's been pretty much from the beginning, it took a little getting used to. And I think that would be true with for any married couple, putting this together. You you have found this, I have found this new life of creating and and then quickly found out that I'm not a technical person, I'm more of an art artistic person, which that can be both on No, but just to have that he's a writer, he's, he's good with all of this technology. He's, it just made sense. And then when it started when we started working with each other on developing this, I guess we call it it it. It gave us more like even as a couple. Yes to do together, which that can't hurt any of us that are in a strong relationship. But it certainly

Buddy Odom  12:32

is certainly sharpened our friendship is one way to say it too. And, but there is whether it's a married couple or not whether but when you interact with one another, there is a learning curve that you you have to hang in there with. But I guess it just started because of what's Cathy's saying is she's got some? Of course she does. I don't kind of the agreement is you paint you teach Kathie, and I'll do whatever else I can to make those two things happen.

Kathie Odom  13:08

I think the best thing I've ever heard that he say, as far as this art thing is, if I could keep you in front of the ease of doing what you love, I will I'll take on the other things. And we discuss everything. And he is so good to make sure that I'm in agreement that he's really fallen for this art thing. And in a lot of ways, and he's the first one to sign us up for going to a museum. That it's it's it's that makes it good to when we both love it. We have different roles, and it helps me do what I do best. And

Buddy Odom  13:54

her name is on the book. Her signature is on the canvas. Her name is on the website. And so she has veto power she has so everything it's it's Kathie, it's Kathie, this is just you know, this is just what's underneath Kathie, just kind of fanning the flame, if you will.

Olya Konell  14:15

So it would be an for an artist that is trying to arrange something similar with their spouse or maybe an older teenage child or an adult child or a family member friend, another student artists that wants to help them. It sounds like the important thing about arranging this kind of business working relationship is setting expectations early on. And the ground rules like who has veto power who do you know, establishing those boundaries is key. Because then you don't get somebody overstepping their boundaries out of helpfulness. Not that they're trying to be, you know, rude or as humans we want to help and we just don't know any better sometimes. So establishing those boundaries. And then like you said, you've discussed it You went through, okay, you'll do this, you know? So you'll focus on that. So if for artists that are looking to maybe hire somebody or find a person, buddy, what advice do you have as somebody that's doing it? You know, what are some characteristics for a good assistant or business manager or anything that you can recommend?

Buddy Odom  15:22

Well, I'll say one that is not let me do it that way. First is not necessarily a spouse, or a boyfriend or girlfriend, or whatever it might be, it's may not that may not work. As a matter of fact, the downside sometimes is, that's all your relationship might end up being built on. And that's, that's not necessarily a good thing. So oftentimes, we, we talk a lot about art, obviously, but it may not be a spouse or, or someone that you're just going to assume that, but but I would really, I think I would really find the person, look for the task, if you will, or what you need first, and then kind of go in that direction. But there's some questions underneath that that ought to take place first about, you know, what your hopes are, what your goals are. And, you know, a lot of times, folks, whether they're artists or not just hate to talk about, I don't want to know about goals, I just want to paint well, good, good. Paint, don't expect sales to come along necessarily with painting. But you want to, you want to figure out how to go hand in hand. So But first, you need to know, if you just want to paint just for fun, well, then you don't need any more, go enjoy it. But if you would like to pay for some of those tubes of paint that costly in the canvass or, or travel a little bit more, you need that, we'd like to say that a mortgage is a good incentive. Not Oh, damn, we got a mortgage, just so. So we really try to pay attention to that. And so one of the goals is of ours is to pay off a mortgage someday. So that's underneath there. So before you decide what your need is, decide, first of all who you are and what you the direction you want to go.

Olya Konell  17:17

I love that. That is such good advice for for sure. Like you said, it's not wrong just to pick because I do that to just

Buddy Odom  17:25

give you my top five, can I just yeah, let's roll. You ready to roll.

Kathie Odom  17:28

I'm ready to roll. Okay, people

Buddy Odom  17:30

get a pencil write this down. Here we go. You're ready. We okay, we go can go. We're rolling. Number one. Be genuine. Just be just make sure you're you make sure you want to paint like you're not like Kathie, or not like fill in the blank. You want to paint like you want to find you you want to grow, be you anything marketing wise, don't just do it because someone else has done and it's been good. We'll talk about the newsletter later, I will tell you to do that anyway. But But don't just do things because someone else is doing b beat you. And if anyone knows Cathy a little bit or a lot, she genuinely, she's Kathie. We're southern. She's kind. I'm not necessarily but but but she's, but she's Kathie and she wants that to work into her art. And I think it I think people she would even tell you to, that people know when you're being genuine, when you're being you when you're, it gets the DNA of the artists gets in there somehow. And don't try to analyze that, on how that works. Just be so unpack the word genuine, that's at the top of my five. Okay, be genuine. Okay, number two, these are in order. Get better. Just get better. Put, if you sell a painting or don't sell a pen you you've got a little retirement you want to pull out early or whatever it is whatever you can get some cash, go to workshops, expand, move more deeply into what that genuineness is so the first one, being genuine is about you as a person. The second one is about you, as an artist get better. Don't do any marketing unless you have deep in your bones that you want to be you and don't go into marketing if you don't plan on getting better. It just doesn't work. The third thing that I would say and so the first is about a person the second is about you as the artist and the third one it is even here's marketing ready get help. Just get get some help. And that's what you know you were beginning to talk about here a little bit is get some help. Look. I don't Okay, you ready? Go ahead and Kathie doesn't know how to spell baloney. Oh, no, I don't mean she does. She does not know how to spell No. Words like Xena Last but no, I mean, she doesn't know how to spell the word bologna. Go ahead.

Kathie Odom  20:08

Well, no, no, no.

Buddy Odom  20:13

She can't, she can't spell the word bologna. And listen, when you paint like she paints or she doesn't need to spell the word bologna. I know how to spell the word bologna. And so you need people around you that know how to spell Bologna, B, O, L, O G, and you need you need people around you that are going to help you do think you don't want to misspell a word. You don't want to. Here's just a few kind of basic sort of things. So she doesn't need to know how to spell bullet. She doesn't need to know how to get on the Google. She doesn't need to have you know, all those sorts of things. She does get on there, but she doesn't need to. So there's a lot of things marketing wise. So that's why that's what you do. So as an artist, you get help. And the fourth thing that I wrote down is, is on number four here is that E newsletter through fast so that that's jumping on here. That's the number one tool we've used. And you can even go there and oh, yeah, I don't know if you can pull this up on the for newsletter there. But you had the newsletter sign up. Underneath that, that red barn that she painted, there's a little button that says read past issues. Click that, would you can they see this?

Olya Konell  21:28

Right here? Yes. Okay, no nice scroll

Buddy Odom  21:32

every month for eight years. Wow, wow,

Kathie Odom  21:39

it's come out at the beginning of every month. And that's kind of what buddies may data has a list, he checks the list. I'm over here dreaming about the next subject matter in a painting. But I can't say enough about how having somebody beside you, that knows what your passion is. And can write can spell that. And, but we put this out every month and people look for it. Now they know it's not spam. Here's another

Buddy Odom  22:27

hint. All of these you can click on all of them. If you're bored out of your mind, click on all of them and steal your little heart out. Helper

Olya Konell  22:37

ideas. Yeah.

Buddy Odom  22:41

So these are all cotton, you can see newly released you can see there's a gallerist right there. There's just in love with Kathie more in love with her. You know, we share everything about that. But that goes back to being to being genuine, to getting help, to getting better, everything, all of those things will be included right there. And this is a most wonderful tool,

Kathie Odom  23:03

we say that your company giving us the opportunity to do a newsletter. And it's easy to do, even though buddy buddy does it for us at watched and, and to know that that's available, and that it can just come out every month and you're staying in touch with your collectors. With new people. I mean, I'm always saying go on my website, go to fast so and sign up for my newsletter. So we we're not saying that just because we're here today. We say that all the time.

Buddy Odom  23:45

She has a very hefty subscriber base that started eight or nine years ago when people started. So everyone that receives this has chosen to receive it. This is not some Instagram, Facebook that might happen to pop. This is an email that comes into their inbox they've chosen to we can then see on analytics, the analytics that FASO also offers, how many people have opened this newsletter, we get contacts through it, there's links, like if you push a link on one of those particular one paintings, it might send you to a to a gallery where that painting is at the gallery and things like that. So you have so here it goes to if I don't know if they're seeing this or not. Oh, yeah, but this painting is that the district gallery because you just click the painting, so okay, we can't say enough about it. But just find someone that you sit with every month, who's tech savvy enough who would like to start off and do this by their bagel? Right? You buy the egg or you buy the coffee, and this person is just a friend, just a friend of yours is so excited about you painting and trying to get have a deeper career. And by the way, not just you get their bank loan Coffee, you also have paintings, don't you? This is how you can pay, you can pay some of these folks is you can frame and give them a painting. You can pay them good cold American cash if you want to. But there's a lot of ways that you can get help.

Olya Konell  25:16

Yeah. And if you're an artist, too, that teaches, let's just say there's somebody in a that's experience that knows that, that has gone through your checklist they have, they've gotten better. They're being authentic, they're doing all that now they just need a person. If they can teach another younger artists, they can always exchange services be like, I will give you a free lesson. You know, we'll exchange you know, this is the value of my lesson, this is the value of the work that I need done every week, I'll help you get better. And so that's another, you know, idea.

Buddy Odom  25:46

Well said,

Kathie Odom  25:48

a recent thing that I had heard that a few artists are doing is they're sharing a person, they have gone in together, and they're sharing somebody that has the skills of organization of technology, all these things. And that that gives another person a good job. Yeah, I think that's brilliant. I think it's a really smart thing. See

Buddy Odom  26:16

how excited you can be when you get help? Yeah.

Angela Agosto  26:21

That's the best referral that you know, other another artist is using them, you're using them. It's like you've already and somebody was just asking about that. What do I do if I don't have somebody? I love that you brought that up, just as they said that?

Olya Konell  26:31

Yeah, you can share. So if you find a person, they're like, Well, I can only do it, if you keep me this busy. You know, and I come back to them Be like, well, I have one other person or two other people will keep you busy, you know, you'll have a job, especially if they have the skills of writing, and a little bit of tech savviness. And all of that. That's fantastic. For

Angela Agosto  26:51

Robin is asking, I guess reach out to another artist, and ask them and so on and word of mouth, that's how you can probably find somebody.

Kathie Odom  26:59

And that's what I was going to jump on. Because you all if artists do for plein air artists, we should be part of a group we, as helped start a group in our area and we go out and paint together, then you all need these helpers. And if you're already in a, in a relationship with other artists, that should come a lot easier. And it it's one of the greatest teachers I have is going out on a weekly basis with a plein air group. So all of this starts to come together and be good for each thing.

Buddy Odom  27:42

This will bring Joe bring up point number five, everybody writing these down, you got 12344 was do the newsletter number five. Number five, you ready for this? This is the air a ir for folks that are not Southern, the air over all the other four. Be generous, be generous. So I'm going to read you a quote that I carry around with me. It's by Annie Dillard. And she writes it about she's a writer. So this quote is about writing, that she's saying that it's really about life, and it's about this. So it's a long quote, but hang in there. It's great. Annie Dillard, one of the things I know about writing is this, spend it all shoot it, play it, lose it all right away every time do not hoard what seems good for a lighter place in the book or for another book. Give it give it all give it now something more will arise for later, something better. These things feel from behind like beneath feel from behind from beneath like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not freely and abundantly give becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. So we look at each other sometime and say you're going to take that to the grave. How good is it going to be for you in the grave. So if you've got even even all the way down to techniques that I know artists, they like to hold on to those little special things that make their peak. Okay. How good is that if you take that secret all the way to the grave with you share it give it abundantly freely and so in doing so also charge accordingly. Okay, we will get into talking about price lists and so forth here but when folks get a piece of my wife's are they're getting a piece of Kathie Odom so in in the vernacular, the vocabulary is Oh, you have a Kathie Odom painting, right? It's a piece of Kathie. She paints by taking her herself and throwing her DNA into a painting. charge accordingly. Be generous give, let's go. Let's play. hire these people. You've got a nephew, you've got a grandson, you got someone who's tech savvy, get help. Get them be generous. And let's, let's roll the all this play. I mean, this is good. Not this. Who is now? So

Olya Konell  30:21

good, so good. Absolutely. And when you're generous, it's like generosity comes back to you, you know. And I mean, if you're teaching, be generous, if you're painting be generous. I just love that whole philosophy, because then it does. Imagine the experience those people have, if one artist comes to your workshop, and they just learned so much they had the most in a How could they not? They're going to come back and they're going to bring a friend. And that is the best sales referral is a testimonial. In my any commission I've ever done anything I've ever done. The best sale, that the best sales referrals, making one person really happy.

Buddy Odom  31:00

He's the one teaching me and so you can teach others by just being generous. They but generosity begets generosity, right? Yeah.

Olya Konell  31:08

Yeah, absolutely. And, and I want to ask Kathie, this. So if there's an artist right now, that's listening, and what advice do you have to them? If they're hesitant to delegate tasks? They're afraid, you know, maybe they're how do they overcome that fear of losing control over their business? Or their voice? Or maybe they're afraid of taking that first step?

Kathie Odom  31:31

I don't know. Yeah, I would say that courage, courage when you put a brush mark on your canvas, but courage when you decide to let somebody come in and help is a big part of how I go about it. Trust and courage, but stay involved? Don't take your hands off of the wheel. Be in it know what your who, who was representing you know, how they're representing you. And it takes time. So, you know, it's not something that you let go of, that's for sure. Yeah.

Olya Konell  32:15

I had somebody asking in the chat. And this kind of jumps into newsletters. And I want to mention this as an artist writing blogs and newsletters to promote my work. Can you recommend any specific content that would be of more interest to collectors and to artists, I would like to connect with more collectors, and what they would like to read here about re regarding art, and I was looking at your all of your newsletters. I'm going to say this, I think you what you write about will appeal to both. But tell me what your recommendations are.

Kathie Odom  32:46

I think you I think you share what art is giving you personally, and I don't I don't get into political stuff. I don't use it as something to get a how I think about some, ask the app, keep it in the art world. And I keep it in the creativity. And I keep it in the subject matter, and how I get to travel because of art. And it's open doors. And I am. I mean, I'm a pretty real tight person. And life is not always awesome. But I do stay positive. In most of our writing about my career. I don't think people want a lot of negativity. And I think art brings a lot of positive things to people's labs. And I like to stay in that realm. Yeah,

Olya Konell  33:59

and I think what you focus on grows. So if you focus on the positive, even for the intent of providing something positive to your audience, in a sense, you're actually facilitating more positivity into your life anyway. I feel there's a The other thing I want to mention. And we've shared this fact before, but art, our newsletters from artists have some of the highest open rates, by the way. So like, it's like government emails, and then like summer long in that top, like, you know, you want to make sure your taxes and bills are paid. And then yes, it's an email from an artist, but if their people genuinely genuinely want a little inspiration in their life, and we have the opportunity to offer that, which is what you guys are doing. Artists

Buddy Odom  34:46

are storytellers. You really, you're certainly you're telling the story of the scene that you're painting, but there's more to it than that. You're telling the story of the one who's painting it. And then if you can, again, In the within the vein of these newsletters if you can tell that story through there, so if the focus is on is on Cathy's story, and you can, not sure she would want, or I would want you to do this, but you can, you can go to the very first newsletter, and you can see the evolution over the last eight years of her story. And you can if you want to read or if you can see, just through the paintings, you can see the evolution of her story of her art career story that

Olya Konell  35:29

way. That's, that's Yeah. And that's cool for ourselves to to go back and look at it. One quick question, you have lovely photos on your of all of your work? Do you guys photograph your own art? Or do you hire a professional to do it?

Buddy Odom  35:44

iPhone,

Kathie Odom  35:45

wave, the iPhone, dismiss got it. But we have done both. It's one point, we started taking my work to a professional. And he did such an amazing job that it was actually him and buddy that said, we have to do more with these photos y'all paid for. And that's how the bar the book got started. So he would only use his professional photos for the book. And I'm so glad about that. I mean, it's it's so beautiful and done so well. That it it really just doing that made the ball roll in other ways.

Olya Konell  36:35

That's awesome. Yeah, I'm going back to the newsletter, this comment really caught my attention in the chat. We have somebody saying that's why I can't do a newsletter. I'm too negative about my work. And I know as artists, we have those moments. So Kathie, what advice do you have?

Kathie Odom  36:53

Well, I had said it earlier about something else, but courage. If we're not putting it out there, and we're not sharing what we're doing, we're missing out. And, you know, if you're working diligently on trying to get your art better, the process is a story, too. And it's worth sharing. Add just, and, gosh, that was what I went through at the very beginning on trying to trying to put the art out there and just, and the fears that go through you and you know, you feel like you're practically a dress and you feel it's very it is and it and but it has, it has paid off. I don't I don't know whether but I work very diligently at at night art and constantly striving to be better.

Buddy Odom  38:06

And that's the first thing that of my five things was just to be genuine. Kathie said at one point she goes, You will never see me on a webinar, or you will never see me video. And I will never be on film. You can forget that right now.

Kathie Odom  38:25

That has changed a little bit.

Buddy Odom  38:28

And so the so the the outflow that the goodness of that is you

Kathie Odom  38:34

can change. That's right. That's right. And that's a beautiful Good day. Yeah. And yeah, yeah,

Angela Agosto  38:40

I bet it's it with number two, right, buddy, where you said get better master your work. And then like Kathie said, thing, you're going to change your mind like, Okay, now I'm ready to do these things that I maybe want to,

Buddy Odom  38:53

or I'm ready to be a little more courageous. You know, we're, no one's ever ready. No one's ever arrived. No,

Kathie Odom  39:00

that's true. Or a sweet woman writes you back after a zoom class and says during COVID My husband is sick, I can't go anywhere. You're the brightest thing that's happened to me in a long time. I love that all of a sudden, you just melt and you don't care what you sound like. And you don't care that your speech teacher told you you had a disease of the voice. I don't

Buddy Odom  39:29

care if you can't tell me you.

Kathie Odom  39:35

If we're being generous and we're giving of ourselves, it makes it makes a huge difference. So all I can say to that person that wrote that is you just got to get some courage about you and do it. We're all missing out because you're not sharing. Yeah.

Olya Konell  39:53

And you can't and you can't build confidence without that initial step of courage and everybody I wanted to highlight that because I know I felt that way I kept the youth, we've all had moments where we feel vulnerable, like you said, like Ron dressing, because it's a part of our DNA. It's a part of us in our art. And and Yeah, another quote that came to mind was the this, a cemetery is just this the wealthiest place on Earth, because there's paintings that were never painted in there that were never shared in there that went down in people's minds and hearts with their grave books that were never written ideas that were never acted upon, you know, all of that. And it's, it's, it's heartbreaking. So we can change that we can make a little bit less wealthy in there.

Angela Agosto  40:40

And I gotta say, the title of cafe, you did a podcast with Oprah Show, and the title of it is the courage to pursue your joy. And I'm going to share that because that was

Olya Konell  40:51

good. It was such a good one. Yeah. For anybody that enjoys us, and wants a little bit more of Kathie and Buddy inspiration, definitely check that one out. No, these are amazing. Thank you, buddy. I love that you broke it down, I'm looking at my questions, you've actually kind of like nailed a lot of things, you know, a lot of the questions I sent, you guys would just kind of answered them through the, you know, just naturally. So I want to ask kind of a because you work with a lot of artists, what are some of the common mistakes artists make when they're trying to delegate business tasks? Or sell art or balancing business and creative stuff? You know? And how can they avoid those mistakes?

Kathie Odom  41:38

I can take that, first of all, do it. Um, I think one huge mistake is not respecting the gallerist not respecting the organizations that are out there trying to help us and let us be a part of what they're doing. But to barge into a gallery with your hands full of framed art and, and asked for you know, them to look at your art. They're human, they're just like us. I mean, you know, they're, they are people that are investing in us, they are paying the light bills, they're sitting at that desk in that gallery showing beautiful art. And they really are investing their time and, and monies. And I think we need to respect that. And always get in touch with a gallery or collector in the proper wet eggs, emailed him first, give them a call before you show up at their door. I just find that to be something that I want to do. And I've not everybody knows that. If you're a beginning artist, you're wondering, Well, hell, you know, and you you you barging in, you know or what, but it it really to respect their feelings and that they may not have a space for you right now. And may later if you treat them with respect, they will remember that

Buddy Odom  43:28

origin it's disingenuous. It's just not a very genuine thing that is just not really who you are or want to be. So just in in that, by the way, if you go into a gallery, or some of these other ideas that you have, like when Kathie goes into a gallery we we say, Can you Can we do this for one year, and at the end of one year, both parties can say yay or nay. So let's just kind of thank you for entertaining the thought of Karen, Kathie, but we try to do that sometimes is

Kathie Odom  44:03

this a good fit? You want to be in a gallery that's a good fit, and you want the gallerist? If they're not excited about your work? It's not going to work. It just didn't. So I want somebody that really wants to represent me. Not that I've pushed myself on them. So I would, those are things I'd recommend

Buddy Odom  44:29

I would recommend. Everybody needs a buddy. Not everybody needs buddy. Because a lot of lot of folks say Hey, buddy, can you so in other words, the way we're doing it is not it's it's not the answer. The best art marketing hasn't been done yet. You might do it, whatever that idea is whatever that might be. It's not necessary. We just kind of we just kind of liked each other in our in our interim Marriage. And then she started painting and I said, Well, do you want me to do this? And then it kind of snowballed. So that was a fit. But there's some more fits out there that haven't been discovered the best art marketing hasn't been done yet.

Olya Konell  45:12

Yeah, well, and also, I'd like to add up a big thing that we teach our BoldBrush we teach our artists is an Clint is very outspoken about this, he does not like the marketing guru that is pitching to artists, this is the only way you should market your art, this is exactly what you have to do. This is the only way that you have to do it this way, you have to post it this way. And so the idea is, is you know, a marketing is putting yourself out there and how you put yourself out there is going to fluctuate based on what's authentic to you. If you're a really good speaker, maybe you should speak more. If you're a really good writer, maybe you should, you know, have either you or have someone help you write more, you know, in putting yourself out. So that's going to fluctuate a little and you get to play into your strengths and your own quirks, you know, we all we should embrace those little quirks. And I want to mention, Kathie, you're, I used to have a speech impediment to I couldn't talk without stuttering. I never thought I'd be in here doing the webinars. So absolutely. You know, those? Yeah, don't? Yeah, for anybody that's in the same boat with something else. You know, don't let that hold you back. Since we're on galleries, one person asked any additional advice on approaching galleries? So you said email them first? Do you just how do you find your galleries? Because this is for those artists that are trying to get into one do you just like, go check them out first, you know, kind of visit them as a visitor,

Kathie Odom  46:39

I think it's a great thing to visit galleries just for our for learning, if anything, and you know, The Gallerist some will, you know, ask you why you're there. What, you know, when I'm an adult, I wouldn't know back then by saying, Well, I do art, you know, and I wanted to come see what, what you're up to. But it's, it's, you know, brag on them. If you if you if they're beautiful. I do care about where my art is shown. And I want to I want to be represented well. And I want to be represented by friendly people. Please, also, but you know, if I has a bad day, you know, you should give people you should give it even a gallery another chance. But I think even while you're in there, if it does come up to the subject of why are you visiting us? Then you're an artist, but just to say, would you entertain an email from me with this is my website, please visit it. And when

Buddy Odom  48:01

would you take my newsletter I send out every month that's how we got it, you got it in Atlanta

Kathie Odom  48:11

you got tools and things and they have a lot of time on their hands. Sometimes they don't always they're not always flooded with guest in the gallery. So they spend a lot of time on the computer.

Buddy Odom  48:26

Here's here's a couple of quick ones is get on the website, see which other artists are there and think, you know, up paint a lot similar to her. I don't know that I would actually fit so you can go and see who's already there. You might you may feel like it's not a fit. Another one is we have some are kids and grandkids, some of them live six hours from here. And there was a gallery halfway. And that was we went on there we visited it was kind of look like a fit. Well, that's a road we're burning up from time to time visiting the kids and the grandkids. So you can be a presence. You can rotate paintings over time, you can instead of being 14 hours from here, you can you can actually it can be on your road. You can you can stay in front of them as far as a presence and rotations of paintings. Just a couple of quick ideas.

Olya Konell  49:17

Yeah. And somebody else had kind of asked did you start with with your website or on Instagram? How did your followers find you? So I think what they're looking for is like, how did you get people onto your newsletter? How do you find these people? I guess what's that look like for Kathie?

Buddy Odom  49:35

best time to plant a Sequoia is when? Oh yeah.

Olya Konell  49:42

planted right away 400

Buddy Odom  49:44

years ago. Oh. And the second best time is today. So you just go ahead and you start and that newsletter certainly is a bit built over time.

Kathie Odom  49:56

You know, we did the website first and I remember thinking, you that was anybody looking at it? Is anybody contacting us through? Is it getting me anywhere? Am I selling anything off of it? It has taken everything. Everything to make this career happen. And it's it's building, you know, did that ad in an in a magazine work? Did we did, I don't think we've ever sold a painting off of an ad. But the name was there. And keeping keeping things simplistic, and bold and beautiful. And they. And all of those things have made, somehow this thing happened.

Olya Konell  50:53

Yeah. So what you're saying is the fact that you just started doing all of these things, you may not know where that collector came from, but they might have seen you there. Then they stumbled across this. And they're like, oh, yeah, I keep seeing this artist everywhere I'm going to, I see, she's having a show. And then they go to that gal, you know, so it could be a combination of things. It's not just one thing. I think the key is, you know, have a list of different ways to get yourself out there. And it's in person. And online. Sometimes younger artists, and I speak for that, you know, crowd like, we get too stuck in just Instagram. And it's not that I mean, Instagram is amazing, it is great. It's a great tool. It's free. That's the best thing about it. But it's not the only way and these in person connections and relationships, events, just going someplace being active traveling, all of that is a part of marketing, I think it's putting yourself out there and you guys do an amazing job at that BoldBrush contest

Buddy Odom  51:50

is Thank you. Contest is free. If you have a if you have a website through through FASO, so it's free. So they're not going to pick a painting you have to monthly so set an alarm on the 15th or the 25th of the month. Pick, it's easy. Enter that. And if you get any notoriety from a BoldBrush contest, capitalize because there are so many entries. So you could say you I was a downside, there's so many entries, well, if you don't put one in your entry to get in. But if you do, and Cathy's got a couple of them. And so then that goes in the newsletter, or that gets posted somewhere and capitalize on that. One other quick thing, if you're ever in an event at an event, and your piece is in the event, and the award are going on, or if you have the judge nearby that wants to say something about it on your on your cute little phone, during the awards every time you go over to the to the audio or recording whatever it's called. And you just put it down by the speaker and push play push record. And then you have a recording of the judge say possibly if you're chosen saying something that's a quote, that's, that you can use. Or if you want to go ask the judge, what do you think of my painting? And you say, may I record it? Or whatever? Yeah, those sorts of there's all sorts of opportunities for you to and it is it's a broad spectrum. Early on, Kathie said yes to almost everything. There were, there were some things that were were a grind. And she was she was genuine in the midst of it. Not like I would be but she was she was what she was and it and it's mounted up and some things have happened differently for different people.

Angela Agosto  53:43

Yeah, say going back to your saying about oil was saying and you guys were saying going here doing this trying this. I feel like just also make sure that everything is connected. And by that I mean like if you're in a live in person event, make sure you have your your phone with your sign up newsletter ready or old fashioned, you know, clipboard or whatever. And I love that you guys have on your Instagram, you guys have your website you have you know, everything by everything is linked. I also mean that you're including your workshops, your website, link, you've got everything in there. So everywhere you go, you make sure everything's up to date. And that everything is from your Facebook, to your Instagram, to your website to your events, everything kind of so that they can find you and your newsletters as well. You know I'm sure that you list all these things.

Olya Konell  54:33

Yeah. And what's cool is if you by doing that, and I don't know if you guys caught that I went to Google and I just put in Cathy's name and right away, which the FASO sites do a great job of being like the first thing if you have one we passos put a lot of effort into that. But like you put in your name, especially if you have somewhat of a common name, but you're an artist. Like by connecting everything having your your your links ever We were having a social media account for your art indifferent, whatever, whichever ones you decide to use, being featured in articles and all of that it populates on Google. And eventually Google knows this is who they're looking for. And all of this is all this is Kathie, this is not some other, Kathie Odom. But this is the copy. And so that's, that's how this works out. So by putting yourself out there, you meet people. And then they might not go to your website right away, but they might think of it later. And if you don't, a lot of artists asks about optimizing SEO on their website. This doesn't benefit artists, the way we optimize, we optimize is we we put ourselves out there give people a reason to search our name, because people don't just go and look for plein air art and hope that they find you that that's not how that's not really how it works. It's like you have to meet them somewhere either on social media, in person online somewhere else or in person somewhere else we actually have. And for those of you that aren't members, we do have speaking of newsletters, we actually have a couple eBooks about how to grow your newsletter list. And we have a little checklist and a lot of the things that you guys are talking about are actually on that list. So I love that you're doing all of that. And you're connecting with people. And it's showing, and it's that consistency. So I I love that. And somebody did acid Kathie ever saw her paintings on her website? Or is it usually through a gallery?

Kathie Odom  56:35

Well, now I would say we have had sales through the website. And it takes it takes it all. Yeah, it takes the website, it takes the galleries, it takes going to events, doing workshops and selling some pieces there. All of it works together. Yeah,

Olya Konell  56:57

all of it. And I think too, in 2024, if you're an artist that wants to sell art, if you're just an artist that you don't need to do any of this. But if you actually want to sell art, not having a website with your name.com or something, it not having one makes you less legitimate, it's almost like having a online resume. So when you email a gallery, because you want to connect with them, or you participated in an event, you can link and people can click on it, and they can look at all of your art. So even if they don't buy through the site, it's a very simple way to him a business card or a link that they can click on and view all of your information because everything is just going into that direction. I mean, everything. It's almost like it just validating your existence.

Kathie Odom  57:49

I want we all want to talk it what I would say is that, that if you're not keeping it up to date, I love one of you mentioned that, the that that's this guy. I mean, he's on it out, you know, he'll be sitting over in his chair on the computer and all of a sudden just go what are you up to what's going on. And he's constantly looking, have we have we put that painting on, have we you have to stay on it and up to date with things and it takes it this takes both of them because

Buddy Odom  58:31

she she sails through through galleries, when you go to her website, you click on a piece, it'll take you to the gallery. So that's the sales through the websites, it'll it'll take you or if it's hanging here in her gallery, like some of these pieces, that piece on the website will take you to contact us and let you know how that piece is available. That kind of thing. But mainly she sells through the galleries. But she's right. The website's got to stay up to date. And you can get help doing that.

Olya Konell  58:58

Yeah, absolutely. I know that for anybody that, you know, let's just say you hire a person, you might feel a little disorganized and not know how to assign them tasks to do you because you yourself haven't mastered that. I do want to mention this buddy, you are offering marketing consultations. So if somebody wants to have a consult, you know, pay for your time to meet with you to help them kind of get a little organized on that end, maybe with whoever their helper is, they can do that. And can they do that virtually with you. It's really simple. And

Buddy Odom  59:35

you can contact me through contact the artist on site. So you go to go there contact the artists say dear buddy, and so and it's $100 an hour, and it's FaceTime or Zoom each other. Talk about anything you want, you can bring up the subject or I can send you questions in advance. We can talk about everything. We talked about developing a price list or anything or we can talk about this so oh Yeah, you need to smile right now here we go. Hi smile. So see, always carry your camera with you. And then you can be at an event or a gallery and hand it to someone and go, would you take my picture, buy my painting, and you get that. So always have this available so that you can get them then you develop a list of, of photos of you, so that you can put them on your newsletter or your website, you can always keep that. Keep that always going, take a picture of what's happening. But yes, you can you can get a hold of me that way. And I'm here for you.

Olya Konell  1:00:36

That's awesome. And I want to mention one other resource for members or non members, if you join this is available, we actually have a marketing calendar, it's obviously not customized specifically to your needs in a sense. But you can actually, it gives you reminders to update your website every month. So I'm just going to click on the so you can add this to your Google Events, but it has you know tasks to update your sales goals for the month. I mean, if if if if you have any, you can also upload any new art you have. So it's just like little reminders, because sometimes that's what we need. The other cool thing that I that I like that we have is for if you don't know what to write about, or post about on social media, we have a little just fun idea that you just took inspiration every day of the month. So it's it's a resource, it's available for all of our members. And it's available. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, but it mean, what we're I guess the point we're trying to get across to everybody is, there's lots of options available for you guys that are listening, there's lots of options. And you just have to find the one that fits best for you. And I hope you guys took notes, I'm going to include those those five things in the notes that are going to go with this recording. So if you just didn't have anything on hand, you can get the recording later. And that document will be attached with all the links and the five points. And anything else that we had. I feel like we had a lot of good nuggets in this conversation

Angela Agosto  1:02:16

them in here too, because I wrote them down. Oh, good. Get ready. So I did. Yeah.

Olya Konell  1:02:22

I and I feel like we could talk forever. You guys have been so fun. I would love to have you first of all back again. But you know, and we talked about a lot of different things. I'm sure you have some things you didn't get a chance to mention. And I know you told me to remind you in the email, but I can't find my notes on my screen right now. Here we go. Yeah,

Angela Agosto  1:02:44

one because I've got that in there about a meeting with Kathie. Yes, home wiki. We

Olya Konell  1:02:49

got that in contact with the artists. Yeah, if so what final kind of advice or final thoughts that you would like to offer the our audience,

Kathie Odom  1:03:03

work hard at it. Don't Don't, don't go to workshops, and then not pay in between going to workshops, work hard at it. Invest in yourself. That I think most of them any sales that I had, at the very beginning all went right back into investing in the art and an art career. And that took a while of doing that. I would say that I would say we're all artist, and we're doing it our way. And we're getting nuggets from several people. And if you're trying to go and paint like the instructor you got a wombat. You want to paint like you. And Holly, I would just really put that really how Malleus is that? We are trying to do art in our own art. So how would Kathie paint that? I hope she learns how and I hope she does it well. And I hope that for all of you.

1:04:20

I love that. Thank you that

Buddy Odom  1:04:24

kind of genuine right there.

Olya Konell  1:04:26

That's what I would say. Yeah. And I don't know whoever said anything about your voice cuz I could listen to you all day you have the sweetest are good. 230 I know. I bet you she even if she's mad, she can't sound mad.

Angela Agosto  1:04:41

You guys are just so just sweet and things you've shared and just your enthusiasm. It's so contagious. The person from earlier said thank you for your advice, being vulnerable and just courage. Yeah, they left already but yeah, I think I mean even I feel like you were talking to me. I APA as you said, Kathie, you started. Yeah,

Olya Konell  1:05:03

thank you, everybody for your genuine sweet comments as well. I'm going to make sure I forward your comments to Kathie. So if you have anything you want to drop in the chat, feel free to do that. Before we all sign off, I will pass it on.

Angela Agosto  1:05:16

They loved her books that we have. They said, Well, we have it we have and we have

Olya Konell  1:05:21

Oh, good. And you know, I'm first of all grateful to everybody that joined us. Thank you guys so much. We appreciate you. We love these monthly gatherings. We do these once a month we feature a different artists. And so we have another one for next month in the email, you'll get in a couple of days, they'll be or tomorrow will be a reminder about the recording how to access it, and then it'll tell you who the next person is. And if you ever want to email me, and you know, pass something along to our amazing guests. I'm happy to do that for you. You can just respond to those. Because I know you guys would love to get that feedback as well. So thank you. Yeah, so it's a beautiful day, I assume. Are you going to be doing more painting? After after this? Are you going to log off and head outdoors or

Kathie Odom  1:06:12

I am in the middle of a little jetlag. But it won't be long too. I'll be outside painting that's for sure.

Olya Konell  1:06:23

You need a nap some some a little bit of iced tea sitting in the backyard enjoying the beautiful weather? Yeah, I bet. Well, I am so grateful for you for taking the time out of your busy day and jet lagged or not you read here and I would have never known. So

Kathie Odom  1:06:42

yes, we think the world. Thank you so much.

Olya Konell  1:06:47

Thank you everybody and to everybody that joined us. Thank you. Thank you, wishing you all a wonderful and creative rest of your day and we will all see you at the next one.

1:06:58

Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Bye bye

If you are interested Parts I and II, I’ve unlocked them and you may read them at the following links: Mastery - Part I (Why Mastery), Mastery - Part II (How to Become a Master).

Today’s post explores the relationship between mastery and money.

About Money and Art

I’m not one who will tell you to “get ready to be poor” if you pursue art, though, of course, I also won’t tell you to “get ready to be rich” either.  Much of monetary success depends upon you, your devotion to mastery, your earnest efforts and marketing and even then, once you throw a piece over the wall, it’s ultimately up to the market.  

When making art, it must resonate with your soul.  But for a piece of art to sell, it must resonate with the viewer’s.  And you can’t control that.  All you can do is maximize your chances.

What I can share is that I’ve known plenty of artists who are comfortable, and who have done well for themselves.  You don’t have to sell your soul…..unless you take shortcuts around the real value in being an artist — achieving mastery and creating something with meaning.

However, until you are truly ready to sell your work — you need to pursue mastery free of the constraints of having to, to use a blasphemous word — monetize — your work too soon.  

You absolutely can not be in a state of neediness  and master your chosen vocation.  You will be too tempted to take shortcuts.

The Paradox of Money and Mastery

For any artist, of any type, the pursuit of Mastery needs to be a habit, and it is one that never ends.

I think the right balance is probably to resolve to not hustle to sell your work too soon in your journey.  Modern hustle culture is robbing us of deeper meaning and ruining our ability to truly master our pursuits and yet, mastering our pursuits is the very thing that can lead us out of the dystopia of distraction we have imprisoned ourselves in!

“The only thing in life that's really worth having is good skill. Good skill is the greatest possession. 

The things that money buys are fine. They're good. I like them. But having a skill [is the most important thing].   I learned this from reading Esquire magazine. 

They did an issue on ‘mastery’…a very Zen Buddhist concept. 

Pursue mastery that will fulfill your life. You will feel good. I know a lot of rich people and they don't feel good as you think they…would. They don't. They're miserable. So I work because if you don't in stand up comedy — if you don't do it a lot — you stink.” 

– Jerry Seinfield

[Source: Trung Phan’s excellent blog post on mastery]

Here is an excerpt from the Esquire magazine article Seinfield references:

“In recent years, a growing number of Westerners have been fascinated by accounts of Eastern masters who offer their students years and years of goal-less practice. In the book ‘Zen In The Art of Archery’, for example, a goal-oriented German philosopher named Eugene Herngel tells of spending a whole year under a Japanese master’s tutelage just learning how to breathe correctly while drawing the bow and then spending the next four years learning to loose the arrow — without once trying to hit the target.

There’s a paradox here: One who renounces immediate goals for the sake of diligent practice generally ends up reaching higher goals than one who shoots for quick results. One who takes the path of mastery is likely to end up a winner more often than one who thinks about nothing but scoring points. But winning for a true master isn’t something to use as fuel for a depleted ego or to gloat about with cries of ‘number one’. It’s simply part of a process that began long ago that will continue as long as life goes on.

[Source: Trung Phan’s excellent blog post on mastery]

In other words, chasing money too soon destroys your chance at mastery, and, doing so diminishes, in the long run, your chances for monetary success as well.  But, paradoxically, early pursuit of mastery enhances your chances of success over the long term.

When I was in the gallery business, we represented an artist who had first studied art, as a child in China, during the cultural revolution.  

He related to me that he was taught how to paint ears, and nothing but ears, from life, for months. Then they painted noses for several more months.  And, then eyes. And then mouths.  He exclaimed, “it took a whole year before we were allowed to paint a single complete face!”

Doesn’t that sound like the Zen master archery story?  

We can criticize such a system if we wish, but how many of us are willing to put in a year, much less years and years to perfect our craft just for the sheer joy of experiencing flow and excellence at having created?

Like the master archer who eventually outshoots his more impatient competitors, this particular artist eventually immigrated to the United States, where he outsold most of his western counterparts.  

My gallery sold almost everything he sent us.  

At his one-person shows, we had to sell his work by random draw due to the demand of multiple collectors wanting the same works.  Each show was a sell-out, with a few lucky purchases, and a long list of disappointed collectors who moved a little higher on his waiting list.  I know that his work now hangs in several museums.  

There are no shortcuts to sell out shows and a waiting list of collectors.  He had put in his time, when he first immigrated, by selling $5 sketches of passerby in a local park.  Long term success requires mastery and long term belief.

In fact, during my gallery time, there was a huge upsurge in the market of many Chinese artists who all possessed a high level of mastery.  They had migrated to the United States or Canada, and many of the western artists struggled to achieve the same level of interest, sales, price points, and prestigious collections that these artists did.

It is for the reasons that I’ve outlined so far that I repeatedly recommend mastery before marketing.

In my own journey of writing, I’m heeding my own advice.  I’ve been writing for decades — but only in a business sense.  However, I’m now writing in pursuit of mastery – essays, fiction, reflections and at least two non-fiction books are coming.  I’ve also started a couple of novels. 

While I am sharing some of my writing journey online, I am not yet selling any of it.  

I’ve been seriously pursuing this now for almost three years and I have not offered a single piece of writing for sale.  I’ve hardly even promoted it.  All of my writing has either stayed private or been published for free, for the goal of getting feedback, and mostly for continuing my journey of mastery.  I am doing exactly what I recommend that you do.  

When I first set up my Substack site, Clinsights, I made the decision that I wouldn’t even think about money until I had 1,000 subscribers.  It took about a year and a half to reach that point.  I thought it would take longer. Then I decided to wait until I had 2,000 subscribers.  I have almost passed that point (1,990 as of this writing) in about another year.  In fact, I think this is actually the first time I’ve addressed you, BoldBush Letter readers, about what I’m doing. I simply started posting there (about non-art topics, but some creativity topics and unrelated fiction and non-fiction) with about 50 subscribers from an old site who followed me there.

My plan was simple; There was no plan other than this: write.

But, I don’t feel like a master yet.  Now, I’m thinking that perhaps I should not even think about money until I have at least 10,000 subscribers.  

I don’t know.  But what I do know is that I don’t feel, deep in my soul, that I can yet convey The Resonance of The Mystery at a master’s level. 

I can “play the note,” but I can not reliably ensure that the reader feels my motherfu*king attitude, as Miles Davis said. 

I don’t want to take shortcuts and sell “pieces of content.”  I want to produce master-pieces.  Even producing one masterpiece in my lifetime feels like a worthwhile goal. I’ll figure out the money part later…maybe.

In any case, until I can write something with true resonance and effortless action, I will continue my daily habit of pursuing mastery of the vocation that I can’t not pursue — writing — because pursuing it is the thing that is necessary for the creative burning deep in my soul.

If you are a true artist of any kind, I pray that it is the same for you.

FASO Loves Donald Yatomi’s oil paintings!

See More of Donald Yatomi’s art by clicking here.

Wouldn’t You Love to work with a website hosting company that actually promotes their artists?

As you can see, at FASO, we actually do, and,
we are the only website host we know of that does.

Click the button below to start working
with an art website host that actually cares about art.

Get Started with FASO for Free

The following article was written by Matt Cardin, the man and the mind behind the publication The Living Dark.

The Living Dark is Matt’s blog/newsletter on creativity for writers, situated at the intersection of religion, horror, nonduality, apocalypse, dystopia, consciousness, and the numinous unknown. Matt is the author of five books and the editor of four more. His books have been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, long-listed the Bram Stoker Award, and praised by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and others.

We urge you to subscribe to his insight packed newsletter for creatives by clicking the button below:

Subscribe to The Living Dark

This article originally appeared here, I’m sharing it with The BoldBrush Letter because I feel it is a topic of interest to all creatives.

Editor’s Note: Since Matt’s original post was for his paid subscribers only, this post also is only for paid subscribers of The BoldBrush Letter.

Special Announcement (Today’s Article is below this announcement):

Free Art Marketing Webinar with Kathie Odom

Free and Open webinar for all visual artists happening this Thursday, June 20th at 11:00 AM CDT!

Join us for a free, artist-focused webinar as we dive into art, creativity, & marketing with renowned fine artist Kathie Odom and Buddy Odom. Along with industry experts Clint Watson, BoldBrush’s Founder & the marketing team. This webinar is open to all artists!

Thursday, June 20th at 11:00am CDT (12:00pm EDT, 10:00am MDT, 9:00am PDT)

Register for this Webinar

The Muse’s Paradox

Dear reader,

1. Having a system in place—and more importantly, an abiding, disciplined intention—to capture fleeting ideas whenever they arrive can be immensely powerful and helpful, and even necessary. HOWEVER,

2. you can also trust that if an idea is meant to be realized, it will come back persistently over time.

This dual understanding has been a part of my philosophical and practical approach to creativity, encompassing both my writing and my music, for many years. I mention it today because it was brought to mind again by a recent Substack Note from Gurwinder containing a quotation from Naval Ravikant:

“Inspiration is perishable—act on it immediately.” This is a forthright statement of one end of a dual or dialectical truth. And it’s one with ample support in both our own individual experience and that of prominent writers and artists who have testified to its truth. At the same time, the complementary proposition—that inspiration is instead persistent— has equal support and deserves an equal hearing.

Read more

Editor’s Note: In two days, this post will be locked and is available only to paid members because we don’t want this duplicate content on the open web in a way that might draw traffic away from the original post. You can always read the entire post here.

This article, What is Art, is an excerpt from my upcoming book, The BoldBrush Way (The Sovereign Artist’s Guide to Making and Marketing Art) that will (God willing) be released later this year. If you wish to be notified when the book is available, please join the waitlist by clicking here.

Read more

Creatively,

Clint Watson
BoldBrush Founder & Creativity Fanatic

PS - This email may be too long for some email programs. We suggest you watch/read it on the web by clicking the button below

Read or watch on the web

Full Transcript:

Olya Babich Konell  00:00

Good morning, or good afternoon, depending on where you're at, on the globe and where you're tuning in from. Welcome to BoldBrush LIVE with our very special guest today, Tony Pro. I'm going to officially introduce him in just a moment, just a couple basic things, a couple of quick announcements, and then we'll do everything else at the very end. So this is brought to you by BoldBrush, and FASO, we do offer free and paid educational resources and tools for artists. And so I'll share more links and information on that at the end, Tony has to head out promptly today, right at 12. So that way, we'll make sure we get the most of this discussion with him on the line. And then we'll talk about that later. The other thing is if you are having to leave early, or you get disconnected, or you have any issues with the live version of this discussion, the recording will be made available next week. If you are a BoldBrush or FASO customer that's going to be available when you log into your account. In the marketing area in the BoldBrush circle of marketing, we have all of our recordings there posted the following week. If you're not a customer, you can get access to it as well. But you just have to subscribe in your emails that you got from us for this webinar, there's a link to subscribe to the BoldBrush Letter newsletter, you can do free or paid whichever one. And that will allow you to get the email next week with the link. So make sure you subscribe before the weekend is over. So otherwise, you're not going to get it, you'll get the next one. But that's you want to make sure you don't miss it. And let me go ahead and do our introduction. I have Tony here. Tony, I go ahead and say hello. And I would love for you, Tony probes. I would love for you to do just a brief, you know little bit about who you are and what you do. And then we'll be able to jump into the questions.

01:55

Well, thanks for having me on the show here. This is great. I don't you know, I don't have any pre set by biographies that I have memorized. Because I'm a kind of an ever evolving person. Like we all are, I guess. But I am, I've been a professional artist probably now for over 24 years or so. I started out I went to went to college, a four year college in Cal State Northridge in Southern California and I got a graphic design degree. I was a business major early on I was gonna go for marketing. And I could not pass business law to save my life. And, and I at the time I was already I was already kind of interested, I was working for Kinkos Believe it or not as a desktop publisher. And I was kind of really enjoying myself with learning the Mac computers then it was really early days at the Mac computer. And my older brother Greg was an illustrator, or is an illustrator I should say. And he's he's 10 years older than I am. And he went to school, he went to art school with Morgan Weiss Ling. And the two of them were kind of really just headed towards a career in film advertising movie poster work. And so I was really excited by that. And I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what that would mean, and how I would go about doing that. And so and by the time I came around, the movie posters weren't done traditionally, they were all done digitally. And so but my brother told me Look, you're going to really need to understand and learn how to draw, to sketch and to thumbnail and that kind of thing, if you want to do movie posters, you know, even digitally so. So I went to art school, I went to the same art school that Greg and Morgan went to different teacher I studied with Glenn orebic, who was a classmate of Morgans and Gregg's. And he was phenomenal. And that's, you know, I spent five years there, just learning to draw I didn't take any painting classes. And I was in class with guys like Jeremy Jeremy, Jeremy started about a year after I did Jeremy lifting I should say. And so we were we were in classes together. And another guy Ryan Wormser, who was another one of the advanced students there at the time. And then, many years later, once I I went back on a second round when I started doing more painting there. And I started teaching there, guys like Aaron Westerberg came around and Joseph Fedorovich. And you know, we were pretty tight knit group there, and you know, so that was kind of the early education. And then, for the most part, I started just learning to paint at home, the education I had in drawing, and the way Glenn taught us, he taught us to teach ourselves, and how to just kind of find the tools and the techniques, and how to seek out, you know, ways of learning how to paint and to create and to, you know, create interesting imagery. The the education was illustration based. So we had a lot of, you know, it was Norman Rockwell, it was Dean Cornwell it was, Jimmy bam, was, you know, so many of the old illustrators that several of them became Western artists. So it was kind of a natural progression. From, you know, illustration into, you know, what Western art is because, you know, a lot of the Western artists, the contemporary Western artists out there now, we're illustrators, you know, they started out as illustrators, Morgan included.

Olya Babich Konell  06:28

And you described it in your discussion with Laura, I think you said, one of the biggest things that you learned was this new method, the Reilly method is what you call it and learning how to see. Because, yeah, yeah, that's

06:42

the first thing, that's the first thing they teach you to do. And it takes a while to really understand that is learning how to see like an artist. And that's being able to, you know, look at anything, and be able to break things down into a very simple abstract pattern of light and dark. And that's, and that's really, I mean, and that was that method, it was, it's a very two dimensional, abstract composition based method of seeing. And, and so that's what I did. And, you know, learning how to paint by myself in my I worked in my dad's studio, when I lived at home, in my early 20s, we had a guest house out out in the back, and my dad had converted that into a studio for him. And so he had, you know, 30 plus years of taking photos that powwows, and don't rodeos and just reenactment events. And so I would, and that's where I kind of, I would just go through his photos and his file cabinets, and just, I would either draw from them, or I would paint from them. And, and, you know, and so that was my early education. And so, you know, we'd come in and I'd show my stuff to my dad and my, my brother, and you know, it was no holds barred on the, on the on the critiques. They were pretty, were pretty harsh.

Olya Babich Konell  08:18

But I think, you know, that has shaped you in many different ways. Because they were it was coming from artists. Yes, your brothers being artists, your dad being an artist. And then even when you were in school, you had quite a bit of friendly competition, you describe having a wall that if your artwork ended up on this wall, that was kind of like a big deal. And I wanted to highlight that. So really briefly, there is a podcast episode that is very detailed, we, Laura interviews, Tony, and they really get into, there's so many nuggets in there, I highly recommend that you check it out. So I'm trying to pull little nuggets for you guys today. And one of the things that artists often struggle with is getting to a place of mastery before they start selling their work, or before they start marketing or advertising and your background and your story. You really had just your the natural flow of where your life ended up and what you ended up going through, you know, your family influences, the historical influences your dad being an artist, the friendly competition in school, all of that pushed you to kind of get to where you are today. I think if you were on a loan on an island, and you didn't immerse yourself in that in that way, you wouldn't be potentially where you are now because that for I think for artists, we need that and lords

09:43

really, yeah. You know, and so in the 80s My first thought my dad was an anesthesiologist, and he was also a muse. He started out in music. So he was was a pianist and a musician went to music school and then I went to med school became a doctor. And in about the late 70s, you know, my dad was always he always needed to do some kind of hobby with his hands. And that's very true. Most doctors they need, because they have to be so precise, they need something that they can relax and do with their hands. So over the years, I've taught so many doctors, it's not even funny. I've heard that. So my dad started in lapidary with gemstones and polishing and making jewelry making and that kind of thing. And it got my mom into that. And she started getting interested in Native American, Native American jewelry. And then, and then my dad started getting really into Native American and Western art collecting it. So we spent a good portion of the early 80s. So I was, I'm 10 years apart from my oldest brother, and I have a couple other older siblings that are 10 to 14 years apart from me. So I grew up kind of like an only child because they didn't really get to go on a lot of the trips that I did, because they had to take me so. So we went to so we were regularly every year going to the reservations or we were traveling around the West, going to all different types of events, whether it was art, or reenactment events, so my dad could get photos or so and we spent a lot of time at the reservations that we would go the Hopi and Navajo reservations, where my parents would trade and buy, they would buy artifacts, rugs, pottery, baskets, I mean God and and I've gotten a lot of it now. You can see a lot of it behind me. There's there's rugs all over there's you know, and it just decorates my studio because it's part of who I became. And, and you know, and the other thing and we started going to the the cowboy hours of America show, and you know, I was literally the only kid there. But I did get to meet all these great old cowboy artists of America artists and and funny story, you know, one of the one of the paintings that my dad had bought was a Gordon Snyder oil painting. And he bought it, you know, over 40 years ago, and about 28 to 30 years ago, he donated it to the Western art museum in Kerrville. Right up here in in outside of San Antonio and I couple of weeks ago, and you'll see the little thumbnail right there of the cowboy painting. Right next to it. Yeah, that I did a painting at the Kerbal museum was just at the Western art ground. So that's me in the in the museum, or the same painting that my dad had bought 40 years ago when I was 10 years old, and I was there. The painting is there in the collection.

Olya Babich Konell  12:55

So that's very cool. And that's

12:59

that's literally my background in it. And it kind of formed me into what I've kind of learned. Now. Yeah,

Olya Babich Konell  13:07

yeah, no, I can. And you really touch on more of the details of that in the podcast episode. So again, you guys go. Make sure you check that out. I'm just reminding you, but certainly looking at, you know, so looking at kind of your website, in your schedule, you have a couple of shows coming up. I just wanted to find out if you can share a little bit about that. And then I want to, after that segue into getting your advice. And so for artists that are preparing for their first show, what are some things that they can do, but go ahead and

13:42

so I have a show. So I have a feature show in July at Meijer gallery in Santa Fe. And that will be I think it's opens July 12. Okay, and they'll be let's see about four or five new works. And then then there's I think they already have about five pieces four or five pieces there already. So and there is there is an accompanying article in Western art collector. Believe the July issue I would imagine. And yeah, the top well, not the top three paintings there you're seeing on the screen but the one in the center on the top right. And the the Navajo woman with the horse. Beautiful. Those pieces those pieces will be Yeah, that one will be in

Olya Babich Konell  14:41

the mire gallery

14:42

at Meijer gallery in Santa Fe. And then that top piece on the top left. That one is going to be at the Buffalo Bill. Cody, West the Ronnie I can never remember the names anything. It's there. Thanks Rhonda Rondae boo Roy cow. Okay, and that's in Cody, Wyoming. And that's in September. And so that piece will be there. And then I just shipped off the other piece for the scout mini show, which is that that piece there on the right,

Olya Babich Konell  15:17

just below, oh, just below. And so you you're very active, you participate in the a lot of different events such as awesome, you have this on, right? You have exactly. So it's not just social media, and I don't want to highlight that for our audience. So a lot of people right now are like, I want to learn about social media, how do I go viral, just emphasizing that you still have to participate in real life, things, whatever that looks like, for free, or you. So this is beautiful. I love just the contrast of the blues and the warmth. How do you know without because I know, you didn't just jump into, you know, doing this, you've worked your way through, you know, a lot of artists think that you're gonna wake up one morning and just get into a bunch of shows, right? For a new artist, or somebody who's early on in their career, and they aren't in many galleries, or they aren't in any galleries, and maybe they want to start participating in these kinds of things to check that off of their list. What advice do you have? Like, if you were them today? What would you what would you do?

16:33

Well, you know, for me, it was a lesson in humility. Because I had, you know, in my 30s into my 40s, I had this I had some, you know, I had these ideas that, oh, I could paint whatever I want. And, you know, people will just buy it. And you know if it's good. And I had this kind of early on idea that you know, and I got, you know, 20 years ago, was literally 20 years ago, look that cover that magazine. I was my first cover and time that I was in, had a prominent magazine article. You know, when that happened, I thought I had made it and I thought things are gonna happen. And it just, it doesn't work that way at all. And really, the way the art market is, is that for the bulk of the collectors that are kind of your average collector, they're going to buy things that they like they're they're not. Or if they think that you're going to be a good investment in the future. That's what that's what most collectors are looking for. They're looking for something with an aesthetic that's going to go with their, their, their decor, something that's going to be striking something that's going to be beautiful. That is something I've learned. And I spent the good first 10 to 15 years of my life just painting people. And most collectors don't want people on their walls that don't have any meaning. So and I you know, and this was an part of that was, you know, I spent some time mentoring with with Richard Schmid. And I learned a lot about painting from his books, and his videos. And we had a he and I had a working relationship. Several years ago, almost 20 years ago, I approached him because at the time I was in DVD in the entertainment industry, and I was kind of in that technology. And so I brought him into the digital world. And so I looked at what Richard was painting, and he was painting just friends and family, neighbors, people he thought looked interesting. And I was seeing that, you know, he was selling almost everything he painted. And I thought, well shoot, I can do that, you know, and so I started doing it, and it didn't really work that way. You know, no matter how nicely you painted it. Something sold, but it wasn't. It was just he was doing it at a time when other people weren't. And he was doing it at such a high level. That's what made him special. And that's what made and he was and his technique. And what he was able to do was different from anybody else. So what I what I learned and what I figured out was basically you know, the I heard this quote said find out where the pack is going and figure out what they missed. And if you're just kind of doing what everybody else does, or, you know, or you basically have to do things that are a little bit differently than what you might want to do, that's if you want to be a selling artist, you know, there's a, there's a difference between someone who wants to just paint because they feel like they have to, and you don't care, if you don't care about sales, that's a great place to be, by the way, if you're, if you're wealthy, and you don't have to make art sales, that's a great place to be. Because you can just paint what you want. And, you know, nobody cares about whether, you know, it doesn't look right or not, but if you're if you're trying to get into galleries, you need to be marketable, and being a marketable artist is someone who looks different, or something, someone that just stands out enough from everyone else in the gallery. Because, you know, galleries these days, a good bulk of them are being tried to fill their walls with as much work good work as possible. And that and that also means bringing in a lot of different artists. So, you know, it's very, you don't see too many galleries these days that are just heavily curating their works and only represent like, you know, maybe 10 artists, and then they, you know, have shows up on the law. And, most, most of the most of the galleries that I know of, in our genre in our world, you walk in, and wall space is just covered from floor to ceiling. And or it's just, you know, it's a large piece of real estate, and they have to fill it, you know, they've got to, and so it's it's inventory, they need to have inventory on the walls, and it's got to be varied. So, in order for you to stand out, you've got to do something different, whether it's colorful, whether it's designed, whether it's, you know, something that just will turn somebody's head. And these are the things that I've observed. Or even being at the shows, like when I go to the show, when I do these shows, and I go and I kind of stand near my work, I watch how people react to my work. And then I watch how people react to the work around me, you know, see what people are keying in on, see what what's drawing them in, and why it's drawing them in. So you kind of have to AMP, you kind of have to analyze your work that way, and analyze what you have to say, you know, which is another big thing, you know, it's one thing to paint really well. And then that's another thing to actually have something to say. So those are two very distinct things that folks need to work on. You know, and look, if you're a landscape painter, you're just you're just saying how beautiful something is, you know, or something is from your perspective. So it's not going to be you know, it's not going to cure cancer, it's not going to, it's not going to just, it's not going to change someone's life completely. But it's a moment in time. That that, you know, a landscape art. And there are so many great landscape art painters today and, and that stops people dead in their tracks, and it sells. And so And really that's an and that's that's kind of everything that I've come to understand now. Yeah,

Olya Babich Konell  23:33

it's like you, you, you mentioned the same thing about social media or the internet. And I'm going to loop that in. So in your podcast with Laura, you said that the downside of social media and YouTube is that suddenly you're not as rare as you thought you were. So in a sense, standing out in a gallery is finding or online is finding a way to be, you know, you're still like, if you're buying a gemstone, you're obviously shopping for a gemstone, so you're creating art, you're creating art within a certain genre, because you you're at a certain gallery that displays certain things, or whether it's online or, but you want it to be different enough that it has that extra sparkle, that unique cut, or whatever it is that draws people to you, or to your work, whether it's online or offline. And that's kind of what I'm picking up on. From your observations by being there and watching people's reactions to your work or and watching people's reactions to other people's work. For Do you have what are your thoughts like how, how does one find? I mean, how does one find what it is that they that makes them more rare? Like if, if I was coming to you, Tony, trying to figure out how to how do I stand out like how do I figure this out for myself? I mean, or do you have any thoughts of how one would go about that?

24:59

Well, I would say first and foremost, you know, if you're young

25:07

first and foremost, getting a technique down, that, you know, that looks great.

Olya Babich Konell  25:18

Craftsmanship getting craftsmanship,

25:19

craftsmanship. That's, that's the first thing that will get you recognized. Yeah. And there is a slew of people on social media that do it, and that get lots of likes, and they get all these followers, and, you know, and they've got these flashy techniques, and it's great, you know, it's great, looks nice, great job. That's step number one. And that will get you a lot of followers that would, you know, if especially if you, if you can understand the technology, if you can understand how to use your phone to kind of make a good video, you understand a little bit about the apps that where you can, where it'll, you know, kind of cut things and make, you know, there's templates you can use to kind of like, you know, jump, clip things around and cut it to music. And that's really what you know, that's what draws people's attention into into the, you know, reels and stuff on Instagram and Facebook, because sometimes, sometimes even just like long, slow progression of somebody just drawing or painting, it's, it loses people's interest, you know, you got you got seven seconds to get somebody's attention. In the movies, it was 15 seconds, the first 15 seconds is where what captures a person's attention. But in social media, it's much less than that. So So you have to kind of, you know, you got to have a hook, you know, what's your hook, you get somebody in, you got to you got to bring them in. Sometimes it's it's the music that you choose, sometimes it's the interesting technique that you're doing. That's the hook. And the other thing is having the time to do that is to. And that's tricky. Because when you're like me, I don't I do everything myself, I don't have any help. I don't, I don't have an assistant anymore. I used to, I had several assistants back in the day, but I do I have to do all the painting, I've got to do all the, I have to design all these paintings. And then I've got to figure out how to get these things on social media. And I got to cut them all because I used to be a video audit video editor back in the day as well. I work in entertainment industry. So I know all this stuff. But it just all takes time. And it's you know, so but if you have help, if you have a spouse, or significant other or a kid that wants to do it, that also helps to you know, if you're older, and you don't understand the technology as well. If you've got a kid or a grandkid, even that, you know, a lot of these, tell me a lot of these kids really not I mean, my daughter who's 14, she's already got this huge Pinterest page, and she has a big following. And she knows how to do all this stuff. And she's making videos and stuff. And she's 14. So if your grandchild that's the same age that you see, that's doing it, yeah, you know, throw in the box, you know, and, or maybe

Olya Babich Konell  28:20

somebody that wants to learn how to paint, maybe, you know, a friend's kid that's like, hey, I want to learn how to paint trading some art lessons, those kinds of things. So, so obviously, you mentioned going back, sorry, the mastery, getting the craftsmanship getting the, the core skills in learning how to actually present yourself online or obviously offline, and then to do something different. And I'm, I'm gonna, I'm wondering, I'm wondering if that's something different is going back to something at your early core, because I remember in your discussion with Laura, you talked about how you painted beautiful women beautiful, this beautiful sceneries you did that, but then you went back, you went back to what you grew up with, which was this has, you know, Western influence that you had, and that ended up being kind of like your thing that ended up being. Yeah, and I'm wondering if that's it, if, if it's, you know, uniqueness,

29:21

you know, it's you. The other thing is, is that it's, it's, you know, you have to be honest with yourself and what you really want to do and, and the collector can see that and I've kind of I just feel like I fit in with that crowd because I grew up in it. You know, I'm not a cowboy. I don't ride horses. But that doesn't mean I can't paint them and I enjoy looking at them looking at the grandeur of them. I'm not Native American. But I grew up around them. I was playing with them as kids. I mean, I go to the reservation, I would find all the kids And we're all welcoming. And I play with them while they're, while my parents were in, you know, trading with their, with the elders. And, and that's just what I did. And you're

Olya Babich Konell  30:09

also touched, you're also touched by the fact that some of their conditions that they were living in, and this was back in the 70s, I think you say you were saying,

30:17

it's still and it hasn't changed. Yeah. So

Olya Babich Konell  30:21

it's almost like just an observation for you, I think you were maybe so touched by their stories. And you're just kind of magnifying that with your work right now, making sure these voices or these images or these things that you saw, these people are not silent, you know, they're you keeping that alive, which I think is beautiful. Yeah. And

30:42

it's such a part of, of the lasts history, you know, they're a huge part of the West history in the formation of how things how things are here, you know, and just, you know, the colors that that come from, from the desert, and the colors that come from their textiles, and their blankets and rugs, beautiful. With with with the earthy reds of the dirt. I mean it to me, it's, it's great. And then of course, the landscape. But you know, I did, I had a show and up at Maynard Dixon's home in studio, it was 10 years ago, I guess, in a little town called Mount Carmel, Utah, it's just outside of Knapp. And it's right, right on that backside of Zion National Park. And, I mean, it was such a, such an amazing experience. It was about a year after my dad had passed away. And it it really cemented in me that this is what I had to do. That's when I made the decision. After my dad passed away, I I wanted a no maj to him. And and, and so you know, and I stuck with it. And I just I started doing it. And I I did the residency up there at at the Maynard Dixon Holman studio, and it's still their beautiful place to go see. The Binghams have a gallery up there, Susan's out there with, with with her gallery, Paul, unfortunately passed away a couple years back. But it's a great place. And it's a very sacred place. For the Western artist, you know, Maynard Dixon was a was huge. In especially in my he was one of my big inspirations, as well as all these other illustrators that I had been studying as a kid. And so, so it's just kind of, it's kind of where I've had to where I've had to go to, to find, to find inspiration and to just kind of try to try to do something that that takes what I've learned over the years as a painter, and just kind of put it into work. But you know, and it's still a long journey, it's still an education, everything, I'm learning something new about every day, right? Every day, it's I'm learning something new, what I should do, what I shouldn't do, do you

Olya Babich Konell  33:25

have first because most artists are in the same shoes as you and this is not a question on the list. But what like are some are there any apps or techniques or things that help you juggle getting all the different things done? You know, like you talked about, you know, painting, designing, posting, taking, you know, is there anything that helps you that you found to be useful?

33:50

Well, since I have a big I have a background in doing movie posters for 10 years. I mean, I started with Photoshop, and you know, it was I think it was Photoshop one. It was like early, very early days of Photoshop, so I've mastered that program years ago, and so I can so you know, if I create an idea, I'll do some thumbnail sketches or whatever, or I'll use my iPad I use I use you know, these it's one of these little digital stylus pencils and use procreate. You just sit there and sketch and procreate, or you can do it traditionally and I've got a you know, I've got some makes it easier to do it in my studio here. So I'll do like little wash studies. There's just like a tiny little, you know, little bit bigger in a business card. And these are just in wash. And, you know, I'll make a, I'll just, you know, and this is basically out of my head. I'll just, I'll just draw it. And then I'll just add color totally out of my head. And if it works, I'll go okay, well, that's cool, then maybe I'll you know, and so I'll start kind of create it digitally. And then I'll work from a digital image that makes a little more sense. You know, and then I'll just this I'll just, you know, these are just figuring out taking a black and white photo and adding color to it, trying to work out, you know, flesh tones.

Olya Babich Konell  35:27

Yeah, kind of figuring out, you know, the concept, the where things are gonna go. Yeah.

35:32

But in terms of, in terms of the apps, you know, I don't use a lot of, you know, Instagram has kind of its own template, making things.

Olya Babich Konell  35:42

It's gotten good. It has all the editing. For anybody that is unfamiliar, make sure you've, you update your apps regularly. It's gotten really good. You don't even need a third party video editing app anymore, you can literally just put your videos and pictures in, right? There's really no

35:58

photos and it snaps it all together. And it makes it jazzy even puts

Olya Babich Konell  36:03

it to the music for you. Right? For anybody. That's a I don't know, has an auto Yeah, Angela.

Angela Agosto  36:09

I was gonna say you don't have to worry about the copyright because they give you a list right of what? News? Oh,

Olya Babich Konell  36:14

you just click the music, you could even have it pick music for you. It is very hands off lately. So that's yeah. And so you just it's more or less just getting it done. Obviously being consistent. You know, and I remember you hadn't mentioned and I want to highlight this online a notoriety doesn't always translate to sales. So for anybody listening, just because you have and you have an awesome following on social media, I'd pulled up your Instagram will share the link. But, you know, there's other artists that I've seen that and we know of, you know, Clint Angela, we know of artists that have huge followings, but they're struggling with sales. And so our audience listening today, just because you make a big on social media, that doesn't mean I mean, you're you're every painting you have is going to sell. And you mentioned that these are two different. The way you said as you they are two different consumers of your art, is you have the one that looks at it, because they just want to be entertained online. And that's it, and they scroll on to the next thing. They just love looking at beautiful art online. And then there's a consumer that actually wants to bring the art home. There are a small group, like there's a real

Clint Watson  37:29

risk with social media, of falling into a trap where you optimize for the wrong thing. You know, I see people that are very good at that. And I'm not even talking about only artists, and they can command attention and they get huge engagement. But at the end of the day, like what does that what does that worth? It may be worth very little.

37:55

Well, if you're I mean, it works good if you sell prints, you know, there are some artists that I'm not going to name any names, but there's people that that have massive followings, and they're super famous, but most of what they're selling online, you know, to their followers, they're not buying originals, they're gonna buy prints. And there's and that's a great way to make money too. But, you know, in the Western art world, there's not a whole lot of Western collector, or you know, art collectors that use Instagram or that use social media in general, because that plays to the big collectors. These are very wealthy people. Most of them are over 60 years old, or in their in their 70s. And somewhere in their 80s. They're not going to be using Instagram,

Olya Babich Konell  38:47

or art to find art. Yeah.

38:49

So when you when you go to the when you go to these Western art shows that I go to, most of the collectors are, they're all retired wealthy people. Yeah. And if they use social media, it's Facebook, and it's once a month to see the grandkids. And that's it. They're not looking for art. Yeah,

Olya Babich Konell  39:06

yeah. Well, that's

39:07

why that's why it's very important to do these shows to travel to the shows. Yeah. Because the on the other hand, too, is that they're not only just buying your art, they are buying the artist, that's true and has to be you have to be a personality. And the person and the artists that I see that are so successful, are the ones that do have the personality that do go to the shows, they show up, you know, yeah. And they and they're pressing flesh. They're there. They're just saying hello, they're shaking hands. And those are the ones that do well.

Olya Babich Konell  39:41

You told a story where you walked into a gallery, and you had a small painting or something in your hand with you and you sold it because you ran into a collector or something.

39:52

That was at Meijer I was delivering. I was delivering paintings to Meijer and it was just a little eight by eight and the guy there was a collector walking around in there and he bought it. I didn't even have a frame on it. It's like, Oh, I'm gonna take that like, Okay, that was the fastest painting sale I've ever made.

Olya Babich Konell  40:09

Yeah. And that's so true that you and I think one of your pieces of advice in the prior discussion was like, go visit your galleries be at your shows. Absolutely.

40:20

And, yeah, and the other the other thing is, is send send your friends into the galleries, just to make sure that galleries are have your work displayed. And okay, check the prices, you know, look at the prices and report back to and have them report back to you what the price is, say on the wall. Yeah, that's another thing.

Clint Watson  40:42

When that happens, how, how have you had that happen? Like, gallery marks marked it up and didn't tell you or they weren't being displayed? Well,

40:52

I yeah, I've had some sketchy situations where you know, where the, or they'll sell something, and you don't really know. I mean, you don't know what they sold it for. Because if you're not in the state, you know, I give them prices, most of the good galette, most of the gap, all the galleries I'm with now, don't do that, because I've left the ones that have done that in the past. But you know, it's, a lot of times, they'll get it wrong, you know, they'll they'll miss mark something. And, you know, and I've had, I've recently had a local gallery, sell something, and I had originally told them, it was higher, but for some reason, the wires got crossed, and they ended up selling it lower by accident. So you know, those things happen. But, you know, it's, it's very important. Once you are in a gallery, you gotta be you got to do your due diligence, and you got to make sure you're supplying them with fresh work often enough, if they want it. And second of all, you've got to stay on them, you know, at least once a month check in say, How's it going? What are people responding to? What are they not responding to? And that's kind of what I do to curate my own work. Within that particular gallery. You're asking for feedback? Yes, you always ask for feedback. What do you think about this? What do you think we do this, you know, you have to kind of just keep up with with them. Because what, because what happens is, you know, if you're not if you're kind of one of the lower artists or kind of an average artists in their roster, and if you're not, and this is this is true, pretty much in almost every gallery I've been in, if you're not one of their best sellers, or a big big name that sells great, they're not going to invest that much time in selling your work, they're going to focus on what makes them the most money. They're going to and what sells the highest. So you know, years ago, I was in when I first got into when I first got into a gallery, I got into legacy gallery 20 years ago, and I was a nobody you know, and I had some Okay, work, it was great. I thought it was better than it was but but my work and it's good gallery of that site, it's a fantastic and one of the best galleries there is out there right now. I mean, Brad and ginger who own legacy, they're great people fantastic gallery, but it would be dumb for them to try and really push my work because a it wasn't that expensive. And B wasn't really anybody at the time, their hot seller was G Harvey. And, you know, they're getting 75 to 125,000 a painting for his for his work, they're going to push his work well before they look at mine. So it's a good idea to to kind of just keep a dialogue keep fresh in their mind, you know, because because you might just be on a wall in their back room and they may not go in there and look at it that often. So it's a good idea to kind of just, you know, giving them fresh work, you know, as often as you can, as often as they would like it checking in with them. What can I do to help with sales? What can I do to push the work a lot of these days you can if you do have an Instagram account, you can collaborate with your gallery, which I do with my or a lot. So we both tag each other on our up a digital collaborator. Yeah, a great way of doing that. You know, just anything to kind of spur things along and you're kind of helping each other if you have a good if you have a good following on social media, you're helping the gallery by inner do sing your followers to that gallery or vice versa. Yeah. So. So that's another thing, that kind of

Angela Agosto  45:06

good piece. You mentioned, keep the work fresh. Do you ever ask or pay? If this isn't working? Can I trade something out? Is that a good idea to use?

45:16

All the time? Yeah,

Olya Babich Konell  45:18

yeah. And you also mentioned, and I think we've had this question asked before, people are like, Oh, I have work in a gallery, but I don't know what's going on, you had mentioned that you should, when you give them a painting for consignment in that contract, it should state what they're going to do for you. And if it doesn't, you should ask about it. Like, are you guys going to make phone calls? Are you guys going to do this? Are you guys going to do ads or whatever, like, you should have clear expectations, when exactly.

45:47

And you got to kind of remind them of that, because sometimes they don't always remember, yeah, they're gonna focus on their big shows, they're gonna focus on their big name artists. And, you know, in, you know, I still have to do and I still have to, you know, harass, you know, some of these people, or I don't harass them, but I'll just be like, you know, look, I'm doing this and, and then, you know, and you kind of figure out if it's going to be a fit or not, you know, and then you're kind of, I'm kind of always on this little journey of finding that gallery, that's a good fit for me, you know, you know, one, you know, it's a gallery that's going to believe in your work, and they're gonna push your work as much as they can.

Clint Watson  46:36

You know, that I've been on the other side of that, too. And it's kind of the same, the other direction, you're always kind of as a gallerist, on a journey for an artist to every gallery has a slightly different vibe, a different, you know, they have a different customer list, they built up a different kind of reputation. And so, you know, you come across artists, and you're like, this person's great, and you try it, and it just, like, doesn't work for whatever reason. Yeah,

47:03

well, you, you get personalities, you know, like, right, so

Clint Watson  47:06

artists personalities, they're just, it's kind of like artists and galleries or on a on a meeting. They're like a speed dating thing. Like, they're trying each other out. Yeah,

Olya Babich Konell  47:18

that's it. That's a really good way of I mean, I

Clint Watson  47:21

remember it was heartbreaking, we'd find artists that we just absolutely loved. And just, you know, for whatever reason, it wasn't a good fit. We never really sold very much, you know, despite trying, sometimes

Angela Agosto  47:32

it depends on the location to like what your painting software says. But you're in a in a beach town. Right? Exactly. That may not work that may not be a good fit. Exactly.

47:43

Yeah. And that's why, you know, I've had, I've tailored my galleries to what were my art is going to sell the best. You know, right. Now, Santa Fe does the best for me, because that's basically what I paint. Yeah. You know, I've got some things there in Scottsdale, but that's a tough market, because there's a lot of there's a lot of Southwest are there already. So but, you know, and it's and it's, and again, you know, like Clint was saying, artists will shoot themselves in the foot too. I mean, I've tried to make myself a very business, and marketing minded person, that's been kind of my background. So I'm, I'm a little different than a lot of artists. I mean, I'm, and I'm not ashamed of, you know, having to make some adjustments or move to get things to sell. Whereas you got some other artists who just refuse to budge. They don't, they don't want to discount work to sell it. You know, these days, every every collector wants a discount doesn't matter.

Olya Babich Konell  48:51

That's what you were saying that you're actually priced that into your pricing? Yeah,

48:56

well, I just yeah, I've raised my prices naturally, just to make up for that discount, because everybody wants a discount.

Olya Babich Konell  49:04

So they feel like they're getting a discount, but and you also said, I want to touch on this in the beginning, when you said you painted your family and kids and wife and you and you painted people you loved a lot. You were less willing to discount those paintings because you were like, No, this is important to me. Right?

49:20

Well, I wouldn't even sell them. The painting that's on the cover of Southwest art that's back there on the wall. That was in my first that painting was in at Legacy gallery, my first time around, and they could have sold it three times. And I just I didn't have the heart to do it. That was one of the reasons that like well, maybe the gallery is not for you. You know, so I learned I learned my lessons. So

Clint Watson  49:45

speaking of I want to ask a question going back to something you discussed early, but I feel like you started to talk about that there were sort of two things as an artist you needed to sort of um, I don't want to say the word master. But I guess master because I can't think of a better word. And one was the technical proficiency, you know, you were talking about a technique that looks good that you've, you've kind of, you know, perfected, not perfected, but you know, you, you get what I'm saying, you've kind of mastered this technique works for you that is attractive that. And then you said, You've got to have something to say, right? You know, you can apply a technique to anything, and it may not mean anything, but what's the meaning of this painting. And it seemed like what you've described in your journey is that at some point, what you had to say deeply that resonated with you was the southwestern art, especially after the Maynard Dixon event and all of that and honoring your father. So what would you describe it? Is there a difference in? Like, what's the difference in the before and after in your career? Not necessarily. It could be sales, or maybe it's not sales, maybe it's just in a way that you feel about the art? Yeah, like, is there a difference before and after that shift.

51:11

So kind of going back to what I had to come to a realization that if I wanted to sell a painting, I had to paint something that someone else would want on their wall. And to marry that with you know, growing up and going on these trips, and, you know, driving through the these deserts and just seeing these big, vast Cloudscapes, you know, in Monument Valley, or or in the deserts. The way to marry those two was just and kind of like, having a homage of like, what Maynard Dixon's work was, or any of the Taos painters, they were, they were, they were showing the beauty of the Southwest. And it happened at the same time to be what people wanted to have on their walls. So and that type of work, it sells pretty well. I mean, people collect that type of work. Whereas before, the things I was I was very attracted to the French naturalist works, which was bashing La Paz, email free aren't like, these French naturalist, they were phenomenal. And but they were very the paintings were very gray. They were very, and a lot of them also were very somber. You know. And just because, you know, and so I was kind of gearing some of my work that way, you know, and you know, both Jeremy and I kind of got in, we were into the same artists, Anders Zorn, all these people. But, you know, Jeremy was doing a lot more nudes then. And he was doing a lot more. He's doing landscapes and was still life. And so I was kind of going down that path as well. He was better at it than I was, of course. But I was finding that people weren't as excited about it, or it's not as collectible, especially, especially if you're painting random people. Yeah, you know, and I was in at the time I was, I was teaching portrait painting on a weekly basis. So I was like painting people constantly, always. And I've just had stacks and stacks of paintings of people. And, you know, nobody wants a portrait of somebody they don't know, unless it's interesting, unless the person is doing something interesting, or if they look interesting, or if they're in an interesting environment. And so

Clint Watson  54:00

I can't You're exactly right, I have a I have a few paintings here at the office that I just think are beautiful portraits that I've collected. And I brought them home and my wife was like, well, who's that? Who's that lady? Why is she in your office?

54:17

Someone who's not an art connoisseur or buys art or likes art is not going to know what they're gonna be like, what do you have that on your wall? You know, yeah. And it's you know, and you know, it is what it is but I had to learn that lesson fairly hard, you know, because you know, it does affect your you know, it affects your, your mindset as an artist, it affects your confidence level. And so I was pretty beat up for a long time going to why I can't, I can't make it. I can't make it as an artist. I can't do this. And you know, and I had I had all kinds of magic magazine articles here and there. It was teaching workshops everywhere and I still like You know, and it's still, you know, and my dad was always after me, he said, Why don't you go back to the Western work? You're so good at it? Why don't you do it? I mean, I'm not doing it, I'm not doing it, you know, I, you know, I was just fighting it, you know, I was fighting it. And, you know, and, and my dad was always telling me, you got to do larger work more complex pieces, constantly, he was harassing me about it, I'm like, Yeah, you know, I was one of them. And I still have a very, I have a very, you know, I get distracted really easily. So, you know, I'll start something. And, you know, and I like one little part of a painting, and then I get excited about doing another painting. So I start that one, and I have all these paintings all over. So I get I just my distraction level was, was an issue. So I had to deal with that, mentally, I had to figure out a way to just hone in and figure out how to do these large pieces and, and just stick with it. And, and that's a, and that's something that, that you have to learn that, you know, if you don't have a, if you don't have patience, which I don't, I'm very I don't have a lot of patience with things in life. So I had to learn it. And it's like, you know, dragged you in kicking and screaming, but I'm the only one naturally fell into it kind of, once you kind of break that mold, it gets a little easier, especially if the paintings going well, the paintings not going well. Well, then, you know, you got to learn to pull the ejection oujet. Panel, because and that's tough for an artist as well. So

Clint Watson  56:45

I'll just say here, I mean, I'd love to ask follow up questions, but I think we may be at the end of your time. Yeah,

Angela Agosto  56:51

it's past noon.

56:52

I could probably do another 10 minutes if you guys have some follow up questions. Yeah.

Olya Babich Konell  56:57

Yeah, absolutely. We, we don't want to push it. But no, I was gonna say I didn't mean to interrupt you, your your work is beautiful. And the one thing with your painting people now I'd like to point out as your your people, the people that are in your paintings are telling a story. So they're doing what you just described, they're interesting. There's a story, like, where's that woman going? Why is she so sad? Or, you know, well,

Clint Watson  57:23

that's how that that's what I was gonna ask to if you thought that was the difference, especially with your dad telling you to do larger works. Yeah, it may be like, you know, I'm sure you recall me on set, too. But when we first came across his work, I'm sure many people were thinking, Well, how's this going to sell? It's a bunch of it's a bunch of Chinese natives are painted. Right? Right. But the thing was the ones that were just basically portraits. Unless, you know, they were extremely interesting. Yeah, they didn't sell as well, but the ones that we're larger and was several people and maybe a grandmother with a grandchild and the parents, like, you could almost feel the story in this larger works like sure, yes, maybe narrative is the word. You know, there was more of a narrative and even though they were not even though they were a different culture, it was still a universal, a universal narrative. Right, right. People could relate to Yeah.

58:31

You know, and the funny thing is, is like I follow the auction sales quite a bit. And for instance, you know, my you know, with Richard Schmid, I was always drawn the most to his people in his landscapes. But oddly enough, the highest dollars for his paintings are his still lives, like ridiculously high dollar like fans, they're, yeah, they're gorgeous. But again, it's what people you know, you can have a beautiful still life on the wall, and no one's gonna say, Who's that, you know, like, but he painted so many different people, just and he painted characters and he painted, he would just paint neighbors, or whoever they could get to sit in Vermont at their, at their puppy group. And, you know, and those paintings, they don't go for as high as the other ones do. You know?

Clint Watson  59:25

Well, the still lives with the beautiful flower petals against the dark background. Yeah, you know, like, that's really his disappearing edges technique is so like, perfect for that. Absolutely.

59:36

Absolutely. And, and you'll find that with other artists, I mean, if you and really, if you want to understand the art market, pay attention to the auctions, at least at least the ones in our genre, which is, you know, the Scottsdale art auction. You know, the Russell show. You know, there's several auctions and And you just pay attention to what sells, and what doesn't sell, you know what the prices are. And it's mostly secondary market. It's not the artists that are making this these are either galleries or, or collectors that are that are liquidating their, their their either their estate. So they're moving their money into another investment and they're just going to sell this piece because it's a good time. Those are the those actually tell a lot more than you would think, you know, keeping track of the sale prices and and again, what sells? What doesn't? Who sells? Who doesn't?

Olya Babich Konell  1:00:36

Yeah, really good advice? Because that's it. Yeah, it doesn't even involve necessarily be artists themselves. It's work that's already been bought, it's moving elsewhere.

Angela Agosto  1:00:49

Prices that people are always asking us, how do you know what to price? So that's a good place to to figure that out? Yeah,

1:00:55

exactly.

Olya Babich Konell  1:00:56

There was more of a technical question, do you? Because you have a lot of experience with galleries? Good ones, and bad isn't isn't? Somebody asked about? They want to know more about contracts and agreements, you know, that galleries provide? Do you pay for the framing? Do you share cost of exhibition invitations, etc? And what percentage of sales Do you normally get? I'm just reading their question.

1:01:21

So it varies from gallery to Gallery, that's something like everything's negotiable. Galleries are always going to come at you and go, Oh, we always start with 5050. And I, I hate that like, right off the bat, especially if I know they're not going to they're not. And, you know, 5050, and that usually means you're shipping your framing. So you're the one taking the burden of the cost, you know, and it's your work. So I always say, you know, at least try to get to 6040. I've had some galleries in the past, offer to frame the work. You know, and that's a good, you know, that's a good deal. If you can get them to frame the work for you. You know, especially if they have a if they have a framer or framing business that's attached to the gallery. That that, that helps. And it's, you know, because look these days, the shipping is so expensive. It's so expensive to ship. And if you're shipping a painting that's got a big heavy frame on it, it's a nightmare. So what I've been what, what I've been doing lately, and again, it depends on the gallery, if they're willing to do it or not. I will I order frames and have the frame shipped to the galleries. Save one less shipping charge. And I just shipped canvases which is so much easier. And most galleries that I've dealt with don't mind that at all, you know, because they've got a back room they've got there's a lot of times when they get paintings in sometimes the frames are a little damaged or they've got you know, so they there's most galleries, decent galleries have a back room where they can, you know, frame things up, they can fix something if it's chipped or whatever. So that's kind of been my work around lately.

Clint Watson  1:03:20

Do you send them rolled? Or do you send them already stretched,

1:03:23

stretched, stretched? Because I don't something about rolled canvases? I don't trust, you know, like, whether it's a dimple or it's, you know, if you paint thickly, it doesn't really, you know,

Clint Watson  1:03:36

and then it probably does depend on your style.

1:03:39

Yeah, a lot of times, you know, my, my paintings are still drying when they're being shipped. So that that can be a little nerve wracking. But what I did start doing and this is a little technique thing. I switched over my titanium whites that I use, I switched over to a Galkin white, titanium white, which is a quick drying white. So it makes your paintings drive faster, so you can ship them sooner. Wow. Because since I'm always waiting to the last minute. I recommend that and it's a good white, you know, it's made by Windsor Newton. It's not this, you know, fancy shmancy handmade paint, and it works fine. I mean, it works completely fine. I mean, and it's a nice little workaround. And I do I saw somebody asked a question if I glaze. I do glaze on occasion. Yes.

Olya Babich Konell  1:04:39

So this is such

Clint Watson  1:04:40

Yeah, I agree with you that having the gallery do the framing is the best solution. Yeah.

1:04:46

And really they should share the cost of the frames especially. I mean the 22 carat frames these days, they've doubled in price since all the innovation. The

Clint Watson  1:04:55

thing that always struck me about it was it's just so unfair to the artists I mean If you pay, I don't even know what frames are lately. But if you pay, I don't know, $300 for our frame, and then the gallery gets that. Yeah, they're most likely going to mark it up. So you pay for the frame and the gallery gets the profit on the frame. Yeah. So just let the gallery handle it. Well, at least they put the you know, at least they deserve the profit in that instance, because they paid for the frame,

Olya Babich Konell  1:05:23

you could even position be like, hey, that way you guys get to pick the frame that's best gonna fit?

1:05:28

Yeah. And let me tell you, a lot of times the clients don't like the frames. Yeah,

Clint Watson  1:05:34

that was when I was in the gallery business. We had a frame shop attached. Yeah, it was. So it helped us sell a lot of stuff. Because people would be like, Oh, I hate that frame. And it was always no problem. We'll take it off, we'll give you whatever the credit was for the frame, and we can help you pick another one.

1:05:50

Yeah, that's, that usually works. And I've had, I've lost painting sales, because of the frame I had on it. They're like, Oh, well, you know, we don't like that frame. And it's like, oh, I can get you another one. But they just, you know, that's how it kind of by the seat of their pants, they make these decisions of buying, it's like, well, you liked the painting, or you don't, you know, and it's like, we can put another frame on it, it's not hard. But again, it's

Olya Babich Konell  1:06:19

becomes part of the art piece to this very much

1:06:22

is, but the frames like a good pointing to carrot frame, it's 16 by 20. There, you know, minimum $450. Now up to up to 800. You know, it's like, you know, what, what artists can absorb a whole show of that, you know, I mean, it's like, you know, you're buying leads, like eight 910 $1,000. And just frames alone, and you haven't even shipped it, you know,

Olya Babich Konell  1:06:46

now this is such good advice for especially for artists that are just getting into that, you know, just dipping their feet into it. And gosh, thank you so much. I, I want everybody to know that we are going to we've shared the link already. And we'll share it again. But we have a much longer episode with Tony and Laura. And he dives into more stuff. And you have such a rich background that we didn't even get to touch on everything that you've been involved in and done and learned that you know, I really think if you're here you would benefit from checking that episode out. And I again, Tony, thank you for and I was so rushed in the beginning guys, I'm just gonna blur. I didn't introduce Clint Watson, who is the founder of BoldBrush and FASO, and Angela Augusta, who is our artists or relations specialist. And I didn't know not to maybe introduce myself. I don't know today. I just went gung ho into hammer. I don't remember.

Clint Watson  1:07:50

I think we need to let Tony go. Yeah.

1:07:52

Thank you. Before I go, though, I sent a picture of my website up on the back there. I must say I love the FASO websites. Oh, you know, it's a great tool. You know, prior to meeting them, I was always trying to like design a website was a pain in the butt. You know, to have a nice, clean website. And the tools are really easy to use. It's a nice way of showing your work. It makes it stand out. Well designed, the fonts are great. So highly recommend if you don't have a FASO website, I highly recommend

Angela Agosto  1:08:30

I posted the link. We

Olya Babich Konell  1:08:31

appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Clint Watson  1:08:34

Traveling you're the only person in the whole history of this company that pronounce FASO the way I thought it would be pronounced even I finally gave up now just call it FASO.

1:08:47

Oh, fast. Oh, really? Okay.

Olya Babich Konell  1:08:51

Yeah. And FASO for anybody that's listening stands for Fine Art Studio online. Which the Yeah, I'll I'll dive into that later. But no, thank you again, Tony. We're gonna we understand that you're heading off to a vacation, and we appreciate you for taking the time

Clint Watson  1:09:11

on that. Happy,

1:09:16

thanks so much, you guys. I appreciate it. And don't be afraid to reach out to me if you have questions. I you know, I have an email address on my website there. I usually answer all emails. So I'm not opposed to that. If you guys have other specific questions, feel free to send an email and

Olya Babich Konell  1:09:35

follow him on Instagram. Maybe send him a DM or comment on something if you have a question about something like the paint color technique. How did you get this color makes it very

1:09:46

easy and very easy to get a hold up so

Angela Agosto  1:09:50

I'll put the link to your DVDs too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So

Olya Babich Konell  1:09:54

if you're looking to learn Thank you Tony so much. I'm gonna So, we're gonna say goodbye to Tony, then I'm going to segue into some brief kind of announcements that we didn't get into in the very beginning. So I, I flew through it. But if you go to boldbrush.com, that's where you can sign up to get recordings of these webinars. We do these once a month or every four weeks. They're free. They're open to everybody. You we have different artists on that are BoldBrush signature artists. And if you aren't able to make it and you want to watch it, if you're signed up for free or paid, you will get a copy or a link with it in your email. Also on our website, well first of all, BoldBrush is a company who we are, we help artists we inspire artists to inspire the world as that little tagline says up top, but we offer free and paid resources media, which is like this, this episode that we're having with the BoldBrush show podcasts. We have marketing articles, educational information on our website. And then we also offer paid products which is fast FASO, I'm going to be correct there FASO,

Clint Watson  1:11:07

we offer art, it's a losing battle. Yeah.

Olya Babich Konell  1:11:12

We have artful Squarespace by BoldBrush. So if you want a Squarespace site, instead, we have partnered with them to offer basically like a discounted plan, the best plan they have, but at a much lower rate. If you're an existing Squarespace customer, you can actually put your site under our umbrella where we bill you, and not gives you the lower rate and the additional benefits. And then once you're one of our members, one of the coolest things you get access to is called a BoldBrush circle of marketing, which is almost like it's like our own internal social media platform in a way it it's, it's, you know, you log into your account, and then you can access it. But this is where artists can come together for getting critiques, which is like our most popular part of the community is artists asking for critiques from their fellow members. We have an art marketing calendar, which basically shows you like what to do this month, I think this is April's that I opened up. But you know, there's like, you can access it through Google Calendar, you can access it through a spreadsheet, we also have videos and educational videos on how to do a studio sale, how to I mean, pretty much every topic we try to create content for to teach artists how to sell their work and market their art and also focus on connecting them with resources to, you know, grow it, you know, gain that mastery that they need. So, and we've shared links will include these links in your emails as well, that you'll get as a follow up. But that's just a little bit about us and how you can continue learning and interact with us after this session. So Clint, Angela, do you have anything else to add?

Angela Agosto  1:13:02

No, I just posted everything you talked about. Okay. Awesome.

Olya Babich Konell  1:13:07

Well, thank you, everybody that held on till the very end. We really appreciate you. And thank you for joining us today. And for any questions that we missed, we apologize. We do our best to jump and grab as many as we can. We hope you have a wonderful and creative rest of your week.

Angela Agosto  1:13:24

Thank you.

Clint Watson  1:13:26

Thank you.

Olya Babich Konell  1:13:26

Bye

Become a paid subscriber

What did you work on this week?
What art did you create?

Let us know what art, magic, writing, or other creative endeavor you created this week over in our weekly free live chat thread by clicking the button below!

What did you create this week?

(By the way, if you are a FASO member, we have a private members only weekly check in, along with tons of other marketing resources, which you can access by clicking here).

Mastery before Marketing

"[Artistic] mastery is the best goal because the rich can't buy it, the impatient can't rush it, the privileged can't inherit it, and nobody can steal it.  You can only earn it through hard work.  Mastery is the ultimate status."

— Derek Sivers

The three major components needed to be a successful professional artist (in both the creative and worldly definitions of the word “successful”) are connection to true self, mastery and marketing.

The connection to true self, we talk about elsewhere, so let’s talk about the other two.

A rule of thumb for building a successful art business:  Mastery before Marketing.

This is one of the things that makes art such a difficult business.  If you want to be a great artist, you have one medium to master.  If you want to sell your art, you have two mediums to master, the second one being selling (which is the goal of marketing).

Steve Jobs, in his 1997 letter to Pixar shareholders, explained why Pixar partnered with Disney to release Toy Story (emphasis mine):

“We took stock of our uniqueness…Diverting our…attention away from doing what only Pixar can do in order to become beginners at marketing and distribution seemed like a bad idea…distribution involves very different skills….Creating is different than selling.” 

— Steve Jobs 

Creating is different than selling.

I’m not saying you can’t do both, plenty of artists have.

What I'm saying is this: achieve a baseline level of technical proficiency in your craft that allows you to fully channel inspired ideas without struggling with technique, before attempting to sell and market.  You will drive yourself crazy if you try to learn and master both at the same time (it is also useful to build a body of masterful works, so that when you are ready to learn selling, you have a good inventory to work with).

If you are struggling to sell your art there are three possible causes:

1. An inspiration problem - Your work has not achieved resonance and is not connecting with viewers because you haven’t yet faced your fears, let go of ego, and connected with your true self where your true creative wellspring is located.  (In other words, your art is not interesting.  This is a common issue  - pieces that are technically okay, but just nice pictures with no deeper message of resonance.  Art with this problem is sometimes called kitch).

2. A mastery problem - You have creative ideas that will resonate, but you haven’t mastered your craft enough to have the proper technique necessary to fully translate the resonance of those ideas into your art.

3. A selling problem - You’ve mastered creating your art (items one and two), but you aren’t actively selling and marketing your art properly. Creating is different than selling.   If you don’t know who your salesperson is, then it’s you, and all art sales require a sales person.

So be honest with yourself and be sure your work is “good enough” before you try to sell it.

Michelangelo once said, “If the people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all.”

“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason, mastery demands all of a person.” 

— Einstein

Think about this:

Would you frequent a restaurant with mediocre food because they impressed you with a great website?

Would you spend an evening with friends listening to live music by an off-tune band with a singer who flubs the lyrics, just because they had a cool logo?

Would you hire a web designer who used harsh colors and janky typography simply because he had mastered search engine marketing?

Obviously, your answer to these questions is no.

It's just the way of things.  A guitar player who can't tune his guitar and hasn't mastered all his chords won't be able to create and sell his music.

Let's apply this idea to art:

Would you purchase mediocre art by an artist who had lots of website traffic, used a popover form to maximize newsletter sign ups, had a number one ranking in Google, and was the most prolific Instagram poster you follow?

You already know that the answer to that question for most people is no.  

Like our guitar player above, an artist who can't mix paint and hasn't mastered drawing, composition, values and brushwork is going to struggle to sell art.

Look, I'm not saying you have to be a Master with a capital "M" before you start selling (though, if art is your true calling, you should never stop walking the path of mastery as long as you practice art). 

I'm recommending that you strive to achieve a level technical proficiency that is good enough that you no longer have to think about technique while you are creating.   When I play guitar, I don’t want to have to stop to remember how to form chords.  I want to simply flow with the musical ideas as fast as they appear in my mind.  It is like language.  Imagine if every time you engaged in conversation, you had to stop and look up words and grammar instead of just allowing ideas to flow from your mind to your mouth.

Then, once you've reached that baseline level of technical competence you will be able to continue to spend time cultivating that competence into a true mastery of your craft while you start building your competence with marketing.

If you’ve achieved such a level of mastery that you are able, without thinking about technique, to receive creative messages from the universe and translate those sparks of inspiration into inspired finished works of art that resonate,  then (and only then, in my opinion), you are ready for your marketing journey.  

If you don’t feel that you’ve achieved that level of technical proficiency, I strongly encourage you to continue with your art practice, put more miles on the brush, seek out an instructor, do more exercises, take a class or a workshop, or whatever it is that you feel you need to do to improve your work to the point that you do feel that you’ve achieved a level of competence and mastery that you would be proud to put a price tag upon and hang next to other professional artists.

Until that point, other than “getting lucky” here and there, you will likely be disappointed with your sales.

Sum ergo creo.

Creatively,

Clint Watson
BoldBrush Founder
Creativity Fanatic

FASO Loves Michael John Ashcroft’s oil paintings!

See More of Michael John Ashcroft’s art by clicking here.

Wouldn’t You Love to work with a website hosting company that actually promotes their artists?

As you can see, at FASO, we actually do, and,
we are the only website host we know of that does.

Click the button below to start working
with an art website host that actually cares about art.

Get Started with FASO for Free

Become a paid subscriber

What did you work on this week?
What art did you create?

Let us know what art, magic, writing, or other creative endeavor you created this week over in our weekly free live chat thread by clicking the button below!

What did you create this week?

(By the way, if you are a FASO member, we have a private members only weekly check in, along with tons of other marketing resources, which you can access by clicking here).

Neediness

Art must be created to give, not to get.  

If you expect to live off your art before you have a large enough fan base, it is possible you might be expecting too much.  It’s quite important, therefore, before embarking on a journey of art marketing, that you arrange your life situation so that you are not in a position of needing to sell art because you need the money.  If you need the money in the short term, your situation will force you into a mindset of getting rather than giving.  

Once you are in a position of needing your art to sell, unless you happen to be extremely mentally disciplined, your financial need may lead you to do things for short term gain because you will fall prey to bad marketing advice that is outdated or simply wrong.  As we’ve discussed, this happens because most internet marketers don’t actually know how to market art.  

Marketing art is a long term endeavor.  It is a marathon, not a sprint. Engaging in wrong, outdated, or questionable short-term tactics will work poorly.  Internet consumers have become quite sophisticated and can see through obvious tactics to “drive traffic” or “grow an email list.” Everyone’s finely calibrated bullshit detector alerts when encountering these off-putting tactics.

If you are needy, or if you’re desperate for attention, we can all feel it.  It will be slightly repellant to those who encounter your work.  It will feel wrong.

As I mentioned, today’s internet consumer is sophisticated and it’s obvious to almost all of us when you are trying to hijack our attention because you simply need it to work quickly.  Or, alternatively, if you engage in such tactics because you have developed such an inflated ego that you must have attention to validate yourself (hello Instagram “influencers”), we will similarly feel something is “off.”  No matter how handsome or pretty you are, posing with your painting in skimpy outfits or dancing like a clown is absolutely not the way to market your divine gift.

While these cheap tactics may not always be apparent to us consciously, we will recognize them unconsciously and our guard will be up when dealing with you because the energy just won’t feel right.  And that will destroy your efforts.

That all sounds like bad news, but it’s not.  

When you are secure in your art, and you aren’t desperate, we can all feel that vibe as well.  And that vibe feels good.  It makes us trust you.  It makes your art seem more desirable and valuable.  It makes us feel that you know what you’re doing.  And ironically, the more you project confidence, and a sort of laissez faire attitude about your traffic and online attention, the more people will be attracted to you.  

In other words, to get the thing you want, you have to not actually care if you get it.  Again, we’re back to the comparison to a Zen-like attitude: you can’t find the enlightenment you already have as  long as you chase it.

In any case, having an open, confident, and abundance-mentality vibe will go a long way in your marketing efforts.  You have to be in the market but not of the market.  Otherwise you will chase every marketing tactic you hear about, or worse, paint for what you think the market wants, and, in doing so, you will destroy the very thing that drew you to art in the first place.

If you’ve captured the feeling and energy that inspired you to create an artwork, and you are happy with the finished piece, then the work is a success, period.  

It may not be a commercial success, but the final sale (or lack thereof) is not what determines the success or failure of a work of art.  In fact, the market is often a poor judge of the merit of a work of art.  What is popular is not the same as what is good.  

For the work to be a commercial success, a plethora of puzzle pieces, beyond the greatness of the work itself, must align, many of which are beyond of your control.  

I say this not to discourage you, but to prepare you:  You must fortify your mental defenses so that you do not get discouraged when a piece of art doesn’t sell.  This is a major reason that it is so important to not be in a state of neediness. 

Even if you achieved everything you wanted with a given piece, or body, of artwork, it may not sell, at least not in the short term.

Practically, avoiding this state of neediness might involve setting aside a chunk of savings before embarking art full-time.  Or it might require keeping a day job to support your art, at least for a while.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  

I ran FASO on the side for nearly five years before leaving my day job and pursuing it full-time.  

And, as I now embark on a new chapter of writing, I’m not abandoning FASO, I’m doing my creative writing on the side.  I need to be able to do my writing for me, for the love of it, to explore creative directions, to learn and improve, to master my craft, and to naturally attract the right kind of people - readers, supporters, and like-minded colleagues - into my orbit.  

That all takes time.  And I need to be free to do all of that while remaining unconcerned with having to “monetize” anything.  That attitude is the same attitude you will need to develop with your art, at least until you’ve achieved certain milestones.  And if you are unable to adopt a mindset that allows you to maintain this mental firewall between making and marketing, then you may need to consider having someone else, such as a spouse, agent or gallery, do your marketing for you.

Sum ergo creo.

Creatively,

Clint Watson
BoldBrush Founder
Creativity Fanatic

FASO Loves Aaron Schuerr’s oil paintings!

See More of Aaron Schuerr’s art by clicking here.

Wouldn’t You Love to work with a website hosting company that actually promotes their artists?

As you can see, at FASO, we actually do, and,
we are the only website host we know of that does.

Click the button below to start working
with an art website host that actually cares about art.

Get Started with FASO for Free

Read more

Read more

Read more