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To finish off season 11, we created a compilation of basic art marketing tips for artists to consider as they begin their career. Our past guests state that artists should focus on developing authentic, personal relationships with their collectors, often by communicating directly through email newsletters. Many pasta guests also attest to the importance of building and regularly growing an email list for maintaining long-term connections and driving sales outside of social media platforms. They also emphasize the importance of presenting oneself as a professional through a polished website and a consistent portfolio to help foster trust with galleries and clients. Also, consistent and strategic pricing, without undercutting galleries or offering variable discounts, supports an artist’s reputation and business relationships. Separating administrative and creative tasks, and managing one’s schedule effectively, enables artists to maximize their productivity and balance business demands. Finally, our guests remind us that artists should continue to adapt to changes in the art market, such as increased social media and marketing responsibilities, which is vital to thrive as a professional artist today.
Episodes mentioned in order of appearance:
37 Catherine Bobkoski
42 Tina Garrett
60 Gladys Roldan-de-Moras
74 Arthur Gain
81 Steve Atkinson
96 Brienne Brown
97 Elizabeth Robbins
114 Kyle Stuckey
117 Poppy Balser
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Transcript:
Tina Garrett: 0:00
You can’t go into business as an artist with only the creative side understood. You really do need to understand what any other business needs to know. So a basic business course could be really helpful to a lot of people who are going to try to work for themselves,
Steve Atkinson: 0:15
understanding that art is a business, and so if you want to make a living at art, you need to not just be excellent at your technique, especially if you’re, you know, a representational artist, you also need to be able to make a profit, make a little bit of a profit. Otherwise, you know, we’re, you’re going to end up, like so many artists that just can’t make a living at it.
Laura Arango Baier: 0:43
Welcome to the BoldBrush show, where we believe that fortune favors the bold brush. My name is Laura ankle Baier, and I’m your host. For those of you who are new to the podcast, we are a podcast that covers art marketing techniques and all sorts of business tips, specifically to help artists learn to better sell their work. We interview artists at all stages of their careers, as well as others for in careers tied to the art world, in order to hear their advice and insights. To finish off season 11, we created a compilation of basic art marketing tips for artists to consider as they begin their career. Our past guests state that artists should focus on developing authentic personal relationships with their collectors, often by communicating directly through email newsletters. Many past guests also attest to the importance of building and regularly growing an email list for maintaining long term connections and driving sales outside of social media platforms. They also emphasize the importance of presenting oneself as a professional through a polished website and a consistent portfolio to help foster trust with galleries and clients, also consistent and strategic pricing without undercutting galleries or offering variable discounts, supports an artist’s reputation and business relationships. Separating administrative tasks and creative tasks and managing one’s schedule effectively enables artists to maximize their productivity and balance business demands. Finally, our guests remind us that artists should continue to adapt to changes in the art market such as increased social media and marketing responsibilities, which is vital to thrive as a professional artist today,
Catherine Bobkoski: 2:10
kind of goes off of what I was just saying about social media, is that, you know, people want to make a personal connection with you. If you’re an artist or a teacher, it’s not just about selling a product, like if I was, I think even if I was just selling a product, you know, people care about who they’re buying from. People care about what does that product represent, and what does it mean for me? What does it say about me that I would, you know, pay money for that? I think it’s even more so if you’re talking about art or talking about someone who wants to learn how to draw or paint. I mean, that’s even more personal, right? So again, I think it’s about, you know, looking for that human connection and creating the opportunities, like you said, for that to happen. So yeah, get people off of your social media page or whatever, and get them onto your newsletter. And then don’t just send out a newsletter, send out a personal email to like your top 10 clients, right? And then don’t just email them like, call them and text them and meet them in person like, you know, create that human connection, right? Because people are, people will be so much more interested in your work and in what you do as an artist and as an instructor and as an artist or whatever, if they’re also interested in you as a person, right? I think that is absolutely the case. And I know for artists like, Look, I get it. I am actually very introverted. You wouldn’t maybe guess it from this interview. I’ve been just like talking so much, but I actually a very, very introverted person, and my ideal evening is being all alone by myself in my studio, painting until 1am probably, yeah, I know exactly same. I see your face. You’re like, yes, that’s the ideal on some level. I think you have to get over it a little bit, right? I mean, don’t not do those things, of course. Like we all need our alone time. We all need that recharging time, and we all need time in the studio. I mean, that’s just that’s just a given that you’re going to spend hours in the studio painting. But don’t forget that a part of being an artist is not the work that you produce, but it’s also you right. That’s part of the thing that you have to put out there. And I know so many artists that so many friends of mine that you know won’t even put a picture of them on their website or a picture of themselves on their like little Oh, am I speaking more
Laura Arango Baier: 4:50
truth? Yeah. I mean, I It’s like this person, yeah, yeah.
Catherine Bobkoski: 4:58
Don’t have like, a logo for. Your profile picture, like it’s your face, okay, that that is who you are. That says something to people, that it’s, it’s, again, it’s, it’s personal, that you are a part of the work that you are, especially if you’re a teacher, who are people going to want to take classes from a logo? No, of course. Yeah, try to make a human connection with people. And the more you do that, the more they’re actually going to be interested in investing in you, in your product, in your work, and anything else that you have to offer. So that’s so true. That was basically it, yeah.
Laura Arango Baier: 5:40
And then I was also wondering if you have any words of wisdom for for example, like your younger self, that you know maybe your younger self would have wanted to hear, and also that would benefit our listeners.
Catherine Bobkoski: 5:59
Yeah, absolutely. Well, one thing is, which, I hope this doesn’t sound like too much of a bummer, but this is a lot of work, learning to paint, finding your your voice, your the thing that you want to say that is worth sharing with the world, and then learning how to say that thing. Gosh, it’s a lot of work. You shouldn’t let that intimidate you, but it’s just, you know, it’s not like how it is in the movies, right? You’re not just gonna, like, waltz into a studio and just like, slap some paint on the canvas and someone’s gonna pay you a million dollars for it. It’d be really nice if that was how it was, but, but be prepared that it’s, it’s a lot of work, and a lot of it is actually very boring. And if you’re a person that you know doesn’t like being bored, or maybe doesn’t find boring things to be really exciting, well, you know, either find a way around that, or maybe there’s another thing for you to invest your time and effort into, you know, teaching so many students, I I’m still surprised sometimes at how many of them are just just shocked. Oh, this is actually hard. What Yeah, it is. It’s very hard, and making a business out of it is even more difficult. So number one, be prepared to work really hard. That’s not a bad thing. But also, you can do it, right? Yes, also you are, you’re, I’m sure, if you are listening to a podcast like this, if you have put up with what I’ve had to say so
Elizabeth Robbins: 7:37
far, I
Catherine Bobkoski: 7:38
guarantee you have the patience and that, and you are probably smart enough and interested enough to make it happen, but it takes the time investment, and it takes, I think, the security and the willingness to be vulnerable enough to say no to certain things and to say, I don’t know certain things, and to invest instead In the things that you really, really do care about, yeah, painting, I think, in a way, it takes this very balanced approach between extremes, right? You have to, on the one hand, be very confident, and at the one hand, be extremely humble. On one hand, be totally invested in your work, right? And on the other hand, be willing to throw it away, trash it start over in a moment’s notice, right? You have to be willing to invest so much time, so much care at the same time. Be improvisational, intuitive, gestural. Always, you have to have this kind of balance between these extremes and to just live in that, in that crazy, wild sauce of stuff, because we’re artists, or we’re cool with that, and don’t expect it to ever be, you know, easy. Don’t expect yourself to always just have the right answer to have all your stuff together. We’re all just figuring this out, right? And to give yourself a break on that too.
Tina Garrett: 9:07
Gosh, you know, I just have to empathize with anyone who’s trying to do almost anything today. It seems like there’s so much more stuff going on, more information coming in, more world events currently, you know, on the radar, more political things on the radar, more cultural things on the radar than there was when I was a young person starting out. I wouldn’t want to be a single young person today to save my life the way people have to connect with people today seems scarier to me than it did for me in my day and age. And I actually, unfortunately, I’ve seen it in the friends of my children who have become, you know, close to me. Some of them even work for me every now and then as models or as a personal. Assistance and things like that. I’ve seen the toll of just life decisions today on on younger people in general, regardless of whether it’s artists or whatnot. My first advice would be, be very cautious of predatory opportunities. So all art organizations are not equal. I would stick to as many not for profits as you can in terms of where you invest your own money, because they’re going to give you back the benefits that come to you at a cheaper rate than a for profit organization will do and ask the people who are in your life that are older than you, that have been doing this longer than you, ask them where they’ve spent their money and where they got the return for it back. Right? So many artists I know come to me and ask me to write letters of recommendation to supposed four year long art colleges, and every single one of them has come back just devastated. They have no skill set. They have no job opportunities. They’re either working for the school or they are working administration or retail or something like that afterwards, and now they have hundreds of 1000s of dollars in debt. So be super, super cautious about where you spend your money. And you can actually practically be when I say Be cautious, what I mean is, do your research. You want to talk to someone who graduated from that school five years ago and hear from them that they are making wages in the realm of where they were supposed to be teaching, not making wages as a bartender and in, you know, retail store, but actually making wages in that career. And you want to spend your dollar very cautiously. And when you do decide to, say, go to school or take on a mentorship or something like that, do the work you’re supposed to do, show up and be serious and do all the work. Make sure that those things come with either at least a recommendation for what business classes to take, if not already including business classes, because there’s no you can’t go into business as an artist with only the creative side understood. You really do need to understand what any other business needs to know. So a basic business course could be really helpful to a lot of people who are going to try to work for themselves. Know how to do your taxes, know how to keep your checkbook straight, know how to estimate what your income is going to be and what your expenses are going to be, and kind of how to create different streams of income. I had the same conversation with my son, who graduated high school in 2019 to go to an arts college in New York City to become an actor. And he put his hands on my shoulders, and he said, Mom, you know how I know I can do it, and I’m just like this, going, what? How do you know? And he said, because I watched you do it. And I said, Oh, honey, please, please marry someone with health insurance like that was my first response. Because I’m like these kids, they don’t understand what happens behind the scenes in their parents relationship. They’re not there for the conversations about how to make ends meet, and so they see the romantic side of, yes, my mom is learning how to paint, and she’s going to these classes, and then she’s teaching all these courses, and she’s traveling around, and all parents are coming to the house, and she sees all, you know, they see all of that stuff. And so they think that they can do that, because they see that part. And they’re gonna, he’s like, I’m gonna go act, and I’m gonna go learn how about playing piano. I’m going to do all this stuff, and he’s not, he’s not seeing that if dad didn’t work where their health insurance was included, that that we would have never made enough money to live on. We would have just been making enough to pay the basic necessities, if that, if you were talking about just my income alone. So I kind of tried to explain to him, and this is probably the last bit I’ll say about this, is that as a creative person, and any young person creating a job at all, you get to choose the size of your life. So I want you to think about what you want to do, like, it’s a teacup, right? A big, big tea cup. You got to hold all the hands of that means you want, like, a five car garage, and you want to send three or four children to college, and you want, you know, 250 you know, $1,000 a year, whatever. Right, that’s a big that’s a lot. That might mean that you’re going to have to paint and teach and maybe sell a product, like your own paint product, or your own aprons or whatever, right? You’re going to have to do a lot of things to manage that huge cup of tea. If you have a smaller life, maybe you have a teeny, tiny cappuccino sized life. You can hold it with two fingers, right, to keep it steady without spilling it. You may only be able to paint and tea, right? So if you choose this big, big life, and you have. This whole umbrella of people who are going to be depending on you financially, you may have to like, make it to like the Brad Pitt version of painter in the world, right, right? Or but if you have a keep your life small, live in a place that you can afford, buy secondhand furniture, whatever, make it all cool and stuff like that, make your life really small, then you can maybe live a life of a painter and have a good gallerist, maybe two, if you’re super lucky, and paint a lot, and maybe just do private lessons on the side, or things like that. So it’s not just about what you know and what you can do. It’s about what you decide. So if you decide you need a lot. You got to have the newest car. You got to wear the Prada sunglasses. You got to have all of that stuff. Then, then you will maybe not be able to do that and only sustain your art career. You may end up having to take a second job on top of the art career. Or, you know, there’s lots of different ways of figuring it out, but, but that is a choice that’s not just something that happens every artist or every person who wants to be an entrepreneur at all, they end up making that choice, whether they’re conscious of it or not. They’re end up making that choice. And so choose a small life you can manage if you end up making more and then you add on to that life, that’s great. But if you set it yourself up, you know, especially starting out with like, hundreds of 1000s of student loans, you might really get yourself up underneath, and then what happens is those people stop trying to be artists, and then they go back to school to do something else, or they get married to someone who has the income, you know, and then the years go by and they’re sorry they never stayed a painter. And this could be a lot of regret and stress involved with that.
Gladys Roldan-de-Moras: 16:40
It relates to many other professions, especially musicians, you know, but I started little by little, I started selling. When I was telling you I was teaching, I was also selling paintings that I was doing that I don’t even want to know where they’re at, you know, because sometimes you wish it would disappear. I don’t even know where that but at second hand furniture stores, that’s how I started. My paintings would sell for 50 $100 at all. And I remember traveling to Mexico once, and we would go all the time to visit the family and my son, David, who’s brought, you know, a man now with his own family, young children. He was, like, four or five years old, and we were walking down the the main aisle when, when the airports were all open, you know, where there was no, no, you can’t go past, you know, back then probably you were probably his age. But anyways, there was a local gallery that used to display paintings on the main on the main corridor as you were going into the gate. And my my son pulls at me, says, Mom, mom, there’s your painting. And I’m like, what? And I turn around and I look at my painting. I said, What is my painting here? I sold it at the second hand furniture store for, you know, whatever. And this one was like, I think $500 I had jumped like, from there to, you know, I remember it was at least double or something, and I was about to leave, and I said, when I come back, I’m going to call and see what this is about. And as soon as I got back, the owner, she says to me, she says, Well, we’ve been selling your paintings very often. I thought it was you that was bringing it. And I said, No, it’s not me. But so I remember, because I was selling for $100 that I need to jump to 500 you know, or something like that. But it was big for me. Way back, it was big, but I have been very careful to sell my paintings and be a little by little, raising my prices, raising my price, never coming back down, because I wanted you know, you think about collectors and you say, well, if they are willing to buy one of my paintings and pay whatever amount you know, you don’t want to know that. Oh, well, you know, unfortunately, some artists will say, Well, if you buy it at my studio, it’ll cost you less or than if you buy it, so and so, which is so wrong, you know, so wrong in so many levels. So I have been very, very careful through the years that as I moved from little galleries to finally, another gallery to another, that whatever you buy at the gallery for whatever it is, you’re going to buy it in my studio for whatever the same amount I’ve never so I’ve been very careful, which has helped me, I guess, because galleries also get burned about people. Because now, with social media, any person interested in your work, well, they go Google you, and then they can find you. What I do, I usually do, is I ask people, where did if they if that happens to me, somebody caught Where did you hear from me? Of course, you never know if they’re going to tell you the truth or not. They could say, Well, I went to this gallery and I heard about you and I Googled you. But what I’ve done is, when they mention a gallery or another one, I always call the gallery and I tell them, Listen, I don’t know if you know this person, but this person has contacted me, and if I do sell, you know, you know, I’ll you will get your but anyway, so what I’ve been is I’ve been very, very, very careful, and when I started selling, it was hard to let go some of the paintings. It really was. Now I find it as an honor that anybody would consider, you know, to add their painting to their collection, but I have been very careful. I have been rejected many times, and that is fine. I just recently, because I still have my old studio in my house. Before I built this studio, there’s still a lot of stuff I haven’t moved over. And I came across it. I came across a letter from a gallery which I had submitted my work and and the gallery wrote me a letter, a very nice letter, that said, you know, we just don’t feel we are a fit for you now. And that was, you know, I took it was very hard because, you know, you’re an artist. We put our hearts in our sleeves. Thankfully, we’re not like performers. At least, you know that we have to sing there in live. At least we can paint then go take it over and then take rejection, kind of, you know, in private or where, but it’s a very, it’s very sensitive. But I found this letter, and I found a letter of that same gallery inviting me, okay, now I was so happy that I felt, I must say, with years difference, and, you know, the gallery was right. I wasn’t, probably ready for that, or maybe they didn’t believe I don’t know, you know, but the thing is that it’s hard to take rejection, but I, you know, I have taken, I have had shows where I did not sell one piece of a painting. So we have to learn that, at least in my life, it’s not all been wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. You know, it’s that, it’s learning, it’s trying to be strong and to make not take it personally that will okay. They didn’t like my work. Well, it’s not because not You’re not good. Like another friend artists says to me, when you have a show and a painting doesn’t sell, well, it’s just that the right collector hasn’t come across. And it’s true. It’s true. It’s happened to me, mine, I find a home, I send it somewhere, like they’ll find a home. So so it was very rewarding moving into selling my paintings I was able to afford, you know, buying my own, you know, because, you know, to this, this, this business, takes a lot of investment. These paintings that are back here, actually, most of these are G click copies. Some are originals, but it’s few. And there’s more toward there. And the only reason I have those here, they don’t have the beautiful frames that I usually I had very simple frames, but we know that frames are expensive and all of that, so it’s you have to put money to make more. But it’s been very rewarding. Sometimes it’s been hard. It hasn’t been easy. I still remember going somebody told me once, how did you get into the Santa Fe market, you know, which was a very hard market to get into it. It was many years ago, and back then, I remember doing this, and I made CDs that was in social media, or here’s my website. It was just, really, just started. I made these CDs with music, and it had like a a show of my paintings. And at the end it would stop and say, looking for representation and and my name and, you know, my phone number. And then I put them in one of those old, you know, covers, and I literally went through all Canyon Road and dropped and dropped them off, and one gallery called me, and that put my foot on Canyon Road. And I will still remember, I will still remember that, but it was, it’s a hard, you know, it’s not an easy road, but it is a rewarding, you know, road. And these are the kind of things i A lot of people come and ask me about and, and I try to be as honest and help them. And why not? You know, people have been so gracious to share with me the way they did it, or be it technically, or, you know, some experience about this business of being an artist. I. Yeah, I I’m I’m very happy when I have time to be able to talk to them and give me give them my advice. And now I must say that I’ve been very fortunate that I have never submitted to a show I have always been invited, for which I’m very grateful. I have been invited to so many other art shows, which I wish I could say yes. And, you know, you work so hard, all your Oh, I would like to be in the show. This would be amazing. And then it comes to a point where, yeah, you are invited, but, and you do it, and you really paint that many paintings and such, you know, and it has been very hard to call people or write them and say, I’m sorry I can’t do it as much as I want. And you hope that you’re not burning bridges, but it’s the honest truth. Just like galleries, I’m waiting for you to present something new. But I don’t know if I’m getting slower as I’m getting older in age, or what it is, or maybe more complex paintings, but I don’t paint that quick. I paint every day, long, long. Dave, 1012, hours, not 10, no, maybe up to 10 hours. Uh, when? But, but I don’t paint that quick, so it’s hard to say no, but you have to, otherwise you’re sacrificing in my point, in my in my experience, you’re sacrificing quality. And I just recently had to ask one of these major shows if I could sit out for this year, because I have so many commissions that I have that have been requested from me. And I said, Yes, and I need to deliver these. So they were very nice, and they said, Yeah, that I hope just you don’t just not show up anymore. I said, No, I just really need one year, but it’s But getting back to the like the business thing, I always tell my students, be very careful, that if you are going to go up on your prices, that you be very careful, and you do not come back because collector’s world is very small, galleries world is very small, and you have to be very professional about this, so that people have credibility in your work, you know. And so I have been that way.
Arthur Gain: 27:31
And there is a time to just to reflect and to to enjoy, something to to learn something, to read books, to watch movies, to Yeah, to have long walks or listening to music. And there is a time when we have to perform. So when we need to perform, I just try to turn into performance more, which means I just Yeah, I try to, I try to separate tasks. I cannot tell that it should work for everyone, because I was okay. I was concerned about it, and I was just searching about different schedules and different time management systems. And there are so many coming from billionaires, CEOs of huge corporations, and you know, different people, I was overwhelmed and confused because, like, some people are sleeping for four minutes a day, so other people are, I don’t know. They claim to do so many things, but in my opinion, so difficult to keep, to keep it going. To be honest. Pablo Picasso, he used to have very peculiar schedule, for example, like he used to wake up quite late. He was just walking around during coffee, meeting with friends until like late afternoon. Slowly, he will get into studio mode that he he could work until two or 3am in the night and after go to sleep, sleep until 11. So you see, like totally opposite from other people, for example, so and then, when I, when I learned about it, I realized that there is no just one approach, the same as with painting or with with art, or everyone should find their own. Yeah, the most resonating and most like suitable way of dealing with things. So for me, I start my mornings after, you know, like normal morning routine workouts and breakfast and so I just started with business stuff. You. Some people, they like to paint right away, and I try to do it. But for me, one or two hours spending refining mails, scheduling, doing some chores, business type of things, you know, is somehow more useful. And yeah, like, I feel more creative towards the evenings. So for me, the real the real action begins, I think between 3pm to 9pm when I really paint very effectively, and when I enjoy it, and surprisingly less disruptions. So yeah, it’s it’s how, and also I teach in between. I can teach afternoons or evening time, because most of my students online students, they are from United States or Canada. So you see like this, some differences in time zones. Yeah. So yeah, like that, but I always try to just to separate, separate my time. So when, when I when I’m in painting mode, I don’t check emails, I don’t I don’t like to answer the phone. So, yeah, generally speaking, I could say the least thing I do is answering my phone or messages, because they can distract you. So I put my headphones on. I listen to books to music to white noise sometimes, and I paint and after I read or spend time with family or watching movies or playing even video games when I have time. Yeah, but yeah, business, business, business, things are in the mornings. But I don’t think it will work for everyone. Maybe, maybe some people will Dave it from just painting straight away out of the bed. Maybe it’s also good because your mind is very clear, and there are no things, no information coming. But yeah, so I haven’t, okay, just put it straight. I haven’t find perfect, perfect way of managing my time. I just do things. And yeah, there are few applications, few apps which can help, like booking, booking for for zoom calls, I use application called Miro to to create some sort of plans and time mapping, what is happening with my projects, what what is in preparation, stage, pre production, production, post production, what I paintings. I should shape things I show varnish, photo shoots like so I’m keeping giving some sort of boards with the tasks as well. But not, not much. I’m not a nerd in this aspect. Just Just few, couple couple of couple of tools to help.
Laura Arango Baier: 33:20
Yeah, no, but that’s awesome. And I love that you bring up the point of, you know, everyone has their own rhythm, right? Because, like, there are some people I don’t know how they do it, like, I have a best friend. She’s a teacher, she naturally wakes up at six in the morning. I can’t do that. I will never in my life naturally wake up at six unless I go to sleep really, really early, but my brain is usually too wired to even try to go to sleep early, so I think I would resonate more with like, how you do it. And actually, that aligns with how I schedule my day too. I like to get rid of all the business stuff first, so I don’t have it, you know, banging around in my head, because then if I have it being around in my head, it’s going to distract me from painting, but, yeah, you know, it’s, it’s good to, you know, to remind people to be aware of, okay, When are your natural energy levels happening? And then, not just, you know, daily, but also weekly. You know, maybe there’s like, a day of the week where you really need maybe, like, a bit of a longer break or, or it’s a good moment to plan, you know, like, take that day just to plan ahead of what you’re going to do. Because that’s the other part that you pointed out this is really challenging, and that is, you got to varnish this painting now, and then you also have to do this, and then you also have to do that, and then there’s so many things to keep track of. Or, like, oh, I have to send this painting to get framed in time so that I can send it to this person. Oh, there’s so much to do when you’re, you know, an artist, because you are literally a one man band trying to do everything. So it’s, yeah, it’s good to also point out, you know, using apps and trying to find whatever works for you. I personally am. I love analog. I. Will write, will write everything I have, like a paper calendar. And I find that that that works for me. But, yeah, it’s good to to remember that, you know, like, how do I personally work? And again, the self reflection side comes in, you know,
Arthur Gain: 35:16
yeah, I believe there is no point, you know, tools to bend yourself and to amend your nature, or either, as you say, we need to be good managers for ourselves, to find sweet spots, to motivate ourselves, because we are fragile artists, you see. And also about time management. There is a for oil painters. Everyone knows who paints the time it can be can be your ally or can work against you. So you need to learn how things are going to dry when you work, especially when you work on the big pieces or multiple pieces at once. It’s not just to have time to paint and to force yourself into painting. You need to know what will dry and when and when you should paint this to for this area to be dry thoroughly so you can start the new layer and so on and so on and so on. So sometimes I even keep track on to put imprimatur here or to put second layer there, because I know I will need to put the third layer at that point to be able to varnish it. Finally, so very often, I just track back from shipping day to varnishing day, and from varnishing day to the day of signature, because you need time for painting to dry thoroughly. But in between, also, there are layers. There are things we need to know. Because, yeah, like, if things are not dry, you all you have to do is to wait, regardless of how many nights you’re going to spend on this painting, painting can be just not ready to to Yes to continue.
Laura Arango Baier: 37:06
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Steve Atkinson: 39:25
The other thing that illustration gave me, and being an illustrator, is understanding, and people are going to roast me for this understanding that art is a business, and so if you want to make a living at art, you need to not just be excellent at your technique, especially if you’re, you know, a representational artist, you also need to be able to understand that there are deadlines, especially if you’re in galleries or in shows, you need to be able to get things done on time. You. Need to make a profit, make a little bit of a profit, otherwise, you know, we’re going to end up like so many artists that just can’t make a living at it, and understanding, Oh, the other big thing, the big difference between illustration and fine art, is that with fine art, it really is centered on, it’s a relationship based way of living with illustration. You have, you know, your commercial clients come to you with with fine art, you need to have collectors in your life who value your work, and in order to do that, yeah, you know they’re going to follow you because they like your work, but so many collectors really like to know the artists that they’re collecting. They and this is true in all business. People do business with people that they like, and so having that email list is so important, having social media is important. Advertising can be important, but picking up the phone and calling people who have bought your work and staying in touch with them so important, and something that I’m trying to get better at because I’m a big introvert, but luckily, I have learned that one on one, I’m I’m really good, but talking to big crowds of people, or going to shows where there’s a big crowd, that’s A little more daunting for me, that’s,
Laura Arango Baier: 41:41
that’s understandable. I completely relate to that. It is definitely a lot easier to, you know, have your focus on one person. I also get very overwhelmed in large groups. But, yeah, those are excellent, excellent, excellent points. And I think, you know, especially, you know, if you have a career in illustration, right? Or, like when you did, you get used to all of that. Maybe not the one on one collector side, but you definitely get used to deadlines speed and okay, you gotta get this done exactly the way that the client wants it. Because, of course, the client is the one who tells you exactly what they want, versus, you know, in fine art, you can come up with almost anything and and then the collectors have to come to you, you know, but you have to put yourself out there. So it’s a little bit of a back and forth. So it’s a little different,
Steve Atkinson: 42:30
yeah, yeah, yeah, most definitely. And I think so often, we don’t understand that it really is a relationship driven kind of, kind of a calling. I didn’t realize that when I first started, and I’ll tell this little story, I was at a show, and a lot of times you’ll see, when artists are at the show, the artists will glom together, you’ll you’ll see somebody that you know who’s an artist, and you’ll go over and talk to them. And there’s all these collectors that are, that are there, or people that you don’t know yet, and you can spend your whole time just talking to an artist or bunch of artists that you know. And I had one time, I had someone come up and insert themselves into a conversation that I was having with another artist, and they didn’t know who I was, and when they found out, they said, Oh, are you in the show? And I said, Yeah, absolutely. And they said, well, where’s your art? And it was a show that had many different rooms of art. And I said, Oh, it’s over in this room over here. And went on to talking to the person that I was talking with. My wife comes up afterwards and say, she said, Honey, you may want, if someone comes up and asks where your art is, you may want to take them over and show them. So I never made that mistake again. But it’s just one of those things that’s not innate, unless you realize that you’re building relationships. And it’s nice to talk to the people that you know, but it’s much better to go up and talk to someone, maybe who’s looking at your art or someone else, and find out what their tastes are in art, and start that conversation where they’re from. Do they have any artwork? Is it prints? Is it originals? What do they look for in a painting? I just find that if you start talking to people about what their likes are, the conversation is so easy. I mean it. People love talking about themselves, and so you just go down that road, ask them a question, and you can just nod for 10 minutes, you know. Or a lot of times you’ll find you have a lot in common. I have made such good friends doing that, and to this day, not just people who buy my art, but people who you just generally like, is genuinely like. So it’s it’s a great experience, if you look at it as this person has something to offer me. Um. I don’t know them, but I know we have things in common. We just have to figure out what they are.
Brienne Brown: 45:05
One thing I did, I’m not trying to remember when I did it. I don’t remember, but I had started trying to sell and I realized quickly I wasn’t very good at selling art, because as an artist, we’re taught, I mean, you’re taught how to paint you love what you do, you paint what you love, but actually trying to sell your work took something else, and running a business took something else. So I took a community class on business, running a small business, which was actually super helpful for me, because it helped me realize that I’m in the business of selling stuff. So, yeah, I’m a businessman, right? I mean, yes, I’m an artist, but I’m also trying to sell my work. So that was super helpful. The other thing is, just, I kept trying to practice at it. You know, when I go to shows, I go up and talk to people, and a lot of it is just coming down to talking about what you love, which is your work, right? And so the other thing that was key for me was that I finally realized it wasn’t my job to get any everybody to like my work, because that’s impossible, right? You’re just not going to you can’t do that, which is good, because so many people have different tastes. So many people like different things. They connect with different things. So my job was just to paint what really spoke to me, do the best I could, and then find the buyer that would connect with that, you know, and that just helped open up any kind of pressure of like, oh, what should I paint? What will sell, you know, and that kind of things. And it’s, it’s so tempting to go in that way and think, Oh, wait, what’s going to sell? No, connect. Connect with what you’re going to connect with paint, what you love, and the buyer, you will find someone that will connect with that, you know, you just gotta then find them. That’s the hard part, right? Well, one hard part, and that’s where the marketing comes in, and understanding your your your your market, so understanding, you know, who you’re actually trying to sell to, and that is a key thing. So I think the business side is something to learn as an
Elizabeth Robbins: 47:27
artist. You know, things have changed drastically because of social media and the internet and but I think it’s really important now if you’re going to try and get into galleries, is to present yourself as a professional, even if maybe you’re not quite there. I think it’s important to present yourself as a professional. My My husband used to say, he says, Be a duck. And I say, What the heck does that mean? Be a duck? He says, calm on the surface and professional on the surface, but paddling, paddling like hell underneath. And so, so as you’re you know, as you’re trying to get into galleries, I think it’s important to have a professional website. I think it’s important to have professional business cards, a professional pamphlet, a professional portfolio. You need to portray that sense that you are a professional and not you don’t even have to be doing it full time, but you need to at least give that sense that you are taking yourself seriously, so that that gallery will take you seriously. You can’t just be a Sunday painter, let’s say, and, and think that you’re going to be selling in galleries. It’s, it’s a professional business relationship. It’s, it’s symbiotic. You know, they can’t sell art without us, and we can’t sell art without them. And and both sides need to run it like a business, and you need to run your art career like a business. And unfortunately, a lot of artists, you know, they’re so right brain that they they don’t have the left side. And some people are fortunate that they have a spouse that, you know, runs that part of the business for them. I was fortunate that I got my dad’s left side of my brain, of his brain, and my mom’s right side of the brain. So I have both the artistic and the and the business sense, but it is really important to be professional, at least look professional on the surface, even if you’re paddling like hell underneath.
Kyle Stuckey: 49:38
I think the expectation on artists has changed for so long, you know, artists would paint, and I think most artists that’s what they want to do. They want to go in their studio, or out and in the, you know, outside and paint plein air, or they want to paint the studio, and they want to create work. You. Now, I think you’ve always needed to be wear a lot of hats, or you’ve always had to be able to market yourself to some degree and organize your life enough to get paintings to galleries. But for so long, I think, you know, galleries handled so much of like the collector find, you know, finding collectors, marketing your work and, and that has changed a bit with with social media. Now a lot of galleries are expecting you to have a good social media presence and, and that seems great because we have, like, the ability to connect with our collectors, but there’s a little bit of a, like, a shift in what an artist is expected to amount of time we’re expected to put in, you know, like, yeah, you could spend, you know, how many hours you could spend a day building social media or doing reels or tiktoks or, you know, whatever, you know, whatever. And that’s basically just taken away from painting time. And I think we’re being, I don’t know what the balance is yet. Honestly, I’m kind of in this. I’m not sure like how to balance, how much social media do you presence, do you have? How much, how much value does it actually have? And and just creating paintings and having galleries do what they do best, and sell, you know, and selling, and it also runs it to like a little bit of a confusing world of like, for so long, galleries built client bases, and now artists are also sort of building client bases. So now who’s, you know, who gets the rights to art sales, or what is the split on that? Should artists start getting finder fees? The way that gallery to Gallery would work, potentially, how that works would probably depend on from gallery to gallery and artists art and I think that’s something like working with galleries. You need to really make sure that you’re on the same page and and moving forward in the changing world, because it’s not what it was 2030, 4050, years ago. You know, it’s changing. We have. I’m finding clients through Instagram in a sense, and and they’re finding clients in their ways and but that’s taken away from paint to time, and that’s navigating that is hard. I think, where, for me, it is, and I think it seems to be, you know, I see so often artists, you know, all sudden, go, go kind of a wall. I’d like on social media. Like, oh, where have they been? And I do it all the time. I haven’t, yeah, I’ll, like, forget to post for days or months. And that’s a terrible platform for building a thriving social media, right? It’s a bad business model. So, yeah, but we get burnt out where I do, I get a little burnt out with it, totally, yeah, because I’m already trying to be creative enough, I think, like I’ve tried to create this art and then also be Creative Social Media Creator is like, it’s still creative brain power that you have to Be
Poppy Balser: 53:38
I got my Faso website in early 2010 and the reason why I did was honestly because of the fine art views newsletter, which had been, had been going for quite a while, it’s and it was delivered into my in my email box. I think it was every day for years and years, it was every day, and mostly it was useful stuff to artists. But every now and then the useful stuff for the artist was discussing how to have a website, how to build a website, what, you know, what sort of website you need to have? What’s what’s useful on a website, all this stuff. And you know, they were, they were, they were general information, which was useful, but it also was Fine Art Studio online saying, this is, you know, this is how we do our websites, and this is why we think it’s important for artists. And it totally worked. And just so I bought the product from the newsletter. And so I got my website early 2010 and almost immediately started a newsletter with 11 people, which was my brother, my sister, my mother, my father, and about five or six other people. And I was not super regular in sending it at the beginning, but I would, you know, when somebody said, Oh, I like your I like your work, how do I find out more? I’d be like. I have a newsletter. I send it out. Do you want to go on my list? So I added people gradually over time. So I started with 11, but then I then I reached out to people that I had sort of like a, you know, any sort of relationship with, where I thought they they might be interested in the fact that I’m now painting. So I invited them to join my list, and then I probably had 50 or 60 people. Over the years, I found different ways to draw people to my my to my website and to sign up for the newsletter, and I see that as the most important tool, honestly, in my artist business, outside of working with galleries, having the website, having the newsletter, that is the biggest tool that I have that drives, drives people to come see what I’m doing, and some of them buy paintings. You’ve mentioned social media, and the problem with social media is what we put on social media, we don’t own that. We don’t own the connections that we make through social media. You know, I left, I left Twitter. Not going to call it x, I left Twitter months ago, a few months ago. And one of the things I miss the most is, you know, there’s this one British artist who I only ever found her posting her stuff on Twitter. And you know, when I went to her website at the time, when I was leaving, there was nothing on her website, I was like, Oh man, how am I going to figure out, you know, what she’s paying because I just love her work so much. Since then, I’ve gone back to her website, and she does have stuff on her website now, which is great. But you know, she was putting her stuff on Twitter, and if I wasn’t on Twitter, I didn’t see her stuff. And i None of us want to be in that situation where people can’t find us. But our website, we own our website. We own what we put on it. We’re responsible for what’s on there. We control what’s on there. We control what people see. If somebody comes to our website, they don’t have to go through an algorithm of, you know, what’s popular, they’re going to see what I, as the artist, put on my website, because that’s what I want them to see, though. That’s why I’m focused on the newsletter and and even my when I post. I haven’t never sold much on social media. I don’t know why. I just it just never seemed to work for me. So rather than try and chase those sales, I would just post stuff and say, hey, you know, this is, this is my painting. If you want to learn more, go to my website. There’s a newsletter sign up page thing on the bottom of every page of my website, and occasionally on social media, and say, hey, you know, if you like this stuff, I have a newsletter sign up. I do that like every few months and so, you know that helped guide people there. I did some activities to help expand my list. Let’s see. So in in 2012 I decided to do a daily painting experiment. And I my kids were still kind of little, so I couldn’t, I couldn’t do it for like, years on end. So I said, Okay, you know, two months before Christmas, I’m going to do 60 paintings in 60 days, and I’m going to charge $60 for them. And so I ran an ad in the local paper, and I probably put it on social media that I was doing this, but the only way to get find out about the painting was to be on my newsletter list, because I emailed out the pictures every I do my painting, and I’d email it out through my newsletter every day, and if they did, if it didn’t sell the first day, the price would go up like it went up to my normal price. So I don’t remember the numbers, because it was a long time ago, but I had a huge growth in my newsletter list from that, because people would tell their friends, oh, my god, I just bought this painting for 60 bucks. And you know, this is how you find out. Sign up for her newsletter. And that worked. I did that for three years, four, three or four anyways, and it was, it was very successful. I also went to a local trade show and put up a little booth with some of my paintings and some note cards, and I had a draw for a painting, and anybody that wanted to, you know, the entry form said, sign up for my emails and get a chance to win this painting. So they would write their email address on the little paper. And I went home with 150 papers, and I entered them all in my system as as new subscribers. So there’s all sorts of stuff you can do to get more names on your list. Yeah.
