The Original Sin

Of The Art Business is pervasive. Don't make it in yours.

If you got into the field of art to create real art, then advice from non-artists and fake artists will not help you. You don't need advice from business people. You may need to hire business people to sell your art, but you can tell them to stuff all their advice. When they start sending you articles telling you that you are “in a business whose product just happens to be art,” you can tell them to take a fuck*!g hike. — Miles W. Mathis [source]

The original sin in art marketing is thinking that the art business is like any other business.

Artists are noble creatures who aspire to manifest inspiration for the benefit of all. Nobility is born by discovering our unique abilities, our true calling, and mastering them to their full potential in the service of others. And that is exactly what artists must do!

Since the purpose of art is to allow humans to send inspiration, energy, and subjective knowledge to one another across space and time, it must be understood that art is sacred. And we don’t market the sacred in profane ways.

You see, a human has three levels of desire - material needs (food, water, shelter), material wants (nearly all products), and spiritual needs (spiritual practices, religion, the arts). Nearly all modern marketers are experienced at selling products that meet material wants.

But Art, for the most part, is not a material want, but a spiritual need. That means that marketing art needs to look more like what religions do, and less like what Amazon does.

And yet most marketing advisers, coaches, and gurus try to convince the artists of the world that they should market their art, a spiritual need, like the common, material want products of the world.

Your efforts to market and sell art will fail, or, at least, fall short, if you don’t internalize this idea.

We’ve discussed the importance of trust. Marketing art in the wrong way will jeopardize trust; The moment you lose trust and even a little suspicion enters your prospect’s mind, especially in spiritual needs, you have lost. So why in the world would you risk somethings as precious as trust to juice a couple of short term numbers?

While my stance is not quite as hardline as Miles’ in the epigraph quote at the beginning of this section (I do think there are non-artists who understand the sacredness of art and who understand how to market art holistically), he is absolutely correct that if someone tells you that you are “in a business whose product just happens to be art,” then, yes, tell them to take a hike. And, don’t just hire a business person to sell your art. Hire someone who can combine business savvy with the proper respect for the absolute sacredness of what you have poured your heart and soul into — Art.

Here is the biggest difference between an art practice and all other businesses:

In a business, the customer comes first. In an art practice, the customer comes last.

Marketing art is less like selling iPhones, and more like finding a partner on Tinder.

Normal products solve a problem. Art does not (except for the “problem” of the deep hunger to create that the artist feels if he doesn’t create it). Art exists to inspire, not solve a problem.

All products have some element of personal preference. Of aesthetic appeal. But art, from the customer’s point of view, is almost all personal preference (barring the case of a specific piece needed by a designer to fit over the fireplace or couch).

For example: Let’s pretend that I need an iPhone because my old one died. I prefer, let's say, a black phone. But they are out of stock and I’m offered a 10% discount if I take a space gray phone. I’ll probably take the discount, because what I truly care about is solving my problem.

But now, say I just fall in love with a piece of art. I feel the energy. I feel the vibe. It resonates. I have no problem to solve. But I want the art. I prefer it. The entire sale is based on my preference for that particular piece of art. If you say “sorry I just sold it to someone else,” it will be difficult to then say, “but you can have this other piece that you passed up earlier for a 10% discount.” I probably will pass on it again.

This misunderstanding about the difference between an art practice and a normal business, is the reason why many art marketers and coaches aren’t quite getting things correct. Marketing art, being completely different from normal products, requires a completely different approach. And most marketers and coaches get that approach wrong because they come from a business background.

How many times have you been asked to “think through the persona of your ideal customer?”

How many times have you heard, “What problem does your art solve for your client?”

Have you been asked to identify your “Blue Ocean?”

Have you been offered an “Art Marketing ‘formula’?”

The question you should actually be thinking about is, “What am I inspired about?” and “Does my latest piece capture the vibrant energy of inspiration that started it?” And, at the point of creation, the customer had better not get in your way!

Those logical, rational, mundane methods are the approaches of business people who view art as a commodity. But art is not a commodity at all! And business people don’t understand that a spreadsheet doesn’t leave room for magic. Each piece you produce is a unique inspiration, lovingly crafted by your hand, with the inspiring idea having been filtered through your unique perceptions to create your vision. At the crafting stage, you aren’t thinking about the customer at all. In fact, even if there is no customer, you would still create your art! Because it’s part of what you have to do. It’s the reason you are here! Each artwork is like a child that you have birthed, and you must find that child’s partner when you market it.

When business people teach their methods to artists, the results are predictable. They’ll point you to marketing methods like “storybranding.” And they’ll point to tactics that work for Amazon. They’ll take the wonder and elegance of the art on your website and pollute it with invasive popups. And “new customers get a 20% discount!” (Why would you discount your child? And even if you did, why would your past buyers, the most important people on your list, be the only ones to not get the discount? It boggles my mind, it is an obvious exploitative and extractive marketing technique.) You will be asked to “optimize your SEO.” (mostly a waste of time). You will be given any and every tactic under the sun for social media (and they will turn you into a jester that works for the algorithm). You will be asked to analyze ridiculous analytics. You will be told your site only scored a “63%” on some made up test or another (who cares?).

For the most part, you will charged to be taught a random assortment of half bad, half-assed, and a few half-decent ideas that might work if you were in any business other than art.

Forget all that stuff.

There is a better way.

And we call it The BoldBrush Way.

When I owned an art gallery, we didn’t do most of that stuff above, because we were selling art.

You know what we called ourselves, internally? Matchmakers.

Each painting and each customer had different interests, stories, needs, budgets, etc. And our job was to make the match.

This is why selling art is so difficult, even for professional gallerists. Difficult, but certainly not impossible, and, potentially, much more fun than selling anything else.

And, if you are marketing your own art, you can forget most of the stuff out there and focus on making the match.

This is what we preach, and teach. This is what we write about. This is what our BoldBrush marketing community is about.

You are an artist - part of the nobility of the online economy. Don’t allow Instagram, Google or the latest course or coach to turn you into a jester working for big tech companies. Instead, hold your head high as a child of God, taking part in the ongoing creation of beauty in the universe and market your art in the way it deserves to be marketed. Adopting such an attitude is how we avoid making the original sin of marketing the sacred in profane ways.

Learn The BoldBrush Way.

The BoldBrush Way is what we teach on this site, and the full program and community is available to paid FASO Members in our private marketing community.

If you are interested in becoming a FASO Member, and learning The BoldBrush Way, we’re currently running an incredible end of year deal that expires in the next few days. You can learn more here.

Creatively,

Clint Watson
BoldBrush/FASO Founder
Creativity Fanatic

PS - This article is an excerpt from one of my two upcoming books on the liberating power of creativity (the first book), and art marketing (the second book). If you’d like to join the waitlist for those books, please do so here.

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The Garden of Eden and The Fall of Man by Peter Paul Rubens, Jan Brueghel the Elder