Your Origin Story
Art Marketing Circle III - Stories
ATTN: FASO Members!
You have access to this full article, as a part of your paid FASO account, at the following link:
https://marketing.faso.com/c/members-only-articles/stories-your-origin-story
We’re continuing our members-only series outlining our Circles of Art Marketing framework. If you’re a new member, or missed what we covered previously, I recommend you catch up on the series at the following links:
Art Marketing Circle I - The Sovereign Artist
Art Marketing Circle II - Your Art
Alright, with that out of the way, let’s take a look at Art Marketing Circle III - Turning Your Art into a Saleable Product…
When you decide you want to sell your art, everything changes. Prior to that decision, you are creating solely because you have the insatiable hunger to create. You are feeding your soul. You are making the world better, from your perspective, because you are making yourself better. As I said before, an artist cannot serve two masters, so you must serve your soul first, before you sell your art, so that you have no inner conflict.
Once you decide to sell your art, however, you walk a fine line. You must, in short, turn your offering which consists of you, your art and the stories and context in which you talk about all of it into a product, without losing your focus on your own vision and your own inspiration.
Now, to sell art, it’s of critical importance that your art is inspired and that there is something of you in it that makes it unique. And if you’ve done your work properly in the previous circle (Art Marketing Circle II - Your Art), you’ve already nailed that aspect.
In addition to you unique art however, there are five business elements that you must think through to turn your art into a product:
Your Offerings - the mix of products and services you offer (covered here)
Reputational Power - The reputation you build up via magic interactions with people (covered here)
The Category or niche that you mostly work within (covered here)
The Price you charge for your art (covered here)
The Stories you tell about yourself and your art (starting with this article)
Nail these five elements and you will give yourself a huge tailwind when you start offering your art for sale.
Now, the stories category is by far the biggest category precisely because stories are important. So we’re going to break up the stories section into several articles.
The main elements of your artistic stories:
1. The importance of stories (review here)
2. Your origin story (today’s article)
Upcoming posts:
3. your ongoing public story
4. the specific story between you and each of your fans.
5. The context your art is displayed within
6. The story of each particular artwork
Today we’re going to look at your origin story.
So let’s dive in……
Story Element 1: Your Origin Story
Origin stories are an important starting point. And a good first step, but first, a caveat, while origin stories are important, usually, for most collectors, they are the least important. Many art coaches spend too much time trying to rely only on the origin story, by looking for some deep traumatic event, or some major childhood event that drove an artist into the arms of waiting oil paints. Sometimes those types of origin stories exist, but many artists got into art simply because they “liked to draw as a kid.” And that is fine. The most important stories are the stories that have to do with the context, what’s in the collectors’ heads, and the story of each piece.
Still, there's a reason that Marvel and DC keep churning out superhero origin stories…
Keep reading the paid portion of this article below the following announcement…..
FASO MEMBERS! - READ THIS SPECIAL MESSAGE
You do not need to pay for this newsletter to read this article.
You ALREADY have access to it here:
https://marketing.faso.com/c/members-only-articles/stories-your-origin-story
All paid FASO members have access to all of these paid articles, including this one, at the following link:
https://marketing.faso.com/c/members-only-articles/