Success as a Self-Promoting Artist
 There are a LOT of
artists in the world, just like there are a lot of musicians and
writers. Where reading (as opposed to listening or viewing
a fictional story) has become a niche market, the need and desire
for visual art and sculpture has increased, the market broadening
and burgeoning in direct proportion to the exponentially
increasing world population.
People who have the means decorate their residences and
businesses with pictures, paintings, sculptures. People
collect books of the kinds of pictures they enjoy viewing.
People always need calendars. People wear clothing printed
with art. They buy objects to hold things which may be,
themselves, a work or art or might incorporate art. Look
around you. The lists of objects in our world which are art or
incorporate art are too numerable to count. What we
know from this examination is that art is a valuable commodity,
nowhere near the extinction threatening the magazine world.
But how does an artist gain success, and, by success, we mean
commercial (Oh that dirty word) viability?
- friends and networking
- exposure
FRIENDS:
- Friends in high places
- Friends who know friends in high places who know more
friends
- Friends who know people with money to burn who have
friends
EXPOSURE:
- Getting your art known by the millions until it “catches
on”
Either one and both of these methods work. Both require
time spent away from doing art. Friends and networking
means social engagements that you may or may not enjoy, usually
not. Exposure means smart marketing.
Let’s look at what worked for a friend of mine:
She paints horses…fantastically, paintings that any horse-lover
would desire. She wanted to paint at will, not to a market
demand. So, instead of selling her paintings, she had
lithographs and very good photographs of them created. The
lithographs she priced high, signed and numbered each, and
refused to sell for less than what she wanted. The
photographs were used to create: T-Shirts, cups, calendars.
(At the time, POD was not an option. The World Wide Web
wasn’t born.) Then she made a flyer — a one-sheet.
This she mailed to various shops around the country — small,
exclusive shops, not large chains. The majority of her mailings
netted nothing. A few, though, got her placements on a
commission basis. Those few commissions paid off.
People bought her work — the posters, the calendars, the
lithographs, the cups, the t-shirts. She
recorded her sales statistics, then made a new one-sheet flyer
and mailed that one out to small, exclusive shops with the sales
statistics printed by each item. She sold more. And
so it went. In two years, she was successful. In five,
she was a made artist.
Originally posted by DLKeur on her art blog on June 11, 2007.
Copyright inheres.
Copyright 2007 D.L.Keur &/or F.W.Lineberry, http://www.zentao.com . All rights reserved. Reprint rights granted ONLY if linked and credited.
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