Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Selling art in hardtimes

Selling art into a headwind

: Eric Sparre,  Artist  Founder of Artspan.com
has this to say.
The economic downturn has made the already challenging proposition of pursuing artistic work as a full time profession even more difficult. This means that you, the professional artist, need to increase your ability to be self reliant.

What does that mean? Simple, you need to be the driving force behind marketing and selling your work.

You might say, “But my job is to produce the art, I don’t have time to market it (and I am not comfortable doing that anyways).” I understand that your skills, training and inclination may all argue against doing your own marketing. I have been an artist for 30 years and feel the same way! But you should recognize that the world has changed and you both can and must do a lot of your own marketing.

You have the tools to do this–tools that no artist had in the past. And the art market is also becoming more competitive.

Bottom line: you need to ask yourself, “why am I creating this work?” If art is your profession as well as your driving passion, the answer combines the desire to see your work shared with the world with the very practical need to keep the lights on in your studio.


" POST YOUR OPINIONS IN THE COMMENTS" or email me at delilah@artbydelilah.com Home Page Art by Delilah = http://www.artbydelilah.com

2 comments:

Kim Vanlandingham said...

Well, that's always discouraging to hear, but it's is the world we live in now. I don't mind the business side of things, though it does take up a lot of my time.

Amanda Makepeace said...

Congrats! You're in the EBSQ Friday Five!