An Artist's Business Guide

New Facebook Page Launched for An Artist's Business Guide

2011-11-15T03:21:00.000-08:00

I have just set up a dedicated Facebook Page for "An Artist's Business Guide". I am hoping the page will become a place for readers of the Business Guide to post ideas and links, share information and common experiences.

I will be using it to highlight any interesting topics or relevant comment that I come across relating to making a living as an Independent Artist.

So please follow the link and LIKE the page. And we'll see where it goes...

Artist against Artist - The Irish Art World in 2011

2011-11-11T15:52:00.000-08:00

Last weekend Dublin hosted not one but two National Art Fairs. No-one seemed to see this as odd, except maybe for some of the artists and galleries involved.

Art Fair 2011 finished up on sunday in the RDS, Ballsbridge. The fair, which has been running in one guise or another since 2000 featured over 100 artists and galleries. While the number of visitors over the weekend seemed to be very high there is no doubt that sales activity was a little quieter than previous years. Meanwhwile, up the road from Ballsbridge at the RHA building on Ely place the VUE: National Contemporary Art Fair was running for the first time, - which according to the Irish Times featured "most of the main Irish galleries, North and South." The main "contemporary art" galleries that is.

Two art fairs in Dublin, on the same weekend? In a country the size of Liverpool ,with a limited pool of support for the visual arts to draw from. Yet someone obviously thought it made sense to run a second art fair, in direct competition (did I mention already it was on the same weekend !?) with the already established and successful (and dare I say it, popular) RDS Art Fair.

Obviously the RHA and organisers of VUE considered the art that they were showing to be quite separate from and different to the art that Art Fair 2011 was offering. And clearly they saw the market for their art as being very different too. Why else would you choose to run one Art fair in direct competition with another? I could suggest arrogance, or self-delusion, but that wouldn't really answer the question, would it? And does it really matter? Is it worth any more than a passing "only in Ireland!" style comment? After all a contemporary art fair had been operating successfully as part of the annual Interior Design Fair for the past couple of years.,

What it highlights for me, more than anything else is the two-tier art world that operates in Ireland and which has always been here, but which we just seem to accept. And when I say we I am mean both artists and general public. And so when the two art worlds come together over the same weekend, in direct competition with each other, no-one bats an eyelid? It's already accepted that this is the status quo and so deserves no comment. I disagree.

On the one hand there is a world where artists produce "contemporary art", around which a whole "contemporary art sector" has been created, complete with an impressive network of new county arts centres, state of the art public galleries (VISUAL in Carlow is an incredible space, but who is ever going to fill it on a regular basis?), an army of arts administrators to manage all of these "spaces" and to oversee and allocate an ever reducing public funding budget, (how many have the skills to make their arts centres commercially viable enterprises in the absence of state funds? We'll see soon enough over the next few years.) and a third level arts education system that produces fine art graduates each year that see no relation between making art and making art that will connect with an art buying public. Without an art buying public there would be no art market, no visual arts sector. The idea of making art for art's sake and being supported by state grants just doesn't cut it when the country is in the midst of deep austerity measures.

Which leads us to the last pillar of the "contemporary art sector", the commercial galleries that represent and sell the work of the artists that come up through the arts education system and are fostered by the public arts support network. Most of these galleries, "the main galleries, north and south" according to the Irish Times, were exhibiting at the VUE: National contemporary Art Fair, an art fair that has been endorsed by the RHA, (a publicly funded Academy for the Arts , an " artist based and artist orientated institution dedicated to developing, affirming and challenging the public's appreciation and understanding of traditional and innovative approaches to the visual arts) and embraced by the broader, publicly funded arts sector.

On the other hand there is .... what? Ordinary art? Non-contemporary art? Art that the general public respond to and collect but that doesn't warrant the support of the arts council or public funding or your local arts office? Art that doesn't get to hang on the walls of our new public gallery network because it is seen as too traditional, too representative, not challenging enough? Or just not clever enough to get beyond the "peer" selection committees , set up to vet and approve the art that eventually gets shown to the wider public. This "ordinary art" is also the art that is represented and presented through the vast majority of private commercial galleries operating in Ireland - but these galleries don't make the shortlist of the "main" galleries in Ireland, nor do they get the endorsement of the RHA.

I have this image in my mind of hordes of Zombies pressed up against and banging on the lovely glass walls of the RHA building on Ely place, trying to get noticed, trying to get in. But to no avail, as the chosen few on the inside continue to sip lattes and wine and talk about the importance of the black paper bag that's displayed on the wall and how it is has redefined the future of art in Ireland! And worse still I'm on the outside :)

Clearly there are two types of art being made in Ireland. One that is made for the ordinary art enthusiast and collector, and another that is made for a self-serving and self-preserving contemporary arts sector. What a pity then that the Royal Hibernian Academy should choose to support the latter and lend it's name to an Art Fair that chose to run in direct competition with the RDS Art Fair - an event that has, over the last 10 years, done more than any other in Ireland in making art - contemporary and "ordinary" - accessible to a wider public and developing a new, self-confident market for Irish art in Ireland. And in the process providing a market place and opportunity for 100s of independent artists, like me, to build and develop our own careers, independently of the "contemporary art sector" to which we appear invisible and by whom we are basically ignored.

If that's starting to sound a bit aggrieved on my part then let me say that it 's not intended to, it is simply reflecting the feelings of so many of the artists and galleries that I have spoken to in the past couple of weeks. Personally I am very content where I am in my career at present - I have a strong support base for my work both nationally and internationally, I work with some great pro-active galleries and I have just had a successful Art Fair 2011. But that shouldn't take away from the reality that there is large cohort of visual artists in every county in Ireland that are trying to make a living from their art and that do not, and probably never will get to benefit from the support or funding opportunities available to the "contemporary art sector". And that just seems unfair. And maybe that's where my frustration is coming from.

Does any of this seem familiar? Does it reflect your experience? Let us know...

Rolano Gray - Art Lover or Duck?

2011-11-08T13:06:00.000-08:00

Keep an eye out for Mr. Rolano Gray. He will email you with some lovely comments about your work and offer to purchase it - with a money order or check. And don't worry about shipping, he will take care of it....but wait, the money order may be more than the price of your artwork and he'll soon be asking for you to send him back the balance....

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck....it's probably a duck. And it seems Mr Gray has been offering to buy lots of art online......here are some links to various forums and posts about his "work".

http://www.dianamiskell.com/blog/scammers-at-it-again/
https://www.artspan.com/community/showthread.php?t=4528
http://community.artspan.com/showthread.php?t=4698

It's relatively easy to protect yourself from online scams, here are some simple tips:
- Only accept payment via Paypal or direct bank transfer to your own bank account.
- If you are going to accept credit card, wait until the money has reached your bank account before releasing the artwork. The same applies to direct bank transfer.
- Don't accept checks or money orders - unless it's from a trusted client.

Most people who contact you about buying your art online will probably be genuine, so don't get too paranoid about someone emailing you about a sale, just be cautious and stick to the simple guidelines above.

Staying Afloat in a Recession - An Artist's Guide

2011-09-22T08:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since my last post.

Not intentionally, it's just that it's been a challenging year so far, one that's taken a lot of time and energy just trying to figure out how to stay standing up as the economy continues to crash down. So I've been spending a lot of time looking at ways to generate new income streams from my art, reviewing my whole marketing and business strategies and generally questioning my views on how to earn a living as an artist - all of which has given me plenty of material for future posts in An Artist's Business Guide. That's if I ever manage to give myself the time to write about them.

The good news is that after months of questioning everything, what becomes clear is that the simple guidelines I have always followed still apply, now more so than ever:

Create work that people can connect with. Create your best work now.
Have a business plan for the next 2 years
Identify your markets and how you plan to reach them
Create multiple opportunities for people to see your work (online and offline)

Make it easy for people to connect with you (online and offline)
Nurture your customers
Think positively, don't get caught up in negative, moaning conversations!
Continually review and revise your business plan

The last one, "continually review and revise your business plan" has to be the most important thing you can do in the current economic environment. It is what distinguishes us as professional artists, intent on earning a living from our art and willing to work at the business side of things in order to make that happen.

The business plan does not have to be some 20 page document that you hire an accountant to draw up for you, nor a one time project that you complete yourself at the start of your career and then leave at the bottom of a drawer in case you ever need to present it to your bank manager or arts administrator. It is something that is alive and constantly evolving. It can be scribbled on a single piece of paper or simply reside in your head, just as long as you keep it to the forefront of everything you do.

It should identify who you think your markets are (i.e. your customers) and how you plan to reach them. How much income you need to generate in a year and how much work you need to produce and sell to meet that target. It should identify different income streams that you can pursue from your art. And it should outline a clear online strategy showing how you plan to use your website and social media to help drive people to your work.

Your business plan should determine what you do in a given year. And when you hit an unexpected bump in the road, then that's the time to re-evaluate where you are and plot a new course.

So let's jump back to the start of the year and see how it can be put into practice. I had a solo exhibition in Dublin in March which by most people's measure was a great success. It generated a real buzz, got some great press, introduced my work to a new audience and sold well (14 pieces). But the value of sales (ie what I got!) fell short of what I had planned for. Two reasons for that - my expectations were too high based on the sales from my solo show the previous year, and the larger pieces proved harder to sell than in previous years meaning that the work that did sell was of a lower sales value. With gallery commission and the cost of frames and materials taken out it left a bit of a hole in my bank balance! The other stark reality that came home was that the recession was hitting all levels of the the art world and was really going to play a big part in the success or otherwise of the rest of the year. So what to do?

After a couple of days of quiet panic I sat down with a coffee, a pen and a piece of paper and began to rethink my business plan for the year. How as I going to make up for lost income and just as importantly compensate for what I expect will be a tough year overall? First I started to list out everything I could think of that I had in my favour as an artist (a very important exercise as it helps to build some self confidence).

People still like my work (thankfully!), it continues to attract new admirers
People that could afford to were still investing in it, others would love to but maybe not now because of the recession.
Over the years I had built up an archive of images of my most popular paintings. Maybe I could utilise these better?
I had developed a strong online presence with my website and Blog. The visitor figures to my website continue to increase each year and continued to show a high proportion of visits coming from overseas (US, UK, Australia and Europe).
I had set up Facebook and Twitter accounts but hadn't figured out quite how to get the most out of them.
My painting workshops, although small in size, were proving popular and attracting repeat participants

I then started to consider the implications of the lower sales from the solo exhibition and the feedback I was receiving:

There was still a market for my work, people still wanted to invest in it but were being much more cautious about buying.
I could probably anticipate the same level of sales activity for the rest of the year through my other galleries and the art fairs - so I would have to compensate for that in my plan
Price was important, with small to medium paintings (€500 - €1200) proving most popular
Most people were still requesting discounts (a sign of the times)
A lot of people expressing interest in attending my painting workshops
A lot of interest coming via my website and the Youtube video that I had created for the exhibition.

Then I made some key assumptions:

People still want to invest in my work, but pricing of paintings has become more critical than ever
Focus on small to medium sized work (but not exclusively, there will always be a demand for larger work, just not as strong at the moment)
I may need to find some more outlets for my work - galleries/art fairs
The Irish art market is becoming more and more challinging due to the austerity measures being introduced by the government. So focus on developing overseas markets - ie selling more work to UK and US collectors.
My archive of images could be used to develop different income streams.
My web presence, even though it is well received, needs a complete review a to make sure I'm getting the most from it.
The painting workshops should not be overly affected by the recession and are attracting strong interest based on the online booking to date.

With all of this in mind I drew up a new plan for the year, a list of objectives to be followed through on over the next couple of months;

Research new galleries and fairs, both in Ireland and overseas
Concentrate my new paintings on small to medium sizes and make sure the larger ones are real show stoppers!
Produce a range of Art Greeting Cards, using some of the most popular images from my archive.
Introduce some new Limited Edition Giclee prints specifically for selling online into the US market.
Spend time developing my online presence and learning how to get the most from it
Develop and grow my annual series of summer painting workshops on Achill Island

Oh, and design a smartphone App for the iPhone.

All in all a pretty hefty amount of work you might think. And so it was :) Some of it proved successful, some of it just didn't work. Some of it will only tell with time. But I'm feeling a little more confident now coming into the busiest time of the year for me - with some big Art Fairs and shows coming up. Hopefully the new additions to the "product range" - the Art Cards, new prints, the altered balance between Small, Medium and Large paintings, the improved online strategy - will all help to secure the levels of income I have planned for. Each item of the new plan deserves a blog post of it's own and that's what I hope to do over the next few months, so stay with me as I try to write it all up.

In the meantime consider your own "business plan" for the year and whether it needs some rethinking or tweeking. Staying afloat as an artist in a recession such as the one we are in is a pretty big challenge for anyone and requires constant monitoring and revision of your own plans for the year. But sure what else would you rather be doing?

Using Video as a Marketing Tool

2011-02-18T13:42:00.000-08:00

A different type of post...

I don't normally use An Artists Business Guide to directly promote anything I am involved in, I prefer to keep it separate to my art business. But I'm going to make an exception this time as I hope and think it may be of interest to some readers.

I have an exhibition coming up next month in Dublin in a new gallery - The Doorway Gallery. The theme I have chosen for the show is emigration - unfortunately a very topical subject at the moment as Ireland is going through a catastrophic economic recession, which has led to another wave of mass emigration from the country. Rather than simply write an "artist statement" for the show and explain what the show is about I decided to create a video, with the aim of conveying a fuller sense of the emotional nature of the exhibition's subject matter. With this in mind I chose an old recording from the 1940s by Count John McCormack, an Irish tenor who was considered the Pavarotti of his day. The song is a lament about emigration called "The Old House" and provides the music for the video.

I created the video over a number of evenings on the sofa in Microsoft Movie Maker, a very simple but effective piece of free software and have just posted the end results up on Youtube. My plan is to use this video over the next 4 weeks as a way of marketing and promoting the exhibition via the internet and social media, and also hopefully to make people pause for a minute and reflect on the sadness and damage that comes with forced emigration.

As I was working on the paintings and thinking about the subject matter - old, deserted Irish farmhouses - it dawned on me just how "normalised" emigration has become in Ireland. My father emigrated to England in the 1950s, where he met and married my mother before returning home to Dublin. My brother and sister emigrated in the 1980s. My sister to Japan and is now married and living with her family in Australia. Some of my closest friends emigrated in the 1980s and are now permanently settled abroad. It's almost like a rite of passage if you are Irish.

And so it became important to me that I try to convey that sense of sadness at what is left behind through something more than just an artist's statement. And that's when I started to make the video. Using a simple slide show format, some concise, complementary text and a carefully chosen song I think it produces something that is more than the sum of its parts. And I now have something more than simply an "artist's statement" that I can add to my website and also something I hope will help get the theme of the exhibition across in a more engaging way.

But that's only my opinion! I would love to know what you think, does it work? Is it effective?
Have a look - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb_nOB9HdYU

Planning For A Successful Year

2011-01-18T09:04:00.000-08:00

January is a strange month for me. Full of ups and downs, paralysing fear and blind panic. I can honestly say I hate and love January in equal measure.

It's the time I sit down and wrap up the previous year, update my spreadsheets and accounts, put them into the archive folder, safely tucked away until it's time to prepare and send in my tax return. It's the time to count the number of new contacts, subscribers and clients I have added to my contact list over the past year, the time to weigh up whether or not I've met the career goals I set for myself at the start of the year. If it's been a good year then it's time to clap myself on the back, have a sip of wine (always advisable when doing this exercise), as I remind myself of some of the big sales I had or the good press coverage I managed to get or the helpful contacts I have made. At that's when the paralysing fear kicks in.

Because that's when it I know I have to start all over again, that last year's successes are gone, last year's money is almost gone!! The income column in my spreadsheet for 2011 reads NIL. And to make things worse the recession that the economy is in is just getting worse. That's when the true reality of being an independent artist of no guaranteed means sinks in. And that's a good time to take another sip of wine.

And then the planning starts. Without a plan you are giving yourself no chance to succeed, but with a plan you are putting yourself in control. The very act of building a new plan for the year is what keeps the fear at bay and allows you to stay positive and excited about the future.

The starting point is giving yourself some goals to aim for - financial, career, professional and personal goals. My financial goal is always to make at least the same as the previous year, but I will always plan to make a little more. My career goal this year will be to continue to grow my profile and attract new collectors and admirers. My professional goal will be to create a number of paintings over the course of the year that I think have moved me forward as a painter, which ensures my work is evolving and which continues to excite me. My personal goal is to make sure I can fit all that I need to do into a regular working week as much as possible and not to take on anything that will mean having to be away from home for long periods.

Once your goals are set you can begin building a plan to meet them. I have a very simple approach to making my plan for the year. In my notebook I draw 12 columns, one for each month of the year, then a number of rows, one for each of my income earning activities, such as gallery exhibitions, art fairs, painting workshops, career coaching workshops, Art Cards, online sales etc. I then start to fill in the grid, starting with my annual "main events" - these are the important ones as they are the ones that I expect to generate the most income from - Wexford FRINGE festival in October, the RDS Dublin Art Fair in November, a solo show sometime in March that I've been working towards. I then add any gallery group shows that I need to have new work for, usually summer and christmas shows and mark the month they need to be delivered in. I always put a note of the number of paintings I plan to have for each show in the grid also.

Already, I have a 12 month calender showing painting commitments for March, May, June, October, November and December. And an estimate of the number of new paintings I will need for each. From this I can start to get a rough idea of how many frames I will need, and when I will need to order them. The plan is coming together and the grid is starting to fill up.

Next, I'll start to plan my series of summer painting workshops, making sure they do not clash with any major painting commitments. Likewise with my Art Coaching workshops I will plan to run them at times that will not interfere too much with my painting schedule.

Finally I look at any new projects or opportunities I might want to take on. This year I hope to have a public gallery show on the east coast over the summer so I'll provisionally mark that in for June. This will include some of my Limited Edition Prints so I make a note that I will need to order and frame a collection of prints for this if the show goes ahead. Also this year I plan to produce a range of Art Cards which I will sell through the galleries I exhibit with, the art fairs, my painting workshops, painting demonstrations and through my website. They may not generate a huge return but they will help to promote my work and my website and hopefully help to generate some future opportunities. I mark them in the February column.

And that's my draft plan for the year, drawn up on a page in my notebook. That's all that's needed for now. I will draw up more detailed time-lines for each of the activities marked in the plan, working backwards from the end date to make sure I allow myself enough time to complete everything that needs to be done (e.g. getting invitations printed, ordering frames, getting into listings etc). If I want to go one step further I can try to estimate roughly how much I expect to sell through each of the gallery shows and art fairs, how many people I expect to sign up for the workshops, etc. With my experience of previous years I should be able to make a reasonable guess, making sure to allow for the fact that this year will probably be harder than ever because of the recession. So I can see if the activities I have planned for the year are enough to generate the income needed to meet my financial goals. If not then I can start looking now at ways to make up the shortfall. And that is the single greatest benefit of preparing a plan at the start of the year - it allows you to stay in control and to be proactive. And now the paralysing fear is gone.

Unfortunately it has been replaced by blind panic. How am I supposed to get all that work done?? But we'll leave that for another day...

Ireland's Artist Tax Exemption Scheme retained

2010-11-24T09:16:00.000-08:00

Ireland is in deep economic trouble right now and today the government published it's Four Year Plan for Recovery and thankfully the Artist's Tax Exemption scheme has survived the cuts, albeit up to a reduced level. So the artists' exemption from Income Tax is now to be restricted to the first €40,000 in earnings.

Credit is due to the Minister for Arts, Mary Hanafin, for recognising the importance of the scheme as a critical support for visual artists who are trying to make a living from their art, and ensuring that the scheme remains intact.

By slashing the income threshold from €125k to €40k the scheme has now become what it should always have been, a helping hand to artists struggling to live off a low income in a precarious business and not a means for tax avoidance by others lucky enough to make six figure annual earnings from their work.

The retention of the scheme will prove even more important in the coming years as other proposed measures in the four year plan will have a direct negative impact on the Irish art market, and the ability of artists to sell their work in Ireland. These include the increase in VAT to 23%, the €5m cut in arts funding in 2011, and most seriously the reduced spending power of the domestic market as a result of the new levies and tax increases that are proposed.

But just as it demonstrates that the scheme is an important support for artists (at minimal cost to the exchequer with the newly reduced income threshold) it also sends a signal to others looking in that Ireland still recognises how important it's aritsts are to the cultural as well as the economic health of the country. And that they are deserving of some level of support.

So thanks Minister for ensuring we at least have a chance of getting through the next couple of years.

If I Could Change One Thing...

2010-09-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

I received an invitation from the Minister for Arts & Culture to attend a Cultural Strategy Consultation Forum this weekend which will discuss the strategy for Arts & Culture in Ireland for the next two years. It will be an opportunity to discuss the "crucial issues facing the arts today and the policy priorities and actions required for the future". No doubt every other visual artist in my area received a similar invitation, but it's nice all the same to think that if I choose to take advantage of the opportunity then I just may be able to have some, tiny influence on how the Arts and Culture sector will develop over the coming years.

So it's got me thinking. If I get my 30 seconds to stand on my soapbox, what will I say? What's the one thing that I would like to tell my kids that I had a hand in influencing?

Maybe it's the retention of the artists tax exemption scheme that we have here in Ireland? It has to be the single most important financial support that I and every other artist receives from the state. As we face into another budget of cuts and tax increases there is no doubt that there is a serious threat to the scheme. It has been in place for 50 years and sends out a strong signal worldwide that Ireland supports and nurtures it's artists in very real, practical way. It is also an acknowledgment that making a living from the creation of art is a truly precarious career to follow and one that is deserving of some support.

Believe me I am completely in favour of making changes to the scheme, such as reducing the cap on income that an artist is allowed before paying tax, but cutting the scheme completely would inevitably lead to many full time artists just giving up trying to survive on their work and probably going back on the dole queue. In my own case the scheme makes up for the fact that I will probably never receive funding from the Arts Council as my work doesn't really "fit" the profile of art that they tend to fund. You see, I make paintings that have a broad appeal, don't really challenge the viewer too much but which people connect strongly with. And one of my goals is to actually sell my work. Unfortunately these criteria don't match the funding criteria for most Arts Council bursaries. So I, and many visual artists like me (the majority of practising visual artists?) will never receive funding through the Arts Council.

But I'm fine with that. I actually think it does make sense that whatever funding is available should probably be biased towards artists who are making less commercial work, more "challenging", less accessible work. Or just work that would not be commercially viable without a little support. And as long as the artist's tax exemption scheme is around I feel that I am being recognised and treated as fairly by the state as an Arts Council funded artist. I just have to make sure that I, and other commercially focused artists like me, sell enough paintings in order to get a meaningful benefit from the exemption scheme in the first place!

So I am a passionate advocate for the retention of the artist's tax exemption scheme, because among other things it ensures all qualifying artists, no matter what style or type of work they produce are treated equally and are given the opportunity to avail of the scheme. And what if the exemption scheme goes? Then we are left competing with every other artist for funding from the Arts Council. Funding which we would have no real chance of getting unless there was a serious rethink about how it was to be allocated.

But there is another equally important issue that seems to get far less critical analysis and coverage and that is: WHY do so few artists actually make enough money to take advantage of the tax exemption scheme in the first place? With statistics published that show as many 90% of all artists make less then €10k from their work does it not raise serious questions about the type of curriculum being taught in our Art Colleges? Or are we just producing artists who have no market for their work?

Where are the classes that teach students how to analyse the art marketplace to see where their work fits in and show them how to reach their markets? Or the classes that show how to prepare cashflow projections and business plans in order to set targets for the coming year? Why are we educating artists in a vacuum, with no connection to the real world of actually making a living from their work?

There seems to be a willingness to let graduates move out into the real world without giving them the skills required to actually survive in it. There's an acceptance that this is not what Art College should be teaching anyway. I disagree. Understanding the commercial marketplace, as much as the publicly funded one, is essential to anyone seriously thinking of making a living from their work. Being a self employed artist is really no different from being any other self employed professional, the same basic business and marketing skills are needed to develop a successful career. And so they need to form part (a small part) of the core Fine Art curriculum. And just as importantly I believe they need to be taught by arts professionals who understand marketing and business in the art world, rather than simply business experts.

"Business" for an artist is not simply about book-keeping or pricing or understanding tax matters. And it's more than just marketing and learning how to promote yourself. It's a way of thinking, one that ensures you always have concrete goals and objectives to aim for, that means you are constantly reviewing your progress and setting new targets.

So if I do get my chance to get up on my soapbox maybe what I'll say is....Any strategy for the visual arts over the next two years should provide for a review of current teaching in our Art Colleges and ensure there is a "business for artists" module included in the core curriculum. One geared towards equipping artists with the practical business skills required to enable them stand on their own two feet and develop a successful, independent career.

Or is there a more crucial issue facing the visual arts that should be changed in the next two years? Let me know...

Putting On Your Own Exhibition?

2010-06-30T16:15:00.000-07:00

A wise gallery owner once told me, in his finest Belfast accent – an art fair is about selling paintings, a solo exhibition is about “selling the man!” (or the woman obviously).

A solo exhibition allows you to present what you do in it’s fullest context. It’s your chance for your work to make a clear, cohesive statement, and for you to make a clear statement about your work. It is the single most important event in any working artist’s calendar.

Finding an established gallery that will offer you a solo show can be one of the biggest challenges an artist faces, however if you are willing to put on the show yourself then there are plenty of other options available – from putting it on in your own front room to hiring a gallery and everything in between. Hotels, restaurants, public buildings – anywhere that can accommodate a viewing audience - can become a gallery space for a few days.

But getting a space to show your work is only the start. The reality is that if you plan to set up your own exhibition then you must be prepared to bring your own audience. The old chestnut – “if you build it they will come” – does not work in the Art world. You have to market it effectively to ensure people know about it. And when I say “people”, I don’t mean just your extended family and friends!

Most people come to an exhibition because they have had some connection with the artist’s work in the past, or they have been recommended to come by someone else or they have seen an image in a magazine or newspaper that has caught their eye. You cannot set up a show and depend solely on people passing by the gallery window (if there is a window) to call in and buy your work, it just doesn’t work that way.

Staging your own exhibition is not something to be taken on lightly and you learn very quickly from what is involved just what a good gallery can provide for an artist, in terms of marketing, promotion and sales support.

Finally, before making any decision, you should ask yourself if you are really ready for a solo show. Is your work good enough? Has it reached the point where it’s ready for public appraisal and critique? Can you put a cohesive body of work together?

Ok, so you’ve made your decision to put on your own exhibition. Now what?

Step 1: Set your objectives and expectations
There are many reasons for staging a solo show, be clear in your own mind what you are hoping to achieve from it. Be realistic about what you expect to gain from it. Here are some questions to ask yourself…

a. What’s the aim of the exhibition?
b. How many paintings/pieces do you need to sell to break even?
c. How many do you need to sell to be a success?
d. What else do you want to achieve?
i. Generate publicity?
ii. Get reviewed in the press?
iii. Attract attention from arts network professionals?
iv. Get new commissions
v. Get into a major collection?
vi. Attract gallery interest?
vii. Get 20 new contacts added to your Client Mailing List

Remember, a successful show is not necessarily one where you sell a lot of work, achieving your other objectives should be just as important.

Step 2: Research your “Gallery” Space
I am going to simplify things here and suggest that there are two types of space available to you. A rented, purpose built gallery space…..and everything else. (For the purpose of this article I will concentrate on the rented gallery spaces).

Many commercial galleries offer their exhibition space or another of their rooms for hire, as a way of generating extra revenue. Others are set up with the sole intention of renting them out to artists. Some public gallery spaces are also available for hire. What separates these spaces from “everything else” is that they have been typically designed for showing art, have decent lighting, a proper hanging system etc, as well as allowing you to use the gallery name when marketing your show. Perception can very important in the art world.

When choosing your gallery space you need to consider some important questions…

1. Is the gallery space on ground level with a window which will get some passers-by (good) or in a basement or upstairs (not so good)?
2. Is the cost of hiring the space within your realistic expectations of sales from the show? Costs can range from €500 to €2000 a week.
3. What level of marketing, advertising can you expect from the venue, if any?
4. Do the gallery have a mailing list? Will they let you use it?
5. Will the gallery provide sales support – e.g. sales staff on opening nights, use of their credit card machine etc
6. Will the gallery provide help hanging the show?
7. What time of year are you booking? ~Is there anything happening in the local area that will take away form your show? Or are you taking a space at a time that you will be able to benefit from something else (e.g. a local arts festival) ?

Step 3: What are the costs involved?
The costs of putting on an exhibition will vary depending on the type of work you make, the type of gallery you hire etc, but here are some costs that you will probably have to consider….

Gallery Hire – Anything from €300 to €2000 for a week. Always ask if VAT is included in the quoted price or if it is added on top of it.
Insurance – Is insurance covered in the Gallery Hire agreement or do you need to have your own Public Liability Insurance
Framing – Assuming an average of €100 per frame then 25 frames will cost you €2500
Transport – Will you need to hire a van to transport your work to and from the gallery?
Advertising – Are you planning any advertising for the exhibition? Maybe a small ad in the arts section of a local newspaper?
Printing (Invitations, flyers, Posters) - Printing costs will vary but you will probably be looking at around €200 to €300 for invitations and flyers. If you are planning a catalogue then your printing costs will be even higher.
Photography – Are you planning to photograph your own work or get a professional to do it?
Postage – One of the forgotten costs. Sending 100 invitations by post will cost you around €50
Wine and Drinks – If you are planning on having wine at the opening night don’t go overboard on fancy wines, but don’t try and do it on the cheap. It’s pretty easy to find good, drinkable wines for around €8 - €10 these days. For 100 people you will probably need 9 red and 9 white. And don’t forget the water!
Flowers (for opening night) – Who is opening the show for you?
Sales assistant for opening night – Having an experienced gallery sales person on the opening night is an investment well worth making. It’s only for 2 or 3 hours so should not cost a huge amount.

Step 4: Plan the Show – Create the Work
Putting together a body of work for a solo show should take into account some commercial realities. To some people that might seem like a “sell out” (whatever that’s supposed to mean)? But usually the main objective of an exhibition is to sell some of the work, so I think it just shows a bit of common sense.

I always aim to paint between 25 to 30 thirty pieces for a solo show. Within that I want to ensure I have pieces available at different sizes (and price levels) so that I am targeting different “market segments” (I promise I’ll keep away from the marketing jargon from now on) – e.g. from people who can afford say €500 to people that can afford €5000.

So when I am planning my shows I always think in terms of making paintings in sizes ranging from Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large (obviously a throwback to my days working in my father’s clothing shop), with roughly 25% of each size.

The extra large pieces are my leading pieces, which are more about generating a “wow” factor and drawing people in rather than making a sale. However, if you do manage to create work with a “wow” factor that draws people in then the chances are these are the very paintings that will sell. These are the pieces I tend to use in my press pack and that I hope to get printed in some newspapers or magazines.

Step 5: Marketing your Exhibition:
This deserves a comprehensive post on it’s own, so next month’s post will focus on marketing your exhibition in much more detail. In the meantime, my marketing strategy for any exhibition can be summed up very simply:

1. Create a comprehensive website for the exhibition
2. Prepare a marketing pack (press release, invites, flyers etc)
3. Identify who you hope to attract to the show – and categorise them into those you can contact/reach directly and those you hope to reach through general marketing. Press & media are separate again.
4. Identify the best ways to reach each category – e.g. by invite, press, online, social media etc - and let them know about the exhibition.
5. Try to entice everyone to visit your website. Your aim is always to get people to visit your website – that’s where you can get them to connect with you, and your work.

The goal of your marketing strategy is to get people to come to the exhibition. Once you do then the next challenge is to maximise your chances of making it a success.

Step 6: Running your own Exhibition
After all the hard work – making the work for the show, organising the invitations, marketing the exhibition, etc – it’s now time to get the most out of it. Here are some things to consider…

Hanging the exhibition:

Give yourself 24 hours before opening night.
Use printed cards for display titles and details of each piece – as opposed to hand written notes.

Opening Night:

Try to ensure that the only thing your focus is on is your guests – and not whether you have enough wine glasses to go around! So it’s worth rounding up some volunteers for the night.
Have someone dedicated to looking after the wine and making sure guests are looked after
Make sure you have someone dedicated to looking after sales. Either sitting at a sales desk where everyone can see or walking the floor. It is well worth paying for a professional gallery sales person to do this.
Enjoy yourself. This is your moment so take some time out to soak it up.

Selling your Work:
Don’t even try. Your work should sell itself, you are only there to talk to potential collectors and fans, to allow your passion and enthusiasm for your new work to come across and possibly to offer to discuss prices if they suggest interest in buying a piece. A gallery salesperson might get away with trying a hard sell on a potential collector, but not you. You are the artist.

And that's about it. If you have any tips or advice on setting up your own exhibition please add a comment to the blog, I'd love to read it.

Getting Art Down to a Fine Business

2010-05-24T05:21:00.000-07:00

"Padraig McCaul is on an unusual mission: to improve the plight of the starving artist"....

So say the Sunday Business Post, Ireland's premier weekly business newspaper. Read all about it in an interview I gave to the paper and which was published at the weekend.

http://www.sbpost.ie/peopleinbusiness/getting-art-down-to-a-fine-business-49382.html

I'm afraid you don't get the chance to see the accompanying photograph which was published in the print version - but that mightn't be a bad thing!

5 Financial Realities for the Independent Artist

2010-05-10T07:39:00.000-07:00

My latest exhibition, COAST, finished a couple of weeks ago. On many levels it has been the most successful exhibition of my professional career. Both artistically and financially. And it feels great! I look on it as validation of all the hard work I’ve put in, of all the decisions I’ve taken in relation to marketing, promotion, pricing and most importantly it’s been a huge boost to my self esteem and confidence. And over the years I’ve learned to take great pleasure in that feeling, in that moment and just soak it up. So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past couple of week,s soaking it all up!

Because unfortunately it doesn’t last, and for most self employed artists the pendulum swings both ways and for every week you spend basking in your own success (deserved of course!) you might spend the other fifty one weeks of the year worrying about what every other self employed person worries about – what happens if the money stops coming in? And if there’s no money then how can I pay the rent? Or get a mortgage or a car loan? Or take out health insurance? Or fund a pension? Or simply buy the materials needed to make more work? This week I’m on top of the world. Four weeks ago I was at the bottom of a giant hole trying to convince myself that not all of the new work I had created for the exhibition should be consigned to a bonfire and torched! Welcome to the world, and the worries, of the self-employed artist!

So what exactly are the realities of being a self-employed artist? Just how different is it to being securely employed with a regular salary coming in? It’s a question I had considered but never fully understood until I had made the leap myself, and in particular the consequences of giving up full time employment. So here is a short reality checklist, 5 financial realities to be aware of if you are considering going out on your own. It’s intention is not to put you off but to make sure you jump with your eyes wide open!

Financial Reality #1: Perhaps the biggest reality check for most people is adjusting to not having a weekly/monthly regular salary coming into their bank account. If you are used to the security of a regular income then it can take some time to get used to the fact that even though you may be successful there will be some (many?) months when you will be generating no income whatever.

As an artist you will hopefully earn income at different times of the year, at different levels, depending on what you have been working on – an exhibition, a commission, some workshops, a bursary maybe etc. The simplest approach I’ve found is to put all of that income into a separate “business” account as it comes in and to pay yourself a monthly salary or allowance from that account. Your goal each year should then be to make sure you have enough “income generating events” (exhibitions, workshops etc) planned throughout the year to ensure you have enough money coming into the pot to pay yourself a regular monthly allowance. Not as easy as it sounds but it forces you to think ahead and plan your year and try to estimate your yearly cashflows.

Financial Reality #2: In the current economic climate your chances of getting a loan or a mortgage once you become self-employed will be severely restricted, if not non-existent. Becoming a self employed artist probably guarantees you won’t!

Quite simply, if you have no guaranteed regular income then banks will be very slow to provide you with credit of any sort.

But there are ways around it. In Ireland we have the local, friendly credit unions that may be much more open to providing a loan than a bank, providing you can show a fairly regular habit of saving with them.

If you are good at managing a credit card then it’s a great way of keeping track of your spending and most importantly it gives you the working capital you need to pay for frames, materials, art fair fees etc. It’s an expensive form of finance but if you are good at managing your credit limit and paying off your balance in a reasonable time frame then it can be worth the high interest rate – in return for the flexibility and freedom it gives you.

Financial Reality #3: As an artist living in Ireland you may believe that you have the same opportunity as every other artist to apply for and receive some level of funding or bursary from the many areas of public arts administered funding. The reality is very different depending on the type of work you are making. If you are creating work that is considered overly commercial – ie your aim is to sell it – then you will probably not be very successful with any funding application. A bold statement but I’ve a feeling I will have more people agree with it than disagree. I’d be interested to hear if this was the case outside of Ireland?

My advice? Put all of your energies into creating opportunities to market and sell your work, and generate your own income. Artists in Ireland have a huge incentive to generate income from their work – it’s tax exempt. We don’t pay income tax on any income generated from our art up to €125,000. Per year. That’s a pretty ridiculous figure given that 90% of Irish artists earn less than $50k a year, and close to 70% earn less than $10k. But the artist’s tax exemption is an incredible support for any aspiring professional artist and it is the one area of state support that we can take full advantage of ourselves and not have to jump over hoops to get.

And keeping on the theme of public funding and support for the self employed artist….if things don’t work out and you are not generating any income from your art you cannot go on social welfare, you do not qualify for job seeker’s allowance or most benefits. Being self employed in Ireland really does mean you have to look after yourself.

Financial Reality #4: If you are leaving permanent employment then the chances are that you have a pension and private health insurance which your company pays into. Once you are out on your own these become just another two outgoings on your list of monthly expenditure. And you have to decide how important they are to you and if you can continue to fund them.

If you already have a mortgage then you will also have life insurance – so that the bank get’s paid in the event of your death. If you have a family then the chances are you will want to increase your life insurance so that they will get something in the event of your death!

Suddenly there are a lot of monthly outgoings….and you will need to prioritise what’s most important for you: Life Insurance? Health Insurance? Private Pension? The reality for a lot of self employed people is that they don’t have any of these. And that’s a stark reality that needs to be considered carefully.

Financial Reality #5: I’m afraid insurance doesn’t stop there. There’s more! Last year I had a solo exhibition in Dublin. About two weeks before the show opened I got all the work back from the framers and left it in my studio – a quaint, cold, old farm building. As I was turning off the lights and about to leave I had a sudden realisation that if the studio went on fire or was broken into then I would lose 30 paintings with the potential value of $30,000. Six months work. It was like someone had hit me with a brick. I worried about it every night until I was able to deliver them to the gallery (where they were then covered by the gallery insurance). Insuring my studio, or my work hadn’t occurred to me before, but now I realised that this was my livelihood, my business. So I took out a specialist Artist’s insurance policy.

The policy covers work in the studio, in transit and work in progress, as well as public liability which covers my painting workshops both in the studio and out on location. And really it’s essential.

So, have I put you off yet? I hope not. Because if you really are passionate about making a living for yourself from your art then you’ll take all of the above in your stride and prioritise what’s important for you. Because being self-employed means taking risks and believing in yourself. It means cutting yourself free, setting yourself apart from the safety and security of being a paid “employee”, of having a controlled, relatively predictable life. In it’s place you are choosing to live your own life, to live off your own abilities. There is a feeling of self worth that comes with that which is impossible to convey to anyone who has never experienced it. It’s something you can’t put a price on and it’s what keeps you going when things are looking a bit rough. A self belief that you can look after yourself.

So consider carefully the financial realities set out above but remember they are only one aspect of what it is to be a self employed artist. And as your career develops and the more successful you become you will hopefully find yourself in a stronger position to deal with them.

In my next post I’ll be looking at some of the realities of the day to day working life of an independent artist.

Why are Artists so Hopeless when it comes to earning a living from their Art?

2010-04-08T14:18:00.000-07:00

Well we are aren’t we? We seem to be incapable of making a living for ourselves from our work. The most recent survey from Visual Artists Ireland conducted in 2008 states that:

• 67% of artists in Ireland earn less than €10,000 per annum from their creative work

• 24% earn between €10,000 and €25,000 per annum.

So, about 90% of Irish artists earn less than €25k a year from their creative work? What other “professional” can say that, after spending 3 or 4 years studying their craft in the best colleges this country can provide? Irish artists are clearly not very good when it comes to developing successful businesses from their art. (And like it or not, if you are a self-employed artist then you are running a business). I‘m sure there are exceptions but the figures tell a pretty bleak story. These are Irish statistics and figures but I’ve a feeling they could be echoed in many other countries.

Is it that the art is no good? Maybe the type of art being produced is not very marketable? Or maybe it’s only certain types of artists that can make a living from their work. It’s probably harder for a performance artist to generate a steady income from their work than a traditional landscape painter. Someone who takes 9 months to produce a piece of work might find it more difficult to provide an annual salary for themselves than someone who can produce 50 pieces of work in the same timeframe. A sculptor who makes life sized bronze heads may find it easier to find a buyer for their work than an artist who makes 30 second video installations...There are as many different types of artists as there are types of art, each with their own unique challenges when it comes to making a living from their work.

Although I can find no figures as to the numbers of artists who make different types of art in Ireland I think it’s safe to assume that the majority of people that call themselves visual artists still make paintings, prints or images of some form. Certainly the majority of work sold in the marketplace is of this type (and art that is sold generates an income for the artist). So while it’s reasonable to assume that makers of challenging conceptual art or temporary installation pieces may find it harder to find willing buyers or collectors of their work can we not equally assume that the majority of artists (ie image makers) should have greater possibilities to find a market for their work?

But according to the Visual Artists Ireland report only about 10% of artists make more that €25k from their creative work. Is anyone really surprised at that figure? I wouldn’t think so, because it fits with the public perception of the poor artist, struggling to earn a living. And it fits nicely with some artists’ perception of themselves as special members of society that need to be supported, nurtured, funded. The belief being that artists, in general, should not have to deal with the pressures of having to fund themselves or their work. I have been told by one artist that artists have a right to be supported by society as they are providing such a unique public service– ie the creation of beautiful or challenging art for society to engage with or enjoy. I’ll leave that discussion for another day.

So how do artists make a living from their creative work? Where does our income come from? For simplicity, I define an artist that makes a living from their work as someone who derives the majority of their income (over 70%) directly from their work. And who may supplement this by offering specialist workshops or lecturing or taking part time work. As opposed to someone who derives most of their income from other employment, such as teaching, and generates supplemetal income from their art work.

Broadly speaking I would suggest there are 5 main sources of income:

Sales of work to private collectors (including commissions)
Sales of work to corporate collectors (including commissions)
Ancilliary specialist services or products – e.g. part-time teaching, workshops, lecturing, licensing, prints etc.
Sales of work to public collections
Public funding (e.g. bursaries, subsidies, commissions)

In my experience there seems to be a huge dependency on public funding in Ireland. If an artist can’t get funding or commissions from the monies allocated and administered through the Arts Council and county arts offices then it’s assumed they can’t make a living from their art. In Ireland over the past 25 years we have developed an amazing network of public galleries and art spaces, which have in turn made art much more accessible to the general public and have in their own way helped increase awareness in art and new Irish art in particular. But with it we seem to have created a culture of dependency for artists on the funding that is managed through this network. Yes, funding is an absolute necessity (and justified) for certain types of art that would never get made or shown otherwise but there are many other artists who could develop viable careers without to access state support, if only they were given the know how, the training to do so.

And unfortunately that culture of dependency is being nurtured and reinforced in our arts education system. A number of years ago I attended a 10 night Professional Development Programme for Visual Artists in one of the country’s main art colleges. We spent a lot of time writing artists statements, understanding how the public gallery system worked, how to apply for public commissions and public funding, writing more artist statements, understanding tax implications on public commissions and writing more artist statements. We spent about 1 hour discussing some of the commercial galleries in Ireland. We spent no time discussing how to effectively market our work to private collectors, to build our own client list, to create a strong online presence, to create a viable career for ourselves that didn’t depend on state funding.

If more artists are to learn how to earn a better living for themselves then it must start with what is being taught in our art colleges and schools. Almost everyone that I meet at my marketing and business workshops tell me the same thing – “we were told nothing in college about how the real, commercial art world works”. Why spend 4 years educating new artists but not give them a proper understanding of how the real world works? i.e. – how the commercial gallery system works and how to work effectively with it (it’s a partnership!) and in it, how to identify and target a market for their work, how to apply basic business and marketing skills to allow them build and develop a viable career.

To make a living as an artist it is not enough simply to be able to create good work and learn how to apply for bursaries and public funding. It requires other skills too. But maybe I’m completely wrong.....what do you think?

The Tyranny of Blogging

2010-03-04T06:46:00.000-08:00

This is more a "Bubble" than a blog post - a few short lines about some thoughts I have rattling around in my head. I intend publishing the occasional "bubble" in between my main posts.

In the meantime my next blog post..."Why are Artists so hopeless at earning a living from their Art?" will be published in the coming days.

But is it a blog post or not? One of the many reasons that it has taken me so long to publish a blog has been the fear of getting caught up in the whole notion of having to put new material out on a regular basis. With exhibitions to work towards, painting workshops to organise and artist business seminars to prepare surely I can do without the extra pressure! But it seems that when you publish a blog there is an expectation that you will…well, blog. That, and the fact that writing for me is something akin to pulling teeth (slow and painful), has led me to re-consider whether in fact I am a blogger.

From my limited time in the blog world I have come to the conclusion that a blogger is someone who publishes regularly and posts short, concise nuggets of information. I on the other hand prefer to post randomly, when I have the time, and deliver more meaty chunks of wisdom! My end goal for An Artist’s Business Guide is to have a comprehensive online resource for artists to dip into as they wish so I intend to keep publishing as best I can for the foreseeable future. And I use a blogging platform to publish on. So maybe I am a blogger after all, or a “Guerrilla Blogger” – someone who posts when you least expect it! So be sure to subscribe if you haven't already, to make sure of getting the latest updates….

Not only have I been caught up in the pressure to produce new posts, I have also inadvertently taken sides in the blogging platform wars between Blogger and Wordpress (by default I’m on Blogger’s side). Which is better? Which will eventually win out? Should I change allegiance before it’s too late? More pressure !…I’m still only a novice but already I can’t seem to get away from the tyranny of blogging !

Deep breath, count to ten, one…two…three…four……

Creating an Artist’s Website…Without the Headaches

2010-03-04T05:25:00.000-08:00

I am constantly surprised at the number of artists I meet that do not have a web presence of any kind, let alone have a website. Developing a professional, engaging presence online is an absolute necessity for any artist who hopes to develop their career and make a living from their art. And it is a lot easier that it may seem.

Setting up a website was the first thing I did once I made the decision to publicly exhibit my work. From the outset I wanted people to be able to contact me easily if they wanted to. Having a website allowed them to do that. It also allowed them learn more about me, see more of my work, get information on future exhibitions etc, all in their own time. The difference between having the website or not is simple, if you don’t have one then you lose a huge opportunity for people to really strengthen the connection they have already made with you and your work. I have started to think of my website now as my “virtual” studio and my aim is to make it as welcoming and engaging an experience as when someone visits my studio.

It is now easier to setup a great looking website than it has ever been. And you don’t have to be a professional web designer to it. Nor do you have to spend a fortune hiring someone to build you one. The simplest and quickest way to set up a great artist’s website is to use one of the many portfolio website providers that can now be found on the web. Blog websites are also becoming more and more popular, but I still find that having a dedicated static website allows me to create a stronger showcase for my work while still allowing me to integrate my Artist’s News blog.

Most portfolio website providers offer amongst other things:

Full Hosting and domain name registration service
24/7 maintenance
A selection of professional looking HTML and FLASH templates
Ability to integrate video, audio as needed.
Integrated Email and email management
Full control over the uploading and editing of all your content
Support line and email help
Ability to expand and add to your website as you grow your business (i.e. you may want to add/integrate Blog at some time
New services and templates added annually

The downside of using a portfolio provider is that you are working with templates, which of course means you are limited to the design provided. So, you might find that you would like to have an extra text box on your front page but the template design won’t allow it. But overall I have found that because the templates have been designed specifically for artists and photographers they tend to cover everything you need.

The cost of using a Portfolio Website Provider can vary – from no cost at all to around $300 a year. You can pay more but there should be no reason to, unless you wanted a fully integrated content management system. As a general rule of thumb the more you pay the easier it is to use and the bigger the selection of templates you will get to choose from. I have been using Foliolink (www.foliolink.com) for my painting website for the past 7 years and have found them to be very reliable and responsive to requests for help and support – pretty important given that I am based in Ireland and my website is based in New York! The quality of templates is also second to none.

Some other providers I have looked into and are well worth checking out are:

Whichever solution you choose to go with there are some simple guidelines to consider when setting up your website.-

5 things to consider when setting up your website

Think of your website as your online or “virtual” studio, where you will be inviting people in to see your work and to see how you work.
Register your own Domain Name. Your own domain name is central to how you plan to brand yourself online. So even if you have no plans to set up a website for some time it is still advisable to register your own domain name.
No one will know you have a website unless you tell them. So you need to market it at every opportunity – business cards, on your email, on any promotional materials or press releases, on the back of your paintings etc
Do not expect to sell work directly from your website. (You may be pleasantly surprised some day and get an online sale, but treat it as the exception to the rule). People still want to be able to see the real thing, smell the paint, before they buy and will use your website more as a shop window, a way to preview the work without any pressure, before going to see the "real thing" in your studio or gallery. This is quite a generalisation and while it certainly reflects the art market in Ireland and the UK is may not be the same in the US or further afield.
Your website should be engaging, welcoming. Remember it’s “your” website, “your” online studio, so it’s your chance to speak directly to your audience, in your own voice. Give people a chance to feel you are talking to them. Write in the first person. If you have some press reviews or articles written about you then by all means have them on your website, but your “artist statement”, your biography, your writings on your process etc should all be written as though you were sitting in front of someone having a one to one conversation.

In a future post I will look at some of the free online services that are available to you to help you develop your website into an even more comprehensive, engaging showcase for you and your work.

10 Steps to Building a Viable Business as an Artist

2010-01-29T16:30:00.000-08:00

It all starts with the art I make. Because if I lose sight of that then everything else becomes meaningless. The only reason it is possible for me to make a living from my art is that there are people out there who find something special in it, something that resonates with them and ultimately something worth paying for. So, while this blog will talk about marketing and business and how to use basic principles to help grow and develop your business as an artist it all starts with what you create in the solitude of your own studio, with the door closed and the big bad commercial world locked outside.

It’s a tricky balancing act, but just as you cannot expect to make a living from your art if you do not put the time and effort into building your business as an artist, you cannot expect to make great art if you don’t give yourself the time to develop as an artist. To manage both takes planning….planning is what good business is based on. See, already we can see the benefit of taking a business approach!

My own philosophy for building a long term, successful career as an artist takes in a little business planning, a whole lot of marketing and most importantly an ability to create work that resonates with people. And in the time honoured tradition of business and marketing consultants, I too have a simple set of steps that I live by and would highly recommend. (Why is it always 10 steps?)

An artist’s 10 step guide to developing a long term, viable career:

1. Create great work

This is where it all starts. Without good work you can’t expect to create a successful career or business. You need to be very clear about what it is you are making, and who you are making it for.

2. Get to know your market

Once you understand your own work and what you have to offer its time to start finding a market for it. As with every other business you need to find out as much as you can about your market – locally, nationally, internationally. You need to stay in touch with new developments, how the economy is affecting it, etc.

Some questions you should be asking yourself are - how big is the market, who is buying art, who is selling, who are your competition (who is producing work similar to yours) and what sort of prices are they getting for their work? Who do you want your audience oto be? Where does your work fit in the art marketplace, what type of spaces do you want your work to be seen in?

3. Get to know your marketplace

I define the art marketplace as anywhere your work can be placed on public view. These can be broken into 3 distinct groups:

1. Public exhibition spaces – e.g. public galleries, museums, libraries, open submission competitions, etc

2. Commercial gallery spaces – these can range from local framing galleries up to international galleries.

3. Direct access spaces – anywhere people can come to you directly to see your work e.g. your studio, art fairs, your website etc.

The better your knowledge of both your market and your marketplace the better your chances of making the right decisions for your work.

4. Develop a simple business plan

A what? I’m an artist, I don’t do business plans! Well now is the time to start but it can be as simple as answering a few questions. Where do you want to be in 1 , 3 and 5 years? Having a well thought out vision for yourself really helps keep you focused.

What do you expect to earn from your work in 12 months? In what months will the money come in? How will you manage in the months when nothing is coming in?

How much work do you need to sell in order to meet your targets? How much work do you need to make in order to sell that amount? – if you can sell even 50% of what you make you are doing really well, but that means you need to make twice as much as you hope to sell!

Ok, I apologise, so maybe some of these questions aren’t that easy after all. But this is the real world for any artist hoping to live off their work and they need to be answered honestly – if you want to be honest with yourself.

5. Create opportunities for people to view your work - Create Fans!

Now you have some targets and goals to meet, you have a good understanding of your market and marketplace, and Featured in you’ve thought about the type of audience you want for your work. The next step is to create as many potential customers of your work as you can. You do this by creating fans. And you create fans by generating as many opportunities as possible for people to view your work.

Fans are people who have made a connection with your work. They have become fans of your work! Fans come in many shapes and sizes…

Admirers – people who simply like your work and may never be in a position to invest in it. But they will champion it!
Art Community Fans - people in a position to help progress your career e.g. media, curators, major collectors, other artists
Future Customers – people who start off as fans and at some point will invest in your work. It could be in 6 months time, it could be 2 years, but they have already committed in their own minds to buying your work at some point in the future.
Actual Customers – This is pretty obvious. It is the people who make such a connection with your work that they are willing to invest in it. Or as the art world likes to call them – Collectors.

No matter what type of fan they are, they all come to your work via the opportunities you have created. Once you stop creating those opportunities, your business, your career will simply die away. Creating new, ongoing opportunities is the single most important thing you can do, other than create the work itself.

Some opportunities I have created in the past 3 months…

Handed out a business card to my Insurance Broker (today!)
Taken out an exhibition space at the Art Fair 09 that saw 8000 people attend over 3 days
Featured in 6 Christmas group exhibitions in December
Held a studio open day in December
Posted new images to my Facebook account
Ran a marketing seminar for other artists
Updated my website with new images and new content
Set up an account with Linkedin and joined a number of groups
Handed out a business card to journalist friend of a friend that I met in January.
Booked solo exhibition for April
Commissioned an online video documentary for my website
Created some slideshow videos of my work and posted them on Youtube
Handed out a business card to the manager of a new arts centre in Dublin
Sold 25 paintings (the best opportunities you can create are through your paying customers)

How many opportunities have you created this month?

6. Make it easy for your potential fans to “Connect” with your work, and with you.

If someone sees your work for the first time – due to one of the many opportunities you have created – and decides that they really like what they see, then there is a good chance that they will be interested in seeing more. You must be ready take advantage of that. And in 2010 that means having an engaging, professional website that people can visit at their leisure. That can be your gallery’s website but ideally it will be your own website or blog, one that offers a rich and rewarding experience to the viewer. Remember, if someone has taken the time to search you out online then you have already made quite an impact on them, so your website is your one big chance to really allow people to “connect” with you and your work. Social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace can be useful places to show your work but they do not offer they same professional experience to the viewer.

I really believe that the opportunities you create up to this point have one simple objective - to drive people to your website. In 2010 having an engaging website and a strong online presence is fundamental to developing a successful and viable business as an artist.

Up to 12 months ago I would judge the success or otherwise of a year by a) the amount of pieces I sold and b) the amount of new contacts I was able to add to my mailing list. These were easy to quantify and easy to measure. I could also get a good feel for the general reaction to my work by talking to my galleries or meeting potential customers myself at the art fairs. What I wasn’t measuring was the number of people that visited my website.

That all changed when I set up Google Analytics and started to measure the traffic to my website. What I began to see, pretty quickly, was a steady stream of daily visits coming from Ireland and worldwide. I was getting an average of 10 visits a day, about 2500 visits in a year. I was amazed. Here were people going online and either searching for me or else typing my website in directly – which was mostly the case. It made me realise just how important my website was. It was my “shop window”, my connection point. Here were 2500 opportunities for people to see my work and make that connection with it. It changed my entire way of thinking about my website from that point on and I began to explore ways of making it more personal, more engaging, more rewarding for the viewer. I am still looking for ways to improve it but I am already seeing the benefits. In future posts I will be outlining in detail some of the approaches and tools I have used to help build my online presence.

7. Wait for “Connections” to turn into actual customers over time

In my experience if you can get people to really connect with your work – get them “hooked” - then it can be just a question of having patience - at some point they are very likely to invest in you. It could be a €100 print, it could be a €1000 painting, it could be a place on one of your workshops. The challenge is to create something that someone just can’t walk away from!

I sold 2 paintings this week to a collector that saw my work for the first time about 2 years ago at an Art Fair. She was very taken by some of my work and let me know before she left. She had connected with it, she had seen something in it that made her stop and want to find out more. I took her contact details and gave her one of my cards. Over the intervening two years she came to some more of my exhibitions and would regularly visit my website to see what I was working on. Last week I got an email from her, she wanted to come to the studio to buy something. And so I sold 2 paintings. The sale took two years to happen but the connection was made the very first time I met her at the art fair.

The art world can move very, very slowly. It can take people many viewings before committing to investing in an artist. In the advertising world it’s said that a person needs to see or hear a new message 7 times before they will finally act on it. In my experience that’s how it works in the art world also.

8. Nurture your customers.

Your customers, your clients, your collectors – the people who invest in your work and in your career – are the people that will help you grow and develop your business as an artist. They are the most important people you will deal with in the course of your career – not the galleries, not the media, not the arts community – and you must try to bring them with you at all times and make them know they are your top priority. As with all businesses your existing customers are where most of your new business will come from – it could be through new sales, recommendations, the championing of your work, introducing your work to new people.

Offer special discounts, private previews of upcoming exhibitions, studio visits, etc. Keep your customers updated on your plans and successes.

9. Review your business plan

Think of your business plan as your map, you need to refer to it every now and then to make sure you are still on course. If you have been honest with yourself when putting it together in the first place and based it on real expectations and not fantasy projections then it becomes a really useful tool to help you stay on track.

For example, if you had planned for a certain income coming in the first 3 months of the year and it doesn’t come in then you have to find a way of making that up in the remaining 9 months. The fact that you had a plan in the first place means that you can react quickly when things don’t look like they are going all well as you had hoped.

At the end of every year I do a complete review of my business plan – ie my annual cashflow projections – and use this to help plan the next year.

10. Go back to step 1 and repeat all 10 steps again.

It’s a never ending cycle. You create good work, you review your market and marketplace to see where you want to be in the coming months, you create a business plan that will allow you meet your goals for the year, and you start creating the opportunities that will bring people to see your work..If you create enough opportunities and have made it easy for people to connect with you and your work then some of those connections will turn into sales and customers. Customers that you will want to look after, because they are what are most important to you.

And that’s it, one artist’s guide to developing a viable career and making a living through their work.

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