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"[Artistic] mastery is the best goal because the rich can't buy it, the impatient can't rush it, the privileged can't inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status."
— Derek Sivers
The three major components needed to be a successful professional artist (in both the creative and worldly definitions of the word “successful”) are connection totrue self, mastery and marketing.
The connection to true self, we talk about elsewhere, so let’s talk about the other two.
A rule of thumb for building a successful art business: Mastery before Marketing.
This is one of the things that makes art such a difficult business. If you want to be a great artist, you have one medium to master. If you want to sell your art, you have two mediums to master, the second one being selling (which is the goal of marketing).
Steve Jobs, in his 1997 letter to Pixar shareholders, explained why Pixar partnered with Disney to release Toy Story (emphasis mine):
“We took stock of our uniqueness…Diverting our…attention away from doing what only Pixar can do in order to become beginners at marketing and distribution seemed like a bad idea…distribution involves very different skills….Creating is different than selling.”
— Steve Jobs
Creating is different than selling.
I’m not saying you can’t do both, plenty of artists have.
What I'm saying is this: achieve a baseline level of technical proficiency in your craft that allows you to fully channel inspired ideas without struggling with technique, before attempting to sell and market. You will drive yourself crazy if you try to learn and master both at the same time (it is also useful to build a body of masterful works, so that when you are ready to learn selling, you have a good inventory to work with).
If you are struggling to sell your art there are three possible causes:
1. An inspiration problem - Your work has not achieved resonance and is not connecting with viewers because you haven’t yet faced your fears, let go of ego, and connected with your true self where your true creative wellspring is located. (In other words, your art is not interesting. This is a common issue - pieces that are technically okay, but just nice pictures with no deeper message of resonance. Art with this problem is sometimes called kitch).
2. A mastery problem - You have creative ideas that will resonate, but you haven’t mastered your craft enough to have the proper technique necessary to fully translate the resonance of those ideas into your art.
3. A selling problem - You’ve mastered creating your art (items one and two), but you aren’t actively selling and marketing your art properly. Creating is different than selling. If you don’t know who your salesperson is, then it’s you, and all art sales require a sales person.
So be honest with yourself and be sure your work is “good enough” before you try to sell it.
Michelangelo once said, “If the people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all.”
“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason, mastery demands all of a person.”
—Einstein
Think about this:
Would you frequent a restaurant with mediocre food because they impressed you with a great website?
Would you spend an evening with friends listening to live music by an off-tune band with a singer who flubs the lyrics, just because they had a cool logo?
Would you hire a web designer who used harsh colors and janky typography simply because he had mastered search engine marketing?
Obviously, your answer to these questions is no.
It's just the way of things. A guitar player who can't tune his guitar and hasn't mastered all his chords won't be able to create and sell his music.
Let's apply this idea to art:
Would you purchase mediocre art by an artist who had lots of website traffic, used a popover form to maximize newsletter sign ups, had a number one ranking in Google, and was the most prolific Instagram poster you follow?
You already know that the answer to that question for most people is no.
Like our guitar player above, an artist who can't mix paint and hasn't mastered drawing, composition, values and brushwork is going to struggle to sell art.
Look, I'm not saying you have to be a Master with a capital "M" before you start selling (though, if art is your true calling, you should never stop walking the path of mastery as long as you practice art).
I'm recommending that you strive to achieve a level technical proficiency that is good enough that you no longer have to think about technique while you are creating. When I play guitar, I don’t want to have to stop to remember how to form chords. I want to simply flow with the musical ideas as fast as they appear in my mind. It is like language. Imagine if every time you engaged in conversation, you had to stop and look up words and grammar instead of just allowing ideas to flow from your mind to your mouth.
Then, once you've reached that baseline level of technical competence you will be able to continue to spend time cultivating that competence into a true mastery of your craft while you start building your competence with marketing.
If you’ve achieved such a level of mastery that you are able, without thinking about technique, to receive creative messages from the universe and translate those sparks of inspiration into inspired finished works of art that resonate, then (and only then, in my opinion), you are ready for your marketing journey.
If you don’t feel that you’ve achieved that level of technical proficiency, I strongly encourage you to continue with your art practice, put more miles on the brush, seek out an instructor, do more exercises, take a class or a workshop, or whatever it is that you feel you need to do to improve your work to the point that you do feel that you’ve achieved a level of competence and mastery that you would be proud to put a price tag upon and hang next to other professional artists.
Until that point, other than “getting lucky” here and there, you will likely be disappointed with your sales.
Sum ergo creo.
Creatively,
Clint Watson
BoldBrush Founder
Creativity Fanatic
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