The art of selling your art

If you have a goal of eventually making a living as an artist, you can benefit from seeing yourself as an independent freelancer. In other words, you must learn to act professionally, both in terms of your ability to create your art and your ability to sell your work.

Many may choose, perhaps for good reason, to focus on the first: developing skills and spending time in the studio, on precisely the work of creating the pieces that gives so infinitely much meaning. That's what you're passionate about. The solitary hours in flow, where you get completely carried away by the process; forget time and place, and everything around you.

The external validation that lies in the market approving of what you do makes it easier for you to justify the ungodly many hours of interest with painting work, which are also hours where you can't do all sorts of other things (...)

That's also how you see yourself: as the soloist in your atelier.

Presumably, not everyone chooses to spend a good part of their waking hours pursuing a career as a creative artist because they love networking and proactive sales, or even find energy in being extroverted and surrounded by many people. Personally, at least, that's not where I find my motivation.

At the same time, you just have to prioritize networking and sales. If you fail to share your own enthusiasm and your own good energy, your project ultimately has no chance.

Not because a sale itself says anything about the quality of a given work. And not because money should be the motivation, or ever has been . . .

But a sale actually brings the plan of—within a foreseeable number of years—being able to call yourself a professional artist one small step closer to realization.

Just as important: The external validation that lies in the market approving of what you do makes it easier for you to justify the ungodly many hours of interest with painting work, which are also hours where you can't do all sorts of other things that others traditionally designate and regard as being productive.

And then it is just more fun to be able to pay your bills, than not—

The myth of the starving artist is indeed just a myth.

Therefore, allow me to remind you that the art of selling your art is at least as important as your ability to create it in the first place.

You have to remain alert and visible, instead of flying under the radar: showing up every time something in the local area smells even a little bit like art, and be generous with your help to others.

If you spot an opportunity to get your works out and working, don't be too precious or fussy about it.

Above all, don't just wait for others to come and ask you to contribute, but launch your own initiatives, and actively and wholeheartedly support those of your peers.

And then remember to celebrate every little sale.

Not boastfully or as an important person to assert yourself in relation to others. But genuinely happy and bubbling with energy, because you have actually managed to create something that others can also reflect themselves in and see value in.

If that is not the point of art making, I don't know what is.