Make Your Place In The Art World

Arts Tribune

7 days ago

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Make Your Own Place In The Art World

Here we are in 2022 and it
might seem counterintuitive to suggest that there are alternatives to selling
your art that can still see you earning a good standard of living as an artist,
by not following a traditional path through the art world. The art world in
2022 has changed, some might say that there has even been a reset, but just how
easy is it to embrace the changes and become a commercially successful visual
artist?

Art has never been what you
might call an easy business, less so as we tentatively and hopefully begin to
emerge from an almost three-year-long pandemic. During that time, buyer behaviours
have changed almost unrecognisably and once-thriving high street galleries have
either made the transition online or in some cases have shuttered their doors,
leaving the art world looking very different from a pre-pandemic time.

It’s not just the business of
art that has changed, businesses of every description have had to adapt to some
quite mammoth challenges. Migrating bricks and mortar stores into the cloud, artists
cancelling long-planned exhibitions, and so many businesses of every description
have faced challenges that often felt more akin to the four horsemen of the
apocalypse turning up to a Downing Street party.

As some parts of the world
began to reopen, things were not quite the same as we left them back at the
start of the pandemic. High streets look different, and buyers who would once
fill stores on a Saturday afternoon are not quite ready yet for re-socialisation,
instead, choosing to continue with online purchases.

Pre-pandemic, it was the
younger population driving the digital economy, post-pandemic, we’re much more
likely to see a hybrid lifestyle emerging, with the younger generation
returning more readily to the high street, and older generations keener to
embrace newly developed digital skills and continuing with online commerce. In
the art world, that seems to be quite a seismic shift.

Highland Nights by Mark Taylor – One of my latest landscape works, prints and other collectables available to order now!

Over the course of the
pandemic, buying behaviours that changed out of necessity throughout the past
couple of years, have become ingrained and habitual, with many emerging behaviours
likely to stick around rather than return to anything like pre-pandemic normal.
Depending on your primary audience, how you think about doing business in a
post-pandemic world could be very different to the world of three years ago.

There is now a mix of buying
behaviours that feel different. We are definitely moving towards a hybrid
approach in some sectors where buyers are starting their buying journey online
and then finishing off the process in physical stores. We are seeing more in
the way of social commerce, where brands are meeting shoppers in their own space
allowing the buyers to discover products at home through the power of social
media and then not worrying too much about where the ultimate sale happens,
just so long as it does. That makes much more commercial sense for companies
selling products, given that they’re less able than they once were to
access social media user tracking data that would once drive the direction of their
online business.

Things are changing online
too. For the first time ever, Facebook has reported a significant drop both in
terms of revenue and daily active users, and that’s a really big shift in what
we have become accustomed to over the past decade or so. That infallible tech giant
seems to be creaking under the pressure of Apple’s privacy war on advertising,
as are other social platforms.

I think to some extent because
people are generally pretty fed up with seeing the same old content repeated
over and over, especially where a lot of it has been found to be factually
questionable. Quality counts on social media, today more than ever, the filler
content is becoming a very distant memory with users now actively looking for
the value add, quality content that informs, entertains, educates, inspires and
converts readers into buyers.

I also think it goes wider
than that, in part because, for businesses, social media has become an unwieldy
minefield over the past few years, not least, because of how little your
efforts seem to be amplified. There is now a wariness bought on by an inherent
risk that your marketing campaign might fall foul of one of the seemingly millions
of unknown algorithmic rules and you find yourself cancelled, cut off from the
clients you have been hyper-focused on retaining since time immemorial.

Disinformation has spread
everywhere to the point that in some instances, it seems as if it has reached the
point of normalisation. That’s despite
some rather weak attempts by the tech giants and governments to put the brakes
on it. That makes it incredibly
difficult to find any level of organic reach unless the content cuts way above
the noise.

As an independent artist, all
of this change is challenging. Pre-pandemic, there were a lot fewer people than
there are today who were willing to make substantial online transactions in
return for art, and even fewer who would be willing to consider purchasing art
through non-traditional routes to ownership. Then, the world changed and buyers
became much more accepting of doing things differently, and mostly they have
surprised everyone by embracing new ways of doing almost everything we once
thought they wouldn’t.

So maybe it’s time we looked
to the future and asked the question, how can we sell more art in the future
and will we need to change our traditional approach to the transactional
process of swapping our art for cold hard cash? Just how different do we need
to be successful artists in a new world?

Many alternatives to the
traditional art sale transaction approach already exist today, we just tend to
favour the traditional way of moving art onto walls which has historically followed the ‘you give me money and I give you
art’ model, with no intermediate complications beyond having a website and a
social media account.

Traditionally, you develop a
following through exhibitions and galleries and then buyers turn up to a show,
fall in love with a work and then make the transaction. There is nothing simpler,
but buyers for the artwork of the majority of working artists, are now willing
to look at alternatives to the traditional art buying process in order to
purchase and consume their art. They’re not looking in the usual places and
spaces, and they’re looking at alternative ways to pay for the work.

As artists, we will need to
adapt. Maybe we tend to favour the traditional approach to selling art because
we’re so much more comfortable with that, know where you are approach, or we
think buyers are more comfortable with that approach. I think buyers are not
only embracing new ways to transact, they’re actively looking for new ways to
transact that make the whole process of buying art and everything else, simpler
for them, and not necessarily us as artists.

The
Normalisation of Selling Online…

I
remember not all that long ago when you were expected as an artist to be
represented by a gallery. That’s how I began my art career, it was a linear
route that had been followed for centuries, and that’s what we were told to do
as artists. Today, there’s a huge blurring of the lines between physical
galleries and the online space, particularly as many galleries have been forced
to go down the online route.

Buyers
who make purchases from the majority of working artists who are either not in
the high-end fine art market or who are not represented by the mega-galleries are less likely to be swayed to make a purchase because the item is for sale
here, rather than there. They just want great art, great quality, and even at
the higher value end of the market, they want to find great value, and that’s
not to say that they’re looking for great value in a monetary sense, it’s much
broader than that.

What has
excited me more than anything over the past couple of years is just how well
known some artists have become despite the lack of professional representation.
I take a look through the likes of Etsy and notice small micro-communities of
fans getting behind their favourite creators, anticipating their next release
and then making a purchase and leaving reviews before going on to become brand
ambassadors of real people and extolling the virtues of their favourite
creators online through social media. It’s not the galleries who do the
discovering today, it’s communities of people who might never have previously
stepped through a gallery door.

Creators
seem to be finally waking up to the 21^st Century/Post-Pandemic, need
for them to become the brand of me, and it’s awesome. So how are these up and
coming creative superstars pulling it off? They’re doing things differently, they’re
being more human-like than corporate-like, they’re being way more authentic and
they’re going direct to the buyer and making the process easy. So how do us
mere mortals get anywhere close to doing that?

Rip up
the rule book!

I firmly
believe, just as I always have, that independent creator’s can shake off the
starving artist image and become successful artists if they first shake off the
belief that they need things like gallery representation or the thinking that
they absolutely must follow the norms and rules of the traditional art world to
be successful, or that they first need to wait around until they are discovered
by the establishment. Top tip here, there were never any rules, just a bunch of
over-confident people telling you that there were.

This
is exactly why you don’t have to follow the traditional transactional process
of getting your art on people’s walls. There are no rules that have been etched
in stone to say that you need to sell through a physical store, a gallery or at
a show, it’s perfectly okay to get your art on walls in a way that works for
you and your buyer without worrying that the sale doesn’t count because you cut
out the middleman, or because you decided to take three turtle doves in payment
for your work instead of cash, so long as it works for you and your buyer. It
is though, probably worth bearing in mind that as cute as Turtle Doves are,
they’re not great at paying the bills.

If
there was any kind of etched in stone rule in the art world, it should be that
independent artists should stop worrying about what the not-so-independent art
world hierarchy is telling them to do. If you’re worried about how you are
viewed by the purists, I’m not convinced you’re at that point, any more independent than an artist who is tied to a gallery contract. You have to dare
to be different.

What
all of this means, of course, is that you now have a duty to be less corporate
and more you, and that goes for everything you do including how you present
yourself online. From emails to your website, people are looking for authentic you
rather than boardroom you.

Do you
want to know what kind of emails I stop what I’m doing to read? Those that aren’t
filled with generic corporate B/S sent out multiple times a day. You don’t have
to follow a traditional corporate template that sounds like it was written by a
deskbound robot. The difference between pre-pandemic email and email in the new
dawn of independent creators is in the tone of the email and the frequency.

This
morning I checked my emails and found three from the same company that had
arrived overnight. This afternoon, another three from the same company. Sure,
they were all trying to sell me different versions of the same widget, but I
don’t have the time to be reminded every 90-minutes about a widget I didn’t
sign up to hear about in the first place.

The
email I did read was one that I get in my inbox maybe once a month, sometimes once or
twice a week, depending on the story the author of the email is sharing with me.
I can relate to the author, we share the same interests, the communication is
less corporate and more friend, I can get behind that, it feels more personal,
less like I don’t have a choice, and it’s not screaming desperation.

I do get
it, you sign up to an email marketing platform that gives you maybe 500, 5,000
or unlimited emails a month to send out to potential clients, that’s not a
target you need to strive to meet, it’s an arbitrary number linked with
whatever price tier you subscribe to of the email service you use.

I once
read something that suggested that an average year of emailing has the same
ecological impact as driving a couple of hundred miles by a gas-guzzling car. If
that truly is the case, then just the act of cutting down on the number you
send will have an impact on the environment. Instead of the typical, do you need to print
this message off, save the trees, straplines, you can at least highlight the
fact that you are reducing filler content/spam. If you are sending emails, you
absolutely have a responsibility to respect peoples time.

The
company that sends me at least nine emails a day must be surely responsible for a
big chunk of global warming. I’m not sure how accurate those figures are, but
not having to think for five minutes about filler content that absolutely no
one reads will gift you with some time back that you could spend doing
something useful, or having a nap, both equally less corporate than buy this, or
this, or that, and make our shareholders happy.

Hot Flamingo by Mark Taylor – Available to order now from my stores! Image – Copyright Mark Taylor 2022

There’s
something else that these superstar creators are all doing in this new world,
and that is, they are giving themselves permission to think of their art
practice as being a business rather than a hobby. There’s no room for the meek
to hide away thinking that if they come out and announce to the world that they
are a business owner they will be laughed at by the purists, or they will be
seen as being a sell-out. In the art world, you really can’t win either
argument, so don’t even try. Think of your practice as anything less than a
real business and it will always be less.

We
often talk about finding our place in the art world, but I am a big believer in
making your own place in the art world. Stop falling in line with the safe
trends that everyone else is doing and following, that’s not how you create a
whole new art movement, and it seems to be a much less useful approach in a
world that has changed so much. The world this side of the pandemic is far more
accepting that you can define your own place in the art world by being your very
own kind of weird.

There
really is no point in simply trying to fit in. Do that and you will blend into
the background along with everyone else. Follow your weird and stand out
because as an artist, that’s your mission, to be honest, it always has been.
That’s how much the art world has changed in the past couple of years, buyers
are being less safe in their choice of art and someone has to feed their newfound appetite for different. In fact, I’m not even sure all that much has
changed in that respect, maybe what has changed is that buyers are more
accepting of not following the current trend or the most well-known name.

You
also have to put the hours in…

In
knowing your place you also have to look beyond your talent and just get on
with putting the work in. That’s how these superstar creators are suddenly
building tribes. They’re figuring out that the world changed and people are
more into making deep connections with other people today than maybe they ever
were before. Hey, we’ve all been mostly locked inside for a few years, now we
yearn for that human interaction again.

These
creative rockstars are suddenly working out that relationships matter. Be it by
email or on social media, there is less of a distance between the buyer and the
creator. More than that, these creators know that building relationships are
not only the key to bringing people on board, they understand that any
relationship is better if it is built on trust, and that takes a little time to establish.

Look
through the comments on social media, through the interactions in the creator’s
online presence, the creators are talking directly to the buyers, more
importantly, they are responding and respecting that someone has given up their
time to engage. What you will also notice is that tribes are talking to each
other, there’s way more interaction than there was before.

What
these rockstar artists are more aware of is that they are competing, not with
other artists, but for peoples time and attention. They are competing to be
heard and noticed and not to be drowned out by all of the noise. They’re listening
to their tribe and they’re telling their story, and if they’re not telling their
story, they’re at least telling people how and why they’re creating what they’re
creating. They’re absolutely talking about the ‘why’ their art exists.

Adrift Under a Neon Sky by Mark Taylor – Available on a wide range of products, even jigsaws! Image copyright Mark Taylor 2022

That’s
something that feels completely different in the new world, this engagement alone is as much a part of the
art as the art itself. The art is only half of the conversation the artist is
trying to have with the world. If we were to simply post our latest creation and
then move on without saying a word, I’m not sure at that point we can even say
that the artist matters. The art could have been created by a robot, and it is
being noticed by buyers more than ever before.

Many
buyers are going to the exact same places as they did before, but now we have
new buyers who might have discovered art for the first time during lockdown.
They’re certainly still looking in the traditional places, especially where
those places exist online, but they’re also more accepting that great art isn’t
exclusive to a gallery, and they are most definitely finding out that the most
unique art is rarely, if ever in a gallery.

More
and more people I talk to have been mentioning just how much they’re looking
for unique works through platforms that might not have been front and centre
pre-pandemic and one of those platforms is Patreon. It’s a whole new way (that
existed before) of engaging those who are moving away from the traditional
transactional process of acquiring art.

Back
in the day when artists were artists, and the plague ran rampant throughout the
world, artists would have patrons who would support them so that the artist
could spend their days creating masterpieces and they would be fully funded to create
whilst taking steps to avoid catching the plague. What a time that must have
been.

Okay,
not much has changed really, apart from fewer artists today can rely on a
traditional patron funded art career. Where traditional patronages exist today,
they’re also a lot different to patronages of the past, they often come in the
form of residencies, or through brand collaborations, and that also means that
the artist tends to now have to do a lot more than simply focus on creating.

What
you can do today is crowdsource a group of patrons to cover your costs and fund
your art career using the power of modern technology and a platform called
Patreon. If people like what you do, they can each pay a small (or large) sum
of money to support you and in return, they will claim rewards for backing you.

Patreon
is something that as an artist, I can get behind because it takes art back to
its very roots in society. This is how artists would be more typically funded
at one time. Today we tend to focus on the artist who creates the artwork but
during the renaissance, for example, it was the patron or a collective group of
patrons who would dictate the cost, materials, size, location and subject
matter of the artwork, the artist would be almost secondary.

Mountain by Mark Taylor – This is one of my older works, it’s also my best selling work ever! Copyright Mark Taylor 2015 – 2022

Today,
artists are mostly in control of the entire creative process, Patreon doesn’t
take any of that benefit away from artists. The creative process is still mostly
owned by you, you determine what you create, but your backers will generally
only back whatever resonates with them, so you will need to take their lead.
They can pick and choose what and who to back, and that’s the key, whilst the
creative process is entirely your own, you will need to keep backers hooked.

When I
mentor new (mostly younger) artists, setting up a Patreon account is often one
of the first things they think about doing, and this is where I always advise a
little caution. Namely, that Patreon is just as uncertain as any other sales
method, until such time that it’s not.

You will
have way more flexibility to be able to build direct relationships with
collectors rather than irregular or casual buyers which in itself sounds like
any artists ultimate dream, but the keyword here is relationship, and Patreon
requires you to build and nurture relationships over the long term. It’s not a
five-minute fix to fund your previous or current poor life decisions before becoming
bored with the whole thing and moving on when the money doesn’t flow in
immediately. Think of it as sowing a seed in the spring, it could very well be
next spring before you see green shoots.

Patreon also isn’t something that should be taken lightly. Supporting different tiers
of donation requires you to do something other than just create art, it
requires you to invest time in making sure that any rewards are indeed rewarded
to those who have shown support for you and your work. You will also need to
make sure that rewards reflect the level of contributed funding. If I’m
pledging five bucks a month, my expectations are that my reward should be
something worth less than five bucks, if anything at all other than the
creative output and knowing I have supported a creative. If I’m pledging a
thousand bucks per month, my expectations might be a little different, it’s
subjective, it depends on the audience. Some backers (as in, few) will be happy
to pay a thousand bucks a month for little to nothing other than a feeling of
support in return, others might expect a vial or two of blood.

If you
don’t have enough time or think you won’t have enough time to fully commit to
Patreon or any other service just like it, don’t do it, or at least limit what
you do with it until you can support your supporters properly. You will need to
go into any Patreon activity in a position of being prepared. I know of far too
many creators who have signed up to the platform, suddenly gained traction, and
then had no plan at all to deal with rewards and it has turned out to become an
unmitigated disaster with plenty of disgruntled backers deciding not to back
you at all.

A Perfect Day by Mark Taylor – Available on a range of archive-quality print mediums, and now, as a jigsaw too! Order from my online store today! Image: copyright Mark Taylor 2022

Patreon
is also not some golden panacea to riches either, I can’t stress this enough. It
takes an insane amount of effort on your part to set up and own a process that
backers can trust and find value in, and an insane amount of effort to fulfil
rewards once you start to build up the number of backers. You might even need
to think about outsourcing some of this work down the line.

It
doesn’t at all, negate the need to carry out marketing which will be a bit of a
blow to those who already struggle with the work involved in surfacing your art
in front of potential buyers through more traditional approaches. It’s also worth
being mindful that any serious level of income is not likely to happen
overnight. Patience is itself an art.

When
setting up your Patreon campaign, never, ever, over-promise, and never
underestimate just how much work is involved in making sure that rewards are
sent out in a timely manner, particularly where a physical process is involved
in delivering physical items.

Just
in terms of shipping, you will want to make sure that you are not spending more
money on getting a product into people’s hands than you earn from the campaign because that would mean that you become the backer of your supporters, and
that’s also not how it’s supposed to work. You really need to have the mindset
of a CEO to create a successful Patreon campaign, and that means being
realistic, robust, resilient, and willing to put in a heap of effort for
any level of reward, small or big.

That
latter point might sound blindingly obvious to most folk, yet there are creatives
on Patreon, even today, who can’t possibly be making more in income than they
spend on outgoings. This doesn’t surprise me one bit, humans don’t much like
planning, and fewer still like to get to grips with how to run a business
before they begin to run a business. Top tip here too, learn the basics of
business before you start any journey towards selling your work, in whatever
way you sell it, you should even approach Patreon with a business-first mindset.

You
should also never underestimate the sheer amount of work that is involved in
organising the logistics of any physical shipping method. Patreon is a global
platform and as such, your logistical issues become global logistical issues as
soon as you go live. You also need to ask yourself some very probing questions
such as, how do I scale if it takes off, what’s my plan B, and am I exerting
way too much effort/funding/energy/will to live, for what I get in return, and
if so, can my energies be refocussed on doing something else that has a better chance
of reward.

Can it
pay off? I know of a growing number of creators who now solely generate their
entire income through using Patreon and some of them live very well on the
model, some can even afford to live in proverbial palaces in the Bay Area of
San Francisco, yes the rewards can be that good.

This
is a model that has the potential to replace the nine to five and the
traditional sales process, even with as few as a couple of thousand patrons
paying you the cost of a cup of coffee each month, but don’t expect it to be
quite like a regular nine to five. It also scales really well, with the only
single point of failures being in your ability to keep creating and your
ability to keep on top of getting the rewards out on time.

While
it can pay off, you will need to take a cautionary approach to thinking about placing
all of your creations (eggs) in one (virtual) basket! Never think that the
amount that has been pledged will be what you actually receive, you will need
to pay fees from anything you make.

Another
cautionary note is around the level of fall off in supporters you might
experience with what is essentially a slightly adapted subscription model.
There will never be any guarantee that someone who pledged this month will
pledge at all next month or ever again. So, as a single source of income, it can
be unpredictable, but in fairness, that can be the case with any sales process.

What
you are doing with these types of platforms is betting on the subscription
model staying in vogue in some of the most uncertain economic times the world
has probably ever faced. What you are doing with a traditional sales process is
betting on that exact same thing.

As a
platform, it remains only a single piece of a larger puzzle, you still need to
have other elements in place such as somewhere to physically live online so
that you can host content and go deeper than the platforms allow and you need
somewhere where you can focus on building relationships with your supporters.
If you see Patreon or any of the multitude of services like it as the only
piece of the puzzle that you need, it might be more prudent to find a simpler
jigsaw.

At
its simplest, these kinds of platforms are recurring payment systems. They essentially
collect rent in return for managing payments. Signing up doesn’t give you a
ready-made audience or extend your reach further than you already have it,
those elements still need you to put in the marketing work to make it happen,
but these platforms will make the backers experience way simpler, and that is
really, really, important. Backers are looking for the kind of simple that you
most likely don’t already offer.

Having
said that, despite the work needed, Patreon is a platform that is well
recognised but never plan on it lasting. Hopefully, at some point, you will
outgrow it and be able to stand alone with your own business model and your own
patron base. You do have to be mindful of the fees, some of my peers who have
found success on the platform are paying monthly fees in the high four figures,
but there’s no gain without at least a little pain as they say.

Pool Party by Mark Taylor – One of my best selling works that promises to add some tropical fun to any space! Image copyright Mark Taylor 2022

Art
collectives are becoming huge, simply because they generally offer some of the
most unique art from the most unique artists but without the overhead, you would
find from a premium high-end gallery. I have been a champion of art collectives
for what seems like forever, where a number of artists share the workload, the
fee’s, and ultimately, the buyers.

That
latter point might seem like a real rub, but there are multiple models that
make sense for collaborative efforts. Online exhibitions, online auctions, even
art rental, but it only ever makes sense if each and every creator is signed up
to the same playbook and they actually contribute an equal amount of effort
too.

There
are things that you will need in place to be able to do this, firstly, you will
need to form a collaboration with like-minded artists who all share a common
goal. Next, you will need to decide on a model that each of you can run with,
or at least live with, and finally, everything has to be done with the utmost
transparency.

The
difficult part is in finding a collaboration that works for everyone. Sure, it’s
easy to find artists who say they want to collaborate, it’s quite another thing
to find a bunch of artists, all equally as committed to pouring their art and
soul into a collective effort. In my experience, collaborations stem from
existing relationships that have been built around mutual trust and respect,
and even then, it all needs to be formalised in writing, even if you are
working with your best friend. Think of it as a pre-nuptial agreement, money
can become quite divisive, especially if the contribution of effort has been
lacking from one or more sides of the collaboration.

Storage Wars by Mark Taylor – Another vintage technology inspired artwork that documents computer storage media from across the decades – pre-1970s to the present day. Image, copyright Mark Taylor 2022 – Available to order from my online store!

Art
rentals are a great way to keep art moving, but you will also need to consider
the arrangements under which the art is essentially rented. There are
logistical issues, insurance, cleaning and maintenance fees, and the cost of
replacement work for works that have become damaged or lost. It happens more
than you would think, especially in hotels (it gets stolen) and in public
spaces (it gets kicked).

You
also need a constantly evolving inventory, but the joy of this model is that
you can find repeat income from the same work. My rental works are provided
under a collaboration of six artists, each of us committing to produce a
certain number of new pieces each year, and we also offer a final rental price
which means that the longer the art is rented, the lower the cost of outright
ownership at the end of the rental. The rental covers the added costs of
insurance, hanging services, cleaning, and replacement.

Print
materials are always at the premium end of the quality scale, not least because
that reduces the ongoing replacement costs, but also because premium materials
attract a premium price, and very few businesses will be inclined to have a
dollar store quality print hanging on public display in their reception,
neither will they want something so small that it has little to no impact so you do
have to think big. You also have to justify the price you set, surprisingly,
the image alone can’t do that because it’s the same image that might also be
available as a dollar store print.

The
downside to this model is that the upfront costs can be high, you’re
essentially paying wholesale prices for your own work on top of the cost of
creating it, and that’s before you earn a dime. But savvy businesses are keen
to have truly never before seen work hanging on their walls rather than a
costly reproduction that’s also on display in every other hotel room and in the
new world, they’re super-keen to switch things around without the feeling that
they need to sell an existing piece before they replace it.

The
point to remember with a rental model is that you really cannot skimp on
quality, even at the beginning. It takes a little time to recoup any
investment, I tend to place work for between 6-12 months before I see any
kind of profit so you will need to factor in an immediately high outlay, but at
some point, it will, or at least should, become a reasonably passive income and
you should then have time to focus on other things.

You
will also be approached by artists who want to join the rental scheme and offer
their work. Think of this as the equivalent of someone buying into your
business, (most are put off when they realise there are costs) and it will water
down any income if it is equally shared. Only encourage this if you need more collaborators
who will collaborate and be part of an overall collective of artists sharing
the work/costs equally.

Tun it Up by Mark Taylor – Another classic piece that will transport you back to decades gone by! Available to order from my online stores! Image, copyright Mark Taylor 2021-2022

Art
auctions, both physical and online can also work well for an artist collective
to engage with, particularly where those auctions also support wider community
causes. Whilst there is nothing stopping a solo artist from going down the route of
auctions, it does become a richer experience for the buyer if they are able to
see and select from a wide range of work created in different mediums, at
different price points and from a selection of genres.

The
shift towards homemade, quality and local…

Maybe
because we couldn’t travel for a couple of years, but the pandemic and the
associated lockdowns began to drive local trade, the search for unique quality
products, and a realisation that people are putting way more thought into
sustainability.

Community-based art projects that raise local awareness of issues and initiatives can be
a vehicle, as an artist, you are not only in a position where you can
visually document what’s important in your community, you can become a vehicle
of change within your community, raising your own artistic profile on the way. Bear
in mind that community projects should be more community, less you.

I have
said this many times over on these very pages, but if you are not engaging your
local community with your creations, you are missing out on one of the best
sources of exposure, repeat business, and gaining recognition for what you do
which may then be more widely recognised further afield.

Artists
have been at the heart of communities for centuries, yet in the 21^st
Century it seems easier to find yourself serving a global market than a local
one, and that could mean that somewhat ironically, you are missing out on many
more sales.

That
too might seem counterintuitive, but to compete in a global art market is
difficult. Despite the relative ease of entry, given all of the online tools
artists now have at their disposal, the act of working in a global space makes
everything more challenging, not least in the amount of more nuanced,
hyper-focused marketing effort that you need to put in.

Your
target market might be similar in other territories and regions but the
marketing message will very likely need to be different to match what
geographically disparate cultures respond better to. If you’re struggling to
find sales with the odd scattering of social posts, here, there, and everywhere,
in the hope that anyone and everyone will see and respond to that post while making
your message resonate with twenty different cultures, you need to be mindful
that sending a coherent marketing message that resonates in each community, is
going to be a whole new level of character building.

The
point here is, if you had any sense of dislike for marketing before, try doing
it properly across multiple territories. Despite the saying that goes something
along the lines of, the art will sell itself, yep, no, it doesn’t, even if you’re pretty darn close to being the next Matisse. Art will sell itself, is just
about the biggest myth there is beyond, your creativity will be discovered very
quickly.

Pisces by Mark Taylor – Like a fish out of water, this work is also available from my online store! Copyright Mark Taylor 2022

I
think, we truly are witnessing a seismic shift in the behaviour of buyers, we’re
certainly seeing a democratization of the art world and we are finally seeing
independent artists find the level of success they deserve. There have been
plenty of creatives who have proven throughout the pandemic that it is possible
to generate a good living from their creative endeavours by embracing change
and adapting to have a much more entrepreneurial spirit.

I so
often speak to independent artists who feel like they are running on the spot
and getting nowhere fast. Art has always been a long game, especially for those
artists who are chasing the unicorn we call, ‘getting discovered’ as if that in
itself is some kind of golden ticket. What the pandemic has shown us, is that
the art world that the majority of working artists create within, has embraced
some seismic changes and it is entirely possible to have a successful art career
without the pursuit of stereotypical discovery, but you will have to be willing
to embrace difficult and challenging and put your business front and centre of
what you do. You are not selling out by making a living.

When
you talk to or read about those previously unknown creatives who have found a
level of commercial success throughout the pandemic, the one thing that you
might notice is that their attitudes towards running their art practice as a
business have been a departure from pre-pandemic times where waiting to be
discovered was their primary objective. Top tip here, no one gets paid to wait around.

Now,
those creatives are more like CEOs of startups, embracing entrepreneurship and
actively doing things that get them noticed, things that we’re not all that
comfortable with, and things that make you get up at 5am, the difference is
that you will want to get up at 5am if you get it right.

Those
creatives are also more likely to have a plan, and they’re more likely to spend
time searching for things that will make them stand out rather than searching and waiting, for the golden ticket that is discovery. They are being discovered
in a totally different way, and more importantly, on their own terms. That my
dear friends sums up just how much the art world has changed.

Glow Over A Dry Stone Wall by Mark Taylor – one of my favourite paintings that I created a couple of years ago. Also available on jigsaws, and the ultimate in luxury, museum-quality acid-free prints! Copyright Mark Taylor 2022

Hopefully,
this post has got you thinking about how the world has changed and given you a
few new ideas about how you might want/need to engage with your market in the
future. It’s difficult to predict with any degree of accuracy what might happen
this time next year or even next week and less so in the art world, but there
is little doubt that buying behaviours have changed dramatically and we really
need to respond differently.

There
are so many marketing guides out there on the ‘tinternet’ that have been
written by marketing gurus and huge organisations who will all readily share
most (but never all) of their secrets to success. They’re often brilliant, even
genius, and tell you exactly what you need to do to get results. Except, they
don’t really tell you anything that is relevant because you’re not playing in
anywhere near the same space. A giant corporations marketing budget is likely
to be more per week than most working artists make in a year, so following the
corporate master plan is more likely to frustrate rather than help.

I come
to this from a lived experience perspective. Three plus decades in, there’s a
heap more I probably got very wrong than I got right along the way, and I never
once followed the fail-fast method of learning. I often failed slowly, frequently,
painfully. What has though become more and more obvious throughout that time,
is that when your market changes for whatever reason, you have to change, adapt,
and embrace it.

About
Mark…

I am
an artist and blogger and live in Staffordshire, England. My days are filled
with art, dog walking and Teams Meetings, while still being stuck somewhere in
the eighties. You can purchase my art through my Fine Art America store or my
Pixels site here: https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com and you
can purchase my new works, special and limited editions directly. You can also
view my portfolio website at https://beechhousemedia.com

If you
are on Facebook, you can give me a follow right here, https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia

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