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Category: business plan

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How to sell your artwork

Think the world is going to beat a path to your door just because you’re brilliant? Think again.
Blueberry barrens on Clary Hill, by Carol L. Douglas. Every residency and event is a bullet point for your resume, but more importantly, a chance to be noticed.

“I read your recent post on business realism,” a reader wrote me. “I think I paint well, but I can’t seem to get any traction in the current marketplace. I’ve lost two galleries this year, and that really hurt. What am I doing wrong?”

The art market is morphing, and this reader was right when he added, “there’s no clear path forward.” His loss of gallery representation may have nothing to do with him, but with rapid change in the marketplace.

I know this painter’s work. It’s as fine as anyone’s out there, including many painters making a very juicy income. Why are their paintings selling and his not?
The bottom line is, he’s not nearly as well-known as he ought to be. While he’s painted with some of the big names in the plein air business, that hasn’t given him a particular leg up. Networking is important, but it only takes you so far.
Athabasca Glacier, by Carol L. Douglas. Want people to be interested in you? Do interesting things, preferably without killing yourself.
Do you want it enough to go for it? That makes marketing your primary job. Some people are offended by that, but unless you were born into the upper crust like Édouard Manet, you’re going to have to work to make connections. A better model is Frederic Edwin Church, who embraced, rather than rejected, his father’s bourgeois business model. Nobody can say that Church sacrificed his artistic goals.
You don’t necessarily have to be a starving artist to want to market yourself. I have a friend who’s fascinated by the uncharted machinations of a career in art. After a career in business, she wants to ‘crack the nut’ and figure out how it’s really done.
Spruces and pines on the Barnum Brook Trail, by Carol L. Douglas. This was painted at ADK Plein Air. To have a following, you must be seen.
It’s not about whether you can paint or not. The late, unlamented Thomas Kinkade is just one of a long line of incompetent painters who parlayed an artistic vision into money. I’m not encouraging you to paint terribly, but I am telling you to stop beating yourself up because you’re “not good enough.”
It helps to be young and beautiful. If you’re no longer either of those things, you need to be witty and fascinating instead. A hippie friend once watched me doing my self-care routine. “Why do you do those things to yourself?” she asked in amazement. I can’t be young anymore, but I can be attractive.
You have to be willing to exploit social media. I know you don’t see the point of Instagram and Facebook, but it’s critical to a profile in the modern world. If you don’t have a clue how to do this, find a book or a webinar and learn. Your website is still important, but it’s the catchment basin for all those other things.
Teaching is a great way to get your name out there, but for heaven’s sake, don’t do it unless you can actually teach. The world doesn’t need any more incompetent teachers.
You need a real-world presence somewhere. You’re going to have to do plein air events, tent shows, be in a cooperative gallery, or have gallery representation. You’re going to have to pull up your big-boy paints and go to openings. (This is the hardest thing for me—not because I don’t like people, but because my bedtime is 7:30 PM.) One real-world contact is worth a thousand internet hits.
You need to plug away, a little every day. Running a $1500 ad in a collector magazine is not going to net you anything if you haven’t done incremental publicizing in advance. Press releases, openings, studio parties, blogs, and emails to your collectors are the heart of modern publicity.
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Just one bullet per customer, please

Mixing bullet points is a simple marketing error. How many more mistakes am I making in my one-man band?

Apple tree with swing, Carol L. Douglas, available through the Kelpie Gallery.
I spent the last two days doing 2018 planning with Bobbi Heath. While I normally hate business meetings, this one was done in stocking feet, with a woodstove and good food.
A good confab with a peer can net you as much or more than a conference does. Ask yourself these questions first:
  • Are our goals and experiences similar enough to be useful to each other?
  • Are our values the same?
  • Can this person be trusted?
  • Will he or she stay on task?
  • Is he or she able to contribute knowledge, experience or process?
  • Is he or she a creative thinker?

Flood tide, by Carol L. Douglas, sold at Castine Plein Air 2017
I’ve had enough experience with art support groups to know that they often devolve into long-winded stories, pissing matches, emotional support groups, or ego-stroking. They have their place in life, but they won’t advance your career.
The person best qualified as your informal business coach might have no experience in the art world at all. If you have enough knowledge yourself, that can work well, but it won’t help if you’re a newbie in the art world. Someone has to understand the nuts and bolts of how paintings are sold. Having said that, my move to Maine was coached by a business consultant with no art-sector experience.
Bath time, by Carol L. Douglas. I don’t focus on online sales, but this sold on Facebook, and netted me a friend in the bargain.
In her former life, Bobbi was a tech start-up project manager. She knows how to move a small business from concept to reality. I have a different but equally valuable background, which comes from years of slogging in the art market. Most importantly, we trust each other.
The question you and your partner are going to ask is, “Where are we now, and where do we want to be in five years?” The answer should not be, “rich and famous,” but it might include something like “looking more like an artist,” which is, in fact, brand management. You want to be concrete, but not limited.
Setting blocks, by Carol L. Douglas, available through Camden Falls Gallery.
Bobbi’s and my business models are a mix (in different ratios) of the same activities. I need to reset the mix. My mix of galleries/teaching/workshops and plein air events ought to be more grounded in my own geographical location, at least from June through September.
Tracking your own hours can reveal a gap between where you’re spending your time and how you’re making your money.
There is no real planning without data. I have some, but it’s all estimated. Better data might tell me that I’m investing time and energy into the wrong things. The above pie charts are fictitious, but they’re an example of how our work might not be going into the most financially productive things. In some cases, that is by choice. For example, right now I choose not to monetize this blog by selling advertising.
My New Year’s Resolution is to start logging my time just as my programmer husband does. I want to know how I’m piddling my time away.
Most of working your way into a better business model is simple trial and error. I’m especially good at the error part. That’s good for success, in fact, but you can’t be stretched so thin financially or timewise that experimentation sinks you.
Bobbi told me about a recent mailing she did, where she learned never to have more than one offer (bullet point) in an ad. She had two, and they got conflated in her readers’ minds. I realize I’m doing the same thing with my workshop ads. I need to fix this.
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My non-existent business plan

The professional painter ought to set some commercial goals. What form should they take?
Michelle reading, by Carol L. Douglas. While I love painting and teaching figure, there’s no room for it in my imaginary business plan.
One of the best things about my Ocean-Park-to-Castine week is that I get to spend it with Mary Byrom. We are good buddies but she lives in North Berwick, ME and I live in Rockport. They’re just far enough apart to make casual get-togethers impossible.
There isn’t much time for idle conversation during these plein air events but we do snatch moments. You might think we’d talk about technique or lofty ideals of art. Mostly, we talk business: are you going to [this place]? How were sales at [that place]?
Recently, Mary has been larding her conversation with the phrase “my business plan,” as in, “I’m not sure how that fits in my business plan.”
More work than they bargained for, by Carol L. Douglas. Do boatyard pictures still fit in my business plan?
After Castine, Mary, her husband, and I were enjoying some cold water in my kitchen (a delicious luxury after a week in the sun). Mary mentioned her business plan again. “Mary,” I objected, “Who has a business plan? My business plan is, um, ‘paint something.’” We guffawed, because we all know that artists are notorious for our bad planning skills.
As usual, Mary is several steps ahead of me. I mulled over what she said all afternoon. It makes sense to have a forward agenda. My problem is that I have absolutely no business experience. The whole notion of a business plan is alien to me.
Under the Queensboro Bridge, by Carol L. Douglas. I didn’t stop painting urban scenes because of a business plan; I just like painting rocks better.
The distinction between an amateur and a professional is whether one does one’s work for love or money. But it goes deeper than that: it’s about the discipline of working every day, on a schedule. It means treating painting as a real job and not something one does when the mood strikes. Even with this, however, I know artists who work extremely hard and don’t make much money.
That, I think, is because being a painter is so personal. Just as modesty precludes the polite person from telling the world how great he is, it precludes the personally-invested artist from selling his own work. For all of us, a business plan is a fence we could erect to prevent our feelings from hindering our careers.
Butter, by Carol L. Douglas. Still lives were never part of my business plan; they’re like practicing scales.
I looked up business plans for artists on the internet. Frankly, they’re gobbledygook to me. I don’t know, for example, how setting a five-year goal of making $200,000 a year in sales can possibly help me attain even a dollar more in sales today. If someone out there is knowledgeable about this and wants to help me understand, I’d love to hear more.
Meanwhile, I do have three simple goals for this year:
  • Add events in the South or Midwest to extend my season. The Northeast jams all our festivals in a four-month period from July to October. This is reasonable considering our climate, but it puts too much pressure on us to be seasonal workers.
  • Diversify my gallery representation into other geographical areas.
  • Paint more boats.

 Does that count as a business plan?