Master Your Art Business: Achieve Your Goals by Focusing on Your ‘Second Thing’
As an artist, growing your art business requires more than just mastering your craft. It involves navigating a range of roles—from marketing and sales to client management and logistics. While…
Don’t Overdo the Gratitude when You Make an Art Sale
There is nothing more exciting than selling a piece of art. If you are directly involved in the sale process you will feel a rush of excitement and accomplishment, as…
Vincent Van Gogh
“The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.” – Vincent van Gogh This spring, I finally read Irving Stone’s biographical novel…
Branding: Artists, Build Your Brand Around Your Name
In today’s post, I would like to address a branding question that comes up quite frequently in relationship to branding for artists:
Should an artist use his or her own name when building a brand, or is it a good idea to create a business name and brand around that name instead?
The most common form of the question I hear is whether it’s okay to use the artist’s studio name instead of just using the artist’s name.
Three Patterns of Art Buying – How to Increase Sales with the Three Types of Art Buyers
If you’ve been in the art world for a while, you have likely observed three types of art buyers: one-time buyers, clients who buy a lot in a frenzy, and…
Video: Ask a Gallery Owner | How Many Artists Can a Gallery Effectively Represent?
In this session, I respond to a question from an artist named Grace in NJ: “In researching galleries, I notice some galleries represent hundreds of artists. Literally 25 w the…
Ask A Gallery Owner | To sign or not to sign . . . that is the question
In the following email exchange, I answer an artist’s question about visible signatures on art – what’s your opinion? Post in the comments. Jason, I’m so glad you were a…
What to Say When Clients Want to Know if Art Is a Good Investment
Not too long ago I received the following question from gallery owner Steve Harrison:
I had a visitor in my gallery yesterday and asked, “Now because this is original art it won’t depreciate will it?” How does one answer that question. I spend a lot of my time trying to figure out an answer to that question. Of course, a person should buy what they like and no one should ever bank on an “investment” whatever that might be. Still when a person is spending gallery prices for original art, the question “Will this painting retain its value” is a question that deserves an answer. How do other people answer it?
The Challenges of Making a Living as an Artist
Strap in; this might be one of my longest posts ever. Recently, I’ve had several interactions with artists who have been feeling incredibly frustrated about their prospects in the art…
What Kind of Artwork Sells Best?
I’m often asked what kind of artwork sells best – traditional or contemporary, paintings or sculpture, large or small works? On its face, this is a pretty easy question to answer – all I have to do is look over my sales records to see which media and subjects have been selling the best. We’re constantly looking at this kind of information in the gallery to get a sense of where our sales are coming from. I’m hesitant to share this information, however, because I’m not certain how helpful it is for artists who read the blog.
The problem with this kind of data is that we are in such a small industry that it’s very, very difficult to draw truly useful information from these kinds of statistics. Sales can fluctuate dramatically from month to month, and what’s selling today, may not be selling tomorrow. I wouldn’t want an artist to change direction or think that what he or she is creating can’t sell because it’s not what’s “hot” at the moment.