This is one of those questions that tends to circle in an artist’s mind during quiet moments in the studio—often when a piece that felt deeply personal doesn’t sell, or when a more decorative piece flies off the wall.
Should I be making art that sells? Or should I be chasing something more meaningful?
It’s easy to frame these two goals as opposites. But they’re not. In fact, some of the most celebrated artists in history managed to strike a balance between the two—and so can you.
The False Divide
The idea that meaningful work can’t sell—or that sellable work can’t be meaningful—is a modern invention. The art world loves to divide things into categories: fine art vs. commercial art, high art vs. decorative, personal vs. marketable. But in practice, the line is rarely that clean.
Artists like Monet, Rembrandt, and John Singer Sargent all made work that appealed to collectors and still reflected their deep artistic vision. They weren’t “selling out”—they were making a living while refining their voice.
And that’s a healthy thing to aim for.
Making Work That Sells Isn’t a Compromise—It’s a Strategy
There’s no shame in creating art that resonates with buyers. If a certain subject, color palette, or format sells consistently, that’s not a signal to stop—it’s a signal that you’ve found a connection point.
That doesn’t mean you have to limit yourself to only that kind of work. In fact, many successful artists build a “bread and butter” body of work that supports their practice financially, allowing them to take risks in other areas. The sales become the fuel that powers deeper experimentation.
This is one reason I often encourage artists to work in series. You can explore multiple directions without jumping around randomly, and you can identify which ones spark the strongest response from collectors. That feedback loop helps you shape your body of work with both integrity and momentum.
Personal Vision Is Still the Foundation
Of course, meaning matters. When artists abandon their voice completely in pursuit of sales, it becomes obvious—and usually unsatisfying for everyone involved. The work loses its energy. Collectors can feel it. So can galleries.
The sweet spot is when your personal vision intersects with your buyer’s desire. When you’ve developed a point of view and can express it across formats and subjects. That’s when you become not just an artist with talent—but an artist with staying power.
Making Both Kinds of Work Is Smart Business
Here’s what I see from the gallery side: artists who are thriving long-term often have two gears. They have work that is accessible and proven—it sells steadily, looks great in a home, and appeals to collectors. And they also have work that challenges, explores, and pushes their boundaries.
Sometimes those two bodies overlap. Sometimes they’re entirely separate. The important thing is that both are respected, and neither is dismissed as lesser. You need both. The balance allows you to survive, grow, and evolve.
Final Thought
Art made for meaning and art made to sell are not mutually exclusive. You can do both. In fact, doing both may be the most sustainable path forward.
So if you’re working on a series you know will connect with buyers, lean into it. If you’ve got an experimental piece in your studio that’s challenging you—don’t abandon it just because it’s harder to price. Let one fund the other. Let one inform the other.
You don’t have to choose between meaning and market. You can build a career that honors both.
I couldn’t agree more with you, Jason. Making art requires mind and heart working together. The less dichotomy between the artist’s and selling art, the better. If my heart isn’t in it, the painting has no life. Thank you!
I try to having meaningful art, to make the viewer think or ponder why the painting, the meaning as well as being beautiful or colorful. It is talking to viewers as to my quirky view of the world is validating .
Jason, I whole heartedly agree with all points you made so concisely!. Many “gurus” try to insist that the artist must express only one “style, subject matter, media choice”, etc. to be successful. I have experienced and seen sucess doing just the opposite. Authenticity, honesty and passion for one’s expression(s) must be honored, as is the case with most good artists. I have found that it is best not to promote and show experimental work that is different than your usual, established art until you know you are comfortable with it as an expression of you, the process is proven to work well, and you know that there are or will be more than one of these.
Thank you, Jason, for your insights about this interesting subject!
I have both. I have my “made to sell pieces which are small, up to 12 x 12. While other sizes are created with my own frame of mind saying, “this is where I want to be”.
What well timed information. Thank you Jason.
I like what Frank Zappa said: “Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.”
I did not sell even one piece. I gave everything to my family and friends. I am still entertaining the idea to sell some even if i don’t need income from selling. In fact, the gallery in Annapolis wanted to buy one painting after they framed it. My wife refused to sell even for a middle 4-digits. I realized that I am leaving the memory about myself.
On another note, many friends are surprised: “You have so many different styles that it’s hard to believe that all those paintings are made by one person”. I have many portraits (I love the challenge) but I am bored doing the same. I even have the sci-fi thematic. I bet there are no buyers for it. Yet, I enjoy switching to another gear.
Right on,. Jason.
When I am carving stones, it doesn’t help me to think about whether that evolving forms will sell. I am aware of my commitment to create the best sculptures I can create before I die, aware of the discipline required to achieve that, and aware of links between what I consider “best” and salability. But carving sculptures in hard stone is so time-consuming that it would drive me crazy if I thought about their salability so much that the qualith of the form would suffer.
Nor am I aware of any kind of symbolic meaning, usually. What dominates my experience of carving, almost always, is not thinking but feeling. I must think about how to solve various technical problems along the way, but not meaning or salability. Carving is a long series of physical, physiological sensations, and the bodily-felt meanings that come with them. The sensations my moving body gives me as I change the shapes of stones not only describes the forma but in a real, mechanical sense, but determines them. In a literal sense, then, forms that evolve under my hand express those sensations and the meanings that arise out of them.
Usually for me, symbolic meaning enters the equation either after completion or late in the production of sculptures. Then I can more freely imagine what sculptures might mean to others and seriously consider salability and price. Fortunatly, wife Lu considers all of that much earlier than I,, and subtle comments from her often nudge works in progress toward meaning to others, salability, and price.
I’m just like fellow poster here Lee Gass, I have no preconceived meaning or aim to sell. I focus purely on the visual outcome of the piece and my vision for it. Symbolism or meaning settles in once the piece is completed and I have time to live with it and contemplate it. It works for me.
Thank you Jason. This is exacly what I’ve been struggling with for the past year. I do both landscape/nature photography that I’ve been selling for the past 10+ years but this past year I wanted to experiment more with my unique abstracts that admittedly haven’t seemed well received. Being told (by so many other artists) that in order to be successful one MUST choose a niche has always rubbed me the wrong way and left me confused as to what to do. Thanks to your insights as one of my long term followed gallery owners I’ll continue pursuing both with vigor. Thanks again!
Personally, I have divided my production into 4 main areas, with some crossover: the deeply personal work that is for meant for myself and I will never sell; the pieces with meaning or a message, and those that I make purely for beauty´s sake, which I offer for sale; the smaller pieces which I make molds of and offer as a limited series; and finally the purely decorative pieces such as garden plaques that I will make as many of as I can sell.
I’m thinking, if you are making art to sell to an audience, the first audience you need to sell it to is you.
If you haven’t invested in “making what you want to see” (Robert Rauschenberg paraphrase), then a fair question is, “Why would you expwct anyone else to invest their time and money to “see” what you didn’t care about.
As you point out, and others have stated and shown, it’s “and” not “or”.
Hmmm. I kind of disagree a bit with this advice. All those great artists of the past were able to create great works AND work to the needs of the people who commissioned them simultaneously. I think this is the challenge that artists who desire to make a living as professional artists have to meet. They have to take the needs of another into account when they create. I describe it as the difference between masturbation and making love. Both provide pleasure, to be sure. But with one, it’s like “self” expression only, which so easily tips over into narcissism. With making love, one must take the needs of both parties into account, and there is a fullness and richness which ensues. This does not mean that an artist cannot have a small experimental group of artworks, but if they are a successful professional, they are going to be awfully busy creating in their regular areas – which surely can be a variety of subjects as long as all are recognizably in their style. This has been my personal experience for 50 years of making a llving at art as a dealer and artist and consulting to artists. MG
One of my professors gave me a great piece of advice.
He said, “I don’t care how brilliant your idea is, it still needs to look good!”
After I started painting, I concluded that if one of my paintings are hanging on a wall somewhere in 100 years, then I won. Why not sell your work? You can’t take it with you. I paint what interests me.
I believe that many artists don’t take advantage of social media marketing. For instance, a few years ago I was driving in a rural section of central Maryland, and saw two guys using metal detectors in a field. I stopped and talked to them, and took some reference photos. Then I painted the scene, and found a Facebook Page dedicated to metal detecting, and posted it there A fellow from 4 states away bought it.
I just painted a deer in a corn field, and posted it yesterday on my business and personal Facebook pages, and on the Maryland Hunters Community Facebook page. I’ve already received two inquiries.
Now, your use of chat groups makes more sense to me than most advice I’ve seen about using social media. Thanks.
Thanks to each of you who shared your thoughts on this topic. I loved reading your different perspectives—whether you create for meaning, for market, or some blend of both. What really stood out is how personal and varied each artist’s journey is. That diversity is a strength. Your comments remind me that there’s no single “right” approach, and that the art world is richer when artists follow their own convictions. Thanks again for taking the time to comment—I’m honored to be in conversation with such thoughtful creators.
Do you think the balance between creating art for meaning and creating art that sells can ever truly be achieved, or will artists always feel a tension between the two goals regardless of strategy?