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Sustain Your Art Business With a Sound Studio Practice, Starting with Warm-Ups When I think of a warm-up, it is usually a sweaty business in which you raise your heart rate, get your muscles loosened up, and stretch a bit. Warm-up exercises for artists are a little different but not that different, and...
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In December, I had the pleasure of going to a panel discussion with a few artist friends at The Teaching Studios of Art in Brooklyn. The Teaching Studios is a school run by my friend Rob Zeller--we went to school together at both the Water Street Atelier and at New York Academy. He's been doing great...
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I went to an artist's talk the other day and was a bit taken aback when the artist admitted that she went door to door looking for a gallery, taking images to every venue she knew of and talking her way past many annoyed assistants to get a few minutes of time with a gallery owner. She once cornered...
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Working with artists is a lot of fun. Really, I would put nothing before it in terms of what I want to do with my life's work. But sometimes it can be a little like herding kittens, and it can get really frustrating if the artists aren't organized. (But really, that never happens...never.) Mom...
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It is interesting to investigate how we make creative decisions, and how so many of those decisions are based on our perceptions of, or fantasies about, how others will feel toward our work. Perhaps this is quite normal for social beings used to negotiating a world of other social beings. Sunset Reflection...
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I am writing this as things have never looked better for me financially, as an artist. I have had a few huge sales and wildly successful shows over the years, but I feel as if I have tapped into a new realm of possibilities in recent months. And this in a time of financial hardship for many across the...
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With the rapidly expanding emergence of social media over the last several years, I think the majority of artists--like most people--have looked upon the phenomenon with anything from mild curiosity to enthusiastic interest. Many of us have jumped on the bandwagon to one degree or another, thoroughly...
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Those of us in the fine art industry know that artists and art galleries have had a long-standing love/hate relationship. Artists love the fact that galleries market and sell works of art, but they hate the fact that the better galleries keep 40% or 50% of every sale. Then along came the Internet, and...
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We all enjoy using Facebook to stay connected to our friends and family, and Pinterest is a lot of fun for collecting and sharing ideas, but have you thought about how you can utilize these social media tools as part of your overall marketing efforts for your art career and to sell art online? A recent...
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Your website can be a terrific online portfolio . But there are definitely ways to not use your website when marketing art. An initial temptation for many artists is to find as many gallery e-mail addresses as they can and send out their website information out to all of them via e-mail. Sounds great...
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Not all art competitions are created equal. There are some that are themed art contests, and others are more open-ended about narrative. One art competition could have an open call for artists, and another could require its participants to submit work for evaluation before even being considered for judging...
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I don't believe that gallery representation defines an artist or even makes one a professional, but if you are interested in pursuing that kind of relationship with a gallery there are a few tips to keep in mind. Make a solid connection. All the artists I know that have strong relationships with...
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Get a website. If you're not a tech genius, you can still do this because there are numerous options. Some are free; some are not. Realistically speaking, the free ones severely limit what you can do and you'll find yourself outgrowing them in no time, but if they get you jumping into the website...
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It's not an unreal aspiration to make money by selling your oil painting artwork or watercolors, but it will take a significant amount of work in two areas: 1) Your art. While it is possible to make money off of art that isn't particularly good--we live in a society, remember, that paid actual...
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Over the weekend, a friend of mine joked that an artist's ultimate goal should be something like 1) making work that is awesome, 2) being famous or having people appreciate your work so you can make a living doing it, and 3) doing what you want--meaning you are your own master and no one else is...