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Article for Art Business Today … APRIL 2010 I gave a seminar at the recent Spring Fair called ‘The Artists Role in the Art Industry’. It seemed to go down well with the audience. They gave me a round of applause, and afterwards I had comments and questions galore. Amongst other things, I told them that in my experience there were five skills that artists must get right in order to survive as full time professionals. Roughly these five skills demanded a day a week each because they should be seen as equally important and time consuming. One day in the studio, one day selling, one day admin, one day networking, one day business. The first bit that filled the artists with dismay was when they realised that they would have to devote a whole day a week doing administration. The trouble with admin is that it actually hurts the artistic soul. We artists are not neurally designed to cope with book-keeping, record keeping, filing, etc. Tidy offices are an anathema. I speak from personal experience here. So I get help, and she turns up every Wednesday at exactly 9 am and does the job. That frees me up to do something creative. Maybe paint, or write, or read, or frame, or print. The point is that I am doing something that I can do better than I can do admin. So I can get a second day in the studio if I want to. Today I am writing this article. But, the main bit that artists really didn’t like was the news that three or four whole days in every week were not studio days. OK so they know that you have to sell your work. Actually selling is the easy bit which comes at the end of a process called marketing and selling. But maybe they could get someone else to do that as well. Bad news here is that people who market and sell art for artists tend to expect a lot of reward for doing so. You have either got to marry them, or pay them a lot of money, or accept that they will do the work, collect the money and keep most of it. They won’t do it for 10%. Typically an artist selling through a dealer will get a very small slice of the cake. And anyway you have got to sell yourself to the dealer in the first place. But it works for some, and it works very well for a few. But what about the networking day? That must be unneccessary. Ye Gods surely it cant take all day to design and keep up-to-date a website, write a blog or twitter, write and submit articles and press releases or sales copy, make videos of work in progress and stick em on u-tube, visit trade shows, go see exhibitions, join local art groups, study part-time to improve weaknesses, take full advantage of Guild membership, read and research about art and business trends, surf the internet for leads, inspiration and ideas, etc. Oh yes it can, and it should. So the business day, what is all that about? Ah yes! This is the day where the artist taps into and uses the vast store of knowledge and experience that all the other small business owners use. The day when you expand laterally or vertically. The day when you exert leverage. When Paretos Law, or The Ghenghis Khan principle apply. I could see a few blank faces in my audience. But this was the good news. On the fifth day the artist can do something else that will help ensure that survival is a probability. Examples are self publishing, licensing, print making, picture framing or restoring, running a small gallery, dealing in art, teaching, painting holidays, or writing about it. See? Colin Ruffell, February 2010 |