Art You Make for Fun Versus Art You Make to Sell

I’m writing a book. The working title is: Artists: Don’t Starve!

One of the ideas in the book is that to freely make the art that wants to be made, you need to create a stable financial platform for yourself. You might know, as I sure do, that there’s nothing more physically, emotionally and creatively draining than worrying about money.

To stabilize your financial life you either need to make or get a day job. I wrote more about how to make a day job for yourself here. In summary, you can get a job with a company, or design your own day job doing work you already do well.

Or you could sell your art.

Art for art's sake versus art for sale; two separate disciplines?

This is up to you, but you might want to consider separating the art you sell from the art you do as your pure creative practice.

What I mean by this is--you might need to do some art just for yourself, or for the art itself, completely separate from art that you expect to sell.

Was Thomas Kinkade a sell-out?

The poster child for the need to do this is an artist called Thomas Kinkade. Considered by mainstream art critics to be a kitschy sell-out, Kinkade trademarked “Painter of Light” to describe himself, and at the height of his career made millions by printing his original images on everything imaginable.

I brought him up in a class I taught last year to four artists wanting to learn how to sell their work.

None of them criticized his “selling out.” “More power to him making tons of money,” they all agreed.

But then they asked this question: “Did he make time for his pure creative practice?”

This was an important question. The rest of the story about Thomas Kinkade is that he died of an accidental alcohol-pill overdose in 2012 at the age of 54 and at the height of his popularity.

The artists in my class didn’t care at all about him “selling out." They just knew how crucial protecting their pure creative practice was, no matter what.

Maintaining time for your art for art's sake versus only focusing your energy on art for sale

Why is it important to protect your creative time that's purely for creativity's sake?

You need time to create freely without worrying whether what you’re making, doing, singing, playing is going to sell.

But once that’s a part of your life, then you can look at the rest of your art freely, to see if or what can be sold. As long as your free creativity has its place, then everything else is up for grabs.

If you’d like to chat about turning some aspect of your art into a day job, we can talk about that.

A free resource to help you sell your art

If you’re ready to begin selling your art, I have a new tool for you to use. When you sign up for my weekly newsletter, you’ll have access to this new cheat sheet called: Keep Calm & Sell Something. It’s the perfect tool to help you get organized and begin selling!

My individualized coaching programs support you in making money with your art

I currently offer two individual coaching programs: Create Your Day Job and Sell Your Art Peacefully. If you’d like to talk about whether either of these programs would be a fit for you, please book a chat with me.