If I Succeed in Selling My Art, I Will Become…
Note: This is an excerpt from my upcoming book: The Nine Binds That Trap Artists, and How to Make Friends with Them. The book is about how to make friends with money, marketing and business, (instead of pretending you can say “I am PROSPEROUS” enough times to your reflection in the mirror to make your business struggles evaporate). I am VERY OPEN to suggestions for a better title. Email me here if you have an idea.
If your work doesn’t sell, it’s depressing. I talked about that a couple weeks ago.
if your work does sell, don’t celebrate. You’ve just made a pact with the devil.
You’ve sold out.
You’llstart copying your previous success and your fans will cooperate withyou by booing you off the stage if you don’t sing your hits.You’ll abandon your vision and only make stuff that’s tame andsafe so the National Endowment for the Arts won’t pull yourfunding. You finally own a house and dammit, you want to keep it.
Worstof all, if money brings power, and power corrupts, selling your workmeans you’re earning your way into the ranks of the blood-sucking,money-grubbing 1% who exploit the rest of society for their private,selfish gain.
Artis a luxury, so you won’t sell your work. If your work doesn’tsell, it stinks. If it does sell, you’re corrupt. It’s impossibleto win.
You aren’t actually caught between selling or selling out.
The problem is simpler than that, and also completely under your control.
Theanswer: you have to define the difference for yourself between makingwork that is a pure expression (or as close as you can get) of yourcreative vision, and commissioned work.
Myfriend Sharon is a brilliant painter. I have bought so much of herwork I’ve almost run out of wall space to hang it.
One evening atdinner we got started talking about the difference between selling,selling out, and taking commissions.
“I know thedifference,” she said. “For me, when I have total control overwhat I make; I make what inspires me, I offer it for sale and someonebuys it, that’s selling.
“Idon’t call when someone requests that I paint something specific‘selling out.’ I think about it as doing a commission. I’vedone some of those when they felt right. A dentist wanted a largepainting of trees for his office and I took that one because I likepainting natural scenes. I also took it because I could do it withoutfeeling like he wanted me to paint something that was completelyuntrue. I also took a commission to paint a golf course/ocean scenefor someone.
“They both turnedout fine, but someone who knows my work like you do (referring to me)could probably tell the difference between one of my commissions andmy ‘pure-I-painted-exactly-what-came-to-me’ paintings.”
She sent me asnapshot of the golf course painting. Although it was beautiful and Icould tell she painted it, something was missing. The skill wasthere, but to my eyes the life force that gleams from the paintingsthat emerge directly from her inspiration, was missing.
Contrastthis with another story she told me. A woman bought one of herpaintings at a show, then asked her to ‘repaint the pink so it’sbrighter,’ to match her decor.
IfSharon had taken that “commission,” the request to alter acompleted painting, she would have felt like she’d vandalized herown work.
If you shuddered at that idea the way she did, your gut is telling you the same thing hers said. Changing a finished painting would indeed be selling out.
Her gut was her guide. Yours can be too.
I’m teaching a ten-week class beginning on July 9th, on Zoom, 6-7pm-ish Pacific Time. You’ll figure out your own definition of selling vs. selling out, along with making peace with money, figuring out who your people are that want your work, and how to make relationships with them, authentically.
Information about the class, Peace With Money and Marketing: Get to Know Your Inner Money Sage is here.
If you’d like to chat for a few minutes about whether or not the class is a fit for you (or to ask me any other questions), click here.
Let’stalk about your work and how to reach the people who want it.