Why are you an artist?

[Philip Letts]

Insanity? Gravity? Can't help yourself? Wanna bankrupt yourself?

Why are you an artist? Really...

[Firepit Friday the Podcast]

Starving artist is not in my vocabulary. If you can't do what you love for a living then you need to MAKE it happen.

One of the hardest things to do is to measure your self worth as an artist. It's not about selling out it's about doing what you love.
We discuss this on the show all the time. Artists need to ban together and share their enthusiasm... eventually it catches on and more people see your vision.

One really important question to ask yourself as an artist. What is your level of success? Once you can answer that question making art for a living really isn't that hard. Staying motivated will be your hardest challenge.

[Philip Letts]

Cool headed thinking I guess. Shame more artists can't find enough outlets to support them and their work financially. Those of us that can are too few.

[Wren]

Yes this is one thing that gets me in the gut and at times I cannot or will not work. It is not that I have not been successful. I have sold quite a bit of my work. I find the very young though to the very old really like my work. I have had some young people spend up to $2000 on my paintings. My most successful exhibit in a tiny gallery at the SUNY museum I sold almost everything and made about $18,000. And they did not take a cut!!! But I have a hard time with the “Galleries”. I feel snubbed a lot. Where I work at the SUNY museum my fellow workers do not respect my work. This makes me sad. I feel too responsible when I do not make any money and lately I have not really been. I think with the economy I am not alone. I guess I feel a little stuck right now and do not know where to go from here. It’s hard either you market or paint. I am not good at doing both at the same time. And if I feel pressure to work I find I dry up totally.
Wren

[Philip Letts]

You have the talent, the economy may be tough, but pictures in the early $1,000's should keep selling. I would probably focus on painting and marketing in almost equal amounts to get through it.

Never feel too down... you are an artist - just making that choice is the inspiration.

[Wren]

Thank you your answer was an inspiration!

[Sunny Studio]

. It’s hard either you market or paint. I am not good at doing both at the same time. And if I feel pressure to work I find I dry up totally.
Wren.
Got that loud and clear. I think that I have been looking around to find Artists to see if there is a way to do that and carry on producing as well. It is very hard nut to crack. Mostly its by getting a good sale and living to the next off it and then go for the next sale to carry you on, building up finds were one can. I say that having spent the cream on my bank account now!
Need sales sometimes and that does not necessarily line up with the real need!
I would like to rent a Finnish studio this year and go do some of my Poem work in the country , yet its all cash in the end!
M

[Chris Peters]

Thanks for sharing Wren, I can totally understand where you are coming from. As for me, I'm focusing 100% on "creating" and am glad to being doing that. It's a lot more fun for me than "marketing" and I'm taking the long view approach and believe my success is simply sharing what I am able to create. When people like my art I feel good but it's really their "eye" doing the looking. When something of mine catches their eye and they take the time to tell me it means a lot because we have made a connection. The artwork stays with them. I think if "you" really like what "you" have created then you are on the right track. After that, (in my opinion) it's your duty to get it out there and share it with your fellow human beings. Cheers and all the best! Chris

[Fran Caldwell]

Oh my, what a question. I simply have just cut and copied a bit of my (other) blog page to try to answer that.

"I wanted to finally come out from behind my paintings and make contact with everyone out there. I have never had my own blog. I was around when personal computers first arrived, jumped on the bandwagon and thought I'd found the keys to the Universe. I have always been a computer geek. Yet I have never had a blog.

So this is it.

I know my customers fairly well, some more than others, and I received charming emails from would-be buyers, other artists, and personal friends, but I have always wondered, over the past couple of years, since I started selling online, who are you? The anonymous viewer. I see from the people who Google me (and Etsy-me, and Stumbleupon-me, and goodness-knows-what-search-engine-me) that you're definitely out there. It's just so hard to imagine you all, what you think, why my particular paintings interest you. I gather you are fun-loving, not too serious, nor self-preoccupied, a bit child-like, perhaps even silly sometimes, because why else would you find my work worth looking at?

I just wanted to say, on this crisp Sunday morning in Ontario, five days after those amazing election results, that I think about you all. You give me a lot of satisfaction, just by checking me out.

It must be said that you are not the reason I paint. I’m not sure why I paint. It certainly isn't to acquire huge wealth. Or even small wealth. Or even enough to pay the utility bills. But there, it's my passion. I can't stop.

Painting can be a lonely occupation, like the writing process, and we need to come up for air every so often to see if there's anybody out there who is remotely interested in what we produce. I am grateful to report that there are lots of you. I'll probably never know who, but I wish you all well, and thank you."

[Philip Letts]

Fran, inspired response. I hope you will blog more for us at b-uncut.

[Wren]

Thanks Fran this is a beautiful statement. I guess we should all say "YES WE CAN"!

[Wren]

I don't think it was a choice. I gave up after one year in School of Visual arts. It was 1970 and they were not teaching art. I got tired of crawling through plastic bags and having my sculpture teacher (this is what I really wanted to do) tell me I was brilliant when for a forgotten homework assignment I took my precious needed apple and stamped on it. We had to keep it there the rest of the semester to watch is rot. I thought that was just such bull shit. My drawing teacher there was very good Peter Heineman (I may be miss spelling his name; it was a long time ago). He was wonderful and I love to draw from the nude even today. After that year which I had to pay for myself I left kicked around, went to a community college at night, got married, and moved to St. Croix, where I decorated windows. Wow what an art education that was! But because of my experience in School of Visual arts I never thought I could be an artist. I had no ideas really and thought to start out by pushing foam through venetian blinds was not right. I wanted to learn the basics first. When we returned back to the states it was very hard to find work. We knew we did not want to return to where we had grown up; Long Island, any other place is an improvement! Bob had a masters in teaching and could not get work. We flounded a bit wound up in Saratoga Springs, NY. I was able to get a job as a receptionist in a dentist office because the state paid for ½ my salary for a year, it was a program for the needy. Bob took computer courses and got a job with the State by luck. In St. Croix I had learned book keeping I got a job in a law office in Albany. Not fun they supported the toxic dumpers. After a number of years I got very, very depressed. Thought maybe we should have a baby. Realized that that would be the very worst thing to do and found a job where I could go back to school. I had gone back to drawing and painting and was finding my style. Bob and I have always been into music at first only jazz we have branched out quite a bit now. I think I mostly started to paint and draw again was so I could put art on our walls we could not afford to do so any other way. I took lithography because I had no idea what it was and that was it. In order for me to get a degree I would have had to give up all art and take math, English, etc. So I went to the Art chair and asked if I needed a MFA to be an artist. He told me no only if I wanted to teach. Well no one was getting jobs so…. The beauty of SUNY is that you can audit any class for free. I did all my art history and the two professors of printmaking were only too happy to have people working in their shops. I now work two days a week in the University museum as their collection manager (another story!), have time for my art and still draw for free from the nude.
Wren

[Henryk M. Fantazos]

The anecdote about being praised for a squashed apple at classes that were supposed to teach sculpture-that is at the heart of the causes why visual arts are no longer serious part of culture.Smelling fraud the public turned away from us.Worse yet,admiration for the squashed apples persists like a long-living contagion in nearly all contemporary artists.To paint well one has to keep daily scouring and scalding baths to remove the effect of cretinization of modern art.
I imagine that most of you will object but before you reply with defense of cut-up cows and stones painted blue or even blurry photos ask yourself what is your contribution to that long ,extremely difficult discipline if in the secrecy of your heart you know you cannot even draw?(not that drawing makes one an artist but it surely is the alphabet of visual art,without which you simply flounder in self imposed kindergarten).................Suddenly I sensed that I lost wish to go on along that painful subject.Perhaps we need another thread of exchanges,"Can you tell the difference between an artist and someone who is entertaining oneself with finger-painting?"