It’s mostly not enough to produce a great piece of art for it to sell. Selling works of art for the independent artist is not just about the creative process, it’s about marketing yourself and your work. That said, cultural marketing is not like any other, it is unique. While publicity sells services and everyday products, art sells perceptions or ideologies. The truth is that artworks have a cultural value. It goes beyond the strictly economic value and depends on different factors: aesthetic value, spiritual value, social value, symbolic value, and historical value. That is what artists are selling.
The proliferation of commercial opportunities for selling art, especially with the growth of the Internet, has helped many successful artists to live comfortably from the proceeds of their creative occupation. All art is saleable, though, with the right approach and great marketing (we’ll cover that in another blog post)
Art galleries will typically keep their eye on the current and emerging market trends and will adjust their approach and acquisitions to reflect those. The artists that most often succeed are those that play to the current trends whilst keeping the uniqueness in the works they produce.
Producing great quality work is the key to success but when you’re producing work, in your studio, it can be difficult to know when good is good enough. A way to define this is to set yourself a set of standards and, as an artist, this can help to set you and your works apart from others. Meeting your own standards is, then, the way to know your work is ready for its audience and will help shape your appeal to your target buyers. They will get to know you and your work and will know the level of quality it will naturally offer. Make your standards achievable – your art works don’t have to be perfect and, indeed, if they were, they would likely lose some of their inherent character and appeal, but make them high enough that the quality in what you produce can speak for itself.
Creating works of art that sell is about planning your collection, making choice available to your potential buyers and getting your work out there. Don’t let the fact that you are a creative put you off tackling the more mundane activities that your business as an artist needs for you to succeed.
All art is saleable if there is an interested audience to buy. Anon-Art offers a different way to sell your works and, in building up a target audience of interested buyers, this is purely, for each sale, based on the work itself. Selling in this anonymous way is a great way to see if you are achieving a look and feel that buyers will associate with you as an artist.
We all want to make a living from our passion. Join the Anon-Art revolution and reach your worldwide audience without leaving your studio.
