Blog
How Artists Can Sell to Tourists, Part 1
Artists who hope to make money need customers. The tens of millions of tourists who travel annually comprise one category of customer. Some tourists come to a given locale like Santa Fe, Provincetown, or Carmel for the art; others include gallery hopping in a New...
When Your Gallery Owner Cools to You
Sometimes a marketplace player cools to us because we haven’t been selling well. This happens all the time. A gallery owner who loved your last suite of paintings is completely cold to your new paintings, even though in your estimation they are better, for no other...
Handling the Weight of Individuality
It is a creative person’s individuality that defines her. Most people are conventional and prize conformity; some people prize their individuality. Even if she trains herself to hold her tongue, an individual who prizes her individuality will already know as a young...
The Journey from Artistic Child to Retirement
It can prove a very long journey from artistic child to a genuine opportunity to pursue one’s art. Sometimes a whole “day job” or “raising family” work life intervenes and it is only during retirement that art making has a chance flourish. Here is one such story: “I...
What Sort of Art Child Were You?
How do you picture your childhood artistic life? Was art the place of sanity for you, the place where you got to remove yourself from the turmoil and the dramas around you and retreat into your imagination? Or do you think that your art-making activities isolated you...
Artists and Stress
Life produces stress, the artistic personality produces additional stress, creating produces even more stress, and living the artist’s life is the topper! An artist must learn how to deal with all of these stressors—and how to deal with them effectively. There are...
Ceremonies for Artists
One of the things that became extra clear to me as I led workshops in London, at Esalen, at Kripalu and at Omega recently was how much ceremonies matter and can help—in your life and in your creative life. By “ceremony” I just mean a small, mindful activity with a...
Artists and Insomnia
According to a Princeton National Health and Wellness Survey, thirty-seven percent of U.S. adults reported insomnia or sleep difficulties during a recent twelve-month period. Between 40% and 60% of people over the age of 60 suffer from insomnia. Two million children...
Do You Have the Answers?
It will pay you excellent dividends to arm yourself with some personal answers to the following ten questions. What will you do when: + You really want to paint but you feel resistant? + Everything else in life seems to come before the painting? + You’ve painted for...
Presenting Yourself With Strength
If it’s become your habit to apologize for your work, to hide from potential buyers, to avoid marketplace interactions, to dismiss yourself as soon as you can (as if beating others to the punch), then these are bad habits that you will want to change. To change a...
