Do You Need Artistic Skills To Succeed?
The short answer is that it helps but it is not enough. To make a living from your talent you will need more than just artistic talent. If you search the internet to look at the work of some artists that are making a living selling their work you might wonder if artistic skills are necessary at all.
So how depressing is this for those that have spent three or four years at art college sweating their way through their courses and building up student loans of thousands of pounds or dollars. We have to be realistic to the fact that many mediocre artists can become successful and talented artists can become the starving artists.
It is often the case that the most talented artists work harder and longer on their art leaving them less time and energy to build up their brand. Unfortunately for these artists their financial success depends proportionally on how well that they market themselves.
Artists have to realise early in their careers that the more time that they spend on marketing now the more time that they will have later to spend on their art. Most artists have at some time in their career to take other work to subsidise their art work. Sometimes this work is art related, but often it has nothing to do with art.
O.K., we all know that the “M” word is poison to some artists, and that any artist that even thinks about the commercial side of their careers is selling out. How can they toil away at their craft only for it to be put on the market and then sold like double glazing, they ask. Very noble you may say. Well I say two things. First there is a certain amount of conceit to believe that you and your chosen way is any better than any other person that works hard at their way. Secondly why would any artist want to spend days, weeks or months toiling on their work and then find that nobody wants to buy it?
When I came out of college many years ago I had the same noble ideas, but I had a reality moment when I was working as a dock labourer and returning home after work, not having any creative energy to push on with my painting. If the internet and its information had been available in those years I would have saved loads of time on making a successful art career. Nothing I can do about that, but I can help young artists by showing them the mistakes that I made and how they can avoid them.
