Generosity of spirit tends to attract good things into your life.
Click here to see this email on the web |  | Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022 | | Want to Sell Your Art? Give it Away. | By Christopher Volpe | Share this article:     |  | At the art dealer by Max Gaisser, 1889 | Making money as an artist is not about making stuff and expecting to be rewarded with money. On the contrary, when you are generous with your creative work (and for the right reasons) everybody benefits.
Forget about the memes wanting you to believe it's not fair to ask artists to donate work to a worthy cause such as a charity auction or a local non-profit fundraiser. No one is asking you to "work for free" – that's just insecurity talking. There is nothing wrong with allowing your work to do an ounce of good in the world without expecting anything in return. |  | This is just an opinion piece, and you have every right to disregard and disagree. But I say, if you want to get started selling your art, seek out every local opportunity to show your work in person. Of course consider and make use of social media, online stores and galleries, free contests, and such, but show your work in person too.
This isn't just about galleries either. Always be looking for the next opportunity to exhibit: Loan or donate a piece to the Chamber of Commerce office, join your local artist association (where you can make connections with other artists and ask them for advice), go ahead and donate a piece to the soup kitchen auction and enter art association shows - all great ways to get seen.
If you're just getting started, it makes sense to reach out to all kinds of places and ask if you can simply display your art – your local library is a great place to start – with price tags or without. Use your work to brighten up church basements, cafes, restaurants, public parks, empty storefronts and doctors' offices. Independent retail stores, craft fairs, and festivals are also good places to show your art, sign folks up for your newsletters, and generally get noticed.
Priorities: Your goal here isn't to sell art. It's to get good work into the world (and in doing so, to establish yourself as an artist so you can make more good work, and if your work is good, the rest will follow.).
Once you begin getting invitations to show your work, accept them. Don't consider something beneath you or not worth your time because you don't think it will make you enough money. Instead, as a rule look for ways to do good and benefit the largest number of people in any situation. | — advertisement — |  | Besides, you never know who will see your work or what connections will eventually lead to a sale or even multiple sales.
I don't know anyone who has ever regretted showing work somewhere (unless it cost them money to do so) much less donating to charity auctions or even just giving work away to people they like (perish the blasphemous thought!). Artists often have folks contact them years after wanting to buy a piece they just saw online or to commission something big, perhaps to furnish a new home or purchase a special gift, attend a workshop or a class, etc.
Post your work to the web and again, expect nothing in return. Avoid using "watermarks" on web images unless you want to look like someone who sweats the small stuff. Even technically it doesn't make sense: digital web files of your work are too small to be printed out and sold as posters at Walmart anyhow. More importantly, obsessing over ownership or copyright law will make you look unprofessional. |  | Joos van Craesbeeck, The Coin Collector, 17th c. Oil on oak panel | Understand that the only people who are going to "steal" your work are people who would never have bought it anyway. If you think about it, you aren't losing anything that you actually have or had if someone saves an image of your work or even reproduces it as a cheap print for sale in Taiwan. Rest in the confidence that if you're producing high-quality paintings and always seeking the next opportunity to show them, nothing can ever take the place of your originals (or indeed, your next painting).
Generosity of spirit tends to attract good things into your life. If someone knows you're an artist and wants you to design a logo for them for free, that's different. That's not benefiting the world, just helping a person line their pockets, therefore it's a commercial transaction, and you decide whether and how much to be paid for that.
But making art is not about making money (there are far more lucrative ways to do that, and some even come with health insurance!) A better way to think of it is: A healthy art career should be about maximizing mutually beneficial relationships between you, your work, and the world.
Do that consistently, and you won't have to worry about "working for free." |
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