The Art World

Lately I have been trying to figure out how one makes a living as an artist. Being an art major you tend to get this question all of the time, whether it be from relatives, counselors (or so they say) and from strangers. To me the art world is like any other world we make a living in. Before college, I was in the Air National Guard, an insurance salesman, call center rep, uniform route salesman, security guy and a lot of other low end jobs. In the end I decided that I didn't know much about the world we lived in and that perhaps I'm not as smart as I had thought. Yet 7 months in Iraq gave me some clarity into who I really was and in the end I knew two things: I hate going to bed on sunday nights knowing that monday would suck and I loved art!

Funny how a war brings out people's true characters and I was no exception to that rule, so upon coming home my wife decided that we wanted to go back to school, we knew nothing about how to make it! We figured that someone else would tell us, like a teacher (let alone a teacher who never had to make a living on art alone). So anyhow, we get to school and find out that through almost all of my teachers that none had to rely on their talents alone. Only two people did!

So guess where we take all of our advice from?

We spoke with them and then we started subscribing to a few magazines on the art market and art in general. In the end I learned two things color and composition are more important than how "real" it is and that the market has no one cookie cutter way.

Now I know a lot of people are saying "I do realism and I can sell work" well that's great but that's not my point. In the begining of every artist's career, when they're young maybe 4 or 6 whatever almost everyone tries to draw to find out that they can either make something look recognizable or something hideous. Thus creating a group of people who say "I can't draw" which we know is not true, because anyone can. What I'm saying here is that there is a pervading feeling that artist must create things that look "real" and if they don't no one is interested. In fact I thought that the whole art world was about realism and that was it, I didn't read a lot of art books prior to 2006.

After looking through hundreds of magazines, reading art magazines focusing on news, business and the "hottest" artists lists I've come to realize that there's a market for everything out there it's a matter of finding it. Hell, I sold some really stupid insurance policies and people would buy! Speaking of which, insurance agents as a whole have a high turnover rate and find it difficult to just make ends meets. Here's the catch, the good ones who do get out and market their product to their target markets.

I'm not done on this topic, but will write more later, I have an early morning tomorrow so yack at ya later!