Besides deeply seated subconscious programming that I need to deal with there has been a long term love hate relationship with the gallery model. Yesterday, allowing myself to have a beginners mind I looked with fresh eyes at my options and found hope.
I listened to a podcast:
SPI 096 : How to Make a Living Selling Your Artwork Online with Cory Huff from The Abundant Artist
I followed a link:
1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly
and i read the comments on the articles
The 1000 true fans theorem is a place between poverty and fame. A place where a certain manageable number of people interested in your art can sustain your career. There has been a lot of news about the new model of the social networked artist using crowd-funding to create recordings and projects. As the music business transformed musicians looked to their fan base to advertise and fund their projects. One musician gives out a free song for every email. Every email address of someone who has shown an interest in your work becomes a valuable commodity. In the podcast cory Huff says he would have an artist identify their niche then create either a facebook ad or google ad directed at that niche with the landing place being an email sign up form. the goal being creating a database of interested parties who you would then open a stream of communication in the form of newsletters, blog posts, and announcements of new work for sale.
Then I went to Etsy and looked up abstract painters where i found Elena Petrova
Elena’s reviews show here selling paintings, large paintings, at the rate of two a month. These are good paintings, each one a personal statement and people are buying them on Etsy.
So why am I researching galleries, attending shows, looking for a gallery show that may result in a sale or not and then waiting 2 years for another? Is it ego? I need to say represented by so and so. Is it confirmation of talent? Acceptance in a an increasingly unbalanced enterprise?
I have to ask myself, what is my goal?
