Art Marketing Secrets

Along the seven rivers of the rugged Australian Kimberley Ranges enigmatic rock paintings bear witness of an advanced civilization that existed long before the ancient cave paintings of Europe, long before man is believed to have acquired the intellect of expressing concepts in art.

I love the analog qualities of film. It offers the opportunity of an infinity of variations not available to digital cameras. And the polaroid took that one step further by adding an element of immediacy. I don’t think that any other camera captured so many “moments” in the lives of so many – each one a unique moment that could never be re-captured in the same way.

Today we took a short break from the studio and drove up the Malibu coast for a couple of hours to take in some nature. Not long after leaving Santa Monica the traffic along the coast highway slowed and we saw in the opposite lanes the aftermath of a very serious car accident involving 3 cars and a motorbike. It was that period just after an accident happens where everything seems still.

If the next Jackson Pollock or Georgia O’Keeffe showed up at a regional art fair or community gallery – would we recognize the mastery in their work?

I came across this old post from 2006 and inspired myself. Thought it was time to re-publish… I’m traveling in Berlin at the moment. I arrived yesterday from New York, and last night I was very tired and jetlagged and could not sleep. If you’ve never experienced it (jetlag), you are truly blessed. If you [...]

One winter I was on a painting trip in Oahu, when I went for a drive to the pipeline to watch some of the big wave surfers catch some big ones…. Scores of surfers and tourists sat on the shore and watched in awe at these tiny specks, dwarfed by massive crashing waves as high as buildings, and marveled at the courage of man. Last week was the Mavericks Surf contest in Half Moon Bay and today the elite of the world surfers wait on call, for the go ahead for Eddie Aikau invitational big wave surf event at the Pipeline in Hawaii, for the waves to meet the 40 foot requirement…. As well as being superb athletes they spend hours studying weather patterns, ocean currents and whatever it takes to understand the movement of the ocean…. The first thing I do when I arrive in a beautiful place such as Hawaii is spend a few days just looking at the ocean. Studying it’s waves, it’s light, it’s energy until I feel I have reached an understanding of the special gifts that the location has to offer…. You have to love it and be willing to do whatever it takes to master your craft. You have to have a big vision and you have to have a big passion for the vision that you want to share with the world.

Here’s a call to action from Nietzsche: “We, the new, the nameless, the hard-to-understand, we firstlings of a yet untried future – we require for a new end also a new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder, and merrier than any healthiness hitherto. He whose soul longs to experience the whole range of hitherto recognized values and desirabilities, and to circumnavigate all the coasts of this ideal “Mediterranean Sea” who, from the adventures of his most personal experience, wants to know how it feels to be a conqueror and discoverer of the ideal – as likewise how it is with the artist, the saint, the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the devotee, the prophet, and the godly Nonconformist of the old style: __ requires one thing above all for that purpose, great healthiness – such healthiness as one not only possesses, but also constantly acquires and must acquire, because one continually sacrifices it again, and must sacrifice it! __ And now, after having being long on the way in this fashion, we Argonauts of the Ideal, who are more courageous perhaps than prudent, and often enough shipwrecked and brought to grief, nevertheless, as said above, healthier than people would like to admit, dangerously healthy, always healthy again, __ it would seem, as if in recompense for it all, that we still have an undiscovered country before us, the boundaries of which no one has yet seen, a beyond to all countries and corners of the ideal known hitherto, a world so over-rich in the beautiful, the strange, the questionable, the frightful, and the divine, that our curiosity as well as our thirst for the possession thereof, have got out of hand __ alas! that nothing will any longer satisfy us!

Recently I have been enjoying a book called “nnnn” by Marc David about the idea of eating food which nourishes our body on all levels. In the book Marc says xxxxxx I was wondering what this would be like applied to art. Can art nourish not only our Souls but our bodies and our emotions? What effect to the images that we surround ourselves effect our emotions and the way we see life? What are some of your favorite artists that nourish you on a deep level?

Edward_ Winkleman has an excellent post on how to get your foot into the NY Art World…. No one is a better ally in your fight to get the recognition you deserve here than other artists. They’re undoubtedly the most qualified critics of your work, they understand completely what you’re going through, and if you share what you hear about opportunities with them, you should be able to expect the same in return…. These are curated generally, so your work may still be rejected, but they do indeed lead to group exhibitions and other opportunities. There are two primary registries you should apply for: the one at Artists Space and the one at White Columns. Please note that both of these spaces focus on emerging artists engaged in the “contemporary” dialog, so if you’re more of a traditionalist, you might not be accepted…all I’m saying here, is consider their mission before you submit…. And the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ “Artists in the Market Place” is a remarkable program that I’ve seen change everything for some of its alumni…. So organize an exhibition, write reviews, work for an art handler, work for a museum, hell…work for a gallery, teach, join an artists’ crit group, start an artist crit group, go to salons, go to lectures, go to openings.

As an artist and a business owner, one of the first foundations to success and growth is to measure your results. How do you do that?