Artists are a sensitive lot. You were built that way.
You’re affected by what goes on in your immediate world and what you witness outside of that bubble, and you rely on that sensitivity to make your best art. We don’t want to change that.
But it also exposes you to everything else — obstacles that wreak havoc with your studio practice and business intentions.
Maybe it’s your own illness or that of a loved one. A bully at your child’s school. A natural disaster in your community. And then there’s whatever’s playing out in the headlines this week, which is often too much to ask you to ignore.
What I’ve witnessed in a lot of the artists I’ve worked with is that we shut down in these situations. We detach and avoid.
It doesn’t even have to be something negative that triggers it. It could be a wedding, a long vacation, the birth of a child. Our resolve istested by all of these things.
In episode 276 of The Art Biz I make two arguments. One, keep making the art. And, two, keep the business in motion.
Listen
Keep making the art
I made the full case for this back in episode 48, “Why make art now,” at the start of COVID, and I still stand by every reason on that list. If you need the long version, go listen.
The short version is that not making art is not going to save the world. It’s doing the opposite, because one less person isn’t living up to their potential. Not making art deprives the world not only of your art, but of the entirety of you.
Making art makes you whole, and it lets you contribute to the world from a healthier position.
The poet Dana Gioia calls including art in our curricula and lives “mainstream civic common sense.” Not a luxury. Not optional. A way of knowing the world that sits alongside science and math, and one that those in power are very good at forgetting we need.
So keep making the art. That part isn’t negotiable.
Keep the business in motion
Making art is one thing. Sharing it with others, as you well know, is quite another.
And for a business to stay afloat, it’s got to stay in motion. There has to be some consistency over time, because it’s incredibly difficult to restart a business after you’ve neglected it, whether it’s for two months or two years.
I’ve watched this happen so many times to artists who innocently take time off for a family event, travel, or illness. Of course many things are unavoidable. We must tend to them.
But … What they discover is that it takes more energy to restart than to keep it going, because things change so quickly with trends and technology.
Or your list has gone cold, and you find you’re having to reintroduce yourself to the people who were once very well aware of your goings on.
Lean on the underlying machine
The way out of this predicament is to lean on a routine — an underlying machine that keeps your business almost, not quite, but almost on autopilot.
Think about what would happen if you opted out of the basic requirements for running a business. What if you didn’t make the art? Didn’t pay your bills? Didn’t pay your taxes? Didn’t update your website? Didn’t share your work with anyone?
Your business would suffer. And each thing you neglect compounds the problem.
So there has to be a way, even when life is heavy, that you keep it afloat. You need rituals, habits, routines (put in place long before they become a lifeline) that can keep going at a bare minimum.
Sometimes you have to just be okay with the bare minimum. I get that. But we have to keep the business going if we want it to be there on the other side.
There will always be room to layer more on top of the minimal routines when you are able.
I will show you how to do this when you join me for YOUR ART MARKETING PLAN.
The post Even when life is heavy, your art business still needs you (276) appeared first on Art Biz Success.