Whether we like it or not art is intrinsically linked to money and money magnets, more often investors hoping for a massive tax rebate from donating or sponsoring galleries and museums all over the world. We all love nice pictures in our homes, it’s all related.
ONE : Art is a business
Whatever your practice you buy or acquire materials to work with, that makes it a trade, which is either exhibited funded by arts council funding, sold or promoted by a gallerist, all at the artists’ expense, that’s finance.
TWO : Buyers aren’t concerned with art theory!
Many art lovers ‘don’t get that art stuff’ very often art is made by artists with their own self-interest in mind….how could anyone relate to something like that? Unless you have found your niche market to sell to or exhibit to people who relate to your mission as an artist, like a medical miracle to salve an emotive connection.
THREE : Tourism is boosted by the arts yet everyone expects it to be accessed free!
What businesses undercuts itself for the sake of being ‘seen’ ‘found’ ‘discovered’?… not many!, mostly artists’ business economy although worth billions to the economy around the world, economic development is rarely invested to artists themselves, so why continue like this? I know of no other occupation that would! We all like to volunteer for a good cause but the bread and butter from art trade is in the auction houses, not artists who like to ‘suffer for the art’.
FOUR : What is Art? it is a question often asked!!!
There are so many published authors of theory of art analysing ‘elite artists’ artists who make very little despite their fame, no one in this art theory can seriously define ultimately other than academically what art is…. Ann Rea of Making Art Making Money describes that artists ‘sell emotion’ to a target market defined by the artists’ research themselves – whoah just there!!! Emotion!!! We all feel moved by many an art piece and Marie Kondo’s “sparking of joy” of items we treasure.
FIVE : Artists don’t have to be a ‘penniless struggling’ away toiling at their craft!
Whether or not an artist has studied at college or university, or no experience of selling and making art but class themselves as an artist, Ann Rea offers an eight part course to find an artist’s niche market and tune into emotions to resolve the awkwardness of ‘selling art’. So why don’t art establishments and academics not want artists to know this? that doesn’t matter it is about time artists took back their power and made a living from what they love to do.
Just to be clear, I am a student on the Making Art Making Money course and it has totally changed my life and outlook for my art life, and importantly I have to express that I am under no due pressure by Ann Rea to create this article and received no direct approval from Ann to write this, this is a personal observation from what I have learned. It is of course life changing for all those who stick at the course. And hey, what does anyone have to lose? Only so much to gain!!