New Facebook Page Launched for An Artist's Business Guide

I have just set up a dedicated Facebook Page for "An Artist's Business Guide". I am hoping the page will become a place for readers of the Business Guide to post ideas and links, share information and common experiences.

I will be using it to highlight any interesting topics or relevant comment that I come across relating to making a living as an Independent Artist.

So please follow the link and LIKE the page. And we'll see where it goes...

Artist against Artist - The Irish Art World in 2011

Last weekend Dublin hosted not one but two National Art Fairs. No-one seemed to see this as odd, except maybe for some of the artists and galleries involved.

Art Fair 2011 finished up on sunday in the RDS, Ballsbridge. The fair, which has been running in one guise or another since 2000 featured over 100 artists and galleries. While the number of visitors over the weekend seemed to be very high there is no doubt that sales activity was a little quieter than previous years. Meanwhwile, up the road from Ballsbridge at the RHA building on Ely place the VUE: National Contemporary Art Fair was running for the first time, - which according to the Irish Times featured "most of the main Irish galleries, North and South." The main "contemporary art" galleries that is.

Two art fairs in Dublin, on the same weekend? In a country the size of Liverpool ,with a limited pool of support for the visual arts to draw from. Yet someone obviously thought it made sense to run a second art fair, in direct competition (did I mention already it was on the same weekend !?) with the already established and successful (and dare I say it, popular) RDS Art Fair.

Obviously the RHA and organisers of VUE considered the art that they were showing to be quite separate from and different to the art that Art Fair 2011 was offering. And clearly they saw the market for their art as being very different too. Why else would you choose to run one Art fair in direct competition with another? I could suggest arrogance, or self-delusion, but that wouldn't really answer the question, would it? And does it really matter? Is it worth any more than a passing "only in Ireland!" style comment? After all a contemporary art fair had been operating successfully as part of the annual Interior Design Fair for the past couple of years.,

What it highlights for me, more than anything else is the two-tier art world that operates in Ireland and which has always been here, but which we just seem to accept. And when I say we I am mean both artists and general public. And so when the two art worlds come together over the same weekend, in direct competition with each other, no-one bats an eyelid? It's already accepted that this is the status quo and so deserves no comment. I disagree.

On the one hand there is a world where artists produce "contemporary art", around which a whole "contemporary art sector" has been created, complete with an impressive network of new county arts centres, state of the art public galleries (VISUAL in Carlow is an incredible space, but who is ever going to fill it on a regular basis?), an army of arts administrators to manage all of these "spaces" and to oversee and allocate an ever reducing public funding budget, (how many have the skills to make their arts centres commercially viable enterprises in the absence of state funds? We'll see soon enough over the next few years.) and a third level arts education system that produces fine art graduates each year that see no relation between making art and making art that will connect with an art buying public. Without an art buying public there would be no art market, no visual arts sector. The idea of making art for art's sake and being supported by state grants just doesn't cut it when the country is in the midst of deep austerity measures.

Which leads us to the last pillar of the "contemporary art sector", the commercial galleries that represent and sell the work of the artists that come up through the arts education system and are fostered by the public arts support network. Most of these galleries, "the main galleries, north and south" according to the Irish Times, were exhibiting at the VUE: National contemporary Art Fair, an art fair that has been endorsed by the RHA, (a publicly funded Academy for the Arts , an " artist based and artist orientated institution dedicated to developing, affirming and challenging the public's appreciation and understanding of traditional and innovative approaches to the visual arts) and embraced by the broader, publicly funded arts sector.

On the other hand there is .... what? Ordinary art? Non-contemporary art? Art that the general public respond to and collect but that doesn't warrant the support of the arts council or public funding or your local arts office? Art that doesn't get to hang on the walls of our new public gallery network because it is seen as too traditional, too representative, not challenging enough? Or just not clever enough to get beyond the "peer" selection committees , set up to vet and approve the art that eventually gets shown to the wider public. This "ordinary art" is also the art that is represented and presented through the vast majority of private commercial galleries operating in Ireland - but these galleries don't make the shortlist of the "main" galleries in Ireland, nor do they get the endorsement of the RHA.

I have this image in my mind of hordes of Zombies pressed up against and banging on the lovely glass walls of the RHA building on Ely place, trying to get noticed, trying to get in. But to no avail, as the chosen few on the inside continue to sip lattes and wine and talk about the importance of the black paper bag that's displayed on the wall and how it is has redefined the future of art in Ireland! And worse still I'm on the outside :)

Clearly there are two types of art being made in Ireland. One that is made for the ordinary art enthusiast and collector, and another that is made for a self-serving and self-preserving contemporary arts sector. What a pity then that the Royal Hibernian Academy should choose to support the latter and lend it's name to an Art Fair that chose to run in direct competition with the RDS Art Fair - an event that has, over the last 10 years, done more than any other in Ireland in making art - contemporary and "ordinary" - accessible to a wider public and developing a new, self-confident market for Irish art in Ireland. And in the process providing a market place and opportunity for 100s of independent artists, like me, to build and develop our own careers, independently of the "contemporary art sector" to which we appear invisible and by whom we are basically ignored.

If that's starting to sound a bit aggrieved on my part then let me say that it 's not intended to, it is simply reflecting the feelings of so many of the artists and galleries that I have spoken to in the past couple of weeks. Personally I am very content where I am in my career at present - I have a strong support base for my work both nationally and internationally, I work with some great pro-active galleries and I have just had a successful Art Fair 2011. But that shouldn't take away from the reality that there is large cohort of visual artists in every county in Ireland that are trying to make a living from their art and that do not, and probably never will get to benefit from the support or funding opportunities available to the "contemporary art sector". And that just seems unfair. And maybe that's where my frustration is coming from.

Does any of this seem familiar? Does it reflect your experience? Let us know...

Rolano Gray - Art Lover or Duck?

Keep an eye out for Mr. Rolano Gray. He will email you with some lovely comments about your work and offer to purchase it - with a money order or check. And don't worry about shipping, he will take care of it....but wait, the money order may be more than the price of your artwork and he'll soon be asking for you to send him back the balance....

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck....it's probably a duck. And it seems Mr Gray has been offering to buy lots of art online......here are some links to various forums and posts about his "work".

http://www.dianamiskell.com/blog/scammers-at-it-again/
https://www.artspan.com/community/showthread.php?t=4528
http://community.artspan.com/showthread.php?t=4698

It's relatively easy to protect yourself from online scams, here are some simple tips:
- Only accept payment via Paypal or direct bank transfer to your own bank account.
- If you are going to accept credit card, wait until the money has reached your bank account before releasing the artwork. The same applies to direct bank transfer.
- Don't accept checks or money orders - unless it's from a trusted client.

Most people who contact you about buying your art online will probably be genuine, so don't get too paranoid about someone emailing you about a sale, just be cautious and stick to the simple guidelines above.

Staying Afloat in a Recession - An Artist's Guide

It's been a while since my last post.

Not intentionally, it's just that it's been a challenging year so far, one that's taken a lot of time and energy just trying to figure out how to stay standing up as the economy continues to crash down. So I've been spending a lot of time looking at ways to generate new income streams from my art, reviewing my whole marketing and business strategies and generally questioning my views on how to earn a living as an artist - all of which has given me plenty of material for future posts in An Artist's Business Guide. That's if I ever manage to give myself the time to write about them.

The good news is that after months of questioning everything, what becomes clear is that the simple guidelines I have always followed still apply, now more so than ever:

• Create work that people can connect with. Create your best work now.
• Have a business plan for the next 2 years
  
• Identify your markets and how you plan to reach them
  
• Create multiple opportunities for people to see your work (online and offline)

• Make it easy for people to connect with you (online and offline)
• Nurture your customers
• Think positively, don't get caught up in negative, moaning conversations!
  
• Continually review and revise your business plan

The last one, "continually review and revise your business plan" has to be the most important thing you can do in the current economic environment. It is what distinguishes us as professional artists, intent on earning a living from our art and willing to work at the business side of things in order to make that happen.

The business plan does not have to be some 20 page document that you hire an accountant to draw up for you, nor a one time project that you complete yourself at the start of your career and then leave at the bottom of a drawer in case you ever need to present it to your bank manager or arts administrator. It is something that is alive and constantly evolving. It can be scribbled on a single piece of paper or simply reside in your head, just as long as you keep it to the forefront of everything you do.

It should identify who you think your markets are (i.e. your customers) and how you plan to reach them. How much income you need to generate in a year and how much work you need to produce and sell to meet that target. It should identify different income streams that you can pursue from your art. And it should outline a clear online strategy showing how you plan to use your website and social media to help drive people to your work.

Your business plan should determine what you do in a given year. And when you hit an unexpected bump in the road, then that's the time to re-evaluate where you are and plot a new course.

So let's jump back to the start of the year and see how it can be put into practice. I had a solo exhibition in Dublin in March which by most people's measure was a great success. It generated a real buzz, got some great press, introduced my work to a new audience and sold well (14 pieces). But the value of sales (ie what I got!) fell short of what I had planned for. Two reasons for that - my expectations were too high based on the sales from my solo show the previous year, and the larger pieces proved harder to sell than in previous years meaning that the work that did sell was of a lower sales value. With gallery commission and the cost of frames and materials taken out it left a bit of a hole in my bank balance! The other stark reality that came home was that the recession was hitting all levels of the the art world and was really going to play a big part in the success or otherwise of the rest of the year. So what to do?

After a couple of days of quiet panic I sat down with a coffee, a pen and a piece of paper and began to rethink my business plan for the year. How as I going to make up for lost income and just as importantly compensate for what I expect will be a tough year overall? First I started to list out everything I could think of that I had in my favour as an artist (a very important exercise as it helps to build some self confidence).

• People still like my work (thankfully!), it continues to attract new admirers
• People that could afford to were still investing in it, others would love to but maybe not now because of the recession.
• Over the years I had built up an archive of images of my most popular paintings. Maybe I could utilise these better?
• I had developed a strong online presence with my website and Blog. The visitor figures to my website continue to increase each year and continued to show a high proportion of visits coming from overseas (US, UK, Australia and Europe).
• I had set up Facebook and Twitter accounts but hadn't figured out quite how to get the most out of them.
• My painting workshops, although small in size, were proving popular and attracting repeat participants
  

I then started to consider the implications of the lower sales from the solo exhibition and the feedback I was receiving:

• There was still a market for my work, people still wanted to invest in it but were being much more cautious about buying.
• I could probably anticipate the same level of sales activity for the rest of the year through my other galleries and the art fairs - so I would have to compensate for that in my plan
• Price was important, with small to medium paintings (€500 - €1200) proving most popular
• Most people were still requesting discounts (a sign of the times)
• A lot of people expressing interest in attending my painting workshops
• A lot of interest coming via my website and the Youtube video that I had created for the exhibition.

Then I made some key assumptions:

• People still want to invest in my work, but pricing of paintings has become more critical than ever
• Focus on small to medium sized work (but not exclusively, there will always be a demand for larger work, just not as strong at the moment)
• I may need to find some more outlets for my work - galleries/art fairs
• The Irish art market is becoming more and more challinging due to the austerity measures being introduced by the government. So focus on developing overseas markets - ie selling more work to UK and US collectors.
• My archive of images could be used to develop different income streams.
• My web presence, even though it is well received, needs a complete review a to make sure I'm getting the most from it.
• The painting workshops should not be overly affected by the recession and are attracting strong interest based on the online booking to date.

With all of this in mind I drew up a new plan for the year, a list of objectives to be followed through on over the next couple of months;

1. Research new galleries and fairs, both in Ireland and overseas
2. Concentrate my new paintings on small to medium sizes and make sure the larger ones are real show stoppers!
3. Produce a range of Art Greeting Cards, using some of the most popular images from my archive.
4. Introduce some new Limited Edition Giclee prints specifically for selling online into the US market.
5. Spend time developing my online presence and learning how to get the most from it
6. Develop and grow my annual series of summer painting workshops on Achill Island
   

Oh, and design a smartphone App for the iPhone.

All in all a pretty hefty amount of work you might think. And so it was :) Some of it proved successful, some of it just didn't work. Some of it will only tell with time. But I'm feeling a little more confident now coming into the busiest time of the year for me - with some big Art Fairs and shows coming up. Hopefully the new additions to the "product range" - the Art Cards, new prints, the altered balance between Small, Medium and Large paintings, the improved online strategy - will all help to secure the levels of income I have planned for. Each item of the new plan deserves a blog post of it's own and that's what I hope to do over the next few months, so stay with me as I try to write it all up.

In the meantime consider your own "business plan" for the year and whether it needs some rethinking or tweeking. Staying afloat as an artist in a recession such as the one we are in is a pretty big challenge for anyone and requires constant monitoring and revision of your own plans for the year. But sure what else would you rather be doing?

Using Video as a Marketing Tool

A different type of post...

I don't normally use An Artists Business Guide to directly promote anything I am involved in, I prefer to keep it separate to my art business. But I'm going to make an exception this time as I hope and think it may be of interest to some readers.

I have an exhibition coming up next month in Dublin in a new gallery - The Doorway Gallery. The theme I have chosen for the show is emigration - unfortunately a very topical subject at the moment as Ireland is going through a catastrophic economic recession, which has led to another wave of mass emigration from the country. Rather than simply write an "artist statement" for the show and explain what the show is about I decided to create a video, with the aim of conveying a fuller sense of the emotional nature of the exhibition's subject matter. With this in mind I chose an old recording from the 1940s by Count John McCormack, an Irish tenor who was considered the Pavarotti of his day. The song is a lament about emigration called "The Old House" and provides the music for the video.

I created the video over a number of evenings on the sofa in Microsoft Movie Maker, a very simple but effective piece of free software and have just posted the end results up on Youtube. My plan is to use this video over the next 4 weeks as a way of marketing and promoting the exhibition via the internet and social media, and also hopefully to make people pause for a minute and reflect on the sadness and damage that comes with forced emigration.

As I was working on the paintings and thinking about the subject matter - old, deserted Irish farmhouses - it dawned on me just how "normalised" emigration has become in Ireland. My father emigrated to England in the 1950s, where he met and married my mother before returning home to Dublin. My brother and sister emigrated in the 1980s. My sister to Japan and is now married and living with her family in Australia. Some of my closest friends emigrated in the 1980s and are now permanently settled abroad. It's almost like a rite of passage if you are Irish.

And so it became important to me that I try to convey that sense of sadness at what is left behind through something more than just an artist's statement. And that's when I started to make the video. Using a simple slide show format, some concise, complementary text and a carefully chosen song I think it produces something that is more than the sum of its parts. And I now have something more than simply an "artist's statement" that I can add to my website and also something I hope will help get the theme of the exhibition across in a more engaging way.

But that's only my opinion! I would love to know what you think, does it work? Is it effective?
Have a look - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb_nOB9HdYU

Planning For A Successful Year

January is a strange month for me. Full of ups and downs, paralysing fear and blind panic. I can honestly say I hate and love January in equal measure.

It's the time I sit down and wrap up the previous year, update my spreadsheets and accounts, put them into the archive folder, safely tucked away until it's time to prepare and send in my tax return. It's the time to count the number of new contacts, subscribers and clients I have added to my contact list over the past year, the time to weigh up whether or not I've met the career goals I set for myself at the start of the year. If it's been a good year then it's time to clap myself on the back, have a sip of wine (always advisable when doing this exercise), as I remind myself of some of the big sales I had or the good press coverage I managed to get or the helpful contacts I have made. At that's when the paralysing fear kicks in.

Because that's when it I know I have to start all over again, that last year's successes are gone, last year's money is almost gone!! The income column in my spreadsheet for 2011 reads NIL. And to make things worse the recession that the economy is in is just getting worse. That's when the true reality of being an independent artist of no guaranteed means sinks in. And that's a good time to take another sip of wine.

And then the planning starts. Without a plan you are giving yourself no chance to succeed, but with a plan you are putting yourself in control. The very act of building a new plan for the year is what keeps the fear at bay and allows you to stay positive and excited about the future.

The starting point is giving yourself some goals to aim for - financial, career, professional and personal goals. My financial goal is always to make at least the same as the previous year, but I will always plan to make a little more. My career goal this year will be to continue to grow my profile and attract new collectors and admirers. My professional goal will be to create a number of paintings over the course of the year that I think have moved me forward as a painter, which ensures my work is evolving and which continues to excite me. My personal goal is to make sure I can fit all that I need to do into a regular working week as much as possible and not to take on anything that will mean having to be away from home for long periods.

Once your goals are set you can begin building a plan to meet them. I have a very simple approach to making my plan for the year. In my notebook I draw 12 columns, one for each month of the year, then a number of rows, one for each of my income earning activities, such as gallery exhibitions, art fairs, painting workshops, career coaching workshops, Art Cards, online sales etc. I then start to fill in the grid, starting with my annual "main events" - these are the important ones as they are the ones that I expect to generate the most income from - Wexford FRINGE festival in October, the RDS Dublin Art Fair in November, a solo show sometime in March that I've been working towards. I then add any gallery group shows that I need to have new work for, usually summer and christmas shows and mark the month they need to be delivered in. I always put a note of the number of paintings I plan to have for each show in the grid also.

Already, I have a 12 month calender showing painting commitments for March, May, June, October, November and December. And an estimate of the number of new paintings I will need for each. From this I can start to get a rough idea of how many frames I will need, and when I will need to order them. The plan is coming together and the grid is starting to fill up.

Next, I'll start to plan my series of summer painting workshops, making sure they do not clash with any major painting commitments. Likewise with my Art Coaching workshops I will plan to run them at times that will not interfere too much with my painting schedule.

Finally I look at any new projects or opportunities I might want to take on. This year I hope to have a public gallery show on the east coast over the summer so I'll provisionally mark that in for June. This will include some of my Limited Edition Prints so I make a note that I will need to order and frame a collection of prints for this if the show goes ahead. Also this year I plan to produce a range of Art Cards which I will sell through the galleries I exhibit with, the art fairs, my painting workshops, painting demonstrations and through my website. They may not generate a huge return but they will help to promote my work and my website and hopefully help to generate some future opportunities. I mark them in the February column.

And that's my draft plan for the year, drawn up on a page in my notebook. That's all that's needed for now. I will draw up more detailed time-lines for each of the activities marked in the plan, working backwards from the end date to make sure I allow myself enough time to complete everything that needs to be done (e.g. getting invitations printed, ordering frames, getting into listings etc). If I want to go one step further I can try to estimate roughly how much I expect to sell through each of the gallery shows and art fairs, how many people I expect to sign up for the workshops, etc. With my experience of previous years I should be able to make a reasonable guess, making sure to allow for the fact that this year will probably be harder than ever because of the recession. So I can see if the activities I have planned for the year are enough to generate the income needed to meet my financial goals. If not then I can start looking now at ways to make up the shortfall. And that is the single greatest benefit of preparing a plan at the start of the year - it allows you to stay in control and to be proactive. And now the paralysing fear is gone.

Unfortunately it has been replaced by blind panic. How am I supposed to get all that work done?? But we'll leave that for another day...

Ireland's Artist Tax Exemption Scheme retained

Ireland is in deep economic trouble right now and today the government published it's Four Year Plan for Recovery and thankfully the Artist's Tax Exemption scheme has survived the cuts, albeit up to a reduced level. So the artists' exemption from Income Tax is now to be restricted to the first €40,000 in earnings.

Credit is due to the Minister for Arts, Mary Hanafin, for recognising the importance of the scheme as a critical support for visual artists who are trying to make a living from their art, and ensuring that the scheme remains intact.

By slashing the income threshold from €125k to €40k the scheme has now become what it should always have been, a helping hand to artists struggling to live off a low income in a precarious business and not a means for tax avoidance by others lucky enough to make six figure annual earnings from their work.

The retention of the scheme will prove even more important in the coming years as other proposed measures in the four year plan will have a direct negative impact on the Irish art market, and the ability of artists to sell their work in Ireland. These include the increase in VAT to 23%, the €5m cut in arts funding in 2011, and most seriously the reduced spending power of the domestic market as a result of the new levies and tax increases that are proposed.

But just as it demonstrates that the scheme is an important support for artists (at minimal cost to the exchequer with the newly reduced income threshold) it also sends a signal to others looking in that Ireland still recognises how important it's aritsts are to the cultural as well as the economic health of the country. And that they are deserving of some level of support.

So thanks Minister for ensuring we at least have a chance of getting through the next couple of years.