Things that “They” don’t tell you when you decide to pursue visual art as a living:
-Plan to spend as much time doing the administrative stuff as the creative stuff
-Expect to understand accounting, bookkeeping, profit and loss, (or make enough money to pay someone who does )
-Become computer literate if you are not already
-Purchase or borrow a good camera or expect to pay a professional photographer for spot-on images
-Develop a thick skin for the tough times and the number of rejections that come along the way
-Hone your social media skills
-Understand terms like “cohesive body of work”, “distribution channel”, “streams of income”, “diversification” and how they affect your income
-No matter how pure you want to keep your creative voice, it will be influenced by what you sell
-Long hours and hard days, are the norm
-Dealing with other artists can be exhilarating and exhausting at the same time
This is just the tip of the iceberg. All of it is secondary to the reason you are in the business of art to begin with: creating art. Creating the “remarkable” all has to be done in addition to the above, not at the exclusion of it.
I love my work. I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else. However you will find me chuckling when someone comes up to me working in my studio and says, “It must be so much fun to make a living at your passion” . If they only knew….
Deborah Gall 