Feature:

Practice, Practice, Practice

 

Post Haste: Blog links you may have missed

Podcasts, e-guides and other great stuff

 

Interviews with artists + innovators

 

More tips and tools

 

More cool links!!

 

A lot of us dream about making a living from our creative efforts. The reality can be much harsher -- few artists are taught how to create a business around their artwork, and fewer still are able to successfully harmonize the art-making and business-building parts of their self-employment.

 

However, there are a growing number of resources available to working artists to smooth the path to financial self-sufficiency. I recently spoke with art business coach Alyson B. Stanfield and she discussed the advice she shares with her clients as they learn to market themselves and their works successfully. In our feature article for this month's newsletter, I break down the wisdom in one particular piece of advice she gave for being a successful self-marketer -- make sure you are getting to the studio and practicing your creative discipline regularly.

 

Also in this issue, I share cool links that touch on the creative process, both from my own blog and the websites of others. Enjoy!

 

As always, if you have questions, comments or suggestions, please contact me at lizmassey68@hotmail.com.

 

— Liz Massey

Practice, practice, practice

My recent podcast interview with Alyson B. Stanfield, owner of ArtBizCoach.com, ended up being packed with a great many tips for becoming comfortable with marketing oneself as a professional artist. One of them stands out in my mind because of its subtly powerful nature: make sure you are engaged in a regular studio practice.

 

Studio time, aka practice, and business development time are often wrongly seen as competitors in one's overall schedule. However, there are 3 qualities that come from practicing one's creative discipline regularly, all of which impact one's ability to build a business.

 

Confidence. Stanfield named this during our chat as the practice's primary benefit to marketing. "Without that studio discipline, you will lack confidence, because you are not closely enough connected with your art,” she said.

 

Consistency. Stanfield also mentioned this as business benefit -- with copious studio time comes the opportunity to produce a mature body of work and an identifiable style. It also gets an artist or innovator used to performing the tasks -- creative or otherwise -- related to their business that must get done, regardless of the emotional "weather" they are experiencing that day.

 

Control. Another benefit of deliberate practice of one's creativity, backed up by research into the nature of task fluency, is that it builds up a storehouse of approaches to challenges that are common to anyone in a given discipline. It builds one's physical and mental "muscle memory," increasing one's ability to respond quickly and intuitively to new situations, be they opportunities or threats.

 

In the podcast interview, Stanfield warns artists to guard against describing their studio time as play, in order to remind others (as well as themselves) that making art is work, however joyful. I believe she is on to something here. Regular practice sessions are the fuel of creative greatness -- they are not always fun, but by cultivating the three "Cs" they are a potent source of artistic and entrepreneurial strength.

A discussion of the creative process with naturalist, computer scientist and outdoor photographer Steve Barardi, creator of the visually sumptuous PhotoNaturalist blog.

 

“The Artist @ Work” series continues with a podcast interview with art business consultant Alyson Stanfield. Alyson, who spent a decade as a museum curator and educator, has built a wonderful consulting and coaching practice that helps visual artists become successful marketers of their work and good business people.

 

A discussion of how to stay focused when collaborating on a creative project, and how to avoid common interruption traps in an office environment.