Are you tired of saying “yes” to every opportunity, only to realize your art is sitting next to scary blue plastic chairs in a space where it just doesn’t belong?
In Season 3, Episode 29 of Art Crush, hosts F Marks and Paula Telizyn dive deep into the importance of hitting pause on the hustle to find your true “why” as an artist.
For many women, societal conditioning and people-pleasing tendencies can lead to a scattered art career filled with compromises. Fi and Paula discuss how to break that cycle by making intentional, informed choices about where your art belongs—and where it absolutely doesn’t.
Whether you want to sell high-end pieces in curated international galleries or simply make art for the joy of it without the pressure of sales, this episode will help you define your path without judgment.
We also explore the concept of the Ideal Collector Avatar (ICA) and why stepping out of your comfort zone is the secret to leveling up your art business.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why stopping to investigate your “why” is the most important step in building an intentional art career.
- How to stop people-pleasing and confidently turn down the wrong shows, cafes, and galleries.
- Why matching your art’s price point to the right environment is critical for sales.
- How to identify your Ideal Collector Avatar and figure out exactly where they shop.
- Why doing the scary things—like exhibiting internationally or raising your prices—is the only way to grow.
Plus, hear the latest updates on our upcoming inaugural collective show at Artcore Gallery in Derby this October!
00:00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to Artcrush with artist’s fee Marks and Paula Telizyn where we talk about being an artist, having an art business, being a woman who’s an artist, and more.
00:00:23 Speaker 1: Hello, fee.
00:00:25 Speaker 2: Hi, Paula, what are we discussing today?
00:00:29 Speaker 1: as most of our listeners know by now, we have a good conversation before we ever hit record. And we’ve been talking about a lot of aspects of being an artist and what we’re noticing in artists around us and in artists in general, and also in ourselves. So our discussion today is going to be about circling back to your why? What is your art for? Why are you making it and what do you want to do with it? And in doing so, we want to stress, first of all, that this is a conversation that is about curiosity and investigating, not about judgment. So bearing that in mind, let’s talk about the topic,
00:01:17 Speaker 2: the reason that we started talking about this was about seizing opportunities and that some artists will commit to something and then drop out. we were questioning why that was. one of the reasons is lack of confidence, but it could also be that you don’t really want to sell your art and that is absolutely fine. You will have to find another stream of income. You can still create art but not feel pressurised if you’re not going to sell it. If you want to sell your art and have an art business like Paula and I, then therefore you have to be able to have the confidence to seize those opportunities and make the most of them and behave in a very professional way so that you’re not letting other people down, or you’re not letting yourself down what your ethos is. So that’s why we said you backtrack to your why. Once you’re so clear about your why, you’re not going to ever say yes and then no.
00:02:35 Speaker 1: Yeah. investigating your why requires stopping. We are trained as adults in Western society to be busy and to be so busy we don’t stop and think. that’s why it’s easy to say like, I don’t even know where a decade of my life went because I was so busy with young children and managing things and running a business and blah, blah, blah. I have no idea where my thirties went. No idea. Now imagine if I’d actually had the presence of mind to stop and ask myself at that point, what do I really want? AM I building a life that I’m enjoying, or am I letting life happen to me? this is the same thing with art. So artists have an inclination and a desire to make art. But if you don’t stop and ask yourself, what are you doing with this art? What do you want from it? What are you communicating with it? What do you want to get out of it through creating your art. Then you’re just going to make art and see what happens. Which is not invalid. But I think that we are conditioned to be so busy. We don’t make intentional choices with our lives. First of all, and with our art. So understanding what you want from your art, why you’re making it is the first step. Once you pause.
00:03:59 Speaker 2: I think for women, we’ve touched on this before with the people pleasing aspect that so many women, particularly of a certain age, have been brought up and brainwashed with. This can make them indecisive because they’re not clear or we’re not clear about exactly what we want. And so we think, oh, I ought to do these shows because this is what everybody does. I mean, Paula and I have talked about the scary blue plastic chair. It was like I had a moment and I was in a church Hall with my art and blue plastic chairs, and I was like, this is not the place for my art. This is not the right environment. it’s almost like questioning everything. Now, I’m not saying it was the wrong environment for everybody else there. For some people, what they were selling, how they want to sell. Completely valid. But I knew what I’d done is I’d almost like spread myself so thin. Oh, it’s an art show. I need to do it. Oh, it’s an art show. I need to do it. It’s an opportunity to sell my art because I knew I wanted to sell my art, but then I had to take a step back and almost, like, revisit my why and say, why are you doing this? Is this where you want to be with your art? And if it’s not because it’s easy to go, no, this isn’t for me. The blue plastic chair, what am I going to do to change that? And how do I envisage my art business in the future if I’m going to be turning down opportunities? So then I had to go back and turn down opportunities, and I was very mindful that I didn’t want to come across as indecisive or flaky or anything like that. So I had to tell them quite clearly that I was almost like rebranding, that I was rethinking of the positioning of my art. What was the best place for it all? Tied up with pricing and everything else. It all fed in and I realized I had to say no. I mean, I hadn’t actually paid, but this year I’ve had to think. And it’s so weird because our little email will pop through over event that I might have done in the past, and I can feel myself going, oh, I could do that. Could do that again. Oh, I sold that. And then I’ve gone. No, this is not my why. This is not where I want to be. It’s such a personal thing, isn’t it, Paula?
00:06:56 Speaker 1: It is. I’ve done the same thing every other artist has done that you have done saying yes to every show and then going there and realizing you don’t fit in. This is not what I want for my art. Or the audience that’s attracted to this kind of event is not the kind of people who would buy my work. So you almost have to test a little bit too. But you can prevent a lot of this by pausing and by writing out or typing out, but get it out of your head just in free writing. so not thinking, not looking at what you’re writing, just let it out and, deciding what you want from your art and from your life. Where do you see yourself? Is this something that you absolutely want? A lot of my decisions around my art come from this podcast, because fee and I have discussions back and forth, and then I walk away. And I think that was interesting. And then three weeks later, I edit the episode. So I’ve had a gap between our conversation and the editing, and I go, actually, that’s what I want. Or this idea was good or whatever. So getting it out and getting it into a different medium that is outside of your head, because our brains swirl around and oftentimes things don’t make sense, but you put it out and listen to it back or read it back or whatever, and you go, oh, I didn’t realize I had these thoughts is important. And then you make decisions. If I want my art to be at this level. and again, there’s no better or worse. It’s just different than I can’t do anything below this. So if I want my art to be on the international stage in very select spaces, then I can’t do the church hall shows and I can’t do the open studios if they are not of a certain quality. I can’t do X, Y, Z, that should make it a lot easier to then focus on what you do want. By saying immediately, I’m not grabbing the shiny thing that came in through my inbox or this invite that somebody said like, one of my mistakes a couple of years ago was I allowed one or two of my pieces when I was doing surreal art to be in a cafe in a beach town? And my rule of thumb has been, don’t put your art in restaurants. People are there to eat. They’re not there to buy. But because it was an art cafe and it’s full of artists and blah, blah, blah, I was like, oh, it’s probably fine. I’m not really selling anyway. But when I went to deliver my work, I should have turned around and left. It just it wasn’t right. But that’s what I got from just sort of floating around and going, well, I’m not really selling my art. I’ve got my other business. It’s fine. but now I would never, absolutely never. It would not even occur to me to open an email if it came through and said, come show your art in our cafe. Fuck no. Absolutely not. it’s a curated space or nothing is the answer.
00:09:48 Speaker 2: both of us have been through that. not too long ago, I had some people invite me to go and, uh, put my work in their gallery and it was a very, very similar position. As soon as I got there, my gut reaction was, this isn’t right, this isn’t right. And I should have turned around and said, look, actually, now I’ve looked at the space. Now I’ve thought about it, actually, I don’t want to waste your time. I don’t want to waste my time. But this isn’t the right place. So it ended up that I put my work in a gallery, and within a couple of months I was trying to get out of it. And that, in a way, is worse than if I had turned around right. Gone with my gut right in the beginning. And I remember as well, Paula, this was something that you talked about, about when you think if it helps and it certainly helps me, if you think about like where you like to shop and where you like to buy things, a lot of people say, oh, I love shopping, but you have to narrow it down if you like going out and getting bargains, and buying quite fast fashion and you are going to not go to Harrods if you want a designer thing, you’ll go to designer shops. We don’t all have the same taste. And we all know that our art is not for everybody. And it’s the same thing going, well, okay, if I’m, if I was shopping where my ICA, my ideal, uh, avatar is.
00:11:34 Speaker 1: Ideal collector, avatar.
00:11:36 Speaker 2: Ideal collector, avatar, I see, I know that just as an ICA, I know exactly what I’m talking about. But then when I started to, I was like, some people might not know, but where would they go shopping? They will be out there because we all love a shop, searching for the things that speak to them, They are wanting to buy your art and that is why it is so important. It’s not that everybody is buying the same art. They’re certainly not. We don’t all buy the same clothes. We don’t all buy the same books. In fact, we know that there are people who say, oh, you must read this book, and you. Well, that’s not my even. No matter what a good friend they are, you’re tasting books is very, very different. But we are not the same. And we all have different tastes. And it’s the same with our artwork. So instead of being the purchaser, you’ve got to think about, right, where are my purchasers and where would be the best place for me to position my artwork? And it’s not everywhere and I’m not going shopping everywhere either.
00:12:49 Speaker 1: Exactly. So your ICA, your ideal collector avatar, is basically this fake person that you create, who is most likely to buy your work. And because humans are very much alike, there’s the details between us are different. Our likes or dislikes, our traumas and experiences in life are different, but humans are very much alike. You create this ideal person who would be the one who would like your work, and then you figure out where they would shop, where they would buy, where they would feel comfortable. But the alternative is that you also need to position your art. So if you want to sell your work for, I don’t know, two thousand pounds or whatever, you are not going to be well positioned if you show up in an art walk that’s just done by a little tiny community or a church, sale type of thing where, crafters and artists are together, you can’t take your two thousand pound art and put it in there because it, it stands out badly. But if you take your fifty pound art and try to stick it in a high end gallery, people will ask, what’s wrong with it? Why is it so cheap and won’t even consider buying it? So positioning with pricing and with your desire to create and who you believe will buy your work makes all the difference. It sounds very complicated, but all of this requires pausing. all of this requires going. Where do I see myself in five years? What am I trying to communicate? What is my art saying? Where do I want to be selling? Where do I feel most comfortable? And this is the important thing that you have to do so that you don’t say yes to the wrong thing. And we still make mistakes. I know the stuff. I’ve been teaching it for years, and it was only about two or three years ago that I went into the cafe. I knew better, and I still did it. So we do have to pause and continually ask ourselves, and this is true for anything, whether you’re making a big purchase or, making choices. Our lives are made up of choices, and most of the choices and decisions we do are done without really thinking about them. And before you know it, years have gone by and you end up with the consequence of that. And you go, actually, all of those little decisions I made years ago put me in this place. Now, do I want to stay in this place or do I want to leave? This is how it is with everything art, life, relationships, everything. So you end up making intentional choices based on what you want. When you pause. So one of the reasons a fifty one percent has chosen to curate and run our shows. We have a great space at Artcore Gallery in our upcoming show in October. But the reason we’re in charge is because we are making intentional, informed choices about our path as artists, about our art, and about who is most likely to want to see it, experience it, buy it. And those choices led us to this fantastic gallery and our inaugural show. we could have easily gone. Okay. Fee. Where is there? a space we can rent in derby for, pennies or whatever. And it could be in a back alley and show our work and hope somebody likes it. No, we want to come out with a bang and be at a level that an international group of artists should be at. These are intentional, informed choices, but we pause and we ask those questions. And we spent months, especially in the beginning, talking about what we each want from our art and where we want to go, and deciding that we want to do it together.
00:16:27 Speaker 2: I’m just going to reiterate, we are not saying one is better than the other. We are not saying that. We’re just saying you need to do what’s right for you, as you would advise any of your really good friends. if they were saying, I don’t know, should I leave him? Should I move house? Should I do this? You can’t make that decision for them. They’ve got to do what’s right for them. Because if you get told, if people say, well, what you must do is this, this and this and you follow it, that’s not going to give you happiness. So we are not saying there is one way. There are loads and loads of different ways. All we’re saying is pause and think We are not the oracles. As Paula said, we have to keep going back to our why and why we’re doing stuff and how we’re going to do it. it’s exciting, but it’s also really difficult because it is not something you are going to get. We get right straight away and we know when we do our show, we will learn so much from it. So the next show will be clearer of what we want and you learn. And as you keep learning from each activity you do, if I hadn’t had that blue chair moment, I would still be there. I would still be there. I had to make a conscious decision. And we’re not saying it’s easy, but as I say, try I not to be influenced by other artists or friends or family. Because when it comes down to it, it’s you and your art.
00:18:11 Speaker 1: this is why the exercise of writing things out, just free writing and not worrying about any editing or what you’re saying or anything is a really, really good one. But you have to do it repeatedly. for me, the podcast also really helped. We started this actually a year ago on August twenty third. So as we record this, we are coming up to that one year anniversary and birthday.
00:18:35 Speaker 2: Paula.
00:18:36 Speaker 1: Exactly. art crush. and, uh, yeah, I didn’t expect these conversations to turn into this us doing a show as being in a collective, me rebooting my art career. And here we are. It’s that getting things out and talking about them both in the recorded conversations, but also in the conversations we have before and after we record fee. And I, we have a lot of conversations. So this is the power of stopping and examining what it is that you want. And where does your heart beat faster and what makes you excited, but a little bit afraid? This is also a key because if you’re not doing things that stretch you, that make you afraid, that give you a bit of discomfort, I’m not talking about, oh, that person with a knife is following me. I better, pretend everything’s fine. No, I’m talking about discomfort being like, maybe you have to be visible. Maybe you have to go into spaces you didn’t think you were quite ready for. We get ready after we do the thing, which is cruel as hell, but you can’t think yourself to be ready. You can’t make yourself ready. all you can do is do a thing, learn the lessons, adjust and go. So this is my third international show that I’ve done. uh, did one in Spain, which was kind of, uh, but I learned a lot from it. did one in Scotland, learned a lot from it, and now doing one in the UK and as we go, I’m learning a lot. I know that Fee and Yella and Susan are also learning a lot as we go because we’re all juggling the pieces together. and that’s all you can do, right? Is learn a lot and move forward and be ready as you go. If this was my first international show, I would have been losing my shit entirely, to be honest. But because I’ve had those other two, I understand some of the pieces I didn’t understand before the very first one. So it’s you just get ready. You just get ready after. And do I feel ready for this? MM. No, but I feel more ready than I did. Like I said, if it wasn’t my third.
00:20:45 Speaker 2: it would be the easiest thing in the world for us to go. Do you know what? This is all too hard. This is all too much. Should we just postpone it for another year and see where we’re at there? It’s like, no, the time is now. Whatever happens, that show is happening. October the twenty third Artcore Gallery in Derby. We will be there, come and see us and we are hoping we’re pretty sure we will be in Toronto in spring time twenty twenty seven. So we’ve got to make it happen. And and it’s not easy. We are. It’s it’s absolutely. Please don’t ever think that we find this easy because we don’t. And the four of us are very different as people, as artists, but we play to each other’s skills. And we know that everybody’s role is different and everybody is frightened of different things. I’ve worked with Paula for a long time, and I remember her talking about doing a pop up show and I was like, my mind was frazzled, blown. All I could think of was, oh my God, I was thinking you had to do it in a shop. I had this thing in my head that you would take over a shop that wasn’t being used and do that. And it was like, it’s going to cost me a fortune or, you know. I realized I wasn’t ready for that. even now, I wouldn’t want to do that by myself. I think it would be really, really hard. it’s finding people, like minded people who get, you understand and have the same thing. So it’s no point us if we decided we were going to work with an artist who didn’t want to part with any of their artwork. just wanted to, put up their work and take it home and that was it. It wouldn’t work. So although we are four very, very different artists, we are all quite determined and want to be a commercial success. That’s us. We want our art to sell. That question you need to put to yourself. And if you say, oh, I don’t want to sell my art, it just make sure you’ve thought through what the reasons are. Is it fear or is it that actually, I’d rather make my money elsewhere and just chill out and do my make art? you can’t have it all. You have to be selective, I think. Selective has been the key to this episode of Art crush.
00:23:35 Speaker 1: I agree, I agree, but definitely asking yourself why you have certain ways of thinking is important. Why you think you can’t or shouldn’t sell, why you think you can’t or shouldn’t be visible. Why you think you can’t or shouldn’t price appropriately. These are questions especially for women who are taught to be in the background. Run your families. Make sure everybody is taken care of, at the cost of your own happiness and well-being and don’t make a fuss. these are important questions to ask yourself. What do you want from your art? Why are you making it? Why are you hesitating to do a thing that maybe you actually desire? What are you afraid of? List all of those things and a lot of them will end up being surprising. And I think that’s, that’s the thing that we want people to take from this is that there’s no bad or good. As Fiat said, there’s no better or worse in terms of what your choices are, but actually investigate inside yourself what you really, really want and what you want to do with that and lean into things that make you a little bit afraid and a little bit uncomfortable. because you will surprise yourself with what you can do. You will really be surprised. And this is coming from somebody who is so afraid to be on video that in my lessons to students, I show my very first video, which is awkward and awful and really, challenging to watch. But it shows how far I’ve come in ten years of practice and I wasn’t comfortable on video until, I’d say about twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. So it’s not been a long time, but I had to do that work and lean into being uncomfortable so I could get comfortable. And this is what we do, right? I’m very, very glad that I had friends and colleagues who pushed me. I’m very, very glad I leaned into being uncomfortable because it changed my life in ways I didn’t expect.
00:25:39 Speaker 2: No regrets. That’s what we all want in life. No regrets. Things that didn’t quite work out. They’re all lesson. it’s an important thing to bear in mind. Not everything will work out, but you will learn.
00:25:54 Speaker 1: Yeah. And then to take the judgment away from those lessons. so instead of saying to yourself, oh, I was an idiot or whatever, you can say things like, oh, what’s the data from this? Isn’t this interesting? Asking in a neutral way so that you can just learn and not be maybe a negative voice in your head So I think this wraps up this episode of Art crush. Unless you have anything else to add. Fee.
00:26:23 Speaker 2: I think we’ve talked around this subject probably more enough that people will have a lot to go with and hopefully think about and let us be the voice in your head going, well, why am I doing this? Why, why, why I always feel that when I do it because I learned that from Paula, but then I’ve taken it to the next level. So I remind Paula to you need that person to remind you and to ask the questions.
00:26:53 Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. You can find episodes of Art crush on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts in your Alexa and Google Home and connected car devices, as well as wherever podcasts are found. New episodes come out every Saturday UK time like, share and subscribe. We will see you in the next episode.
