Is making it as a visual artist harder or just different in 2026?
In this episode of Art Crush, hosts Fi Marks and Paula Telizyn dive deep into the reality of being a professional visual artist in today’s landscape. We get real about what it actually takes to build a sustainable, successful art career.
Inside this episode, we discuss:
- The Marketing Mindset Shift: Why marketing isn’t a chore—it’s an opportunity to delight your collectors and share your vision.
- The “Field of Dreams” Fallacy: Why you can’t just create and expect an audience to appear, and what to do instead.
- The Power of Clarity: How defining your message—both in your artistic voice and your brand marketing—is the secret to cutting through the noise.
Whether you are an established painter, a digital artist, or just starting your professional journey, this conversation will help you find the clarity needed to connect your work with the people who will love it most.
00:00:00 Speaker 1: welcome to Art crush podcast with artist Fee Marks and artist Paula Tolson, where we talk about being an artist in twenty twenty six, running an art business, being a woman in the art world, and more.
00:00:27 Speaker 1: Hello, fee.
00:00:29 Speaker 2: Hello, Paula and hello everyone. Welcome.
00:00:32 Speaker 1: Yes, we have a really fun and interesting topic today that I don’t think we’ve really covered in any kind of detail or depth. and that’s all about the pros and cons of being a successful artist in twenty twenty six. why it’s not just about creating beautiful, thought provoking art, why you absolutely need to embrace, understand, live and breathe marketing.
00:01:04 Speaker 2: Paula and I were just talking about this because I was talking to somebody recently who, was wanting to write but hadn’t even thought and didn’t, had never had the experience sort of discussing how you go about that. And I think a lot of people are get to that point where they’re like, I love painting. I love doing my art, I love writing, I love creating, I’d love to make a business out of it. And I think now the first thing that I would say to any of those people is think about it really hard. Are you passionate enough and dedicated enough to embrace marketing, publicity and putting yourself out there? Because that is what we have to do in twenty twenty six, In years gone by it was different. And this is why at the moment we have these sort of two confusing strands going along, and a lot of people get very, very muddled because we have the old strand going back to Victoriana, which is the gallery route. some people still think all I need to do is get into a gallery or get representation and then that’s it. Job done. Once I’ve got representation, I can just stay in my studio and create and then all of that will be taken care of. So in the past, if you did go down that route, then you didn’t need to worry about marketing and publicity and putting yourself out there because if you got other people to do it, and galleries, good galleries will still do that for you today. but they are very few and far between. And I think and I would advise this, and I know Paula does it. You know that if you want to be successful, you cannot rely on that route in twenty twenty six. We’re not saying you can’t do it, but you can’t rely on it in any shape or form in order to get your art out there. You have to embrace social media. You have to get in contact with people who you’ve never met, cold call whatever you want to call it. I’d like to think of another word for cold call. So we’ll discuss that in a in a bit because it sounds so unfriendly. Um, go and meet people face to face, film yourself. Have an interesting website that you update weekly, hopefully weekly. Um, and you’re putting new fresh material on there all the time.
00:03:46 Speaker 1: Yeah. And understand that the art making is actually a small part of your business. Not the biggest part. It is the thirty percent or forty percent of your time, not the seventy or eighty percent that people really, really want. I on social media, I see a lot of, um, artists complaining that they have to produce content, they have to market themselves. And this is not fair and it’s asking too much. Well, every other business has to do the same. Think about all the ads that you see online. We have, clothing, detergent companies, big ones here, like tide or sunlight or whatever in Canada that have been around for decades since I was little and probably even longer than that. So we’re talking a buttload of decades. I’m not going to say how many. And they are still advertising in twenty twenty six. They are still marketing because they know if they didn’t market that, even though they are visible in the shops on the shelf, people may or may not pick them up because they won’t be as familiar. They won’t be known. They will still be visible, but they won’t be chosen because of the familiarity through the marketing. And this is what you need to do as an artist. So I’ve been represented by galleries, not great ones, let’s be honest. Uh, because if they were great ones, maybe they would have taken me far.
00:05:05 Speaker 3: You’d still be there.
00:05:06 Speaker 1: Exactly. Uh, I’ve had a personal rep, an artist rep whose job was to get me into shows and make connections for me. And I worked with her for, I think, five or six months before I fired her because she was not doing the job that I was paying her to do. at the end of the day, I knew from experience and from her experience that we are the best people to talk about our art. We have to be passionate enough about the topics that we’re painting and very clear about our whys, and very clear about who is our ideal collector to be able to go out there and find them. And it shouldn’t be seen as drudgery. It shouldn’t be seen as, oh God, now I’ve got to do the icky stuff. but it should be seen as this amazing chance to connect with people who are looking for what you have made, who are going to be delighted their lives will be enriched and improved. And I think that most artists approach marketing as the equivalent of having your arm chewed off, when it should actually be the equivalent of spreading delight, sprinkling glitter, but good glitter through the world, you know, happiness and connection.
00:06:09 Speaker 2: I can categorically say I have never, ever sold a piece of artwork when I’ve just put it up in a gallery and walked away and left it even with like quite a lot of blurb explaining it and this, that and the other, my art just doesn’t sell like that. But if I’m there talking to people about my art, if I’m there on social media, that is how my art sells because people are buying the whole Package. And why do you think when you look at adverts, they pay big money for no names, people that they think people will rely on or they will have a reason. Um, I mean at the moment they’re probably already, well, they might have already finished their Christmas twenty twenty six advertising campaigns. You know, we, we haven’t even we’re like, oh no, it’s summer. We’re just going into summer. It’s spring. It’s warming. The sun’s just come out. I mean, the difference is, is that with the big companies and I can hear you all saying, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they’ve got a marketing team. They’ve got a publicity team. It’s not the people who are making the washing up liquid or whatever who are doing it. And this is the difference when you are running a I say small business when it when it’s just you, you might have one or two people working for you, but we’re not the big mega business, so we cannot afford to employ people to do this for us. And, you know, probably never will because if we’re comfortable, we need to celebrate being comfortable and well off as an artist, not start employing other people. And to get there, we need to be able to do the marketing and the publicity. And that is is crucial. And as, as Paula said, embrace it, enjoy it. Um, I know I’ve left a few paintings in the gallery and I was talking to another artist friend and I said, they just don’t get it. They, the people, you know, the people who are in that gallery don’t understand what they need to do. I had to sort of let it all go with the, oh, you know, we haven’t put the prices on yet. That took about a week and, uh, and that’s fine. But tomorrow we’re going to meet the artist event. And I’m thinking, okay, I might take a few extra paintings with me just in case. Now I’m only going to be there an hour and a half, but that hour and a half I’m going to make count, because that, to me, is the only time I think I would sell any of my artwork in the place where it is. And I have just, had to embrace that. And I’ve seen it happen now over the years. I’ve been doing the job long enough to know just hanging a painting up, leaving it and expecting the sales to roll in isn’t going to happen. I even when I’ve done that, I’ve had people saying, oh, well, if you sold it for about one hundred and fifty pounds, you know, that’s the sort of budget our people have coming in the wrong place. We’re back to talking about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
00:09:25 Speaker 1: Yeah. Being clear on your pricing, who your art is for the right places for where your art should be should become easier to find and define so that you can say no to places. We often think as artists that there are only maybe a handful of art buyers in the world, because we tend to be surrounded by other artists. If you look at your your friends and followers on social media, odds are half of them are artists. And I just recorded a recorded. I presented a masterclass yesterday for one of the local libraries here about selling art and one of the things I talked about was audience quality. And the audience quality is really important.
00:10:06 Speaker 2: Although I do think that artists do buy art, but they have to be quite successful, in order to have them extra money in order to buy it, because both you and I, Paula, love buying art, you know, and we would buy. The more money we have, the more art we would buy it. That is our our sort of like penchant for luxury. That’s what we like. We don’t go on holiday. We would buy art. So I don’t think it’s that artists won’t buy art. So if you have got artists following you, don’t immediately dismiss them because I have sold to other artists. but they’re not going to be your main client.
00:10:47 Speaker 1: Yeah. But the, the thing too is that if we’re surrounded by other artists, which is, um, so I’m not saying that artists don’t buy art, but if we’re surrounded by other artists, so the people commenting on our posts are artists. The people in our followings are artists. The people getting our newsletter are artists. It’s very easy for us to assume that there are more artists than art buyers. Yeah. And so while fee is right that artists do and have and will buy art whenever they can. It’s hard to look around and say, okay, there’s a lot more art buyers than artists if you just look at your social media numbers. So that it feels like you have to say yes to every opportunity. So yes to the, to the shows that might not be right. The church, basement shows the, the small gallery shows where art’s no more than one hundred and fifty pounds. The collective or guild shows where everybody’s kind of just playing at being an artist. You think you have to do those two because you’re missing out on opportunities to get people. But being very clear on the fact that there are a lot more art buyers than artists in the world. You just have to know who your ideal collector is and understand that you don’t have to say yes to. Every opportunity will make it far, far easier for you to be in the right places at the right shows, sharing in the right groups, networking with the right people in order to sell your work, because that that makes a huge difference. it’s like you can say no to a commission that comes in if it’s not right for you, because it’s better for you to say no than to take money at any cost fee. And I have both done this, and I can speak for myself personally, where I’ve taken commissions that were wildly inappropriate for me to take, like pen and ink drawings when I’m a painter. Yes, I could do it, but am I as good as somebody who does pen and ink all the time? No. Absolutely not. Um, the one commission I turned down, thank goodness, was an artist architectural rendering. Like, why would they pick me a an impressionistic, post-impressionistic portrait artist to do architectural artist renderings of architectural drawings? I said no, and they’re like, why you make art? It’s not my art. So so that clarity is really important, that it’s important to say no to what looks like opportunities when they will drain your finances, drain your energy and put you in the wrong spaces. So part of marketing is that clarity around who your art is for and who it is not for.
00:13:15 Speaker 2: And so all the things that we talk about on this podcast, like when we talk about why, why are you creating? Who is it for? Um, you know, what do you want to say? All these things are not an academic, procedure. Why we’re saying this is because if you don’t understand that, then your potential customers won’t understand it either. And you are actually not marketing and not selling your work because you’re making it almost unsellable because you don’t understand it. And so therefore, why, you know, nobody else is. And it’s really, really interesting because there are a lot of artists out there who would say, yeah, but I don’t know. I just do it because it’s a nice picture. I do that well. And I’m, as I’m saying, you can have a business doing landscapes or pet portraits that’s fine, but you will only go so far because once you have to start talking about your art, you will struggle because you haven’t gone through the process as we advise on a regular basis of why, who? all those questions are vital. And one of the biggest light bulb moments I had as an ex-teacher. And it was when I realised we used to have to teach. And I know throughout every single key stage in the UK, and I’m sure it’s the same in Canada or wherever you are, Australia. Um children had to learn. One of the things they had to learn in their writing was persuasive writing, being able to persuade somebody to change their mind or to to agree with a subject that you were writing about. So the old chestnut in a primary school would be write a letter to the head teacher to persuade them that school uniform should be banned, should be got rid of something like that, or, you know, it would be something like that. And that would be as far as you got it. But I actually now understand and again, it’s because it’s been diluted so, so much. I now understand that if I went back to teaching persuasive writing, I would understand the reason that you’re being you’re teaching persuasive writing is it’s marketing. It’s about marketing and publicity. And if you were, if I understood that as a teacher, I’d say, okay, let’s make a project. let’s make pizzas and then market it. Let’s do an art gallery and let’s market it because the young people will understand far more. Then once you understand it’s marketing and publicity rather than persuasive writing. Completely makes makes sense. But things have been diluted. And so then therefore, they’re not being taught in a way that prepares people in order to go and do these things, like getting them to debate. Speaking. Speaking is so important. and this is why so many people in the UK, and I’m sure it’s the same with you kind of don’t, don’t like standing up and talking about their art or meeting people face to face because they’ve not been taught how to do it. It’s not through any fault of their own. It’s just like they feel like they’re being fed to the lions because they’ve never had to do it, and they’ve avoided it, and they’ve never been made to do it or study it or understand it. You know that it’s a fascinating subject language. This is what English language is about in any language. Um, it’s just the dots have not been joined up. And therefore when you want to go and start your creative career, you struggle because you think all it is is just one dimensional, just creating artwork or writing or textiles, whatever, whatever it is that you are good at and passionate about.
00:17:28 Speaker 1: Yeah. As adults, we often want to only do the things we’re good at. And instead of saying, well, I’m not good at that right now, but I can learn it, we tend to avoid things. Right? so I mentioned doing my taxes earlier and it’s been the bane of my existence for twenty six years that I’ve been self-employed, but it’s also been prior to that, the bane of my existence as a human adult. Um, and because I don’t like filling out forms, I get it’s, it’s one of those things. I have a learning disability. It’s one of those things that that causes me stress.
00:17:59 Speaker 3: But I know.
00:17:59 Speaker 2: Many people, including myself, who do not like filling in forms, doing any kind of admin whatsoever. But again, I would say going back to my previous point, it’s because we’ve not been taught how to do it. So we’re doing it blind. We’re just making it up as we go along because it wasn’t taught to us in schools how to do admin, how to do your taxes. Maybe, you know, that should have been part of the maths curriculum. Oh heaven forbid.
00:18:28 Speaker 1: Yeah, I completely agree. Like if I had made the time. Now, granted, when I started working as a human adult, it was the nineteen nineties. There was very little on the internet. But, um, if I had made the time to sit down and, and understand what I needed to do, then I would have made this period of time this month of April, which is usually when I go, I must do my taxes and then I don’t do them, and I must do my taxes every day that runs through my head until I sit down and do them. It would make this month that much easier for me. But because I don’t like doing it, because I don’t understand everything I need to understand, or I think I don’t, um, then I avoid it as much as possible. And this is how artists approach marketing. So I’m going to give two examples here. So I go to a lot of networking meetings. One of the businesses I run is a website design agency. So I go to a lot of networking meetings to meet local business owners and entrepreneurs and sort of almost get immediate feedback on how I speak and communicate about my business, as well as hopefully landing clients. And so I go to these meetings, like I went to one yesterday and they said to me, you know, hey Paula, what do you do? And I say, I run a website design agency. And I go, oh, that’s very nice. That’s very nice. And then I was watching that going, that’s exactly what I tell my students not to do. Oh, I’m an artist. And it just sort of stops the conversation, right? It’s boring. There’s no hook. So when we had to actually stand up and do our pitch, basically our intro to the group. So standing up, everybody else is watching whatever. I got up and I said, my business creates aspirational websites for mission driven entrepreneurs who are making a difference in their community. And immediately, that’s much more powerful than saying, I run a website design agency, you know, out of my house in London, blah, blah, blah. it’s much more different because I immediately identified who I want to work with, what they get and what the difference is why pick me? And so I people then start, you know, asking for my business card and whatever, because they want to connect further. It’s much more engaging. So if I go around saying, because I’m a portrait artist, a post-impressionistic portrait artist, so I say I paint portraits. Okay, that’s nice. Okay, it could be watercolor. They could be made out of gum wrappers. Who knows? Right? So if I go around and I say something like, um, and I haven’t done this in a while and I’m about to start my project, so I better think of something to say. Um.
00:20:48 Speaker 3: I create still not started. Paula.
00:20:52 Speaker 1: I know, I know. Um, so I, my, my portraits are all about perception and about connecting with ourselves and how we want to be seen and perceived throughout the world. So, um, I could say something like, uh, my portraits allow my subjects to express their self perception and desired reception, um, through the portraits that I paint in a post-impressionistic style, um, throughout the world kind of thing. I, I’d refine that a lot. Obviously the website one I’ve refined through practice and everything else, but I would do something more than just, I paint portraits, I paint deeply emotive portraits of the everyday person who has a desire to be seen as someone special. There you go. That’s that’s what I would say.
00:21:38 Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And we all know, I bet there’s loads of people out there who know it when they say, oh, I’m an artist. I could almost guarantee that the response is either, oh, I can’t paint for toffee or I can’t draw for toffee or oh, my niece, daughter, grandad, uncle, Auntie. They paint.
00:22:02 Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:22:03 Speaker 2: And then where are you? How is that helping you sell your art? It’s not so. You know, Paul is absolutely right. As soon as I say about my art that I tell the stories of underrepresented women from history, from literature and women’s stories today that deserve to be heard. It’s what the message is. And then they, they say, oh, quite right. Oh yeah. Oh I’d love can I have a look? It it’s immediately a different response. And what you’re doing even in that opening gambit, that opening conversation is you are marketing. You’re not marketing. Oh, I am an artist. I mean, you are While marketing what you paint. Everybody you meet is a potential client. You never know. You never know. It’s not that you’re bragging. You’re just telling people what you do. It’s ridiculous, you know? It really is. But understanding that, when people ask you. So I’m going to throw it out there to the listeners. When people ask you what you do, what do you say about your art? What do you say about being an artist? You know, even if you are still at that point where you’re like, yeah, but I’ve got another job. So I don’t even mention the art. You know, it’s like, turn it around. If that’s the direction you want to go to, you don’t have to, you know, as you say, you could keep it as a hobby, keep it as something going to art fairs now and again. That’s fine. That’s the way you’ve got off on your creative journey. But but if you want to make a successful business. Always be aware of what you’re saying and it will go back to the why you’re making your why is it important?
00:23:57 Speaker 1: And getting clear on all of that is absolutely critical. So at the beginning of this podcast episode, we I said that we were going to talk about the pros and cons of being a success in the art world in twenty twenty six. So one of the cons I think that artists would say is a con is having to market yourself, but I would move that immediately to the pro column because you get to market yourself, you get this opportunity to engage with people, hopefully in person, but you’ll also engage with them online where you can see their reaction or experience a reaction to some degree and realize that your art has impact, that this this effort of making people notice you through marketing and through saying things that give people a reason to take a second look or to continue the conversation. is a service and it’s so, so important. So marketing in twenty twenty six, creating that success through showing up and understanding that the art making unfortunately, is a small part of it, but also fortunately, because The more you think about your art, the more you communicate with to other people about your art, the more you understand what you’re creating and why you’re doing it. Therefore, when you do create your work, you create better work and deeper work. And maybe you even have more subtext and symbolism in that work because you understand yourself better. Because art, like writing, and I can speak from experience because I, I also am a writer, um, is just a vehicle for communication music. Again, I grew up in a musical household. I play a couple of instruments. Music is also a vehicle for communication. The communication, the, the, the conveyance of the emotion of the ideas that you’re doing through that vehicle, music, art or writing, um, the vehicle doesn’t matter. It’s that communication. So getting very clear on what you’re saying through your work will help you make better, deeper work and understand what you’re trying to say. In my years of helping artists, I’ve come across maybe two artists who didn’t want to understand what they were saying actively resisted me.
00:26:07 Speaker 2: Only to I’m quite surprised it’s only two.
00:26:10 Speaker 1: I think the rest were being polite and didn’t.
00:26:13 Speaker 3: Want.
00:26:14 Speaker 1: To be honest, but. But these two come specifically to mind. One of them specifically comes to mind, who insisted that she only made pretty landscapes. She just liked the way the light shone through the trees and that was it. Did not want to go any deeper, did not want to understand, did not want to communicate in any way. She has not progressed her business any further. To the best of my knowledge, I’ve. I’m. Don’t go and follow people just to, to see. Um, but it’s So interesting to me that you wouldn’t want to examine what you’re trying to say, what you’re trying to communicate through your work so you can make better work, that you could make it intentionally rather than randomly or subconsciously, you know, like to me, wanting to be the best communicator possible is one of the things I want as an artist and a writer, even as a podcast host. And again, this is the podcast is just a vehicle for fee and I to, to convey our ideas. We could do it through dance, uh, which would be challenging.
00:27:15 Speaker 3: No, please.
00:27:16 Speaker 2: Please not dance.
00:27:18 Speaker 1: Well, believe me, you don’t. Nobody wants to see me dancing either. But we could. We could pick a different vehicle. This is the one we’ve picked. And we had a lot of conversations before we ever started recording our first podcast, because we wanted to make sure that when we started and we knew it would have changed as we went, when we started, we wanted to have clarity around what our goals were with this podcast, the same way that I want artists to have clarity about what their goals are with their art. It’s not just a pretty picture. It’s not just creating controversy. It’s not just having impact or whatever it is something more. What is that more? And that’s a pro as far as I’m concerned when it comes to marketing in twenty twenty six and creating that success for yourself.
00:28:02 Speaker 2: and look at it as empowering. It’s empowerment of the artist, of what we want to say. Instead of looking at it as a con. I don’t want to do that. It’s because I’m not. It’s actually you’re not relying on other people and you are the person that knows or should know your work better than anyone else. You know, when people go and pitch their ideas, they they wouldn’t send someone they didn’t know to do that for them. They pitch their ideas from the heart, what they would say, what they want to say about a product, about whatever we need to look at being an artist in twenty twenty six as empowering, not the negatives. We have so many more choices and we don’t need to be those artists. Like everybody quotes about Van Gogh that he only sold one painting in his whole time of being alive. You know, we don’t that’s not that’s not true anymore. If Van Gogh was alive today and if he wasn’t ill, he he would be telling people about his art and he would be making sure that people knew about it. Instead, he had to wait for a woman to come along and do that for him. But that woman, if Johanna Bonger had not done that for him, nobody would know who Vincent van Gogh is today. It’s not that his work just spoke to people.
00:29:34 Speaker 1: There’s not a single artist around that didn’t have Promotion and marketing and something that they did, or something that a person around them did to make them well known. There’s not a single artist. It is not a case of if you create it, they will come. That just does not happen. Right? Even the artists that maybe you were unaware of that generated controversy, um, like the banana taped to the wall guy didn’t just show up one day and tape a banana to a wall. He has marketing people, he has representation, he has connections with galleries. And that’s why that particular piece created the splash that it did, because he already had the marketing. He already had the audience. So the, the attitude. So I’d say that, um, let’s see, we got pros and cons of being a success in the art world. A con would be assuming that if you make it, people will just automatically find it. Well, they won’t, they won’t. You’ve got to make them find it. Um, assuming that you get into one gallery and you’ve got it made, as we said in the beginning, you won’t. And I talked to somebody last year who kept coming on to my live videos on TikTok saying, I just need to be in one gallery in Toronto and I’ll have it made. I just need to be in one gallery. No, no you won’t, you won’t. So so the cons of being a success in the art world is thinking that you have to hustle, thinking that you just need to be discovered, thinking that one gallery will make it for you. Um, you don’t need to hustle to sell your art, but you do need to do it strategically and have clarity. You do not need to be on every platform to sell your art. In fact, it’s exhausting to be on every platform. Pick a platform and market, but also be strategic. It’s not just a spray and pray. It’s just understanding that you’re making people discover you, and you’re giving them a reason to take a second look by being clear about what you make, who it’s for, and why they should care. So I think we’re going to wrap this episode up because I think we’ve we’ve covered quite a bit on that, but we just want our listeners to walk away Understanding that it’s not just about creating amazing, beautiful art and magically being discovered. You’ve got to do the work. But the work shouldn’t be work with a, with a work attitude. It should be. I get to improve the lives of the people around me with my art. How lucky am I?
00:32:01 Speaker 3: And I want.
00:32:02 Speaker 2: To share that.
00:32:03 Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:32:04 Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So that’s the end of this episode of Art crush. Um, you can find Art Crush on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, audible, and your favorite podcast platform. New episodes drop every Saturday. You can join myself, Paula, and marks as we talk about anything related to art, being an artist, being a woman in the art world, and more. Don’t forget to like and subscribe and share with your artist friends. We will see you next week.
