Is the fear of selling out keeping you from achieving your true potential as an artist?
In this episode of Art Crush, hosts Fi Marks and Paula Telizyn dive deep into why treating your art like a business is the most empowering move you can make for your career.
Many creatives fall into the trap of waiting for the holy grail—believing a top-tier gallery will swoop in, handle all the sales, and make them famous. Fi and Paula dismantle this toxic myth, explaining why relying on luck, raw talent, or third-party representatives is a recipe for disappointment.
Instead, they share how taking personal responsibility and defining exactly what success looks like to you can completely transform your artistic journey.
In this episode, we unpick:
- Why handing over all control (and a huge cut of your earnings) isn’t the only way to “make it.”
- Why vague goals lead to aimless results, and how to figure out what you actually want.
- Overcoming the societal pressures of what it means to be a proper or acceptable artist.
- The straightforward, simple truth about exchanging your valuable art (as a product or service) for a profit.
Whether you are tired of underpricing your work on the sidewalk or simply want to feel confident navigating the entrepreneurial side of your passion, this episode will help you put a motor in your boat and steer your own ship.
We want to hear from you! What are your biggest questions or struggles when it comes to running your art career as a business? Let us know in the comments. New episodes of Art Crush come out every Saturday.
00:00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to Art crush with artist Fi Marks and Paula Telizyn, where we talk about being an artist, being a professional artist and being a woman who’s an artist and more.
00:00:23 Speaker 1: Hello, fee.
00:00:25 Speaker 2: Hi, Paula. How are you?
00:00:27 Speaker 1: I’m great. We’ve been having a very lively discussion before we hit record. Talking about, some of the artists that we know, some of the events going on, some of the things that we’re experiencing in our businesses. And this neatly leads into what we are going to be talking about today, which is about artists who don’t view themselves as having a business per se, as if having a business, capital B is a bad word. or selling out.
00:01:01 Speaker 2: I don’t like to generalize, but if you’re an artist out there, what would be the holy grail of your art career? When would you think, if ever that you have reached the peak, you’ve done it. You’re a huge success as an artist because I don’t think this is explored enough. I was saying to Paula just before we came on that art galleries can. And again, I know I’m generalizing and I’m sure if you work in an art gallery, your art gallery may be very, very different. So please do not come for us when we say things like this, when we make huge generalizations. But, there are art galleries out there that turn artists into manufacturers, because basically artists think if they get into a good gallery. The gallery will take all their artwork, sell it for huge amounts, and then they will send them the cut. They don’t see their role as being in the gallery as part of that and selling their own work that it’s their business. They’ve created everything. Do you need to have somebody who sells it and takes a big cut of your wages, of your earnings, and you think that’s making it? Whereas if you think of your art business as a business, it’s about making that success for yourself, not relying on others. It’s a bit like the myth of true love and finding your perfect partner. You think, oh, if I met the right person, then my whole life would be heavenly. If that has happened to you, I’m absolutely thrilled. But for the majority of people, if you’re relying on somebody else to find your happiness, we all know you’re not going to find it. And I think it’s the same when you look at how you want to run your art business.
00:03:16 Speaker 1: One of the things that I consistently see in artists, and throughout the years that I’ve worked with artists, is the artists who create success for themselves have defined what that success is, what they need to do to get to that successful point. And it’s not this vague image of I’ll have a show in a gallery and everything will be great. It’s not this vague image of, I will go to this art fair and sell a few pieces, and everything will be great, and I’ll be famous, or I’ll be in the news or whatever for the right reasons, and be famous and sell work, right? These are very vague things. The people who create success for themselves as artists take responsibility for understanding the aspects of their business. this is the key thing. And I’m not judging because when I started my art business way, way, way, way back, I had experience as a business owner, but merging that idea of business plus art actually took me a bit to sort of get to that point. I wanted to stay in the studio and let somebody else sell my work, and I tried, and that did not work. I had an artist representative. I had to fire her. About four months in, I had galleries who were showing my work and trying to sell it, and it just didn’t work for me. What worked the most was treating the art I created and my art business like a business. It was getting out there promoting, selling, connecting, and owning that responsibility. But before I could do that, I had to have a clear idea as to what success meant to me, what it looked like in detail.
00:04:48 Speaker 2: Which was what I said right at the beginning and what I would like the listeners to really think about. we all know about that dreaded question when you had interviews, where do you see yourself in five years time? In ten years time? And I used to think, oh, I don’t know, I don’t know, but actually the essence of that question is really, really important. If you want success, you, you have to know what that looks like. And that also ties in with getting rid of the myth that it’s all to do with luck. And people think, oh, it’s because you were born talented. It’s like, no, this isn’t the case. Yes, we all have as human beings, a certain amount of talent, but it’s about how we foster that. If I wanted to learn to play the piano, I would have to work at it, and I would have to practice every day, and I would have to keep going, and I would have to learn a lot before I was ready to do my first performance. But I could do it now. It’s exactly the same with the art world. There is, again, this sort of myth around it that people in school, in education, there are people who are good at art and everybody else isn’t. And that is so not the case. It’s about experience. It’s about wanting, having the desire and the passion to improve. To work at it. To learn about it. To get that overview about it. To think I could actually do something with this and create a business. These things never are just luck. But as I say, the most common phrase that people as artists and in a lot of other the arts will be told is, you’re so lucky I couldn’t do that. You’re so lucky or you’re so talented. That’s the reason your art sells. It’s more complex than that. Far more complex.
00:07:02 Speaker 1: it is a lot more complex, and to boil somebody’s career or skills down to a single sentence, I think is really unfair to the level of complexity and level of work that goes into it. Whether you are learning to play the piano or you are learning to paint with a level of skill, it does take practice, but so does running a business takes practice. It takes embracing the idea that you have a business and then it’s taking responsibility for it as well. There’s so much information available online about running a business that it does require that first step of what do I actually want? And this comes up for me every time I talk to artists, this is consistent. So since twenty eighteen or so, when I sat down in front of my first artist client and said, what’s your vision for your business? They were very concerned. And like I said, it’s been very consistent for eight years. They were very concerned about doing things right. What’s right for me? when it comes to women who are artists, I predominantly work with women who are artists, but not always. it’s what is proper, what’s allowed, what is seen as okay and acceptable. my job is to throw all that aside and help them see that they don’t need to do what is proper, what is acceptable, what is normal. this is a key thing in looking at your goals. What’s the goal? You actually really want that you’re so afraid to even admit to yourself because it’s perhaps too big or too scary or too unrealistic. Because when you start admitting those things, you start creating that vision and you can start putting in the steps to get to the point where you create that business. I’ve seen so many artists who are very, very good at what they do in terms of making art and are Terrible at positioning their art as the amazing aspirational pieces that they are. They show up with their art laid out on blankets on the sidewalk, as we had here recently, right in downtown London. There was an art event where artists laid out their beautiful pieces on the ground to sell. I’ve seen artists around the world at markets taping five hundred pound or five hundred euro paintings to boards to try to sell them. Who’s going to pay five hundred? Anything, any unit of currency, for something that you’re selling in a corner of a market taped to a board?
00:09:41 Speaker 2: there is this mismatch, isn’t there? Because we’re looking at success. And often people think the only element of success as an artist is selling your work and selling at any price. How often do we see a social media post with somebody saying, oh, I’ve just sold this and everyone’s going, congratulations, you know, big party did it. We don’t know what it’s been sold for. It could be sold for ten p, it could be sold for ten thousand pounds. But it’s almost like the amount is not mentioned. And I’m not saying that you should, but it’s almost like. And the. Congratulations. Well, it’s your job. If somebody comes and you buy a kitchen off them and they put it in your house, they’re not going on to social media and going, oh, I’ve sold a kitchen. Woohoo! And everyone going, yay, well done. Oh, that’s so good. it’s almost like for artists, there’s this very strange world where, yes, it is great, obviously when you sell a piece of work. it is more complex. It is more complex than everybody who sells a piece of work. You know, we can look and go, oh, look, they’ve sold ten pieces. We had somebody, didn’t we, Paula, who we saw on social media who was selling their art for twenty five pounds and was going on with a pity party on their post saying, oh, I’ve only sold three pieces this week. What was that all about? Well, yeah, because you’ve only made seventy five pounds, but it’s like, it’s just a very strange thing I think it goes back to this idea of not the whole world in a way, not understanding art is a business. we all know about Sotheby’s and the auctions and all that, and people making huge amount of profits from dead artists work and about them being an investment. that’s like another world that is nothing to do with the artist or even the artwork. It’s about money. It’s all about money. So there’s that. And I think that’s what’s given the nasty taste in people’s mouths about it, because you’ve got that and then you’ve got the person who’s painting in their kitchen selling on the local market stall, which suddenly feels more authentic. And then there’s this huge gap in the middle where all those artists in the middle, where are they? Is it are you a success if somebody else in Sotheby’s is making and a loads of investors are investing in your artwork, or are you a success when you sell a couple of cards on a local market stall? There’s very little in between. there is so much here, which as you know, if you listen regularly, we unpick and go, this is strange, this is weird. We need to do something about that. And we have the opportunity to do something about it, not accept ourselves as either the person on the market stall or on the sidewalk, or the person who’s dead and somebody else is making loads of money of your art.
00:12:55 Speaker 1: a lot of times, because laypeople don’t have this idea. And by laypeople, I mean Non-artists have this idea of what artists are. By the time somebody decides how artists live and what it means to be an artist, by the time somebody decides that they are going to be an artist, they’ve been indoctrinated into those ideas. Indoctrination sounds evil and planned and conspiracy, and I’m not meaning in that way. But we are all indoctrinated into ideas of colonialism and racism and sexism and and all the isms that we grew up with, especially if you are of a certain age and looking back and going, oh, I enjoyed the show in the eighties and you watch it and you go, wow, That didn’t age well. You know, we have these indoctrinations that happen because these are the ways we are thinking in certain decades when we’re raised by parents or are taught by teachers or mentors or instructors, we are absorbing a lot of their perspectives and form our own perspective moving forward. But that that perspective is informed on what you learn from those people. So when we come into becoming an artist, we think that we must do what’s acceptable, which to me, I find is very odd. As artists, we’re supposed to be a little bit rebellious, a little bit different, walking out of step. So when we approach a business, we approach as artists, we approach it all the same, which is so strange. So rolling us right back around to why artists struggle to sell work and struggle to have successful businesses and struggle to even have a good living comes back down to not having the vision to understand what is success to them, and also having the ability to unpack that bigger vision, not just what is acceptable success. It’s what is unacceptable success that you desire. Because we all have big desires, but a lot of times they get squashed because you know what? What would so and so think, what would my neighbors think? What would people online think if I got really big? Who cares? Yeah.
00:15:08 Speaker 2: people lower their expectations so they don’t get disappointed. So we understand that. I think we’ve talked about in the past, Paula, about where you find support as an artist, this is where the mismatch between the business world and art, it’s like, well, you do you become an artist if you’re good at art and it’s seen as quite self-indulgent, it’s not thought of as a service to the whole population, which it is. you just sort of like end up getting lost and not knowing which way to turn because some people are telling you, oh, you’re an artist, you can’t run a business. And some people say, oh, well, your art’s not very good. You know, you’re never going to make it or art is just a hobby. There’s so much going around in artists heads. because the idea of art and business being married is, is quite a new idea. if we focused on, entrepreneurship being a sort of aspect of the curriculum in schools, then you’d say, what is it that I can do? What product can I make What service can I offer in order to help me, live and pay my bills and do all those things. But it’s not even an option. If you ask most kids what they wanted to be when they grow up, they don’t even think about being an entrepreneur because they don’t think of that as a possibility. They always think that they’re going to be working for somebody else, doing somebody else’s job.
00:16:44 Speaker 1: Mhm. I think that as we wrap this episode up, I want to leave our listeners with a couple of important thoughts. Number one, running a business is not that hard. You have a product or service that you are selling for a profit, and you are providing that you exchange money for it, right? That’s it. Everybody makes a lot more complicated. So you create art that is a product that you are selling. I’m sorry, I’m using the P word for art, but it is a product that you are selling. Also, art gets to be a service too, because there is there’s a service aspect to it, but we’re not going to go into that right now. you are pricing it in order to make money, which means that you’re making back your material costs. You’re making also back your time costs. That means marketing costs, going to shows or whatever fees that you have to pay out. You need to factor those into your pricing and then you are putting it in front of people, making them notice it, telling them that they need it in ways that allows them to see that they need it and exchanging money for it. They give you money, they get the art, that’s it. That’s running a business and then keeping track of that. So you can pay taxes because has all. But that’s the easy part. And people make business so complicated. Generally, if they make it complicated, it’s because they’re selling you a course. But business really isn’t that complicated. I was running a business for years before I realized I was running a business. Back when I started freelancing as a programmer way back in. Oh, I’m not going to say the decade. Um, but yeah, it took me a few years to realize actually I’m running a business. so we do these mental games with ourselves. It is really straightforward. The other thing that I want to make sure that we stress is that you must have a vision to work towards. That vision may change over time, that goal, that intention. But you must have it because if you’re vague about it, you are just going to be floating vaguely aimlessly down the stream, going nowhere based on whatever the current is. So wherever the water is taking you, at whatever speed is, what’s going to happen to you. You could put a motor in your boat and a rudder and go. You just need that vision.
00:18:55 Speaker 2: just remember that you don’t want to emulate anybody else. Your vision is for you. You are have to have your USP, your unique selling point and your unique selling point is your amazing art and what that offers people.
00:19:16 Speaker 1: Yeah. So is there anything else you want to say before we wrap up this episode?
00:19:20 Speaker 2: Nope. That’s fine.
00:19:23 Speaker 1: Excellent. So we’d love to hear from you in the comments. Feel free to share if you have any ideas or questions about running your art career as a business. what has worked for you? Maybe what has not worked for you? It’d be interesting to have a discussion about that. We do answer the comments. so feel free to put them in place don’t forget to like, subscribe and share. New episodes come out every Saturday UK time and we are on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Iheartpodcast, audible And your favorite podcast platform. We’ll see you in the next one.
