Ancient Artist: Developing an art career after 50

Time for an Equity Stake in Yourself

Sometimes it feels as if everything has derailed.  Our personal hopes and dreams are eclipsed by larger dangers and catastrophes.  Worries pop up from beneath our feet and the path we charted is now so steep it's impossible to move forward.  For the creative personality, these fears can stop us dead in our tracks.  But it doesn't have to be this way.

We can take out an Equity Stake in ourselves.

Why not take advantage in the economic slowdown to slow down our own mad dash forward?  Revisit a few old paintings that haven't sold and see if you can improve them.  Find an artist you admire and spend as long as it takes to learn three new insights about their work.  Buy those little 6 x 8 or 8 x 10 canvas panels and paint one every day, even if you never thought of yourself as a Daily Painter.  Your skills will improve, and you can put these small works up for sale on sites like Etsy or eBay if you like them. 

Continue to market.  Yesterday, I joined the Chamber of Commerce.  Our town is in the midst of urban renewal with an emphasis on the arts and I think I can contribute.  More importantly, I want to contribute. 

With Chamber membership comes the list of other members who will be added to my mailing list.  With that in mind, I am also looking for a new computer program that will handle my marketing.  Excel is fine for some things, but the last time I tried to sort I lost some data and haven't gone back in to correct it. 

I am continuing to plan my next postcard mailing, and working out initial brainstorming ideas about a news letter sent out by snail mail. Or maybe an E-book.

I am actually grateful for this period of removed pressure.  My work is currently for sale in three venues, and in an exhibition that will close in November.  I can allow myself to step back from the self imposed pressure to produce huge bodies of work and assess what I've accomplished so far.  I know that my interest in landscape is interpreted both abstractly and realistically.  In the area of realism, I can look at my current work and see how much farther I know I can go.  If things were selling now at the same pace they were two years ago I wouldn't have realized that the work could be better.  I most likely would still be assuming-- as I did then -- that I was near the top of my game. 

But the game is ongoing.  The silver lining in all this is the confirmation that -- if the artist is to sustain her ability to create art -- the emphasis should be more about the process toward achieving the desired product, and not the end result by any means.  As we saw from the  AWS post, artists who become too focused on the end product risk several things, among them the inability to adapt to changing public tastes, and the potential for an underlying insecurity that could stop them from creating something that was not dependent upon artificial means. 

Artists need to balance both aspects of creating: process and product.  There is no career without a product that is marketable.  But there is no authentic product without a process based in the artist's own efforts.  Your "defining style" comes into being through your willingness to move beyond duplicating the visual work of others.  How many times have you looked at an artist's work and thought "just out of art school?"  I know I have.  And -- in fact -- I have looked at images of work I was selling two years ago and thought -- "eeegaad! I can't believe people bought that!" (Although I am grateful that they did and are still enjoying the pieces.)

But more than anything, the silver lining in this slowdown is the gift of patience. Your art career does not happen over night.  You need a 5 year plan just to get your level of craftsmanship up to snuff.  To field test your ideas. Like -- how do I hang these panels?  Or -- will this process appeal to people?  Some experts say it takes a ten to twenty year plan to become self sustaining as an artist.  Not much different from a business plan in the real world.

But every plan starts with a single action. And then another.  An Equity Stake in your future.

This week,

I painted several small paintings.
I joined the Chamber of Commerce.
I started studying the books by Edgar Payne and Sorolla.
I revisited a painting and completely changed a major element.

I like this silver lining.

The Easy Cure for the Markaphobic

A friend asked me the other day, "How do you actually sell art to people?"  We had been talking about the gallery setting and the people who pass through, sometimes so thoroughly disengaged I wondered if they were on a required field trip and more concerned about the next food break than looking at the art.

My answer was simple.  "I don't sell art.  I build relationships."

I don't believe you can sell something as intangible as the emotion aroused by an artist's vision. People connect with what they connect with, it's that basic.  But what I can do is build a relationship, first between the potential client and myself, and then transfer that connection to the artwork and the artist.

This is actually the way we should be thinking about marketing.

Markaphobia

There are going to be those pauses in our careers when we stand there thinking, "I need to be marketing this artwork."  And, for a markaphobic, the next thought is, "I can't possibly market."

Not surprisingly, many artists - myself included -  are markaphobic.  When confronted with the necessity of marketing our work, we paint the idea with a very large and inaccurate brush.  It needs to be comprehensive.  I need a logo, a brand, positioning myself in the marketplace, a catchy jingle...oooh, yes, and dancing paint brushes, a huge promotion...videos on YouTube, viral marketing, maybe a 15 second fast forward of me creating my...being somewhat of a creative, my thinking can get out of control. Along with all those "needs."

But what if we reframed the idea of marketing from "selling something" to "relationship building"?

The Bulls Eye Approach

Being big on self-cures, I have devised what I call the Bulls Eye approach when it comes to "relationship building" and my personal art career.

The center of my Bulls Eye is labeled Local.  Within this area are activities I might employ to build relationships with people who like art, who think or write about art, and who sell art.  Or who make art.  Or who accompany their spouses to art openings because next weekend they get to go fishing.   The goal is safe: just make yourself visible.  Shake a few hands.  Tell funny stories about how you had to rush some artwork into a gallery when it hadn't completely set and the heat of the lights melted your painting (true, actually happened).  It's sending an email to a local arts writer with a link to information they might find interesting, or talking with the photographer who shoots your pictures (not literally, with his camera, silly), or volunteering to help out at that local fund raising event you were going to attend anyway, so it's easy enough to call it marketing -- oops, relationship building.

See how easy it is?

The Outer Rings

Anything more complex falls into the outer rings of the Bulls Eye. Museums are a great first step.  Just visit them.  See how your work follows similar themes.  When you feel brave enough, you can extend your relationship building to visiting galleries in other cities, where you can observe first hand how other artists present their work, the level of skill, the subject matter.  If you start to feel tense, just breathe in and out and repeat the mantra "I can... do this."

Once you feel confident, tackling your mailing list is next.  Ordering postcards and actually mailing them out is important: it doesn't count it you leave the postcards in the box they came in, so if you need a markaphobic sponsor to talk you through it, send me an email and I'll try to help. Of course you might need to help me work through my fear of the artist portfolio, but I have full confidence that if markaphobics unite, we can find the strength.

The Easy Cure?

You have something you want to communicate.  It's worthwhile.  It deals with our human condition, our insights, our vision for the future or something as indescribable as a sensation or an emotional understanding of the place where things are formed.  Of course you aren't about to stand on the street corner hawking your wares like some caricature from a used car commercial.

Set that image aside and ask yourself these questions:

• Do I have a body of work (10 - 20 pieces) I sincerely believe in?
• Is my "product presentation" comparable with the marketplace?
• Can I tolerate the uncertainty of public reaction?
• Do I have enough patience for the process?
• Am I comfortable enough with my artistic path that I will continue no matter what the initial outcome?

Then go out there and build those relationships.

Why Artists Should Collect Art

 
On the wall: Where In This World @ Sue Favinger Smith  Oil on Panel
On the desk: Where Did Simpkins Go @Cary Latham Weigand, original porcelain

Do you collect art?  Other artists' art?

I know, most artists have walls covered with their own work.  If you're like me, there's stuff in the closet, the garage, even the guest bathroom.

But I've always felt a residual creative energy attached to artwork, and not only do I want to send that energy out into the world with my own pieces,  I want to bring the energy from other artists into my home environment.

What I Collect:

I have utilitarian but beautiful pottery vase serving as my brush holder, instead of mason jar. 

I have a Membres replica pottery bowl, plus an original pottery vessel from Guatemala, forming part of a collection that includes pieces my daughter made in school.

On my wall I have an original pastel by Marla Baggetta, and my most recent acquisition is a fabulous porcelain sculpture by Cary Latham Weigand.

Where did Simpkins Go @ Cary Latham Weigand

Here's the story:

I first saw this sculpture when it came in to the gallery for the "Where Rivers Meet" show.  The work was delivered well in advance of the show, and every day I would find it in the storage area and lust after this piece...as soon as the show opened I called in and purchased it.

Cary's work speaks to me on so many levels - the beauty of the porcelain surfaces, the mythological character of her figures, the expressions on the faces...plus, I see elements that motivate my own work, but they're interpreted differently in Cary's work.  I can feel the shared, positive creative energy every time I look at this -- or any of my other pieces. 

How about you? 

Who do you collect and why?

And if you don't collect, why not? 

What does your Art Avatar look like?

My daughter and son-in-law bought one of those new video games and I've become addicted.  Not to the games - they're fun, but what I really like is building the avatars.  Okay, perhaps I've taken too much pleasure in grasping the head of my husband's avatar, dragging him off, kicking and screaming to the avatar workroom, where I turn him into something resembling a large pumpkin with feet.  But I get to decide what the avatar looks like, clothes, gender, size - tall or minuscule - and put him or her out into the virtual world.  Then, if I want, I can catch my avatar and drag it off again.  Great fun, and an effective stress reliever.   But also an effective business concept.

Ask any business person what their demographic target is and they will tell you.  Ask any novice artist and you might just get a blank stare or a vague description.  But the more you know what your art avatar looks, sounds, and acts like, the more effective you will be in operating your art business.

This is my art avatar:

He or she is between the age of early 20's to early 60's, well educated, comfortable purchasing artwork between $500 and $5000, visits galleries, and has contemporary tastes.  My avatar likes things that look unique, is willing to take chances and is not afraid of mixing styles.  Usually my avatars are couples with  enough knowledge of art trends to feel confident in their decisions, and often have home environments that balance natural elements with things of beauty.  They like to know as much about the artist as the artwork, are totally engaged in their art purchases, and tell me they still love the artwork even years after the purchase.   

My avatar is interested in all aspects of art, and will visit art fairs, but will probably reserve major purchases for paintings they find in a gallery or open studio environment.  This means that I must create art for the gallery market.  My marketing should reinforce this and be designed to appeal to those venues appealing to my avatars.  While art fairs might be a tempting alternative, with my current body of work I can see that my efforts would be better spent approaching my avatars through the gallery/open studio pathway.

My avatar wants to know about me as an artist, so I will make a point of generating local publicity as well as applying to juried national shows, gaining entry into juried national artist associations, and looking for ways to build my list of credentials.  While my avatars will not purchase art they don't like just because of the artist's pedigree, they want to know that the art they like was created by someone acknowledged by their artistic peers.

Having a good understanding of my avatars makes the decision-making easier, functioning as a way to check my efforts -- will this help me with my avatars, or am I dragging them off kicking and screaming thinking I need to change them?  And if I am thinking about change, which is merely another word for growth, knowing how my new avatars function is simply part of the process.  But if I don't really want to change, seeing how a new plan of action might or might not appeal to my avatars will keep me focused and ultimately more successful.

Most artists already have a vague understanding of their target demographic.   What does your avatar look like?  How does he or she behave?  If your avatar seems too vague, pick him or her up by the head -- kicking and screaming -- and take a good look at all the attributes. You might gain a deeper appreciation of the type of customer you want to target.  And that knowledge will make it easier to decide your plan of action as you progress in your art career.

Trends and the Changing Art Market

The May issue of Art Business News published an excerpt from the Gallery Roundtable held at Artexpo New York 2008, and I thought I would share with you some of the interesting points that jumped out at me.

• Small paintings are gaining popularity, as clients opt for filling large spaces with "a collection of small pieces by the same artist or by several artists."

• There is a return to Contemporary Realism, figurative work, still lifes and representational work in the style of the old Masters or traditional approaches.

• The internet is driving sales on reproductions, prints and giclees, so many galleries are countering the trend by focusing on originals or very limited editions.

• More young people are entering the market as collectors, generating a sense of energy,  "a new kind of celebrity" similar to that seen in fashion, music, and technology.

• Relationships - between galleries and their clients, and galleries and their artists - matter: "At the end of the day, it's about the relationships we create and how we build them."

You can read the Gallery Roundtable excerpt here, if you don't subscribe to the free magazine. 

Breaking the Glass, Continued

Last Friday I came across a thought provoking post on Seth Godin's Blog about a beautiful glass sculpture that contains a clock stopped at 0:00.  The clock is real, waiting to start ticking.  But in order to start the clock you must break the fragile glass sculpture.  That was your choice.  You have something beautifully constructed, a work of art, but time will not start unless you "break" your comfort zone and be willing to start new in the unknown. 

Seth has a way with words, and in his post he asked "analogy, anyone?"

We receive messages all the time.  Sometimes, the message is so familiar to the messages we've received in the past we "tune it out" the way our kids do when we tell them to clean their rooms. 

And sometimes a message comes through that rings such a bell of authenticity within your personal psyche that you suddenly "get it."

This is one of those messages for me.

Although it seems logical that life should proceed in a linear fashion, with one accomplishment leading naturally into the next, more often it becomes a spiral.  Each rotation of "learning" comes back to the starting point and we are faced with the choice of standing there admiring our beautiful glass sculpture or breaking the glass.

Starting that clock requires that we "break" with the past, or safety, or the comfort zone we've created.  Maybe, like me, there is fear beneath the hesitancy.  What do I risk if I do this?

But turn the question around and ask yourself, what have I compromised in order to keep this security?

If you have compromised your artistic dreams, then you have no other choice but to lift that hammer.

The Indisputable Creative Advantage of Older Artists

When I owned my business, there was a rule everyone accepted: If you survived five years, you were successful.  Try to get credit, or open an account , and you could hear the tension:  how long have you  been in business?  Always followed by relief when told five, ten, or eighteen years.  Time, it seemed, was the primary predictor of success.

According to AGING, CREATIVITY, AND ART, A Positive Perspective on Late-Life Development, by Martin S. Lindauer,  this rule holds true for artists, too.

I discussed Lindauer's findings in an earlier post titled The Seven Characteristics that Distinguish Older Artists over their Younger Peers, and I wanted to follow up with more encouraging conclusions.

The statistics Lindauer used were gathered by art historians looking at artists from the past who had created masterpieces.  The data included working lifespan, when masterpieces were created in relation to death, and reflected activity from the past few centuries.  A second data set included women,  and finding artists working closer to the modern age, the last 100 years or so. Earlier assumptions about creativity being a "young man's game" had been based on research flawed in Lindauer's opinion, because it revealed that artists "peaked" in their late 20's or 30's, without considering lifespan (most of the artists died in their late 40's or very early 50's).  When research expanded to include artists with longer lifespans, something interesting emerged.

"Bursts of creative activity varied for 45 well-known artists; peaks were found in nearly every decade of their lives: in youth, middle-age, and old age.  Despite differences between individual artists, creative output generally occurred relatively later in life than earlier; and creative productivity continued into old age in nearly all cases.  Youth is therefore not the only or even the predominant period in which creative productivity was maximized (pp 123)."

I like that: "Youth is therefore not the only or even predominant period in which creative productivity is maximized."

So youth is not a pre-condition to becoming a successful artist.

But the amount of time spent creating art is.

And what does this mean for the Ancient Artist?

The older you are, the longer you've been painting.

And the longer you paint, the better you get.

Indisputable.

Imagine.  What could you do if you knew that you had at least one "peak" ahead of you, and if you exercise and eat right, there's the possibility of two?

I'm heading to the kitchen right now for some  broccoli to eat with my coffee.

Here are some interesting sites mined from my bookmarks. 

Creative Aging's Blog

edward_ winkleman

New York Art News

Have You Discovered Your Hidden Support System?

I spent most of yesterday gathering up the courage to call my photographer and set an appointment to bring in the ten new works on paper that I've been staring at for the past few months.  When I finally called, he answered on the first ring.

Yes, he remembered me.  And how did those photographs he took a year and a half ago work out for me?

Very well, I politely told him, and could he possibly have some time today or tomorrow.

Yes. He could.  So I was stuck, committed.  I kept telling myself that all I was doing was getting professional shots taken of pieces that proved too difficult for me to shoot, with their reflective surfaces and subtle colors.  It wasn't like I had to follow through on anything else, like sending them off to that juried event with the deadline in two weeks.   

I do this to myself on a regular basis, I realize, having no legitimate reason to feel so insecure.  But that seems to be the nature of my particular creative beast.  Give me a compliment or accept me into some organization and immediately the tiny voice in my head starts crowing over the imminent discovery that I am, yes, an artistic fraud. 

But he is expecting me.  We have a nice visit, I leave the work with instructions to return today. 

What can I say?  The meeting today was wonderful. Not because he thought the work was so fantastic that he couldn't breathe -- no.  I think it was because he's also an artist, working on his own version of that creative dream.  We were two creatives meeting where our paths crossed, and paused to share a moment of encouragement and support.  He told me how he had started doing stock photography; his wife called while we were talking to share the news that one of his images had earned a "Flame."  (Apparently, when an image has been downloaded 100 times, it earns a flame.)  We talked about the art market in general and artists we both knew, how everyone was feeling the slowdown and looking for answers.  Then he sat me down in front of his computer and we collaborated on the presentation of my images, while he instructed me on some new tips and tricks in Photoshop, and how to save the files on my desktop.

When I left two hours later I couldn't understand why it had been so difficult for me to make that initial call.   

Creating art is often an isolating experience. At times, we might forget that others are feeling equally isolated.  Our fears keep us from opening up to the very people who understand exactly where we're coming from, and we miss opportunities to discover our hidden support systems.  Yes, there are scary parts to success and to failure that isolation magnifies,  but just beyond that studio door there are hundreds of hidden sources of creative support.  We are not on this journey alone. 

Believe it.

The Seven Characteristics that Distinguish Older Artists over their Younger Peers

I went back to college when I was 51.  I sat in chairs designed for the young, next to my fellow students who were also...well, young.  Adding insult to injury, I needed tutoring -- from the young -- to learn the new technology that these kids in their late teens and twenties grew up with and used as casually as I once used the rotary phone.

It was culture shock.  But more than that.  It was the shock of realizing I was rapidly approaching the gray realm of Old Age.  My first small encounters with...ageism.

Ageism is insidious in that it is so acceptable.  Logical.  It is also based -- at least with regard to late-life creativity -- on scientific research that reinforces traditional views about aging and the mental and physical decline models.

Even when it comes to "creativity" -- something that can't be touched, tested, or accurately measured, let alone understood --  the scientific community  still relies on research that is "objective" and "measurable" -- sort of like trying to catch a fish with your hands.  The easiest one to grab becomes the archetype for the "Creative Old Guy."

But I recently started reading a book by Martin S. Lindauer, titled AGING, CREATIVITY, AND ART, A Positive Perspective on Late-Life Development.

This is a very recent book, with a copyright date of 2003, and reads like a research paper with numerous citations.

It is still worth the effort.

Because here is the good news.  According to Lindauer,  new research reveals that over time, creative people increase both the quality of their artistic output, and the quantity, over their lifetimes, with productivity peaking during their 60's, but the quality of the output remaining steady at the lifetime highs well into the 70's.

Even for artists working in their 80's, their quality ratings were higher -- get that, higher! -- than when  they were in their 20's and 30's.

How can this be?   

According to Lindauer, there are seven characteristics that distinguish "old artists and late art from young artists and youthful efforts." 

• "Older artists have more knowledge and are less career oriented.
• "They also have less energy - the only case where older artists were at a disadvantage to younger ones..."
• "...which they compensated for with greater maturity, concentration, and self-acceptance."
• "Older artists were also less critical than their younger counterparts."
• "However, in two areas, creativity and experimentation, older artists were seen as equal to younger practitioners." (2003, pp.187-188)

Further, while discussing the age at which an artist's "Old Age Style" might emerge, Lindauer wrote, "...the 60-year-old artists, and many of the 70-year-olds who were studied, were 'too young' to have an old-age style."

Re-read that last part again: even the 70-year-olds were too young to have an old age style!

Sometimes the challenges of reinventing yourself at mid-life can seem so daunting that you want to give up.  I know that for me, discouragement became my constant companion to the point where I nearly gave up on the whole "career" idea, caught up in my fear of having "missed the creative boat."

But knowing that, at 60, I am still decades away from having an "Old Age Style" has renewed my energy, sending me back out into the creative world with rekindled optimism.

I hope to see  you all there!

 

How Bonnie Luria Proved 'Em Wrong

Last week I wrote a post about the slowing art market -- well, Bonnie Luria has a terrific post on her blog, St. Croix-nicity, about her nearly sold-out show held in an alternative venue. Transforming an unused breezeway into an elegant gallery space, providing wonderful, exotic food and a special atmosphere, this show was an overwhelming success - not to mention the "limited tourist season" Bonnie describes on St. Croix.

 " If you provide people with an interesting evening out, in a beautiful setting and do the appropriate outreach in forms of advertising, you can get around those details. This show was made into a very elegant, exhibition that brought in what looked like a few hundred people and within the first half hour, 4 of the 7 paintings I had on display, were sold!"

Bonnie is an extremely talented artist, and it doesn't surprise me at all that her paintings were so well received by her art patrons.  She has always been a staunch supporter of the idea that artists should take control of their creative adventure and her success just adds validity to her arguments.

"Read some of the many other suggestions on Creating Artists Space to learn what alternate paths are available. Just as you can’t stop learning new computer programs and re-programming another phone, sitting back and thinking the same old way will get you exactly that."

Get the full story by clicking on over to Bonnie's blog. You won't be disappointed.

Water Carrier @ Bonnie Luria