Art for Sale
Making a living as an artist is hard work. While it remains a dream for many, the pressures of a rapidly increasing cost of living here in New Orleans is turning that dream into a difficult hustle. And who besides the privileged amongst us has extra income to buy original work anymore? This particular question has recently become more personal for me; I have been given a rare opportunity not typically available to someone in my income bracket to open a nonprofit art space that has a gallery component right in the belly of the beast on Julia Street. While selling art is probably the least interesting part of the work I do there, for the sake of the talented, struggling artists I know (and the monthly rent check I write), sales are necessary. To help me better understand the current landscape, I asked some of my favorite local artists how they are faring out there. Below are their candid and insightful answers.
1. Do you make a living as an artist?
Ida: Yes, and I feel an enormous gratitude for that. There was a good decade or so during which that wasn’t the case.
Sean: Nope. I have a full-time job that pays the bills and helps to support my goals of one day being a full-time artist.
Nathan: Yes, I have made a living as an artist for about 10 years in New Orleans now.
Michael: I suppose that first depends upon what one considers art. For decades I earned a living as an illustrator, and for some reason there are people who do not consider illustration “high” art. That’s a relatively modern concept; before the beginning of Abstraction, around 1900, most paintings—likenesses, landscapes, narrative paintings—were essentially illustrations in one sense or another. For instance, the cave paintings at Lascaux, the Sistine Chapel, even Goya’s Horrors of War, are all illustrations of a kind. So up until a few years ago, illustration is how I primarily supported myself. I mainly did line drawings for manufacturers of cardboard boxes, pencil sketches for god-awful textbooks like Careers in the Legal Profession and such. It wasn’t pleasant, but not entirely miserable either: it beat working a wood chipper and it was gratifying to see my work in print. And I was slowly getting better at oil painting. I stayed with it, eventually earning enough to rent a run-down apartment in an otherwise nice neighborhood in Brooklyn. Only occasionally would I do a painting or drawing for myself. As I became more competent with oil paint, I gradually began to interject my own voice into my assignments. I tried to make illustrations that looked like paintings, images that would hopefully stand the test of time, whether as the cover of a book or hanging on a person’s wall. I ended up giving away many of those early pictures, but in recent years I’ve learned to retain them; several of those originals are now owned by museums and private collectors.
2. How do you sell your art?
Ida: I’m in a few galleries around town and across the South—that’s the bread and butter. I also get a fair amount of commissions, which I think mostly come from word of mouth or social media.
Sean: I primarily sell art online through my website, social media, and other online vendors. I tend to get the greatest amount of exposure through social media. The analytics software that’s incorporated in my website and on social media help me narrow down the who, what, when, and where of my buyer demographics.
Nathan: Mostly in Jackson Square, which has been very good to me, but I also have a booth at Secondline Antiques, which I have total freedom to design as I wish and that has been a nice addition to my income when I can’t go out to the Square. The Square can be challenging because it involves so much time at home to make the work and an almost equal amount of time out there selling, and you are always hoping for good conditions. From time to time I have had a few art shows and I hope to do more in the future, but they typically aren’t as financially successful for me and I’m ok with that.
Michael: Like most of my colleagues, I’m not good at marketing. I rarely sell in galleries because I work so slowly, and I’m not very good at playing the flamboyant artist. I did get a tremendous boost in 2012 when the curator of the Ogden Museum, Bradley Sumrall, encouraged me to have an exhibition there. It was my first solo exhibition ever, and it was favorably received. It was marvelous to get my work before a larger audience. Since then, it’s been largely word of mouth, with me selling work privately from my studio. To a large extent, I depend upon the quality of the work to sell itself.
3. Do you make art that is intentionally sellable? Does it differ from the rest of your creative practice? If so, how?
Ida: I definitely have a style of work that I know to be very sellable. It’s more conservative than the work that I might otherwise do. My art features a lot of themes of nature and religion, fertility and mortality, and I have a few motifs that I can return to that do very well in the galleries. Eggs, feathers, leaves, the lighter pieces tend to do well. There are also color families that do well—bright blues, soft greens. It feels weird to be making those creative decisions in that context and I often want to buck against it, work with gnarly reds and browns and things that are less approachable. When you become known for a certain style, and successful in that way, it makes it very difficult to experiment. I’ve been trying to make loose, abstract, messy drawings as an opener to my day. They’re like stream of consciousness images; very separate from my painting, and not intended to sell or even show. I’m not sure where I’m going with this project, but it feels important.
Sean: I do make somewhat novelty pieces that I think may appeal to certain audiences. I price them to sell to encourage those who may be on the fence about collecting original art because of the cost. I also do commissions, which are often times at the request of whatever the client wants, which can sometimes be a challenge in that it is so far from my creative practice. I would honestly do it for free if capitalism didn’t demand that I make a living. It mostly differs only in subject matter. The beauty of it is that no matter what I’m painting, it typically brings me joy and it is an opportunity to hone in on my creative skills.
Nathan: Hmmmm...the second part of this question is a little difficult for me to determine because most of my time as an artist has been spent out in the Square selling. I made art before I was out there, but I was young and my artistic voice was in its infancy. I would say that I do make certain compromises to my work to make it sellable but not as much as you’d think. Most of my clientele are tourists on vacation so my path out there has led me to make smaller work that they can take home easily at accessible prices for most. There are people out there that sell larger scale work but that often involves much waiting and hoping for that good sale. I guess the biggest compromise is preventing my imagery from getting too vague, and by that I mean I tend to want to make my work abstract, obscure, and just more strange but people respond less to that. I find I get the best response the more narrative my work feels and the more I add a visual hook. It’s still weird but relatable. These things don’t bother me too bad because I still feel I have a lot of creative freedom and I do really enjoy making the work.
Michael: Not intentionally, no. I am, however, sometimes drawn to imagery that is darkly-themed and geared, perhaps, to a more specialized audience: New Orleans cemeteries, empty buildings, isolated figures. Not pictures everyone necessarily wants to hang above their sofas or in their bedroom. That said, I trust that the quality of the work will speak for itself, and that the underlying themes, i.e. the subtext, will allow each picture to eventually find a home. Painting for oneself, then, is invariably an act of faith, as well as a gamble.
4. Does selling your art validate your practice for you personally? Do you measure your own artistic success by your ability to sell?
Ida: Not really, or I try not to. There’s definitely a sense of pride to be gotten from it, after a lifetime of hearing the starving artist trope. I think, though, depending on art for a living can make it feel more like a capital-J Job than an artistic practice. I go to the studio every day like a 9 to5, and set concrete goals for myself. Especially lately, I’ve had a lot of commissions and galleries asking for certain types of paintings. It’s been a few months since I’ve had the opportunity to make a painting just because I want to, because I feel inspired to or have an idea that I want to explore. This is something that I’m constantly grappling with—how to maintain excitement and freshness when the practice becomes the thing that pays rent.
Sean: Selling art is a byproduct of my artistic practice. I make art primarily to explore ideas, mental health and community. Art is my tool for healing myself and maybe others. I’m always happy when someone can connect with a piece and they want to support my continuation of creating art. I love the process of making art and I measure my success based on growth. I ask myself questions like, “Am I satisfied with this piece?” and “Have I improved since the last work I created?” Success is growth and learning.
Nathan: Absolutely! It really energizes me to sell something, especially the pieces I feel personally invested in. I love meeting people in the street from all over the place and just seeing their reaction to my work and hearing what it makes them think about. However I do not measure my artistic success by my ability to sell. Artistic success is a very complex thing to me and often falls outside of what will be financially rewarding or even something that can be traded for money at all.
Michael: It’s been said that if you can support yourself by creating the things you want, the work you love—whether it be writing, composing, or painting—and still make ends meet, you’ve succeeded. You’ve earned the right to call yourself an artist. So for me, at this point, that remains to be seen.
5. If you already had all the money you would ever need, what would you be working on right now?
Ida: I think I would want to take a hiatus from oil painting. I’d want to get more into drawing or learn egg tempera or try sculpture or performance, anything out of my comfort zone. I think it would also be nice to make art that I don’t intend to show anywhere—just make it, put it away for a while. Maybe come back to it at a later date, but something free from the possibility of an audience. That sounds very liberating and appealing.
Sean: I would continue to sharpen my skills as an artist, spend more time with family and friends. If I had that kind of freedom I think I would use my art to dismantle oppressive systems that stifle creativity, love, and healing.
Nathan: I think I would actually still be working the Square sometimes. I do really enjoy the social aspect and selling art at an accessible price. Though I would have other artistic pursuits. I would make much larger three dimensional works and spend a lot more time on each piece. I would work on putting together a show involving interactive installations that had a cohesive narrative theme.
Michael: Well, money is an issue. Nevertheless, I’m creating images as though it were not. I took a fair beating in art school back in the 1970s, with instructors actively deriding realism and purposefully dissuading me from pursuing fine art. Now, four decades later, I’m making a go of it by painting and drawing images almost entirely of my own choosing. And it’s precarious, perhaps more so than if I were in my 20s. I don’t have a backup plan—illustration is now primarily done digitally—and I no longer have all the time in the world. So it’s a serious gamble.