Outsourcing Art

When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?

When I think of successful thriving artists, I naturally think of the mysterious street artist Banksy. I also think of Damien Hirst the artist made popular by slicing full sized animals in half and displaying them in great big tanks of formaldehyde.

First of all I have heard that both of these artists have crews of people. According to the UK daily mail he outsources the labour to more than 150 assistants. I imagine a similar story could be told for Banksy but that information I imagine would be highly confidential. And in terms of starving artists, Hirst has a net worth of $384 million USD.

Obviously not every Artist can be Damien Hirst but it does show just how much money is available in the art world if you find the right collectors for your work. And these days with the help of the internet finding your collectors has become a whole lot easier, certainly easier than when Damien Hirst first started out. It’s just probably a matter of putting in a lot, lot, lot of time and some more time creating interest around your work by making creative content for your chosen social media channels. Or maybe if you can afford to have a team like Mr Hirst you could employ a team of marketers to get your work in front of the right people.

So one thing I think is really important for becoming a thriving artist is outsourcing what you can and not feeling guilty about it. This brings the topic back around to pricing. I think you need to price your work as if you are asking someone else to create it. That way if you come into times where you do have a high workload you can outsource some minor jobs to allow you to create more work. Obviously it’s a difficult balance, but it seems like if you want to be a thriving artist that doesn’t need to do other jobs, you might need to think more in terms of growing a business, rather than the solitary artist working alone in their studio.