You’re the problem

What’s something you believe everyone should know.

Something I believe everyone should know is that you can probably do the work you love for a living, if you are ridiculously obsessed and disciplined with your work, and by work I mean artwork. And also please take note of the word ‘probably’ in the previous statement. What I’m suggesting is that there has never, ever, ever been a better time in history for artists to make a living creating what they love… art.

I think the biggest and possibly only hurdle in artists becoming thriving artists is themselves. We are our own worst enemies

Problem number one is that artists hate marketing – in particular, artists hate marketing or selling their work… Selling themselves. If you want to be a thriving artist you have to find a way of making peace with this, because if you don’t want to market you’ll never thrive.

Problem number two is that most artists don’t have a plan or a goal. Without a goal how do you know where you are going? How do you know when you get there? You need a plan, and if you get carried away you could even do a business plan. Because that’s what thriving artists have, it’s boring and not artistic in anyway, but it could be creative, and possibly the more creative it is the better.

Problem number three is devoting enough time to your practice. You might feel like you don’t have time and you probably don’t. Especially for childish activities like creating art and not getting paid for it. You should be down a dusty mine to earn some big dollars, so you can afford junk you don’t need. You have to be frugal with your money and with your most valuable asset… your time. Don’t waste all of your time on someone else’s dream, when you could be wasting it on yours, because that’s much more fun.

So put yourself out into the world, commit every spare minute to your art and then maybe, probably, maybe you might just be an overnight success… in ten years time. Yes that’s the other thing, it probably won’t happen overnight. But you know if you never give it a go you definitely won’t get there.