Good Judgment

Getting Your Work Noticed

I’m often asked for advice on the business side of painting. How does one actually make money at this?? Some of it’s just luck, and there’s certainly more than one way to do it. Here are a couple of thoughts on promoting your work in ways that might eventually lead to money changing hands.

Develop Your Own Style

It might sound obvious, but in order to be recognized, your work needs to be recognizable as your work. Don’t try to create work that appeals to everyone. Instead, focus on a subject matter you’re passionate about, pursue a style that interests you, explore emotional narratives that resonate with your heart, or just create something that makes you laugh.

Enter Your Work in Competitions

Competitions are a great way to get your work seen outside your circle of fans and followers, and awards make your work more appealing to buyers. Don’t let a belief that your work isn’t good enough to be recognized hold you back. Judging standards for art competitions can differ widely, and most competitions use multiple judges with varying approaches to evaluating a piece. Some competitions require an entry fee — make sure it’s a true competition, and if so pay the fee and do it. One tip: research the judges. Find their work, and read what they’ve written about it. If possible, focus on competitions with judges whose own work is similar in some way to yours — similar styles, subject matter or perspective, for example. Judges are human — they will evaluate your work by the competition criteria, but they might like works that have something in common with their own work just a little bit better. By the same token, don’t be discouraged if your work isn’t accepted or recognized by a show or competition. Keep trying — different judges can lead to different results.

Resource

The Art Renewal Center has an annual international salon that includes thousands of talented artists from around the world. Check it out here: Art Renewal Center Salon.

Put Only Your Best Work Online

In our digital age, many artists use a website or social media as their “portfolio”. Back in the olden days a few years ago, we created portfolios in binders and folders or offline software, and winnowed down what we sent to galleries in order to emphasize good work, keep the package a user-friendly size, control printing costs and so forth. Nowadays, creating an online portfolio is so fast and inexpensive it’s tempting to just upload everything — the more images the better, and it’s a great way to keep your work organized, right?

No! Every artist knows they have pieces that are stunners, and others that are just … okay-to-good. While you’re pursuing a gallery or other sales channel, focus your online presence on the stunners. Any gallery you approach will seek out your work online even if you only show them one or two pieces when you make the contact. When the gallery’s director — who probably looks at hundreds of images a year — pulls up your website, don’t make her wade through your okay work to get to the awesome stuff. All of that okay work will just drag down her impression of your exceptional pieces. Organize your portfolio offline, and promote the stunners online. And be sure to focus on pieces that elicit an emotional response in the way that you, uniquely, pursue that response in your work.

Resource

Artonomo is an inexpensive ($10/month) platform, created by creators, for organizing your portfolio and sharing your work with galleries, licensing agents and other sales channels. Check it out here: Artonomo.

New Work

Speaking of galleries and being judged, I’m painting like crazy to get work ready for CODA 2025 in Palm Desert this December. Here’s one of my latest pieces, which seems appropriate for today’s topic. I only realized when I finished the painting that I’d used the British spelling of “judgement”. But I imagine that’s the way a very judgmental cat would spell it.