Stop Competing With Artists – Focus On You

The common artist can become a fierce player within the market today. A key problem exists with how they try to achieve this. Too many are focused on competing with other artists.

Where does this competition take place? Every hub where they gather. Pick a social media outlet. Go to your local arts center. It is hub after hub of artists.

There is nothing wrong with being among ourselves. There is something wrong with expecting things to change when we do not alter our habits.

Our Greatest Competition Is In The Mirror

How much time have you spend in education this week for art? How many hours of practice did you put in? Factors such as affording art education can be a concern for many.

How much time have you spend in marketing education over the past days? Did you seek out anyone within local circles in town to donate time, offer help, services?

Now lets compare…

How much time did you spend on social media this week? How many self promotional images, selfies, likes, shares, especially things revolving around your art?

For too many, they miss the real world. An artists platform is more than a marketing gimmick.

Individually we hold ourselves back more than anyone by doing all the wrong things. We have a problem.

Why Competing In The Art Market Is So Hard

Art is one of the most saturated markets in the world. There are far more artists than there ever will be buyers.

This principle is very easy to see. Artists have taken to using fan art to gain popularity. Each struggles to gain some notice.

If you go to hubs online like Etsy and find where artists gather it does not take long to find some seriously underselling their work. When original works sell too cheaply many bad things happen.

These hubs first create a sense of hope. In the end it feels like a choke hold where you must compete with everyone else out there. The only answer seems to be dropping your price in order to gain that edge. It is a mistake just as being in Etsy is most likely a mistake as well.

On social media the problems get worse if you find yourself competing with art. I have heard the horror stories of how artists give away their trade secrets in how to videos or posts. Once that mistake is made they wonder why new people appear copying their work.

These methods many use do little to aid in real public relations for artists. Rather too often they hinder or harm the efforts one would wish to put forward and impact artistic meaning.

It takes little to be an “artist” today. It may seem like an easy way to generate some kind of income. I find that mindset humorous for art has never been easy within any period of history.

Some become famous after their deaths. Most are forgotten.

Art is one of the most difficult markets to survive in. Nevertheless an artist can learn how to market art.

As for how competitive it is, there are few other places you can go within industry to find a more competitive atmosphere.

The Good News About The Competition

The good news about your competition is that most of them are all doing things the wrong way. Let me ask you, do you think that Monet or Picasso would have sold via social media or other hubs?

Do famous artists of today do this? No.

If you do.. may I ask why?

The next big misunderstanding is the artist who puts together a website. It is as if they watched the movie “Field Of Dreams” and if they build it then people will come.

It doesn’t work this way in the real world.

With all this opposition where do you begin? If you have read this far then you at least stand a chance at catching the most important part of this competitive industry.

You Are Your Greatest Competitor

Becoming best friends with failure is not easy but it is necessary. You will have many failures before you ever find your first real success. It is too easy to allow these lows to destroy artistic expression.

This is true in life much less within things like art. It is how the world really is.

Becoming a success within art requires seeing it through the proper lens. It is a marathon which will last most likely for the duration of your lifetime. It is not a sprint where you arrive at a destination to sit on top of a mountain.

The mountain top itself is an illusion. It is like a mirage. No matter how far you go there is always that next competitive thing to overcome. The real question is, will you quit?

There are things you will need to address. Those things will be the aspects of your work and presentation that you are weak at. Get better at them. Pay attention to the details.

Dot the I’s and cross the T’s. Continue your education. Continue networking.

Continue growing yourself so you can present yourself professionally. Overcome the little obstacles like these first. If you cannot handle these then the big ones you never will get to see.

Remain Objective, Ignore Other Artists Competitively

If you live your professional life as an artist always competing by comparison you will drive yourself insane. You are not them, and that artist is not you.

So why try to be like someone that you are not?

While it is great to learn from others the imperative is to learn in order to improve ourselves.

No one will ever rise beyond what their character will allow them to reach. This is a fundamental truth within life that is as valid as the law of gravity.

You can copy someone all you like. It means nothing. What does mean something is what you are becoming. It is about the character.

The only thing that grows character is hardship, failure, obstacles that we overcome, and those we reach out to help.

These are the big obstacles. It is here where normally people begin blaming the world around them. It is here where people begin to give up. Growing hurts.

How To Win At This Competition

How to win in this kind of competition requires a lot from you personally. It will not only deepen who you are, but it will also change your artwork.

What you paint, sculpt, or carve will forever change as a result of your growth. This is about more than knowing how to make money with art.

Winning is about doing a lot of little things that others do not like to do. Things such as spending late hours perfecting your work, reading self help books, or learning about other arts.

It even requires learning things you may never envision like coding so you can maintain your own web presence.

It requires thousands of little things to be maintained. It becomes a way of life. Winning also comes slowly.

It begins with an unbelievable up front investment through time, energy, education, and even money, before you ever begin to see your first real win.

In order to make it as a success within art is much like becoming a success within life. It doesn’t happen by accident and there is no magical place to be discovered.

Where Do You Begin?

First accept your failures as events. They are events which happened and nothing more. Failure is not a person, thus you are not a failure.

Once you can do this, you begin working with where you are strong while improving where you are weak. It is one step at a time.

If anyone begins to promise you a fast track to reach your goals, run away. That doesn’t exist. At least it doesn’t exist where you truly benefit from it without being used.

Keeping An Eye On The Competition

There will be within you one avenue which you are primarily successful at reaching the public. Follow it. Incorporate other methods as well, yet as an individual we only have so much time and energy.

It is important to keep an eye on the competition. Nevertheless we shouldn’t obsess over it.

When in doubt, make friends. This is completely contrary to anything you will be taught. Many competing artists will resist this.

The art world is rather unique. The concept behind friendships is how art was done in the old world. Picasso himself would not have gone far if it were not for his friends known as The Surrealists.

Certain of Picasso’s new friends–besides Cocteau, there was also the Spanish painter Joan Miró and the French writers Louis Aragon and André Breton–began to form a new artistic group, called the Surrealists.

Picasso’s Notes

No one gets anywhere alone.

While art is a very difficult market to survive within it still is big enough to where people can and should help one another.

Making a friend out of your competitor is far more beneficial than making them your nemesis. In the end you both move ahead.

There is another very critical reason for this method. The Surrealists knew it in their time. The old world models of galleries today do not fit the modern world within which we live.

Each generation of artists have faced some form of this transition.

Networking opens opportunities. It allows you access to ideas and avenues which are cutting edge. It gets you running ahead instead of standing in a line.

Your an artist, so think outside of the box the institutions have created, then begin creating a path.

Do I Believe Traditional Competition Is Bad?

Do I really believe that competing within the art world in the more traditional way is bad? Absolutely not!

The problem becomes when the artist begins to define themselves by it and then compares themselves to that.

When you begin to follow trends or fads in order to gain attention. This is bad. If you begin to give away trade secrets to gain likes or follows, this is extremely bad.

If you cannot get the forms filled out and present yourself for an event as requested, then grow up.

What is Competition? Competition makes one better. It exists as a form of measurement that allows you to see an opinion. You then are to take that opinion to better yourself and your work. It is a tool.

While it can give you a rod by which to be measured against it does not define what or who one is. We have the power to change and grow. We can become better if we so choose to do so.

When we compete against other artists it is as a sport. When we compete against ourselves it is for the very essence of life itself. These are two very real different worlds of competition.

Are You Good Enough Just As You Are?

Unfortunately this generation has been lied to for far too long. You have been told that you are perfect and good enough just as you are.

Allow me to refine that statement.

By design the creation of who you are is perfect as it is intended to be yet you are not a finished product. Upon birth you have the canvass, the brushes, and the paints to color your life.

Yet the masterpiece is never finished until we leave this world.

Some will paint more colorfully than others. Some may paint very little at all. Yet you are not good enough just as you are.

Perfecting ones masterpiece requires much work. It requires much sweat. It also requires overcoming fear, failure, and opposition.

For those who are brave enough to go the distance so that they can paint their canvas of life with all the colors which it can posses, they will see the truth behind what I say. The rest will mock and complain about what they do not have.

We as artist change the world if only we change and define who we are first. If the world around us cannot see what we have become, then why should it care about what we give to it through our work? This is what real artists learn with time.