A Site for Emerging Artists
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I spent twenty years as a ceramic artist with a production studio, and eight years selling for art publishing companies. Upon graduating college with a degree in fine art, I had no business experience but learned the hard way how to carve out a career in art. This blog is intended to be an informative and inspirational source to emerging artists and students, who are finding their own way in this business.
Homepage: http://www.artsyshark.com
Posts by admin
Top 10 Articles on Artsy Shark this Year
Dec 29th
A countdown of the most popular articles on this blog, by readership, in 2010:
10. Art Website Basics: What Every Artist Should Know – Marketing strategist John R. Math’s excellent article on how to construct an effective web presence
9. A Gallery Director Speaks: What Artists Must Know – Robert Patrick, gallery director and artist advocate gives a 3-part interview about how to present to a gallery, and their inner workings. This is part one – don’t miss the whole series! Here are links to Part 2 and Part 3.
8. How to Fail as an Artist – a tongue-in-check list, with links.
7. What you Didn’t Know About Starting a Greeting Card Line, Part 1 – a primer for the card entrepreneur. What sells; what doesn’t; how retailers work; how to balance your line. This is the first article in a 3-part series. Check out these links to Part 2 and Part 3.
6. How to Sell Your Work to Art Publishers – interview with Harriet Rinehart Flehinger of Bentley Publishing Group. A how-to guide for artists looking to work with art publishers. Business Cycles, what they are looking for, and how to create the right art.
5. How to License Art to Manufacturers – Joan Beiriger’s article on how to create art for the licensing market, plan strategically and approach the right prospective clients. Lots of links to resources.
4. Vision and Strategies for Artists – This is part one of Rhonda Schaller’s outstanding four-part guest article on DIY strategies for artists; alternative opportunities for exhibitions, and taking control of your art career. See also Part 2, Alternative Opportunities for Artists, Part 3, Discover Your Market and Part 4, Strategies for Self-Producing Artists.
3. 25 Ways Artists and Craftspeople Can Market Their Work – a checklist of different ways to sell your work, with lots of links to resources.
2. Greeting Card Biz Insider Secrets, Part 1 – Creative Director Don Ruge’s outstanding 3-part guest article tells you how the card business works, and how to design great sellers, whether as an entrepreneur or licensor. Read Part 2 and Part 3 for the rest of the series.
1. Selling Your Work in New York Galleries/An Insider’s Story – Rhonda Schaller hits a home run again, with a guide to artists who want to sell to top galleries, from a coach, gallerist and pro. How to approach this market, and what you should never do.
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Featured Artist Bill Werle
Dec 27th
Artsy Shark presents the wildlife portfolio of painter Bill Werle, and the compelling story of his journey as an artist. Enjoy the rest of his portfolio and get additional information about Bill by visiting his website and his blog.
The very first painting I ever did, meaning the first time my hands put paint to canvas, won an award and garnered me a scholarship to the Minneapolis Institute of Art and Design. I’d been a prolific pencil artist up to that point. I had sketchbooks full of drawings but until my senior year in high school had never been exposed to painting. Needless to say I found my life’s calling and the paintings thereafter just flowed off my fingers. It’s my one regret in life not taking charge of my life and pursuing that scholarship.
I moved out west to Spokane, Washington a few years after high school and continued to pursue my love of painting nature. I was on my way to building up a career in painting. I was selling paintings here and there and started to get my name out when life happened. You know how life can sometimes become a train wreck and you dangle off the trestle for a bit. It happened and part of the fallout from that was I turned my back on painting as a career for the next 15 years. There is an interconnection between an artists feelings and the canvas and I tried my best to sever that tie. Oh I still painted but it was more as release valve than anything.
While I drifted from job to job searching for myself I went back to school and got a degree in computer networking. The past ten years I worked as a computer network engineer or admin. It was not my calling and despite my love of the Internet and tech related stuff I still heard the little voice whispering with every painting “you are an artist and you can’t hide from it.”
Fifteen years after destroying my inventory of paintings and throwing away anything that reminded me of who I was I could no longer ignore that nagging voice in my head. I turned 40 and realized after I completed a painting around that time that the clock was ticking. It was time to suck it up and do what I was born to do and that was create colorful wildlife art infused with a lot of heart and soul then share it with the world. You might say that instead of a new girlfriend and a corvette my mid-life crisis was to get a tattoo and follow my heart again. Just a side note here, the kids were ok with the corvette but my wife nixed the girlfriend idea. Go figure.
My work is better now in that I do have those extra years under my belt. I know what I want to say and I hope what I say through my paintings helps you. I tell a story in each painting in hopes that you reflect on your story and make it better moving forward. I use wildlife to tell the story because that’s my “happy place”. That’s where I feel the most creative and where I experience boundless joy. The colors, animals and forms in nature are a visual rock concert to me. I feel the energy when I’m hiking a trail up a mountain through a huckleberry patch in the heart of Grizzly country. I feel the vibrant waves of nature reeling in a 16 inch rainbow and nothing calms my soul more than that first push off of shore in my 18 yr old canoe. That gentle silence envelops my heart like a mothers heartbeat soothes a newborn.
I paint because I have to.
A Very Merry Christmas to You!
Dec 25th
Developing Clarity, Intention and Business Strategy
Dec 23rd
The smARTist Telesummit has been around since 2007, but I first heard about it earlier this year from Lindy Gruger Hanson who raved about her experience and how much she had learned. I contacted Ariane Goodwin, Ed.D, the passionate writer and art career coach who runs this learning extravaganza for artists, and we spoke on the phone recently.
The first thing we did was throw out the written questions and simply talk about her vision and her methods. She asked if I had read The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level
It is that cage that the smARTist Telesummit is freeing artists from – and shaking it up by taking the artist past their starting point, that exciting place where we make a few sales and realize that others respond to the art we feel so passionate about making. It can come as a shock to us to realize that as we were caught in the momentum, we were turning a corner and starting a business without knowing it.
An artist taking the leap from having a “day job” or other means of support, to a business and then a career, may feel unsure or even scared about marketing and the everyday tasks involved in the business world. They don’t have clarity or intention; their definition of “success” may be undeveloped or not defined at all.
The smARTist Telesummit helps artists create a path for their career. A Vision Questionnaire completed before the event establishes a benchmark from which the artist can grow. A private conference website with a forum – where artists share resources, stories and feedback from each other, as well as have direct access to Ariane – creates community and relieves the isolation so many of us experience. The question “What is Success?” could be answered very differently by the artists throughout their career life.
Historically, artists have existed outside the mainstream, and even embraced this mystique. It wasn’t until the 1970s and 1980s that “artist as businessperson” became a mindset and a model for success in the arts today. Now the next age is upon us.
Ariane says, “The internet has created a different universe with different rules of gravity. Things don’t fall down, they expand infinitely. If you don’t participate, you handicap yourself with self-imposed limitations. Online, every imaginable interest is available. There are millions of people, and you can find the exact audience that resonates with your art in ways never before conceived.”
Featured Artist Kelly O’Neal
Dec 20th
Artsy Shark presents the work of Kelly O’Neal. Visit her website and blog to see more of her portfolio, become a fan of her Facebook page, and stop by her Etsy shop.
E. Kelly O’Neal is a fine-art nature photographer, currently specializing in abstract images of nature created by moving the camera during exposure. Kelly grew up in Florida and has since lived in North Carolina, Hawaii, Texas, Boston, and now Burlington, Vermont where she constantly delights in the sunsets over Lake Champlain.
My Story
My love of photography started closely married to my love of travel. Much of my work has focused on capturing new and inspiring places of the world—the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Ireland, China, Palau, Thailand, and most recently, Iceland! I hope to inspire other people to see the world and take better care of it.
But my photography groove right now is creating impressionistic, abstract photos of nature through camera motion. It’s a bit unpredictable and experimental. I like it.
It started as a way to blow off steam. In 2007 I was in the midst of a stressful 14-hour-a-day job, and I found solace and comfort in photography. Though I was a nature photographer, the sun was up when I was at work—so I started to play with my camera at night, literally dancing around while making photographs of bouquets of flowers, splashing swaths of unidentifiable color across my virtual page. With practice I learned how to move both me and the camera to get that painterly impressionist effect just right.
I wasn’t planning on doing this elsewhere, but I felt the tug to try this out during my annual fall leaf peeping photography jaunts. With more practice, I could create the ethereal quality that captured, for me, the essence of place—that snapshot you keep in your head that doesn’t retain the details, but remembers the patterns and the colors and the light and the emotion they evoked.
Most recently I’ve been trying to expand the types of photos and shapes I make—using new camera movements and trying this out on new subjects. Some new images of red and yellow trees from the fall of 2010 are some of my favorites, keeping the structure and intensity of the trees but obscuring much of the detail. They were really fun to work on and turned out more vibrant than many of my other images, which tend to be more subdued. I’ve also had fun using these techniques in an urban setting—on the Eiffel Tower, for example.
Being out in nature shooting is one of my favorite things about photography—I adore the peace and serenity of nature. The silence. The calm. A welcome contrast to the frenzy and chaos of modern life. I try to capture that tranquility in my art. The details are blurred out, creating a simple quiet impression of the place.
Through motion, I create stillness.
I hope you enjoy getting to know my art!
Featured Artist Julia Hacker
