Roadmap Or Hike To a Painting™

Deep Breath Method… how to become a self sustaining painter

Jack McGowan

Marketing is a daunting topic to many artists, but it doesn’t have to be.  I created the “Deep Breath Method” for painting, but it also applies here.  Quite simply, take a deep breath and think about planning your Art Future.  Many are intimidated by “business plans”.  Good news, you don’t need one.  Take my word, I have run successful businesses and also taught MBA Marketing for a decade.  A business plan helps companies find investors, which you don’t need. What you need is a marketing plan, to articulate how you will find collectors to acquire (buy) your paintings.  Actually, all business plans include market plans, plus lots of other stuff, to convince investors: they have something unique and they can grow. You are already unique, but your definition of growth is different, so you need a way to plan your Art Future.

Market Plans are about understanding who wants to buy your art and setting goals to create “a business side to your art”. What does that mean?  Well, it’s simple, if you want to generate enough income, from the sale of your art, to make painting your full-time job, your art is a business.  That isn’t a bad word, on the contrary it may be how to simplify figuring out what you want and need to do.  It becomes a roadmap for where you want to go, and it clearly articulates how to get there.  My Market Plans include five topics: Work (marketers call this Product, a word many artists understandably don’t like), Place (where people buy your Work through galleries, shows, etc.), Price (establishing the value that paintings sell for), Promotion (advertising, articles and other communication like social media) and finally Financial (what are your goals for income).  That’s a lot, but you’ve thought about it all before, so take a deep breath.

What Next: We are creating an annual marketing plan. or roadmap.  An example is on the next page to show how simple it is.  The cardinal rule is to first create a plan but, more importantly, don’t leave it on the shelf, get it out and revisit your progress regularly.  Before this sounds too complex, let’s take a look as the sample plan and consider how the goals support your plan(s). 

Work: again, this is your painting, what you love, it is also where most artists spend their time.  That makes sense but, under this heading, there are goals for both your painting and your art business.  Consider this, if you owned a restaurant, it would be because you love to cook and visit with patrons, but you also have to order food, hire people, pay taxes, etc., think of your Art the same way.  So, the plan has goals for art and marketing, starting with a time commitment for each per week.  Workshops and critique sessions help develop your art, but Mastermind Networking groups are also great to your art business.  Also note the “Stretch Goals”, these may seem ambitious but they are planning for the future.

Place: is an odd word, but it means the “place” where collectors would buy your paintings.  In business we call these “channels” and they include anything from a retail store to an online retailer to a flea market.  For Art, the plan has separate goals for the two most common places: galleries and shows, but it is also worth considering the diversity of new options, mentioned above, as other ways to find collectors.  For example, there are wide ranging Web-based and Sovereign Art Sales strategies to consider as well.  These should be added to your plan if you are active in that space

Price: Many artists struggle with price, because it is hard to do.  Galleries can help with this, but there are many other approaches. Consider other artists, that are in your peer group, and look at their pricing.  A common model is “price per square inch” that is slightly higher for smaller works and slightly lower for bigger ones.  Here is the point, if you have sold paintings, then collectors have established a financial value.  So, use those prices to calculate a price per square inch, or develop a pricing model.  You should continue to test it, as well as get feedback, prices should change over time.

Promotion: is any form of communication to tell your Artistic Story. It includes Advertising, your Website, Social Media and editorial stories in magazines.  In the business world, this also includes selling directly to customers.   With art this happens at shows, openings and other events.  Selling is not a dirty word, it is just talking to people who truly appreciate your work. If you look at the goals on the sample plan, you will see a wide range of ideas to promote you and your paintings.

Business Goals: are financial goals to generate income by selling paintings.  This income supports the cost of all your other goals, but also allows you to support yourself. In the beginning, financial goals are kind of like throwing a number at the wall, but over time you will figure out how to build a plan that makes that number stick to the wall.  In other words, you will meet your sales goal.

Variation to consider: So take a Deep Breath and remember you have thought about all this before, but now you have a framework to establish reasonable goals.  One aside, worth noting, is your “market”.  In a business plans, much effort goes into defining markets (local, regional, national, global), the ideal customer and where to find them, as how you communicate to them.  By comparison, many artists focus locally or statewide, so they already know the market; i.e. galleries, museums, shows, organizations, etc. 

If you plan to pursue a wider regional or national market, that is where your plan needs to be expanded just a bit.  Basic components are the same,  but we need to learn a new market.  We already know from our home turf, that galleries on particular types of art, and we won’t be a good fit for all.  Its not personal, it is just their artistic focus, and we know this because we have visited all of the galleries at home, and talked with friends and colleagues about this subject.  When we leave home, we have to duplicate this knowledge for each new market.  I wholly concur with Jason Horejs, of Xanadu, when he says that the only way to make these contacts is in person.  However, we need to do research before we make a trip to be sure we use the time well and talk to the right people.  A place to start is with State features in magazines, like Plein Air, major galleries in those states will likely advertise there, even better the Plein Air Annual Event list in January includes the entire country.  Starting this way allows you to identify galleries, as well as organizations you might join and events you can apply to in that new market.  Talk to friends who live there, or artists you know who are already represented there, also spend some time on CAFÉ and JAS looking at events.  I know several people who were Juried into an event in another state, judged by a local gallery owner, who later reached out to represent them.  All of this adds to your goals under place and promotion.  You may even want to create separate market plans for major expansions.

So, take a deep breath and reengage with the future of your art career.

Jack is a Santa Fe Plein Air Painter, creating landscape paintings throughout Northern New Mexico.  He won the 2021 Enchanted Sky Award at the Plein Air Painters of New Mexico, Paint the Enchanted Circle Invitational in Taos, and have Juried in to shows in the West. www.jackmcgowan-artist.com