Much as I like to simply be in the middle of the creative process, I have to admit that it always gives my self-esteem a lift when one of my pieces of art sells.
Maybe that sounds a bit mercenary in some ways, but in the course of running two galleries over a total of about 16 years, I have to confess that most of the artists I have known along the way I felt very similarly.
We might, indeed, love to Simply Create for creation's sake but selling a piece of work to somebody who's actually committing to give you their hard-earned money for something you created offers a sense of validation we don't get in other ways.
I've discovered that there is an interesting paradox there. Whereas I can say with a great deal of emphasis that I am not in the art business "for the sake of making money," at the same time if I go for an extended period without selling anything, it starts to weigh down on my level of creativity.
Part of me feels like it just shouldn't matter, and I experience a little bit of negative self-talk over that, but at the same time I can't help but quietly wonder — somewhere in the background — whether I'm doing something wrong since nothing is selling. And that is true even if the fact that it's not selling actually has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of my art, in an objective sense.
Which brings me to the question that I posed as the title of this post. To what degree does actually selling a piece of art influence your creativity, if at all?
Although making a sale definitely does make a difference to my mood, I can also say that the correlation between selling and feeling creative is relatively low and/or weak.
To which I should add, that I really don't enjoy sales, self-promotion and marketing and often the lack of sales can be blamed directly on my own lack of activity in that particular area!
It seems almost paradoxical for me to even say that, because I was always quite adept at selling other people's art!
Alas, I don't have "representation," so it's all completely up to me. And I'd just as well just park the work on a web site somewhere and hope that people find it.
Not gonna happen!
At times, it feels almost like a vicious circle. My lack of motivation leads to an absence of selling work, which leads to a lack of motivation.
Ever experienced something like that?
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