Business

Whether or not there is a tough economy ahead, the way to make 2023 your best year in art sales is to start working on it now. In fact, it’s even a little late; I try to set budgets and plans in September. But there is still time.

Though it may sound foolishly simple, start by setting a budget — the amount of money you need to make — and developing a simple management system to make sure you are hitting that budget. Most of the artists I know who are selling artwork don’t know their budgets or how to be sure they’re meeting their minimum needs. Others, who use simple systems like the one described below, not only hit their budgets most months, they tend to exceed them because the system helps them accomplish more. It takes a few hours, one time, to make a budget, and after that you’ll only need to spend about 10 minutes a day checking in on your plan.

How much do you want to make in 2023? Though it’s OK to dream a little and push yourself, it’s a tall order to double or triple what you already make in a year. (It can be done, but it has a lot to do with doubling down on visibility and advertising. But that’s an article for another time.)

How to Make $120,000

To make the math easy, let’s say you need to make $120,000 in 2023, or $10,000 a month. Start by asking yourself how many paintings you produced and sold in 2022, and in 2021. Come up with an average. Notice that I said how many you sold, because you’ll typically produce more than you sell (ordinarily, not everything you send to a gallery will be sold).

Again for the sake of easy math, let’s say you painted 100 paintings each of the last two years, and you sold an average of 80 percent of them. So out of 100 paintings created, you sold 80. Now divide that by 12 months, and you have to sell about 6.5 paintings per month, and those paintings need to bring you $10,000. Now you know your minimum price is $1,538 per painting ($10,000 divided by 6.5).

What About Frames and Canvas?

But wait, what about your costs to produce those paintings? If they’re not already included in the $120,000 you need to make, you’ll have to add in those costs to the price of every painting. To break even on those expenses for one painting: a frame might cost $100, canvas and paint another $50, and let’s say shipping is $75. So you have a total of $225 more. Now your minimum sale price is $1,538 + $225, or $1,763.

Adding in Operations Expenses, Like Advertising

Of course, we can complicate this more, if you want to. You can add all your operational business costs into the price of a painting. Let’s say you attended two workshops at $2,000 each with expenses. You spent 10 percent of your expected income ($12,000) on advertising, and you have some other operational costs that add up to $20,000. Now you have $34,000 in expenses. Divide that by 12 and you have $2,833 in other expenses each month. Now divide $2,833 by 6.5 paintings. You now have to add $435 to your painting cost. Now your minimum price is $1763 + $435: $2,198.

Many artists don’t think about adding those costs to the price of their paintings, and though these things don’t have to be reflected in your prices, that money has to come from somewhere. It comes either from your $120,000 in income from paintings (don’t forget, you have to pay income tax on that), or it has to come from your workshops or other work. Forgetting that is why some people never have as much money at the end of the year as they expect.

Remember, this is an average price per painting. That means the mixture of small paintings and big paintings has to average that minimum combined amount. One big painting sold makes the month, but it might take 20 small ones.

Difficult Lessons

When I first started in business, I had a bunch of sales and had a bunch of money in the bank. No one had taught me about cash flow, so I went out and bought something foolish, and when bills came due, I had no money to pay them.

One way to handle this (though it’s not the most sophisticated) is to make an envelope for each month, and inside it keep envelopes for each expense item (frames, materials, rent, etc.). On the big envelope, write the amount you need to bring in for the whole month ($10,000, in our example). Then, on the front of each smaller envelope, write the budget amount you need to bring in to cover those expenses ($1,000 to frame 10 paintings, $600 for art supplies, etc.)

Every time you bring money in, assign it to an expense you need to cover for the month, and put a note in the matching envelope. Then deduct the money you still need to make, for a new total. When you spend money (say, $300 to frame some paintings, or $150 at the art supply store), make a note for the envelope, and add the amount to the total you need to bring in.

This all requires some arithmetic, but you’ll always know how much you’ll need in every category to make your budget overall.

Of course, most of us would do this in Quickbooks or another accounting program, but this is an easy-to-understand system if you don’t have the tech skills.

Discipline Matters

Here is what matters most: You have to discipline yourself to bring in your budgeted income every single month, no matter what. I like to have a daily budget, so each day I can ask myself if

I brought in that money today. You can do this weekly as well, but when you do it every day, you have more time to make money come in the door before the month runs out.

When I first learned this, I looked at my daily budget each morning. “Today I have to bring in $150,” I’d tell myself. Doing this prepares your mind for the daily goal and makes it a priority. Instead of creating pressure, it actually relieves it. I used to tell myself I would not leave the office till I hit that $150 number. Sometimes I’d be making calls late at night to hit my goal. But if I missed it, the next day I had to bring in twice the amount ($300), and that was much more overwhelming than $150. If I missed it all week, then the daily number increased the following week.

Getting Ahead

An old mentor of mine taught me that the real goal is to work ahead of the current month and try to hit 80 percent of each month’s sales in the month before. It takes a lot of pressure off when you have a little wiggle room, and it’s also helpful to be ahead if you need to take a couple of weeks away.

A Gallery System That Brought Millions

My friend Bob, a former gallery owner, had a daily number he had to hit. Each of five salespeople made up one-fifth of the daily budget, so he called each one every morning and said, “Today you must hit this number.” At the end of the day, he’d call to find out what number they hit. He didn’t yell at anyone if they missed it, just reminded them they had to do more the next day.

He kept it all on a sheet that he filled in by hand, even when he was on vacation — and he always hit or exceeded his budgets. No one wanted to let him down. I used to share my own budget number with my wife, and when I came in for dinner, she would ask, “Did you hit the number today?” I did not want to disappoint her or myself.

An Important Lifetime Lesson

I wish someone had taught me these little things when I was first starting; I would have been more successful sooner. When I first learned about these systems, I thought they were too much work, and they seemed unnecessary. But when I kept missing my budgets and was nearing financial ruin, I started keeping track.

Sharing Is Important

It’s also important to share your goals. Though you should not pressure your galleries, it’s OK to say, “I plan to send you 10 paintings a month. I’m hopeful you’ll sell eight of those 10 every month, and I need to bring in this amount every single week.” Though they may think you’re crazy, just by mentioning it they’ll know you’re a serious business person, you’ll appear professional and organized, and they’ll know that if they are not meeting your goals, you will eventually leave them. So putting that goal in front of your gallery can’t hurt. (Please, no e-mails from galleries. You should be doing this too.)

Systems Make a Massive Impact

In a nutshell, this is how to manage the financial side of your business. You won’t get it right at first, and you’ll miss budgets from time to time – sometimes due to things out of your control. But you’ll learn to put some money away for missed months, and to build in some extra padding (some extra profit, or some extra paintings). And when you know your monthly, weekly, and even daily numbers, you’ll suddenly be managing your business, instead of the business managing you. You’ll know exactly where you stand, and if you miss budgets, you’ll know to cut back spending. And you’ll creatively look for new ways to stimulate sales … more shows, more galleries, more workshops, special promotions.

The most asked question I get is about pricing; there is a whole book that could be written on pricing for artists. But it starts by knowing your expenses and your target income. Following this plan will set your prices for you. It may take some time to hit that pricing goal — which is a marketing issue — but once you do, you’ll never regret it.

Refine Your Motives

If the career path of plein air painting shows, art fairs, or gallery representation does not appeal to you, consider a museum exhibition. The dream of a solo museum show may seem unattainable, but with planning and determination, it can be done.

During the final semester of my MFA, I was asked to prepare a one-year, five-year and ten-year career plan for my journey to becoming a professional artist. In hindsight, the planning process helped me to minimize wasted time floundering around the artworld. A clear path from A to B gives you results.

My first-year goal was to organize my image (or brand) as an artist so I would be taken seriously. Having a portfolio of work, resume, biography and social media presence was essential. At the beginning it was not a strong presentation, but it was an important start.

Build Your Audience

During the next five years, I focused on building my resume by joining national art organizations (like OPA) that had tiers of membership and competition. The experience of applying, preparing and attending the shows began awkwardly. This is expected. The more you apply, the more experience you gain, raising the bar of your work and presentation.

Social media is a must! Yes, it is always changing. Yes, there is politics. But it is important to learn how to adapt, to be consistent, and to keep informed of what your peers are doing. It has also been my number one source of new clients and sales. The more you engage in it, the better you get at communicating with your audience. Social media is in fact how I caught the eye of the museum staff. I noticed they were liking my posts, so I prepared an inquiry for a potential exhibition, which eventually led to an in-person meeting with the director.

Believe In Your Professionalism

The preliminary meeting with a museum director is easy if you have done your work in advance. I recommend a body of work (20-30 pieces), a resume, biography, letters of recommendations and published articles. The time you spend with the director and viewing the space is more of a moment to discuss timing. All museums have agendas that precede exhibitions by at least three years. Whether you fit in their agenda is their call. A rejection is not about your work necessarily. It may be timing. Rejection and reapplying are norms in this pursuit. Once you understand that concept you will be more open to museum opportunities.

Preparing For The Big Show

The time from acceptance to the exhibit is typically 3 years. Developing the body of work and not selling it in the meantime has its challenges, including storage. In my case, the majority of the work was already finished and framed in museum-quality framing. I hung the work in a lower-level gallery in my studio. This way I could see the entire show as it developed over the years. If a client came to buy a piece, I told them it was reserved for a show. Some pieces I entered into group exhibitions or contests to see how they were received. 

Every year I contacted the director to check in. Six months before the opening, the director sent a floorplan and a list of dates when things needed to be submitted, such as the name of the exhibition, an updated biography, artist statement and images. I created a list of dates and checked them off as I completed them. At the same time, I began advertising, social media posts, and connecting with collectors to let them know about the show dates and purchases.

In Conclusion

In conclusion, my pursuit from the beginning was to exhibit my art in museum settings. It may not be your path, but you can use the same steps for your own career. Create goals, do the work and keep focused. After seven years, I was offered my first solo museum exhibition. Three years later, it opens this June through September. What’s next? Finishing up a new body of work and laying out a new goal plan.

To see more of Michelle’s work and to learn about her upcoming exhibition Making Waves: A Solo Exhibition at the Santa Paula Art Museum, visit www.michellejungstudio.com

Quickly, in one sentence, what is representational painting?

Keep it short.

It’s not so easy, is it?

Sure, we know what it is. We’ve been painting this way for years. There are over 3,500 of us in this organization and we have all found enthusiastic buyers that collect our work. This is proof that what the OPA set out to do 30 years ago is coming to fruition. Representational art is gaining back the respectability and value that it lost when modernism took over.

I sometimes forget this in my little town.  The art guild here skews heavily towards contemporary art and I sometimes feel like a lonely outlier when my paintings are juried into shows. The art museum recently offered a six-week class on how to understand contemporary art. When I saw that, a thought jelled in my head: People who look at representational art don’t need someone to explain what it is they’re viewing. They recognize it and appreciate it for what it is. This is one of our biggest assets.

This got me thinking. What if we could leverage that? Perhaps our job is not finished.

Because if we fumble when we try to explain representational painting, is it any wonder that people, already brainwashed to believe contemporary art is preferable, don’t appreciate it? That they turn away  from traditional art in favor of something they’ve heard so much about, like expressionism, abstraction or contemporary art?

It’s important to be able to define representational painting for a non-painter – a potential collector – in as few words as possible. Think of it as an elevator pitch.

We need talking points, our own little manifesto.

Imagine if we all used the same language. We’d be doing our own real branding.

We could use our talking points in casual conversation, interviews, gallery write-ups. Sprinkle them into our own artist info and bio pages. Weave them into our stories to make them uniquely our own.

For example, my bio includes this:  “In a world where it seems anything can be considered art, I’m proud to be a representational painter.  I paint from life and love the tradition of old master painting and value the skills that are required.”

On the left is my Instagram bio, and on the right, my Facebook “About” page. You can see how the branding is aligned across all of these.

Here are a few starter talking points that you might consider using, in no particular order:

• Representational painting is not copying, though the objects are clearly recognizable. It’s an  interpretation of what we see. 
• We represent what we observe.
• We use old master techniques, like chiaroscuro (the journey of light as it emerges from the shadows), sfumato (the art of subtle blending), or alla prima (wet into wet paint application).
• Representational art is accessible to everyone.
• It’s okay to like something you think is beautiful.
• People recognize beauty and appreciate it when they see it.
• Beauty is a refuge; it brings the viewer joy.
• With representational painting, people don’t need a curator to explain what they’re looking at and how they should respond to it. They know it when they see it.
• Good art doesn’t have to shock you or make you uncomfortable.
• We create paintings with depth and glow.
• We paint still lifes, landscapes and portraits that are powerfully evocative — they can bring you joy, serenity and energy.
• We like to paint with a concept that’s about something and we want you to recognize it.
• Representational painting requires a certain amount of skill in drawing, composition, perspective, familiarity with color, portrayal of light and thoughtful observation. 
• Instead of rejecting these skills we value them. As David Leffel says in An Artist Teaches, “Self-expression is the refuge of the unskilled.” Amen to that!
• But representational painting is not a closed system; we can be as free as we want – loose, painterly and impressionistic.
• We can make representational painting as traditional or modern as we choose.
• Representational paintings will make you stop and stare. They draw you in.
• No one needs to tell you what kind of art you should appreciate.
• At the end of the day we all like to be with art that brings us joy, serenity and inspiration.

If all of us started incorporating language like this, we could be that butterfly creating a ripple effect in a sea of self-expression. The possibilities are limitless. 

We could educate and influence potential collectors. We could release the hesitation that some (brainwashed) people still feel in wanting what is traditionally or immediately pleasing. We could increase demand, and in so doing, our collector pool. More galleries would take notice and want to show our work. And dare I say it – a museum or two? I can think of several contemporary representational painters that belong in more museums right now.

And if our work is seen as more valuable than it is presently, heck, we could even raise our prices.

What do you think? Would you like to join me on this journey? I’d love to have you with me, fighting the good fight. But first, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please leave them in the comment box.