Art Problems

Andrew Russeth knows art. As Editor-in-Chief at Artnet News and a critic for nearly two decades, he sees more art than almost anyone in the art world. In this episode, he and Paddy Johnson dig into what keeps a career going over the long haul and why even artists with name recognition still have career gaps to fill. His most repeated advice may also be the most commonly dismissed: you have to have fun.

Andrew Russeth won the Rabkin Prize for visual arts journalism in 2019 and was previously executive editor of ARTnews.

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Martin Kippenberger, Jeff Koons, Richard Serra, Sadie Coles HQ, Richard Prince, Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, Jasper Johns, Peter Halley, John Currin, Jordan Casteel, Amy Sherald, Pace, Esther Schipper, Jeffrey Deitch, Carlo McCormick, Charlie Finch, Jerry Saltz, Howard Halle, Bill Arning, Dave Hickey, Sarah Douglas, Jared Kushner, Will Heinrich, Magnolia Bakery

What makes an art fair successful? Sales. Crowds. Fairs that give people a reason to come back. This fall, artist William Powhida, Netvvrk Director of Operations Penny Retica, and I walked New York's fair week to see which ones do that job. We went to the Spring Break in the old CBS News offices, Independent 20th Century, The Armory, and Printed Matter's New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1. One of them left us with some serious FOMO. 

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Mike Ryczek flew to New Orleans to see his work hanging in the kind of gallery he'd always aspired to. Dinner with the other artists went fine. Then came the gallery crawl the next day, and he froze: four galleries deep without talking to anyone, thirty minutes standing beside his own paintings waiting for someone to approach, and finally the Irish goodbye and some consolation fried chicken. 

In this episode, the two of us talk about the moments an art career makes you feel like an imposter, and I share my own recent version of his story, because these feelings don't retire with experience. What changes is how you recover.

Mike is a painter in Dedham, Massachusetts who has held gallery representation for over a decade, won a $15,000 Mass Cultural Council grant, and still interrogates every achievement for the trick behind it. Our conversation stays close to what an art career feels like: from the whiplash of rejection and reward arriving back to back to the self-belief it takes to keep assigning yourself work few people see. There’s no strategy in this episode, just the facts of the profession. 

Relevant Links: 

Mike Ryczek

Have you ever struggled to figure out exactly where your art fits? Or maybe you’ve tried to write an artist statement only to find it one of the hardest tasks you’ve ever had to do. Today’s guest, Jennifer Sharpe, a multimedia artist and experimental filmmaker, has a way of making those problems vivid and infinitely relatable. 

In this episode, we talk about how a continuously shifting cultural landscape affects artistic practice. Over the last twenty years, we’ve seen multiple online communities collapse and rebuild. Jennifer came away convinced that while platforms vanish and institutions wobble, the relationships you build are the only durable asset an artist has. 

This conversation wanders in the best way. Racehorses, vagabonds, cave paintings, jobs, and a whole bunch of other ideas you wouldn’t think have anything to do with artists, but really do.

Free Info Session, How to Get on a Museum’s Radar, Tuesday, July 21, 7:00 PM EST

The art world tells artists that if you just keep going, eventually something will break for you. But persistence can also keep you stuck. If you don’t know something’s broken so you keep doing the same thing, you won’t grow.

That's what happened to Gin Stone. Gin is a Cape Cod artist who did what she was supposed to do. She kept going. And she stayed stuck because she didn't have the right help. In this episode, she talks about the gallery show that made her realize she had nothing to say about her own work, the overhaul that followed, and the grant she landed just last week for a sonification project built on 2,000 years of geological data.

RELEVANT LINKS:

Free Info Session, How to Get on a Museum’s Radar, Tuesday July 21, 7:00 PM EST

After years of producing social practice art, Peter Walsh wanted to get back in the studio. So he rented a space and started painting. But when he started reaching out to his old painting friends, he found most had moved on to other things. He needed community. 

He joined Netvvrk, along with many of the artists in his Brooklyn studio building. Then he practiced patience: he went to other people’s shows, built relationships, and let the work lead. That led to his first solo show in New York. 

In this episode, we talk about restarting a practice mid-career, the self-doubt that shows up even with a long CV, and why the artwork always has to come first. Peter lost a painting the day before we recorded. He painted over it and kept working. As he puts it, he's not done.

Guest: Mark Witzling, abstract painter

In this episode of Art Problems, I speak with Mark Witzling about his career path as a painter. Witzling continues our series on artists who are building careers regionally, and his story takes on a second challenge that artists ask me about all the time. Witzling doesn’t have an MFA or a BFA in art. 

And he works full time on his art. Want to know how he got his studio paid for and work placed without institutional bona fides, while living in St Louis, MO? Tune into this episode and find out! 

RELEVANT LINKS 

How to Get on a Museum’s Radar, (Free info session) Tuesday July 21, 2026

Mark Witzling

Craft Alliance (St. Louis) 

Southern Vermont Art Center — site of his solo show last year

Meg Lagodzki paints from a studio in the woods just outside Bloomington, Indiana, five hours from the nearest major art center. In this conversation, part of an ongoing series on artists building careers outside NYC and LA, she talks with Paddy about what it took to grow beyond her local market: the critique group that pushed her work in a new direction, the cold DM from a gallery that turned into a five-year relationship, and the shift from applying to open calls alone to finding opportunities through other artists.

Momentum Gallery

In this episode, Paddy gives you the skinny on the Guggenheim Fellowship, one of the most prestigious awards for mid-career artists. The talk contains tips and strategies you won't find on their website, including knowing when to apply and how often. You won't find this information anywhere else, so have a listen. Even if you're not planning to apply, this episode will give you strategies for ALL grant applications.

Katie Hargrave is a visual artist and associate professor at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, where she's lived and worked for twelve years. This is the second episode in a series on artists building careers outside city centers.