Last year I spent a lot of time struggling over creating realistic goals and objectives in my art business, because I felt like I was stretching ideas and strategies in an awkward way. I don’t mean to suggest that as an artist I don’t need goals and objectives, but rather that I didn’t feel completely comfortable that I was measuring the right things. It just didn’t feel right. So I set myself the goal of understanding why I felt that I was trying to put a square peg in a round hole when planning my art career. 

I think the main obstacle I faced was my unwillingness to assign the same measures for success to my creative life. Think about it. If you’re running a shop selling buttons, a big measure for you success would be the money you make from those sales. Makes sense. And the company that sells more buttons is considered to be more successful than those who sell fewer. Again, makes sense to me. And further, if a button store sells little to no buttons, it’s hard to imagine that store as having any success at all.

Apply the same notion now to art. Can you be successful as an artist and not make money? Well, yes. I think we can all point to numerous examples of artists who are remarkably talented, who do great work, and yet they’re not making money… at least not while they’re alive. So if you’re measuring your success as a creative, it’s easy to miss the measures that matter most in our field.

I tried to approach the problem in a different way. I decided to create a list of 5 living artists that I admired, and then associate one word to each. Why did I admire each artist? The hope was that if I could identify real-life examples of creatives I found inspirational, that might help me identify what I considered success to look like. I realize that this list may be different for each of us, but that’s ok.

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Season 2: Episode 2
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“Art Life Podcast” is a weekly blog/vlog/podcast that creates a community, a conversation, between creatives in all sorts of fields at all sorts of levels.  We want to discuss what we’re learning, what we’ve experienced, and whom we’ve met in our journey of running a freelance creative business. John Bishop is a visual artist living in Houston, Texas. His work is largely abstract, and explores how to turn mythic, archetypal symbols into individual experiences allowing us to see them in a new way, with fresh eyes. Bogdan is a videographer and fine art photographer who constantly seeks to stretch the boundaries of traditional photographic work, with the added flare of his artistic eye.  Both artists’ work can be seen online, or at their studios at Silver Street Studios, 2000 Edwards Street, in Houston.

John Bishop: http://www.johnbishopfineart.com

Bogdan Mihai: http://www.bogdanfotoart.com

Bogdan’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bogdanoninstagram/

John’s Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/johnbishopfineart/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnBishopart

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnbishopfineart

Buburuza Productions: http://www.Buburuzaproductions.com