Marketing yourself?

[Michele Rushworth]

Oh, also, a question for Jim Riley: can you tell me where you go to get your business cards printed? That sounds like a good deal!

[Peggy Baumgaertner]

I've always heard that any artist (or any self employed business person, for that matter) needs to spend about half their time on marketing. That's about what I do. Given that, I understand why the agents charge 40%. Having a productive agent relationship frees the artist from having to spend all that time on doing their own marketing.....

....If the agents will represent you. With all the discussion as to if an artist should or should not go with an agent or gallery, I think it should be mentioned exactly how difficult it is to find agent representation.

In 1990 I had an interview with a broker from Portraits South. She told me that every year they receive over 400 queries from artists. They accept (maybe) 2 new artists a year. And this was in 1990. There are more burgeoning artists every year, each vying for that very limited position of new artists that the agencies will represent.

The big agencies represent between 50 and 150 artists. Many (if not most...) of the artists are represented by more than one of the big agencies. So you are looking at possibly 200 artists in this country who are represented by the portrait agencies, and the agencies accepting maybe 5-7 new artists in any given year. I won't even begin to enumerate the small number of artists that actually receive a significant number of commission from the agencies. Being with a broker does not guarantee work.

My point to this is that looking to find representation is an end-line marketing move, not a first-line marketing move. The agencies are not looking for a diamond in the rough. They are looking for a stone that has been faceted, polished, mounted, and presented in a fine velvet box with ribbons.

For all of those of you out there that think that you don't know about marketing, and that you will find an agent, broker, or gallery to sell you, this forum is of paramount importance.

YOU HAVE TO LEARN TO SELL YOURSELF.

I am afraid that that is the bottom line. The hard truth is that in this business, marketing yourself is as important as learning to paint.

Peggy

[Tarique Beg]

Peggy

Thanks for this most enlightening post. I'm now wondering if artists get selected for representation, by an agency, only after they've already reached a certain level of recognition and skill with their own hard work and self-promotion. The numbers you mention, like 200 artists all around the US, and 5 to 7 new artists per year, essentially rule out representation for almost everyone.

Let me contrast those numbers with other professions. In computer consulting you have a total of around 5 million engineers in the US of whom say at least 1 million may be agent represented (and agent-hopper!!!) contractors like me. In addition, 195,000 foreigners are imported every year to pick up the slack (in good times). That's the level of demand we have in high-tech (or at least had during the Y2K bug and .com days).

Am I correct in concluding that the market for something like portraiture is confined to just a very small select group of clients who are wealthy and knowlegdeable enough to realize the value of portrait ?. If 200 artists around the US complete an average of 1 portrait a month, that's around 2400 portraits a year times an average price of say $10,000 would be $24 million, or let's jack it up to $30 million spent on portraits in the US a year. That strikes me as relatively low compared to other areas where affluent people spend disposable income.

I wonder if more artists got their work out there, that the demand for portraits would increase. After all, people spend a lot to join the exclusive $35K Rollex watch, and $10K mink coat clubs. If only it were better known that having a portrait painted puts a person in an even more exclusive group (celebrities and leaders in business, education, clergy, government, and other professions etc.)

Tarique