What Are The Seven Indicators That Your Art Is Just a Hobby?
7 Signs that your art is just a hobby
Artists feel happy, affirmed, and inspired when they sell their art.
If you sell your art, you own a business.
Don’t believe me? Ask the Internal Revenue service.
- Hobby artists give their art away. You should never give your art away if you want to build a market for it. Yes. That includes charitable donations and gifts to loved ones.
- Hobby artists operate in deep denial. They say that money doesn’t matter to them. Please. I want to meet someone who doesn’t care about money. Even a monk must rely on charitable donations.
- When someone expresses interest in buying a hobby artist’s art, the artist is not prepared to sell it because they are not confident in their pricing, and potential collectors can smell this.
- Hobby artists don’t have a clear, concise, and current written plan to sell their art. A plan to sell art without a plan is a plan to sell no art.
- Hobby artists are waiting for someone else to discover them. But no one is coming to save you, and no one is going to discover you. Serious artists understand that they alone are responsible for their successes and failures.
- Hobby artists surround themselves with other artists who are often competitive and jealous of other artist’s success. Successful artists have a mentor and a strong support network. It’s too hard and too lonely to try to build a creative enterprise alone.
- Hobby artists buy into the cultural myth of the “starving artist” and assume that’s this is their lot in life. The problem with this is that your life is the story that you’re telling yourself.
If selling your art does not matter to you, there’s no shame in that. You have a meaningful hobby and Making Art Making Money is probably not the place for you.
However, I have yet to meet an artist who does not feel happy, affirmed, and inspired every time they sell their art. As yourself:
- How am I approaching selling my art?
- Am I approaching selling my art like a hobby or a business?
- Is my aim to show my art or sell my art?
Hint: If your intention is to show your art versus sell your art then that’s just what you’ll do, show and not sell.
Ann Rea, Fine Artist & Mentor
Ann Rea is a San Francisco-based fine artist. She created Making Art Making Money™, the leading and most reputable business program for fine artists since 2005. Rea’s art and business savvy have been featured on ABC, HGTV, Creative Live, The Good Life Project, in the book Career Renegade by Jonathan Fields, the San Francisco Chronicle, Art Business News, Fortune, and Inc. Magazines. Rea’s artistic talent was commended by her mentor, art icon Wayne Thiebaud.
