Who said being an artist was easy? When your bread and butter is your art, it is a lot of pressure to take to stay dedicated to your Artistic journey while also managing your finances. This strive for balance between passion and business in an art career is a classic hurdle that every full time artist faces. However in the current times, artists are also confronted with a new host of modern day challenges that didn’t even exist a decade ago.
This is why I find myself writing this blog to address the new challenges that the art world is facing at the moment, how that is affecting the everyday artist and what I am personally doing to counter them. So, what are these artist challenges that I’m talking about?
Here they are…
- The Mergence of Tech and Art
As someone who has experienced considerable Artistic success in the realm of digital art by capitalising on modern tech advancements ahead of the curve, I understand the incredible importance of staying up to date with all the tech/art world developments. When NFTs were just being introduced to the art market, I was one of the first artists in the region to explore and adopt this tool to my art which resulted in great exposure for my work and artistic growth. However, significant effort and risk was undertaken in order to achieve these results. There was no set blueprint for the trajectory my career was taking, I had to just trust my instinct and research.
The challenge here for the modern artist is to constantly research and stay abreast of all the latest tech developments in the art world and having the risk appetite to adopt these developments in their artistry. It’s a gamble and a test of adaptability which I have found to be an exercise that will set your anxiety into overdrive. I handle this challenge by ensuring that I carve out some time on a weekly basis to visit networking events and reading art market materials to keep my well informed. Regarding expanding my risk appetite, I try to do as much research as possible to ensure that any risk I am taking is a well calculated one.
- The Creative Burnout
One of major Creative career challenges that any professional artist faces is burning out and not having sufficient energy to produce quality artwork. I believe, the artist in this day and age is quicker to become creatively depleted because of all the distractions that are at their disposal – the major one being social media. With social media, it is not just the artists that are finding themselves being burnt out, it’s everyone from all sorts of professions. We are mentally, emotionally and creatively drained as we find ourselves endlessly doom-scrolling, consuming content that makes us believe that we are not good enough or being productive enough. As creatives, we feel this added pressure of constantly putting out content to keep our social media stats up to stay “relevant”. This constant demand of churning out social media fodder is nothing but draining at times.
To counter this challenge, it is absolutely crucial that we do regular social media detox where we allow ourselves some time away from our social media feed. I do this atleast twice a month and instead of going through my feed, I treat myself to some Art museum visits or watching art documentaries of my favourite artists to recharge my creative batteries and finding aspirations.
- The Oversaturation of the Art Market
Believe or not, the current art market faces an abundance of artists trying to “make it” while there is a dwindling supply of buyers for their artwork. The low volume of potential art buyers can be contributed to the adverse economic conditions that we are all facing at the moment and the lack of education on digital art offerings such as NFTs. This demand and supply issue in the market has been quite the barrier to entry from budding artists going completely full time, as they will simply not make enough selling art to sustain themselves.
What have I done in response to this issue? Well, I always strive to expand my network within the art market as much as possible. This way I am constantly connecting with potential buyers at exhibitions, art events and conventions that can be hopefully converted to dedicated clients. All of this is only possible if you consistently put yourself out there and have the self discipline to frequently follow-up on your new network connection. This combination of social acumen and discipline is absolutely key to tackle the oversaturation issue and have constant sales of your artworks coming through.
There you have it – 3 major issues faced my modern day artists and what I do to tackle them in my career. With all the advancements that we artists benefit from in this day and age, we need to hone in on our adaptability and creative problem-solving to consistently stay afloat from all the challenges these developments pose as well.
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