Art and commerce
It's one of the trickiest intersections to navigate
I’ve been talking about why it’s important to answer your creative call for a few weeks now. Most of what I’ve focused on is about the personal benefits to you, because that’s the biggest impact you’re guaranteed to see—and feel.
The elephant in the room, though, is what the heck you DO with the stuff you create. Give it to friends? Hang it on your mom’s fridge even though you may be long past grade school? Sell it?
Ahh, that’s the rub, that last question. Should you sell it? It may sound like an obvious answer—you’ve spent money on whatever supplies you needed, so why not see if you can recoup some of that investment? What’s the harm?
The potential for harm is actually greater than you might think, though that alone is not a reason to decide not to sell your art. It is, however, a reason to think about it really carefully before you decide to follow that path.
I want to be super clear here that I am NOT saying that you should not ever even think about selling your art. That would, among other things, make me a hypocrite—my own novel is available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, after all. (And I am here to tell you that I occasionally bring in about $5/copy, and by the end of the typical year I may have earned enough to have treated myself to a reasonably nice dinner out, lest you have any illusions about that.)
I say all this because I have, in the past, been assailed for saying that you should make your art for yourself, without thinking about the wants of those you might sell it to. This position apparently required more nuance than folks on TikTok were able to give it, because somehow that comment got turned into an accusation of me expecting artists to starve, to fail to do what they might need to do to make their next rent payment, etc.
That’s not what I was saying at all. You’ll hear me talk about this a bit on this week’s podcast, but I want to go into it further not just because it’s complicated, but also because I think it’s really important to give it a good think rather than jumping in blindly.
If you can sell your art, and you want to, you should! But before you do, you should be aware that a couple of things can happen, and either decide that you’re okay with those consequences (that word sounds negative, but any negativity is really in the eye of the beholder), or come up with a plan to deal with them so they don’t destroy you and/or your art.
Make Your Art for Yourself First
The most important thing to decide, if you’re going to sell your art, is that you have to make your art for yourself first. What do I mean by that?
I mean you adhere to your own artistic sensibilities. What does that mean? It means you don’t second-guess yourself. You don’t spend your time wondering what your customers want, and you definitely don’t turn your art into that thing that you think they want.
Why is this important? You are the only one who can and will make the things you feel called to make. You! Not your mom, not your neighbor, not the teacher you studied under for 20 years. You’re a unique person with a unique talent and a unique vision. (“Unique” is often misused these days, so let’s take a second to remember that it means there’s only one. There’s only one you. Nobody else can do what you do the way you do it.)
If you start guessing what others want, odds are really good you’ll guess wrong. How can I be confident of this? First of all, that’s just how guessing what other people want tends to go in any life situation. Second, I’m really quite sure that if someone wants something you created, it’s because of the fact that you created it.
Think of it this way: most people who’ve taken even a basic art appreciation course can walk into a museum and immediately identify a Monet, if asked. If someone tries to tell them that a Monet painting is a Picasso, they know that’s just not true. A Monet looks like a Monet, and a Picasso looks like a Picasso. The only way you’d confuse them is if you knew nothing about who those painters were and were just trying to throw names at them in the desperate hope that one stuck.
Your work and your vision come from the same place. They’re uniquely yours. As I write this, I’m trying to imagine what it would look like if Picasso had tried to imitate Monet, and my brain just won’t process it. If you try to be someone you’re not, you’ll likely end up with a similar result. (Note: imitation can be a great way to learn and find your own style—and Picasso was influenced by a lot of impressionists, so he may well have done just that—so I’m not saying there’s never an occasion for it. But that’s not the same as creating your own work!)
People are drawn to Monet because his vision appeals to them. Other people are drawn to Picasso for the same reason. Some people are drawn to both! The key thing here, though, is that not everyone is your audience, and if you dilute your vision to try to reach a wider audience, you’ll probably end up appealing to almost no one.
As another example, I’m not into weird little monstrous creatures, but I had a colleague who was. I was never going to buy figures of little trolls, but she had several at her desk and adored them, and the artist who made them. Plenty of others agreed much more with her than with me. If that artist tried to make something to appeal to the Disney crowd, just as one possibility, I’m sure disaster would have ensued. Nobody would have been happy. But she didn’t, and had an audience who thought her work was the bee’s knees.
If you don’t follow your own artistic integrity, you’re headed for trouble before you even get started.
Consider the downside
Again, to be very clear here, I’m not against selling your work. I just think it’s smart to consider the potential repercussions. Like… do you want your art to become your job?
That can sound really appealing! And if you do it right, it can be. But you need to know what that means for you (it’s probably different than for someone else) and that you’re doing it because you want to, not because other people have pressured you into it. Living in a capitalist society means that we’re automatically conditioned to try to get money out of everything, whether it’s a good idea or not, so you really do need to know you’re in it because you want it.
It’s really easy, even if you do want it, to assume that everything will be sunshine and flowers. I will admit that my parents were right on this one: sometimes it’s better to do the thing you love as an avocation, as a hobby, than to make it your full-time job. (Also, sometimes it is not better! Only you can determine which one is true for you.) Why? Because, if you’re not careful, you can turn the thing you really love into a chore, and then end up resenting and even hating it.
Sound like fun? I didn’t think so.
For instance, I’ve found social media to have this effect on me. Now, in fairness, I’d never call social media my calling, so it’s not exactly the same. Nonetheless, playing around on TikTok really was fun…until it wasn’t—until it started feeling like a pressure-filled effort every day to come up with some new pithy, wise thing to share with the masses (and these masses were generally not all that massive!). So what happened? I eventually stopped doing it. Haven’t posted over there in more than a year, and even then, it had become pretty sporadic. My experience with other platforms has been similar.
If you’ve ever experienced the feeling of being an avid reader who was “forced” to read books, especially too many books, for a class, you may also know this feeling already. There’s nothing quite like the torture of loving to read but not wanting to read something because you have to.
Starting off as a hobby can also be a great way to feel things out and decide if you do want to go bigger or keep things small. It’s also great practice for really following your instincts and learning to listen to yourself so you’re less likely to be thrown off by people who, while enthusiastic and with the best of intentions, will pressure you to do more, to get bigger whether that’s right for you or not.
Those instincts are also important if you decide to take commissions. By definition, someone paying you to make something specific for them is going to have particular things they’d like you to do or include. Is that request going to eat away at your artistic integrity? It could, if you try too hard to make what you think they want. If you filter their request through your own authentic lens, and make what you want from their request, though, it’ll still be an authentic piece by you. And that’s really what anyone who commissions you is looking for anyway.
The trick is to be able to tell the difference.
The other thing that happens when you turn your hobby into a business is that you lose your hobby. (And, of course, you suddenly have to figure out how to run a business!) So what’s your hobby now? It’s not a deal-breaker, necessarily, but if you really depend on your photography as a source of low-pressure comfort, it’s not going to feel the same if you’re producing it for a living. Is that okay with you? Do you know what will fill that gap? Then by all means, go for it! If it makes you feel uneasy, though, you might want to resist the temptation to jump in with both feet sat least until you sort through it for yourself.
Vox has a great piece about this very thing by an amateur potter who turned pro somewhat unexpectedly, and the relationship between leisure and labor. It’s a great look at the factors involved and how they push and pull against each other. I’d recommend it to anyone, because it’s thought-provoking even on a general level, but I especially encourage you to read it if you think you want to make your art your job, just to be sure you’ve considered all the angles.
The short version of what I’m hoping to convey here is this: whatever you do with your art, make sure it feels right to you—ideally, that it feels really good to you—so you don’t take something you love and inadvertently turn it into something you hate. That’s just tragic, and would be a huge loss for you, and for those of us who would otherwise love to enjoy your work.
Your gut will know the difference. Listen to it.
I've done this to myself more than once - it's a great way to ruin your favorite pastime if you're not careful.