Marketing. BOO!
By Sue Pendleton, Founder
Painting clouds used to scare me. Not in any dramatic sense. But for a long time, clouds were one of those subjects I approached with more caution than confidence.
Then my art class spent several weeks on them.
We looked at how old masters handled clouds and how contemporary artists interpreted them. Our teacher demonstrated different techniques. We went home with small assignments, brought them back for critique, then tried another approach the following week.
By the end of the session, I hadn’t discovered one perfect way to paint clouds.
I had something better: a handful of techniques I understood well enough to use when I needed them.
Clouds stopped feeling mysterious.
That happens a lot in art
It’s one of the things I admire most about artists.
We’re constantly putting ourselves in situations where we don’t quite know what we’re doing yet.
A different medium. A harder subject. A workshop with someone whose work we admire. A painting that has wandered far enough off course that the only sensible option is to keep going and see if we can bring it back.
Most artists are deeply curious about their craft. We study. Experiment. Make mistakes. Adjust.
And then, somehow, marketing comes up and that same person can suddenly look as though someone has released a giant spider into the room.
I find that fascinating.
The skills are already there
The more time I spend working with artists, the more convinced I am that many of the qualities needed to become good at marketing are already part of an art practice.
Artists know how to learn by doing.
We know that one attempt doesn’t tell us very much. We know how to look closely, compare approaches, take what works, discard what doesn’t and try again.
We also know how personal that process can be.
What works beautifully for one painter may be completely wrong for another.
That doesn’t mean the technique is bad. It means we have to understand it well enough to make it our own.
Why does marketing feel different?
Maybe because art feels like our territory.
Even when we’re trying something new, we understand the basic language of the studio. Marketing can feel like stepping into someone else’s world, complete with unfamiliar terminology and an impressive number of acronyms.
That’s enough to make almost anyone hesitate.
But I keep wondering what would happen if artists approached marketing the same way they approach learning something new in their work.
Not as a test of whether we’re “good at marketing.”
Just another practice.
Something we can study, experiment with, adjust and eventually understand well enough to develop our own way of doing it.
Marketing is allowed to have a sketchbook
I love that idea.
A sketchbook doesn’t ask us to prove anything. It gives us room to explore before we decide what deserves to become something more.
Maybe marketing needs a little more of that spirit.
Not because everything should feel easy.
But because artists already know what to do when something doesn’t.
We get curious.
We practice.
And eventually, the scary thing becomes something we know how to handle.
