30 September 2024

As a creative business I need to understand what the current trends are in my area of art. I follow a number of artists on social media and have a reasonable idea of how they market themselves and reach out to their potential clients.

One of the artists I follow on Instagram and Facebook is Tony O’Connor. He is known for being an equine artist and takes on a lot of commissions as well as some of his own portfolio pieces for sale. In his own words he does “other critters” too, such as pigs, donkeys, foxes and stags. I bought one of his limited edition calendars in 2024, it’s a good marketing tactic as I fulfilled my desire to have some of his artwork in an affordable way. For him as an artist it’s an avenue to get your work out there and another income stream. Tony has a shop on his website which concentrates on selling mainly fine art prints. He sells a few pieces via The Doorway Gallery in Dublin. His main outlet that he works towards every year to get new work on display is the annual Dublin Horse Show. I admire him because he is an accomplished sketch artist for his ideas and painter. He formulates his own artwork ideas and sketches them our before creating the larger pieces. He also works closely with an Equine Photographer and uses her images for some of his more classic style paintings. It seems to work really well for him, helped by the fact that he’s approachable and created a brand/business that really suits his personality and it comes through in all his social media posts and his own studio website. I think as an artist it’s really important to understand how much of you is your brand, something I already know I am going to find difficult. •https://whitetreestudio.ie

Christian Hook, https://www.christianhook.com , is another artist I follow and have enjoyed watching how his work has changed and developed over the years since I discovered his work. His work was really highlighted when he won the Sky Portrait Artist of the Year 2014. He has done portraits of several famous people including The Duke of Edinburgh and Dame Judi Dench. However, it’s his equestrian art that I started to follow him for. He has such a way of mixing realism with abstraction and you really get drawn into the world he creates. His work is displayed in higher end galleries and from the professional style to his website and videography of his work I feel he has a team of professional media and film creators supporting him. However, the style is still very much him and how his work is created. His portrait of Sue Thompson to commemorate the Hillsborough Families, was inspiring. The anthem of Liverpool FC is “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and I was inspired by how much time he spent with Sue, and that he use his barefeet to walk on the monochrome portrait. That element of being involved in the story and some how incorporating it in the image strikes a chord in how I wish to create my own art.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjuOYClr3Qs

More recently I have started to follow Susan Benes. She is an equine artist who creates small scale sculptures, similar in price and size to the ones that I wish to create. She has written books and runs courses in how to create clay sculptures and supplemented her income in this way. •https://www.susiebenes.com

I follow a number of artists, ceramicists and printmakers on Instagram and Facebook. They represent a wide range of genre. The choose different ways of selling their work either from a shop on their own website, Etsy – which means sales fees, or via art fairs, shows and exhibitions, and galleries.

Regardless of how you wish to sell your work, there are costs to be covered in either exhibition space, art fair fees, gallery commission and bank fees ie, square, sumup etc.

I need to consider who is my market? Am I aiming for the lower range tourist passing trade, mid tier working professionals/ commissions, or higher range galleries that specialise in animal art. Who do I really want to attract and do I wish to limit the range/genre of works I create?