The Artist Delusion: How NOT to sell your art.

"The Lovers" 

Acrylic, Oil pastel and Oil paints. 

36" x 24"  

Cedric Chambers

Dear Artworld,

Everyone knows someone whom calls them self an artist. The title "artist" represents some higher idealism. In the broad sense, anything man-made can be art. The artworld has this delusion of grandeur; where everything made by the artist is unique and revolutionary. In my opinion the idea of transcendence is mentally preventing artists from progressing in their work. 

What does an artist have to do to sell a painting? Every artist already knows the answer: a commercial style. Does commercial mean become a sell out? NO. Simply put it means; "cut the crap". No one cares about your love lost, or how deep you think you are. An artists purpose is to create nice status symbol that represents a lifestyle. Artwork with any kind of obvious interpretation, scares away the general public. If you try and create artwork that says something; keep in mind that it just might.

The stereotype of a romantic artist who somehow has a glimpse of truth. Is an egotistical art world delusion; it is pathological lying. People can see right through the fake idealism you project onto others; the semi-deep fake quotes from  "lacan" or your favorite poet; comes off as corny. As intelligent as you may think you are. It's not that people don't understand your work. It's that people don't want the message that your work conveys, or is trying to convey. If you can't sell your artwork, it's because people don't want it.

Thank you,

Cedric C.

Trying: who knows what that means???

I'll do what it takes and try my  best to get commissions and work. Often resulting in NO work. I'm a little spammy, a little impersonal. Just like other situations in life, you only get better by trying. 

NOTE: You can not get better at dying.

We all see this, people try and sell their tweets, mentions in blogs. I get strangers off the street saying I should be in their gallery, or art something, trying to sell me stuff, overpriced prints, expensive thousand dollar colored pencils, tickets to events; trying to convince me it'll pay off. No one should ever have to convince you of anything. 

There are a lot of  awards you can buy, for example. You can get published in artbooks from $60-$2500, depending on how well they hide the bought space. A Raw artist nomination will cost you about $200, a lot of social media promotion, in the end, you look like an idiot at some event desperately begging for someone to look at your work. (My experience was a line of signatures, photos, and facebook friend requests, and of course being overly drunk)

There are lots of events and award ceremonies that do nothing for your career. Resumes are useless, experience isn't. Do what it takes... even if its cold calling, or copy-pasting some generic message all over the freaking internet. Trying is getting your hands in the freaking dirt, and pulling something good out of it, never giving up. Just doing it. It's no days off, no rest, no concern about people's opinion of you.

Thank you for your time,
Cedric C.

The Art Hoarder

I remember going to art school, and having it drilled into my head, that everything I create could be valuable one day. I was told to sign everything, and keep good documentation of all my work. 

This is crazy talk, I was determining the current value of my work, like a hoarder determines the value of garbage. MAYBE someone somewhere will pay MILLIONS of dollars for this scribble on a napkin. Maybe yes, likely no. All I ended up doing was hoarding tons of bad drawings, paintings, and studies; stuff that I didn't even care about. Wasting my time taking pictures, and pretending I was doing something productive.

I would go to art shows and attempt to talk to gallery owners/artists (at their own shows mind you) about MY unprofessional art, in an unprofessional way. I realized I really looked desperate carrying around a hard copy of my portfolio, even if it was only in my car. I would have done anything just to say that I was represented by someone. 

When I dropped out of school, you know what I discovered, NO ONE CARES about my portfolio! They only care that I have one. What I did in art school, is not what I want to be showing off anyways. Going to school only proves that you are dedicated enough to do something with your life. It's a sentence on first dates. 

I see this nearly every day. I fell for this trap too. When I started off in the artworld. I was conditioned to think that someone somewhere is buying art. When you can't sell your work, or get into a gallery, you think that just haven't found the right person.... Though, you probably still have that derranged hoarder artist mindset, where all your work is worth millions...I personally have always had a good sense of time, my peers often try and get away with some ridiculous stories for why their work is priced so high. Trying to say that their charcoal portraits took some ridiculous amount of time to complete and that they can't sell it for less than two grand. Either a veteran or a brand new artist: the piece in question is a very personal piece, and the buyer is lucky that the artist isn't accounting for school, gas, and gallery fees.

Everything I made in art school was overpriced nonsense, valuable for learning, and at the time I thought it was pretty good. My recommendation is when you're done with artschool. Destroy burn or giveaway, all of your old artwork. That painting that I did in college that had so much "meaning" attached to it, is about as deep as a bathtub. 

When I attempt to create art that I'm not excited about, the art comes off as forced. This happens with all of my work eventually. It serves the purpose of being therapuetic during the time of creation, like the Greeks say, " Memento Mori", remember we will all die. 

As much as I like covering my house with my own artwork, and I think of all the hours that I've spent creating my artwork. I have to remember that I never created these works for money. Now while I would love to make a living to creating artwork. Often I find myself just attempting to recouperate costs so I can paint even more.

Thank you for your time,

Cedric C.

Painting Outer Space

This series has drawn a large influence from my past artwork. I realize now; that the separate stylistic choices I have made, were merely training. This series combines the techniques that I have learned. All the commercial styles that I have approached; pure experimentation. Each painting starts off by arbitrarily picking space scenes and alignments. I then divide up the scene purely based on intuition. Allowing the oils to dry, I return to the pieces individually. Adding more details, and glazes increasing the aesthetic quality. I love every minute of it. 

Final Image: Like the Romantic paintings of the old west, this speaks of the awe and grandeur of our universe. In the middle ground, we have battleships. They aren't the sci-fi versions, this isn't a real scene, they serve as symbols. The violence, destruction, it is so small. A minor part of reality.

I layed down the first layers onto this work, at first I wanted to paint a mountain scene floating on a platform, with a pretty sunset behind it. The two planets aligned themselves, and it felt like I had no choice. I painted the clouds in, and its reflection. The image came together as a symmetrical image. Now for the best part; the spice. Often a painter would stop at the image below, a pretty night scene, with water reflections. As I usually work, if something fits together too well, then I must ruin it, splatter paint on it. Things that are too right, are boring. I began adding in some ships, 3, as to stay away from even numbers. I made two of them come out of the clouds. It was still too boring. What makes sense now. Some vertebrae looking tendrils coming from the water? perfect.