While I started transitioning from working as an employee to becoming my own boss in the latter half of last year, I realised how my focus slowly shifted from creating art to building a business. And it left me feeling unsatisfied, unhappy and unfulfilled.

Moving into this year, I knew that I had to prioritize art. In this blog post, I’ll share with you how I balance the business of art with art making.

No “Art” Business without Art

The foundation of an art business is an artist’s creative practice. There is no “art” business without the art.

Your creative business is only as strong as your creative practice. Therefore it is essential to nurture your creativity and keep creating a vast volume of artwork.

Prioritizing Creative Time

I treat art-making as a non-negotiable, therefore it is the first task of my workday. All tasks which are to be done to run a business always come after I’ve spent some time making art.

This doesn’t always have to be art that I intend to sell. In fact, on most days making art contributes to my own creative practice with no agenda to sell that work.

This was not how it was at the end of last year, I struggled to prioritize my creative practice. In fact, I compromised on it and spent all my energy on tasks such as working on my website, email list, social media, blog, and other such marketing/branding tasks.

While it is important to do things that help us sell our art, we also need to continue making art to sell.

Why did you Start?

When we feel like we are losing the plot, it is imperative to remind ourselves why did we decide to build a business with our art in the first place? Why did we decide to become a full-time artist?

It is really helpful to go back to the feelings of joy, fulfilment and purpose that come with expressing ourselves through art and the process of creating.

That becomes our north start every time we start spending more and more time building the business and less and less time making art.