For this weeks
Inspiration Tuesday I asked
Natasha Newton, Of
The Blackbird Sings for some advice about how creating a variety of work can gain you access to different audiences.
About Natasha
Natasha is a professional artist and illustrator living and working in Suffolk, England and Paris, France. She has had her work used as
book cover designs for several books by Jorge Bucay (published by Random House) and her art is also used for
a range of stationery products printed by
Moo.com. If you would like to learn more about Natasha, click
here to read her full biography.
On Accessing Different Audiences...
"One thing I've noticed is that different artworks attract different audiences. I always assumed that the larger pieces would take much longer to sell and so I was sometimes a little reluctant to take the huge amount of time needed to make a large painting on canvas because of this. But I was completely wrong!
On the few occasions I've made really large pieces, they've actually sold fairly quickly. I was surprised by this, but then someone explained the reason why and it made perfect sense: the type of people who visit galleries to buy artwork tend to be fairly wealthy (not always of course, as many different people buy from galleries, but this is often the case)....because they're fairly wealthy, they tend to live in larger houses, and these larger houses have larger rooms with larger walls - therefore requiring larger artwork!
So by making larger fine art pieces, I'm appealing to a wealthier clientele and I also make smaller paintings on canvas, which are more affordable for people who have a love of original art, but don't have upwards of a thousand pounds to spend.
At the next level, I make
small originals on paper (often unframed) or the little '
found art objects' like my recent
painted stones, which are even more affordable and appeal to people on a limited budget. I also sell
high-quality postcard prints of my work to people who can't afford any of the above options! So you see, if I just concentrated on making one type of artwork, I'd probably only appeal to one type of person. It's far more interesting for me - and better for my career - to enjoy working on many different pieces and attract a wider audience at the same time. I think that this is some of the best advice I can give. Just follow your heart, and if you feel that you want to make large scale, expensive pieces; just do it! If you have an original idea and the talent and expertise to see it through, then your pieces will find the right audience."
Thanks Natasha for such honest and helpful advice!
