Why does it help for me to be a visual artist, who sells their work, and filmmaker?

There are many films and docuseries out there about artists. My husband has seen many and I’ve seen even more! One key thing the filmmakers who are not professional artists tend to do is to leave out is the empathy towards the artist. They often portray the artist, featured in the series, just going out and successfully completing their job/contract/work. There may be a few minor bumps along the way, but typically it doesn’t really capture the truly difficult, and often discouraging, nature of the artists’ vocation.

The struggle of being an artist and selling your work is monumental. To share your work and convince people it’s just as nice and as well made as something you can find in a store is something only an artist understands.

I try to capture the difficulties in the first series of Crafting a Professional Career and it’s why I included the community resources. I didn’t know about many of these resources when I first started selling my work. Often when thinking about selling your work as an artist, you may not think of it as a business and may not approach places like the Alberta Women’s Entrepreneurs, which is a not-for-profit organization who helps women’s businesses succeed. I had seen they had offered a free build your business plan workshop, years ago, and I signed up to go. Unfortunately, it was one of those days where I couldn’t go because of having “no spoons left” that day, so Tanner went for me. The help the AWE provided changed my way of thinking about how I sold my art and how I structured everything I did. By being a visual artist, who is trying to earn a living making art, and a filmmaker who wants to share the stories of other artists experience, as well as my own, I’m better able to understand the struggles an artist faces daily. Because I understand the difficulties artists face first hand, I know how I can offer advice or assistance to try to help alleviate their pain points I had when starting out. I am also in the position to ask the questions of organizations and community supports that I had when I was starting out, but didn’t know where to go on behalf of upcoming artists. In turn, I include the answers in my film projects so new artists, or those feeling a bit lost, can refer to it and hopefully find some sort of guidance to point them towards the resources they need. In my series, I ask the featured artists for their advice so I can share it with new artists as many new artists would not have access to more seasoned artists or may be uncomfortable to march up and ask them for a bunch of advice.