By Art Winstanley

When I moved to the Florida Keys, five years ago, I was walking away from a mostly successful career as a Designer for the Fortune 500. I’d spend my days developing marketing strategies and advertising collateral and I’d spend my nights painting. It was on one of those nights, in mid-stroke on a block of 140# Archers, when it hit me. . . If I had the experience and skills to market microwave towers to Saudi Arabia, advertise Commercial Real Estate to a Global Marketplace, publish International Finance Journals; not to mention the boatload of other useless corporate goods and services I can barely remember, couldn’t I use those same experiences and skills to market and advertise my paintings? Well, who knew, but I was gonna give it a try.

Here’s some of what I’ve learned, so far, along the way.

The “arts scene” is your marketplace. Getting the “flavor” of it is understanding how the marketplace does business. Remember, it’s already up, running and not likely to slow down enough to notice another newcomer.

Your assignment, should you decide to accept it, is to break in to that marketplace.

Your list of names and numbers tells you who the players are, but you also want to figure out how the game is played. By the way, that list is going to be a valuable tool for you down the road and we’ll talk about that in part 2 of this series so, in the meantime, hang on to that information.

I remember thinking that self-promotion was a ton of time consuming work and wondering when would I ever have time to paint. . . .Well, as it turns out, that’s the challenge! But you’ll work it out. The important thing, no matter where you are in the self-promotion game, is to have fun with it. Gallery openings and outdoor art shows are parties. Take your friends and get out there, munch on some finger food and sip champagne, meet new people and talk about the thing you know best in the world, your artwork.

Continued on Part 2