Where Do You Find Your Art Buyers?

When it comes to getting your work to market, this question becomes the heart of the matter.

If you make art and wish to sell it, you need buyers. But where do you find them?

Ask a dozen artists, and you’ll get at least a dozen different answers. Shows, fairs, galleries, print ads, online galleries, social media, publicity, email marketing, direct mail, and postcards are among the usual replies. But nearly every artist also has something else they do that’s unique to them.

Monica Hebert has been painting oils for decades, but she’s sold more art through her Substack, where she writes about being a fiercely independent older woman and only occasionally mentions her art, than through other channels.

And she’s not alone. Although I’m generally against coffee shop marketing because I think it’s more often a waste of time than an effective strategy, some artists manage to make it work quite well.

There simply is no definitive best way to get your artwork to market.

Everything good begins with a conversation

I believe artists can apply a universal truth to finding buyers and building their careers. I’ve been saying this for years.

“Everything good in an art career begins with a conversation.”

Think about it. Whether you want to get into a gallery, get publicity, secure a grant, or improve your booth location at a show you’ve attended for years, you’ll eventually need to talk to someone.

You may have a wonderful human-interest story behind your art, but a journalist won’t know about it until you tell them. You may deserve a better booth location, but the show organizer needs to hear from you.

And the same principle applies to finding art buyers.

Traditional marketing methods can introduce your art to hundreds or thousands of people. But they are low-quality one-way connections. They may have seen your art, even know your name, but you don’t know them, and they don’t know much about you either. In time, some of those people may become buyers. And I’ve spent much of my career helping artists market using such methods to sell their work effectively.

But there’s another, and I believe much better, way to find buyers, one that starts with the people you know, the interests you pursue, and the connections you make along the way.

Not all marketing is the same

In 2016, I launched a course called How to Find Art Buyers. Hundreds of artists went through it, and I was teaching methods I knew could work.

But eventually I realized I was trying to turn artists into direct marketers. The techniques made sense, but applying them consistently required a kind of marketing discipline that many artists had little interest in developing.

They became artists to make art and live creative lives. I was asking them to spend a considerable amount of time doing something that didn’t fit who they are or how they preferred to get their work seen and sold.

So I mothballed the course. It was still selling well, but I couldn’t sleep well if that were the only reason to keep it on the market.

But I never stopped thinking about the underlying idea. When you make intentional connections, when your life intersects with someone else’s in a meaningful way, those relationships can make an enormous difference in your career.

They can lead to sales, certainly, but also to referrals, introductions, friendships, opportunities, and a greater sense of enjoyment and belonging.

And I’ve come to believe that finding those connections can be a much more natural part of an artist’s life than many of the marketing activities we routinely recommend.

A different way to find art buyers

That’s why I created an entirely new version of How to Find Art Buyers.

It begins with what you already have: the people you know, the interests you enjoy, the experiences you’ve accumulated, and the communities where you feel comfortable.

From there, it’s about recognizing promising connections, finding meaningful ways to participate, talking naturally about your art, telling stories people remember, and following up when there’s a good reason.

It complements whatever marketing you’re already doing. And it gives you another way to think about how buyers and opportunities find their way into your life.

I’ve spent nearly four decades helping artists market their work. The longer I’ve done it, the more convinced I’ve become that the best marketing often fits naturally into the life you want to live.

That’s the thinking behind the new course, and I’m pleased to finally share it with you.

Introducing How to Find Art Buyers — learn more here.

See you next week.

—Barney

P.S. Of all the books, blog posts, and courses I’ve created over the years, I’m most proud of this one. That’s because I believe it can work for artists at any career or skill level. It makes art marketing manageable and human: take a genuine interest in people, build meaningful connections, and let relationships develop naturally. It’s a more comfortable way to market your art, with the potential to create opportunities you might never have found otherwise.