From Self-Doubt to Sold Out: Build an Art Career with Authenticity and Marketable Art

By: Shakirra Meghjee

Published January 06, 2025

Whoever said art careers don’t pay must have forgotten about the endless supply of pitying looks at the family gathering after the fourth person in a row asks that extremely refreshing, deeply reassuring question we all know and love: “So…what’s your plan again?”

Working towards commercial art success can stir up so much insecurity, doubt, and fear, which might sound something like…

“Maybe I have nothing new to say”

“I’m not sure I’m good enough to hack it in such a competitive field”

“I’m a creator alright – creator of embarrassing, delusional, and financially reckless choices ”

This is why it can be so tempting to jump the metaphorical [glue] gun and attempt to silence these painful feelings by trying to chase commercial art success before fully developing your artistic authenticity and honing your technical skills.

Paradoxically, the key to becoming a working artist is to stay focused on the core of your practice – the actual art – as a means to finding your unique art audience and building a business by serving them. Before we get into what it looks like to do that, first we want to reassure you that:

🥠 Successful art careers are still possible – even now, even for you ;)

🥠 There are many paths towards making truly marketable art, and you can find the right formula for you

🥠 You are not alone – all creative people live in the space between fear and hope, and Creator Collective provides you with a community, resources, and support at every point along this journey

Moving along…

There are two major processes that fuel successful art careers:

PROCESS 1: The deeply personal, emotional, and even spiritual process of artistic authenticity as an act of radical self-expression.

PROCESS 2: The practical process of managing your production and selling to a specific art audience.

When it comes to building successful art careers, we can’t have one process without the other – focusing on Process 1 is what makes Process 2 possible. The more we nurture our artistic authenticity, the more we’ll have to offer our target market audience. 

So, what does it look like to focus on what’s meaningful in order to create marketable art? Glad you asked! 👇🏽

1) Establish and nurture genuine artistic authenticity.

To make art is to say that you see, hear, or feel something that means something profound about being human, a kind of transcendent truth that goes beyond the ordinary here & now.

There are many ways to find and hone artistic authenticity – through introspection, psychedelics, empathy, or even trauma. However you come by it, your first and most important job is to cultivate and tend to the portal in your soul that channels art ideas; think of it as a cute little intergalactic open wound that you’ve gotta keep from closing up. #HurtsSoGood 🌀😋

2) Leverage your most exciting and intriguing art ideas in order to practice and master your technical skills.

In order to make marketable art, we must first make enjoyable art, entrancing art, engrossing art. Ask not what you should make, and instead focus on what you want to make. Use your own pleasure as a creative lighthouse that relentlessly leads you back to your practice. 

Live by the mantra that “What’s Fun, Gets Done” – you need lots of reps to get good, and the best way to build a consistent habit is to come up with art ideas that you can’t wait to do and come back to.

3) Pay attention to who likes what you make and what they like about it, even if it’s only a few people right now.

As you develop your artistic authenticity and technical proficiency, your work will start to resonate with some people, even if it’s only a few to start – this is your fledgling art audience. Once you have an audience to serve, you can then focus on doing more of what’s working, i.e. producing marketable art by slowly and intentionally building business systems. Which brings us to…

4) Build the business one step at a time, focusing on the very next problem you need to solve.

As we discussed, it can be tempting to want to jump to the business aspect of things, but it’s more efficient and less overwhelming to build solutions as they’re needed.

For example, say you’re showing your work at a coffee shop event, and a few people are interested in keeping up with you and your work. You can start a free Google Sheets email list at this point, as opposed to springing for a Mailchimp commercial subscription right from the start.

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You are so worthy of the full expression of your art ideas and of commercial art success, and those coveted outcomes result from taking the steps above to prioritize your authentic artistry before attempting to make marketable art. 

This isn’t an easy journey, but it is worthwhile, and at Creator Collective, it’s something you can do alongside like-minded peers who are striving to make things that matter and make a living at the same time. Join us at Creator Collective now to see how passion and profit can be partners in crime – after all, the muse never said she didn’t like a little money too 💅🏽.

Creator Collective is a space where creatives can find not just an audience, but a community. We put in the time showcasing artists, so that they can spend more time doing what they were born to do. If we have our own message to get across, it’s this: In today’s world, art is more important than ever.

Create with us.