Art Dialog with Christy and Carol was a short-lived YouTube podcast presented by my friend Christy Strauch and me. We offered pithy marketing tips and deep insights from our own experiences to help artists sell their art. Our mission was to help artists get their work into the world and help them get paid for it.

Commendable goal, right? The world needs more art, and artists need more money. Slam dunk.

Turns out it was a lofty but foolish endeavor. Why?

We had two guesses.

Reason 1: Most people do not care about art

Buying art is like promising to exercise. We think it’s a worthy objective, but when the realities of life get in the way (e.g., taking care of our activities of daily living), we always find a reason to buy gas for our fossil-fuel burning automobile, buy Hamburger Helper to feed our hungry kids, fire up the lawn mower if we are lucky enough to have a lawn . . . you get the picture. Life is expensive, busy, and constantly in need of upkeep. For most of us, art hangs on the fridge with magnets.

Buying “real” art, on the other hand, is a luxury best left to people who can afford it. You know who I mean, the fictitious people who have electric cars, solar houses, immigrants who deliver food to their doorsteps, oodles of wall space, and investments that move in only one direction—up, thanks to fiscal policies that give them big bootstraps while the rest of us are wearing hand-me-down Crocs.

So, yes, a few people buy “real” art. Yay.

But for an artist with a tedious day job, living paycheck to paycheck and paying more than 50 percent of their income on housing, finding those art buyers is difficult if not almost impossible. Why?

One reason is because poor artists don’t hang out where the rich people are.

Christy and I talked ad nauseum about “finding our tribe.” We knew it was hard, but as hopelessly naive optimistics, we thought if artists just did their footwork (according to our suggestions), everything would work out hunky dory. Art buyers would fill their palaces with art, and artists would receive fair compensation.

Unfortunately, not only are art buyers elusive creatures who don’t tend to coalesce in one place, artists find it difficult to muster the willingness to market and sell their work. Which brings me to Reason 2.

Reason 2: Artists are both fearful and arrogant

Fearful? Yes. Fearful of failure, fearful of success. All kinds of fear, which can lead to paralysis. For some artists, fear means creativity evaporates. For many, it means the thought of marketing their work to potential buyers is utterly terrifying.

All kinds of thoughts go through our minds:

My work is no good. It’s not worth the price. Nobody will want it. My work is too commercial. If I don’t sell anything, I’m a failure. If I sell everything, I’m a sellout.

You can probably relate to the fear. But wait, you say. What about arrogance? How can artists be fearful and arrogant at the same time?

Artists tend to believe they are special, which means they believe they should get what they want without working too hard for it. Many artists believe their work is so fabulous that buyers will simply knock on their door and say, “That’s the most amazing art I’ve ever seen! I must have it now. I’ll give you $50,000, plus I will pay to have it shipped to my Italian villa. Where do I sign?”

In other words, money should fall down from the sky on our heads.

I will say on our behalf, it’s not that artists don’t see the value in marketing and selling. If it has to be done, though, we want someone else to do it for us.

Back to Art Dialog with Christy and Carol.

We kept finding reasons to postpone our next video. Christy left the country. I went on an extended road trip. Finally, we had to face the truth. Art Dialog with Christy and Carol was not working.

It took us a while, but we figured out what was wrong.

We were frauds

Before we pulled the plug on Art Dialog with Christy and Carol, we had planned to present a video announcing our new direction. The script started something like this:

CHRISTY: In the beginning our aim was to make videos about marketing topics, like how to figure out what to sell, how to price your work, and so on. We produced a dozen or so videos that we thought would help artists market and sell their art. Then something strange happened. We started to feel like frauds.

CAROL: You mean like we weren’t being totally honest about how hard it was going to be to sell art? 

CHRISTY: Yes. We sometimes alluded to the possibility that artists might encounter some resistance to using the marketing tactics we talked about, but we didn’t give them any way to understand and address the resistance. We talked about the obstacles that can get in the way of marketing. We sometimes mentioned the frustration of getting stuck, not being able to take action. But we didn’t talk about what artists could do to move past the obstacles and start selling their work.

CAROL: I think I fell into the trap of believing that if I just used certain tools in a certain way and focused on a particular group of people with just the right message and the perfect website and relentless social media that there was no way I could fail. 

Christy: The sad secret is that even if you do this whole thing right, you still may not sell much art. We typed this question into AI: What percentage of artists support themselves and make a decent living selling art, and the answer is only one in 10 artists earn over $100K/year, and 85% make less than $25K per year. Daunting statistics.

Yada yada. Then we were going to talk about a marketing tool (bwahaha), describe what happens to an artist’s brain when they try to use it (massive explosion), and explain the culprit: your problem stems from past trauma (said two artists with way too much education masquerading as therapists). Finally, we had a really bold idea: We were going to demonstrate how to talk to the part of the artist brain that was carrying the past trauma so the artist could overcome the blocks that kept them from marketing their work. In other words, role play!

No wonder we left town.

Looking back now, with the wisdom of someone two months older, I can see how deluded we were. Somehow we drank the New Age Kool-aid that so many so-called gurus before us have recommended: Hey Artist, it’s your brain! Your brain is causing you to balk at marketing your work. All you have to do is think and get over it.

It’s kind of like telling a person to think and grow rich. Think and cure your bunions. Think and do situps. Think and erase heartburn. Think and people will buy your art.

If only.

I may be late to the party, but my current philosphy is that it doesn’t matter what we think. Or what we feel, to be honest. The universe only responds to what we do.

But doing is not the same as receiving. Just because we market our art does not mean anyone will buy it. In fact, if past performance is an indication of future results, it’s quite likely we will earn next to nothing for our work, no matter how great it might be.

That was a long way of saying, Art Dialog with Christy and Carol met its match when it came up against two irrefutable realities: most people don’t care enough about art to buy it, and artists, for many reasons, do not want to do the work to market it.

Hence, the demise of Art Dialog. RIP.