I have been nesting in my studio which for me always means making room for new possibilities—always very exciting. I rediscovered this bird, he was hidden away all dusty. This painting is actually titled “Possibilities”. I brought him out into the light, cleaned him up and have let him be my creative guide while I clean, sort and categorize. He reminds me that as artists, too often we make these beautiful things and then never show them to anyone for risk of failure or perhaps even risk of success.

I just had a lengthy discussion with a friend today—a remarkable jeweler Jane Frank. http://www.janefrank.de/index.html We are both artists and we discussed how challenging it is to be creatively authentic and develop the skills needed to sell our work. I was once told that you have to soft as a lamb to create and tough as a rhinoceros to sell. These are two very different skills and one area generally suffers if you are working hard in the other.

How do we solve this conflict as artists? We need to seek as much counsel as we can—feedback about work, conferences, search out expertise in areas that challenge us— advertising, social media, follow up with clients on and on. But, good golly even typing this list makes me want to quietly create something and never show it to anyone. However, the duality of this is that we also want it out there. We do want people talking about and buying our work. OK, so here I go…

To see more of my work go to: http://lisalillibridge.com/home.html
Now I put myself out there today. SO, what steps can you take to up your game?

P.S. Oh, and by the way lots of these works are for sale and I welcome commission work. I sure wish I had an agent.