Unlike most other Curators and Artist mentors, my background is in psychology and the relationship between imagery and story. My research examined the psychological influences on creativity as well as understanding the emotional dynamics between practice and artist AND art and its audience. 

For most artists, their work is fundamentally about their own need to connect and make sense of their experiences…then, they also wish to sell their work. Unsurprisingly, the most common desire I hear from artists is that they want to connect with an audience. The most common way they measure this connection is through representation selling their work – even though connection and sales are often very different things. This is an important distinction, because the desire to monetize their art is always secondary to their foremost desire to connect through it.

Even if you never sell your art again because no one else connects with it – would you stop creating it? Conversely, if you were able to make a sustainable living from making art that doesn’t reflect your own creativity, would you be satisfied? It has never been guaranteed that anyone would connect with and buy our art simply because it is in us to create it. My research found that “art” has little to do with commercialism. It is about creativity. An artist, of any form, uses their art to make sense of their world and to communicate. It is society that has made commercial industry of that. Paradoxically, an artist must keep returning to that purity; the truth that art is unrelated to selling – in order to sell it. In this way my coaching sessions are designed to reflect that ethos and always seek to start a conversation about the personal purpose of the artists art first, so we can successfully identify your audience and re-engage them through your art.

I don’t believe in blanket solutions in my mentoring, it is not who I am. I believe in three core principles of self-belief, strategy and support combined with bespoke solutions for the individual artist. I believe in transparency, honesty and open communication in all my connections – professional and personal. If this resonates with you, please get in touch.