The primary school playground.

Yesterday I wrote:- “ You are the key to your success.”

I want to emphasise that you are the key to your success, not anyone else.

You are responsible for you and all that you do with the gift and talent that you have been given.

Now you can argue with me and say that circumstances are against you, the Art Market does not recognize you and if I knew the problems that you had I would understand why you are not doing so well.

Firstly, we all face the same circumstances, it rains on the rich and the poor, its called life and we are all living it.

The unforeseen can happen to us all.

Also we all have to live with the vagaries of the Art Market, we cannot change it so we better find a way to work with it.

There must be a way because there are many successful Artists out there, how did they do it, what makes them successful?

The answer will seem so simple, they went to work on themselves to be better and learned as much about the Art Market as they could and then they put into action what they learned.

Remember when you were a child at school and you wanted to join into a game with some other children so you just up and started playing just doing what ever you thought was right?

Pretty quick you would be stopped and told that's not how you play the game, there are rules and if you don't play by the rules then you cannot play. Then you had to watch and ask questions and learn the rules so you could play in the game. So you got in and asked questions and watched and learned and then you were allowed to play but if you did it wrong you would be stopped and told you can't do that.

You could stand and ague with the other kids that is was a stupid rule but they would just look at you say, you have to play by the rules or you can't play.

So you learned the rules and got to play and enjoy the game because you played by the rules and now that you can play you can now negotiate with the other kids to change some rules, but you had to learn first and play by the rules before you could suggest change.

Then when a new kid came along to play and makes a mistakes you would then call out, “Hey you can't do that, you must play by the rules.”

So it is with the Art Market, you must play by the rules.

You must get in and learn all you can about the market.

You must ask questions and understand how it works and then you can play.

It is no good complaining and saying how unfair it is, no one is interested because there are rules and you must play by them. Of course some will come along and try and change some of the rules but over time the market will adjust and go back to how it is.

In saying that I must also say that the market is changing because of the internet and it will adjust and then there will be a new set of rules to learn, as the market evolves we must also.

Read that book, do the course, learn all you can about your craft and the market you want to sell your craft into.

Your success depends on you, and to get into the market depends on you, everything you want to know about the Art Market you learned in the primary school playground.

If you want to play the game, you have to first learn the rules to play and so it is with most things in life.

The key to your success is you, so it's up to you..