Mark E Shellshear.

The Artist sold nothing, this was his big one man show in a large gallery in the big city. No sales, he just looked so hurt, collected his paintings and prepared to leave. The Gallery staff looked at me, they are all young, I said, “You have to taste failure to understand how devastating it is, this Artist is hurt enough without us adding to his pain by asking him to pay a hanging fee, he is a nice guy, lets understand, sometimes its not always about business .” Before he left he asked me what he had done wrong? I said, “Nothing about your art, it is good. The problem is you are unknown, the curse of the Artist.” I told him to go home and build a following in his own city before he tries again in a big city like Manila and get a presence on line where people can get to know you, its all about getting peoples attention. This really is an example of what happens so often, big dreams not quite thought out properly and it leads to rejection and disappointment and that...

Success is not to be  honored , it is be built upon and expanded . Take care of what you have accomplished. Make sure to continue to strive hard, remember your real competition is yourself and the laziness that is built into all of us. Have the attitude, that if you are doing well now, you must do better in the future. Do not let today's success cheat you out of your future successes, we must all continually build upon them and work on chang ing ourselves for the better. Read more, study more, learn more, draw more and paint more, because the more you accomplish within, the greater your success will be seen without . Success is not the time to slow down, but the time to switch up a gear and go harder. Protect your successes and build upon them, because if you want more, you must become more.

How important is story telling your art? I have been telling Artists for so long now, story tell your Art, some have done it, most don't, they just do not understand that people want to buy into the Artist story. The romance of the Artist, the mystery of the studio, always creating amazing art, the bohemian lifestyle of the Artist, it might not seem like that to you the Artist but to the buyer all this adds up to a wonderful story that the buyer wants to h ear and visualize. Why, because they want to tell themselves a story that makes them feel a certain way.. People buy Art because of the story the Artist tells. People buy Art because of the story the buyer is telling themselves. That's why they buy Art, an I phone, a Ferrari, a Lear jet, its the story they tell themselves when they buy it.

While recording the “ Ask Mark Art Show ” this morning I said something that I had not thought to say, but it came out and it has made me think. I said something like when you are looking for a Gallery make sure they are doing social, not just emails as we getting to a place where people do not open emails like they once used to. Now I am not saying a list of willing subscribers on email is not good we all use them, but I think in 2016 we should be doing more than that and so should Artists. I think all Artists should be doing “live” Facebook if they have good internet access and videos, Twitter, Instagram and others as well. I think that blogs are a necessity not something I should do one day. Blogs tell our story and to connect to our buyer we must be telling them a story about our Art that they want to hear. Now I know that sounds strange but today tv adds do not work, word of mouth is the prime source of advertising and internet is perfect platform for that. The...

One necessary ingredient to being a successful Artist is, commitment. Please notice that I did not say talent, there are many talented failures. Commitment is an interesting idea, often we say we are committed to our Art no matter what, but after the initial emotional rush has waned, often we loose interest and stop, especially when the Art journey gets very tough and it will get tough. So what is true commitment to the Artistic practice. Commitment to your Art is doing the thing you said you would do long after the emotional high you said it in, has passed. Passion and talent will get you so far and you need both, but commitment w ill see you through to the finish line, long after the passionate and the talented have given up. Commitment does it even when you don't feel like it. Commitment turns up, every time. Commitment believes you can win when it is falling apart around you. Commitment confirms , you are worth y of success because you are committe...

So often in our Art practice we will be faced with a number of choices of what to do. Maybe you are looking at a number choices that you have to make for your Art career right now and wondering what should I do? The choice to make, is to do the one thing that will make you remarkable and remembered, compared to something that is easy to do and safe. Choose the hard and scary way that will force you out of your comfort zone and stretch you.. Why? If you take the easy road, you will not grow, you will not stretch yourself and you will not achieve greatness but you will be average and boring and predictable. The easy road is well travelled, nearly everyone is on it and it leads to average, conformity, safe and mediocrity. The hard and scary road, is not well travelled leads to growth, learning and greatness and change. Being scared is normal, but seeing it as a challenge is not. What you are scared of just may be the opportunity you have been waiting for that will ...

When I was a young man starting out in the business world in the 1970's, I would go to a barber in the suburb of Sandgate where I lived. The reason I would always go this particular barber was that he was an Artist, a very dedicated Artist and I was also painting and enjoyed talking to him about Art. His Barber shop was filled with his paintings, every space on the walls was covered with his paintings, all the paintings were of his local area in every seaso n and weather condition. When he had no customers he would work on his paintings. He taught me so much about Art. Not how to paint or what to paint, but about attitude to painting and dedication to your craft, always turning up and painting whether you sell or not, for him it was always about the act of painting. As a prolific Artist he was very successful, he painted at every opportunity that he could and he had a large body of work to show for his efforts. Whether they were good or bad paintings it was never discussed, wha...

One of the great joys of life is watching children paint. Children paint wholeheartedly without tension, because they are not aware of what people think, only of what they are doing and feeling. When a child paints there is no right or wrong, no thought about perspective, tone, balance, tension, complementary colours etc, these things do not come into the equation, for them it is about painting. What is always important to them is that they are painting, in reality the painting that they are doing is not even as important as the action of painting, only after it is finished do they want praise for what they produced. But for adults so many things come into play even before we pick up the brush to put the first colour onto the canvas, for many a real battle takes place because of the pressure to produce a masterpiece. Stop, before you paint and allow yourself to just paint, nothing else is important, just paint. Of course there will be days of good painting and days of ...

Artistic success is just as dependant on confidence as it is on competence. When we take action, we strengthen our belief in our own ability to do things. Have you ever had a great idea in the evening about what you should do to increase your sales and then over the next day you have slowly talked yourself out of it? Why? The tyranny of the past……...Lack of self confidence. Fear of past failures. Fear of past rejections. Fear of past hurts. These all gang up on us and our critical inner voice slowly wears away at our self confidence. The inner voice say, “This is what will happen to you again, you don't want to experience those hurts again, so don't do it, you will be laughed at because you know you are a failure, don't do it.” Friends, yes we have all had past failures, that is life. Life happens to us all. You can use your past to your advantage or you can use it as bat to beat yourself up with, it's a choice. The tyranny of the past h...