What is art? What sells?

Two questions bothered me when I was little:

What is art?

What sells?

So much so that I chewed over them throughout my childhood and teens, and then did a couple of university degrees and diplomas ‘to try to understand them better’.

And then spent 15 years working in demanding roles and industries that asked me to articulate and be the face of these questions.

And yet…

Even though I worked at Christies and Sotheby’s selling fine art…

Even though I worked at Harpers and Vogue and Marie Claire and Cosmo selling artistic fantasies and lifestyles…

Even though I worked in advertising and had to create artistic campaigns that would SELL SELL SELL at all costs…

Even though I worked as a fancy stripper and had to artfully sell myself…

Even though I did all the other things that I can’t be bothered listing…

… I was unconvinced about the answers I was getting to the questions – and definitely unfulfilled in my experience of art and selling.

And I also found myself turning down the big-time offers to step up and take pole position in the selling of the art or the art of the selling.

Hm.

It took me far too long – going at these two questions like a dog with a bone – to realise I didn’t want to be selling someone else’s art. Or artifying someone else’s sales.

I wanted to SELL MY OWN ART. Wanted to ART MY OWN SELL.

But not as an ’artist’. Or a ‘salesperson’.

There had to be something BIG behind it. A CONCEPT.

So, I continued to go at the two questions like a dog with a bone.

What did selling my OWN art mean and look like?

And, my commitment was rewarded.

DARK LUXURY was the answer. To BOTH questions.

Dark Luxury is art. And it sells.

And, most importantly…

IT’S MINE. ALLLLL MIIIIIINE.

Now, I am convinced. I am fulfilled.

I have an IT’S MINE.

And… epiphany…

THIS is what my clients really need and want, when they come to me with all the other problems and the confusion.

They want an IT’S MINE.

All of their very own.

Yet 99.9 per cent of my clients don’t have an IT’S MINE.

They have a half-formed embryo of an idea, and a lot of passion, and someone else’s language, and a muddied jumble of principles, and a lack of viewpoints, and a half-arsed message, and no clarity around the tangibles, and a nebulous idea of value, and no coherent impression of their own identity, and zero idea how they are different from someone else, and visuals that are beige, and structures copied from someone else, and etc etc etc

They have no concept (you know, that thing that brings everything together in a sophisticated, lucrative way?).

Because they have no concept, they have no IT’S MINE.

And they won’t, until they have the concept.

CONCEPT IS EVERYTHING.

(“But I have passion! I want this SOOOOOO badly! Surely that’s enough!?!!?!”)

Hah.

No wonder they are unconvinced (and their clients and audience and customers are equally unconvinced). And why they are unfulfilled (and their clients etc etc etc).

Long story short – if you want to be convinced and fulfilled, you need your own IT’S MINE.

Like I do.