What's Your Artistic Brand?

A toy sale catalogue arrived in our mailbox today, an I was struck by how everything is branded. You can't just buy a truck - you buy a Transformer. Hannah Montana beams out from kits of craft supplies and Dora the Explorer has her own toy video projector. Everything has some well-known face enhancing its desirability. Commercialism was even rearing its ugly head at the Sydney Aquarium, with 'Spongebob Squarepants' characters decorating the majority of the exhibits.

The problem is, however much we hate it - and most artists I know loathe marketing and would rather perish in obscurity than advertise - creating a viable career in the arts requires that you have a personal brand. This doesn't mean plastering a ritzy logo and flamboyant signature across ever piece you do. It means having consistency of style, a certain unity in your body of work, and something that sets it apart from the crowd. For most visual artists, this tends to happen organically. When your art is internally driven, there are themes and qualities that will keep appearing. It might be obvious, or it might be subtle, and it may well change over time, but if you look hard enough, there are connecting threads.

Lack of a recognizable 'brand' can be a real problem in a competitive marketplace. The value of an artist's work can be somewhat artificial and subject to fashion, as we know, but there's more to it than that. You don't want a potential buyer to look at a work and say 'Oh, I must get a colored pencil horse drawing too.' You want them to think, 'I need a piece by THAT artist.' If you're just another realist artist making generic copies of stock photos, what is there to set your work apart?

Why, for example, would you commission J.D. Hillberry over some other artist chosen at random from a Google search? He is renowned for his mastery of realism, but there are plenty of competent photo-realists around. There's a clue in his expert compositions, which aren't simple copies of photos. Most of his drawings have close-cropped composition and use a lot of white space to balance the intricately rendered textures. His trompe-l'oeil pieces have a unique combination of shallow-space illusion and quirky humor. His personality emerges in his work, even given its degree of precise realism.

A promising young artist is Stephanie Sekula. Stephanie sketches using a grid, rather than tracing, so her drawings have a more relaxed and individual feel. I'd describe her work as naturalistic, rather than photo-realistic, and there's a lovely sense of the artist's hand at work in her drawings. I hope she doesn't lose that sense of individuality as her work matures.

So what sets your work apart? If I browse through your online gallery, will I then recognize one of your drawings when I see it at an art show?

Check out some tips on Developing Your Personal Style from Marion Boddy-Evans.