There are over 60.000 registered artists working in the UK, that means that for every one thousand people there’s at least one making art and selling it to the market. In the US the ratio is even bigger, with about 2,1 million registered artists; where one in every 150 people is making art for a living (or at least as a source of side income).

The conclusion — there’s a lot of us out there competing in the markets and the numbers are only growing. But what does this mean for all of us creators? Well, first of all it’s amazing! The fact that so many people can choose to create what they love and at least get by somehow (the statistics showed no data on salaries) is incomparable to any prior time in our society. Just imagine one in every one hundred people being painters or sculptors in the dark ages!

But with so many people making paintings, sculptures, video and photographs, one does ask the question of how do you get noticed in such a big crowd? You could just say everybody does their own thing and there’s more than enough room for all of us and just approach the art business with a big spoon of optimism.

But creating and waiting for that magical moment, when a wealthy collector magically appears in my studio and buys-up all of my work isn’t the issue, because it probably just won’t happen by itself. That’s easy to swallow. The bigger problem is, if you’ve already put in 3 years of hard work and there’s still no-one knocking on the door!

And as angry or disappointed as we get when nothing happens for so long, while watching other artists on Instagram or Behance making it “over night”, the truth is, nobody ever made it in a day. While we might see our peers exhibiting in famous galleries and selling their work at big art fairs, they didn’t get there by mere chance or luck. They worked hard and smart and they did it  everyday, because they understand the power of perseverance. 

We must never forget that success takes time; you can’t paint an oil portrait in 20 minutes and expect it to be ready for shipping, because no matter how fast you are, the paint will dry at its own pace. But take your time, put in the work, show up everyday and build on your dreams and they will come.

And if after 5 or 10 years still nothing has happened, don’t blame the fact you took your time, rather look into your efforts and the work you have done; because sometimes, we may plant seeds in barren soil, and no time in the world will make them grow if we aren’t prepared to do all it takes to nurture them ourselves.