We artists tend to enjoy our solitude a lot more than the average person and while there are many among us who are primarily extroverted, a lot of us do love the comforts of our own home and those few people we keep in our inner circle.

But when it comes to getting our work into the world, introversion doesn’t really pair nicely with exhibition openings, open calls and traveling to foreign places for shows. 

I myself enjoy meeting new people a lot. The excitement of new cultures, new viewpoints on art, philosophy and life in general all give me an incredible boost of energy and usually create a wonderful environment of wellbeing and all-around curiosity in all the new places I visit while exhibiting or just traveling around.

But some of us get home-sick quite quickly and the idea of blindly getting on a plane or train and going someplace new can be daunting if not frightening to a lot of the more cosy, stay-at-home and create type artists.

So, why not tackle this by asking one of your creator friends to work in tandem with you? 

Not only will you both be able to stick to work plans much more efficiently — because of the mutual support you’ll receive from each other when one of you has a tough time — but you’ll both get much more work done. And when at an opening or just when writing your open call applications, you will have two times the thought power to make well crafted statements about your work or just mingle with the crowd.

Being part of an artist collective or even a team of two people can greatly help us on our way to growing our art business. Now, this might not necessarily mean surrounding ourselves with 10 perfectly aligned and likeminded people, because as much as I’d like a think tank like that, it’s really hard to find one!

It doesn’t matter if all of your group’s views are aligned, and it surely doesn’t matter how many people are part of it, the most important power of working together for me is the strong support system that having likeminded people around you produces and the ability of harnessing the individual strengths of each of the members to boost the success of everybody in the group.

Sharing is caring and cooperation amongst likeminded people can go a long way. Just think of the Impressionists or the Dada movement; without the support of each member of these groups of creatives, they wouldn’t have stood a chance when they decided to revolt against the then prevailing school of thought and prevalent aesthetics of the academic masses.