The kind of art we produce has an enormous effect on the end customer we attract; pretty flower paintings will attract people that like flowers.

But this does not translate directly; some of them are much fonder of pretty flowers and may be specific about which kind of flower is deemed pretty and which isn’t. And even when getting the type, colour, and other factors right, only a few of those people might actually want their pretty flowers to be presented via paintings (the more specific our work, the less of a target group we are aiming at effectively).

But apart form the obvious fact that people that like pretty flowers probably won’t share the same love towards the macabre (most of them at least), our products have much more depth to them than the sole question of looks and aesthetics.

While of course incredibly important, aesthetics only get your customers interested in your work to the point of actually stopping and looking at it — and that’s where the real work actually begins.

The next step is the concept, the story, the narrative; all of it further defines what kind of person will like the sort of work we do. Are they searching for decoration and an easy-to-consume story? Or do they want their home or office to tell a particular story; of hard work and commitment, or maybe diligence and precision? Maybe they want to solely tell the story of trust and honour?

To go back a little; if we look at what a home is and how it’s connected to the people that inhabit it, we can find a lot of information about them: Is it organised, neat and clean? Or more chaotic and disorganised to the point where they partake of the use of The Chair?

(For anyone unaware of the concept; The Chair is a normal chair that becomes imbued with the power of a clothing rack, nightstand, table and sometimes even waste disposal system — usually by some form of tribal magic).

A home is a projection of the owner or owners and as such needs to tell their story.

This might not happen with every individual and every home, because it all depends on whether or not their basic needs are being fully met (so people who are struggling for a living will obviously tend not to put a lot of emphasis on the story their home tells about them; they’ll be happy they even have one and seriously anxious about the fact that they’re one pay cheque away from loosing it).

But we’re not aiming at such customers, because they just wouldn’t have anything to do with a well-made portrait or landscape painting — they would probably try to flip it for food money.

If you were ever unlucky to be in such a position you’ll know that as you progress into debt, all of your possessions slowly start to turn from memories and useful objects into potential cash for food and electricity. It’s like in the cartoons, when a couple of characters get stranded on a boat and all of them slowly begin to look like food.

The point for us artists though, is to find not what our customers want — there are far too many voices that we would need to listen to, and our own art would get completely diluted in the end. Of course we need to be vigilant and address all the minor changes that our customers tell us would make our work even better (it is a dialog nonetheless), but fist and foremost we need to figure out what kind of art we actually make.

What it is that our paintings, prints, sculptures or video installations are actually addressing; in most cases it’s a problem with the status quo in the world, some issue that we feel is sousing inequality and pain around us.

While we may not (especially at the beginning) be able to really point our finger on the issue that is causing this inequality and as such is making us feel and create in a certain direction, we can find a lot of clues in our work.

And exactly there lay the basic traits of our customers; not all of our customers though, only those that would really enjoy and understand our art in such a way that we would like them to — only people who share the same feeling towards the world, only those of us that feel the same about a certain idea can relate to such a subjective type of product as is the product of artistic creation.