Some sellers, notably galleries and dealers, will conduct public relations to one degree or another for artists that they represent. A gallery may recommend a certain kind of exposure or publicity as part of the campaign to sell your art.
Artists as individuals may seek and receive advice on how to present themselves to the public. This may include, for better or worse, adopting some of the prevailing conventions for dress, public appearances, rehearsed mini-speeches on various topics related to art, etc.
I am reminded of various artists who will bring their pet dog to an opening, as Andy Warhol and others have done. Which provides a foil for direct attentiveness between artist and others. I have noticed
these dogs are usually small and cute, and respond conveniently to attention or the lack thereof. Many artists affect some inscrutable, eccentric facade as an ambiguous defense.
Interviewers, buyers, and sellers may purposefully ask provocative questions and the results of these questions and your answers may be good and bad, depending on the effects in various areas of your career or the public.
As you work your way through these various situations you will find out which methods and activities are more to your liking. Hopefully, you can cultivate so many opportunities that you get the more pleasant task of choosing which opportunities you want to select or reject. Some artists have a steadily changing array of opportunities, other artists find a niche and stay within those boundaries.
And there has to be some comfort level in the balance between creating and selling your art. When you ask yourself why you are making art one of the answers is probably that you want to sell it. And that you are comfortable generally with that position.
Some artists, the particularly idealistic – or posing as the particularly idealistic – may say or act as though selling is beneath them. They may point to the nobility and idealism that they do not want to sell. This
artist might go on to explain that they were sought out by some infatuated collectors or galleries who
pleaded with them so eloquently that they could not refuse.
Now as a result, this "idealistic" artist had allowed some of the better mortals to sell his / her works to one another, and they had set the prices, determined what must be said about the artist and art, made necessary arrangements, etc . This plays well mostly with the uneducated and naive. Asking this same
artist for a freebie or discount might relegate you eternally to the "Twilight Zone."
There is no question that art can be nobly created for the best reasons or purest of impulses. But to suggest that nobility is rarely known in others, and seldom recognized by mortals is ridiculous and dumbly arrogant. But wherever there is an audience, there will finally appear the performer.
Whatever compromises you find yourself making please avoid this one. Other help can be read at: