Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Aubrey Gray. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Aubrey, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s jump right into the heart of things. Outsiders often think businesses or industries have much larger profit margins than they actually do – the reason is that outsiders are often unaware of the biggest challenges to profitability in various industries – what’s the biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?
This is such a great question, especially for creatives who are tired of pouring their heart and soul into a beautiful and deserving piece of work for it to sit in their studio for years. From my point of view, I think the biggest challenge to profitability for artists of any medium is how much they’re willing to allow the world to view their work as well as finding the audience who is most receptive to their work.
First and foremost, you have to lay it all on the line! How can anyone buy an artists work if it’s never talked about? It’s such a vulnerable experience to submit our work for viewing, whether it’s a post on social media, in an art gallery, a spot on the wall of a quaint coffee shop, etc., so we can easily get caught up in the “what if people don’t like it…” spiral. But….what if they LOVE it? The first step to truly profiting from your work is getting it in front of an audience, any audience if you’re just starting out. Post your work and your progress photos, check out what local places are looking for art, and apply to Call For Entires. Just be brave and put it out there.
From here, it’s easier to collect information about the people who do enjoy your work. Vendor events and local art events, especially in the first year of selling artwork, are a pretty great way to gauge where the work sells best and the kind of people who enjoy the work. Every artist has a different style, and what does well in one area doesn’t always do well in another area for every artist. I also love to ask questions about my audience’s interpretation of my work, and when they buy I love to ask if there’s a specific spot my client has in mind for the piece. Over the last couple of years, I have learned that my artwork often ends up in mental health physicians office’s, which has so much to do with the reason I started painting to begin with. I also have quite a few clients who own short term rental properties, and a great amount of collectors who love my series of mystical seascapes and own a few original paintings of mine.
Not knowing who to sell artwork to is probably the biggest challenge in profitability for artists. It’s crucial for artists to find who enjoys collecting their work, and spend less time and resources trying to sell to everyone and instead focus on the clients right in front of them who truly value the time and energy they put into their art.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Everyone starts somewhere, and I definitively started at the bottom. I have a few workshops under my belt, thousands of hours learning from mentors and fellow artists, and a heaping pile of failed attempts, paintings under paintings, and poorly done artwork. But I have never been so grateful to have started in the first place.
I actually went to school in Hollywood to learn the ins and outs of the music industry. I attended Musician’s Institute and walked away a certified independent artist qualified for all kinds of things, like web design, graphic design, audio engineering, mixing and mastering, business, marketing, songwriting, piano, guitar, and vocals. I think this certificate is the most valuable education I’ve used for my art career, and to me that is such a laughable fact. The art refines itself mostly through practice, patience, and failure, but the art doesn’t matter without knowing the first steps finding the people who value it for everything it represents to them, and knowing how to prioritize those collectors.
My great grandmother was an oil painter, and I remember checking out whatever painting she had been working on, no matter where at in the process, every time we would pop in to visit. She made these gorgeous mountain-esque paintings with barns, old farm equipment, bodies of water, vibrant trees… I never did get to study at her hand, but I do study her work often and admire her unique brushwork. Shortly after my husband and I got married, he bought me a small acrylic paint set, since moving to California where he was stationed left me without much to do or many friends for the first few months we lived there. I found I wasn’t great, but still absolutely enjoyed trying to keep up with Bob Ross.
A couple years later, I had our daughter. She is my everything and I love her more than anything, but it’s easy to slip into a monotonous drone of every day mother hood. I needed a creative outlet, so I turned to that little acrylic paint set that sat dusty for 2 years prior. And I still wasn’t a great artist. I painted every single day that year, and a few months in some of my work took a turn. Learning to paint my own paintings without following a class or a tutorial was so difficult, but after I got the hang of it some of my works were truly beautiful. My piece, Lakeside Irises, was created in those first few months. It is a 5×5 foot acrylic painting, nearly as tall as myself, that I painted from my imagination as I experimented with finding my footing in what I love to paint. I found so much inner peace creating for myself, so I kept with it. After switching up styles and experimenting, I’ve discovered a love for vibrant seascapes and pirate-esque ocean scenes with hints of history and whimsical features.
I create because you deserve to surround yourself with pieces that inspire peace, productivity, and power. The items in our everyday spaces are so impactful, and what’s more intriguing to the vibrant seascape lover than a bioluminescent bay and a Spanish galleon ran aground under the full moon? (Artwork: Corsair’s Lullaby). I am most attracted to seascape paintings in both oil and acrylic, and I prefer to paint on Masonite I have made textured, though I still paint the occasional stretched canvas. I do take some commissions for landscapes or floral pieces, but in my personal creating, and most of my commissions, I only paint seascapes.
In the years I have lived on this gorgeous planet, I’ve seen beautiful land from the islands of Hawaii and Puerto Rico, to the mountains of Wyoming, I truly love where we have currently landed in Eastern North Carolina. There is nothing more humble yet spectacular than an east coast sunset. With painted clouds in vibrant colors by the sun setting in the opposite direction, and the rolling ocean towards grass and cattails, and sometimes the moon just above the horizon at sunset. I think it’s my favorite reference for my work.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
What has helped me the most in building a reputation in our local art community: saying “no”. As artists, there’s just so many different avenues for creating, and if they’re anything like me, they want to try it alllll. Whether it’s because we see another artist do something and it looks fun, or we we’re strapped for cash and uber tempted to take on a project that really doesn’t align with our work, it can be incredibly difficult to “stay on task” with the work we create. I’m sure it’s relatable, we’ve all seen these questions pop up in our DM’s: “can you paint this picture of my family?” And “Will you paint my cat?” The long and short answer for myself and my work is always “no”. I have lots of fellow creatives who absolutely will, but I am a seascape artist. People reach out to me when they’re looking for the perfect vibrant panoramic textured ocean painting to fit the spot above their couch. I also think it’s incredibly important to have an online presence through a profesional and clean looking website, where you can easily nurture a trustful relationship with clients and collectors with the use of a portfolio, available for purchase artworks, contact forms, and an email list. Staying in touch with the people who currently enjoy your work, and fostering a relationship with potential clients with small ticket items like prints and trinkets, is a great way to maintain a reputation for your works.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
As a seascape artist, there’s not a whole lot of seasonal work I can create. This is only something I am challenged with because I LOVE autumn, Halloween, and the whole month of October, and I want nothing more than to participate in the spooky creating that happens in the fall season. Unless a thrift store has a ton of old seascape paintings sitting in a stack, painting a spooky ghost on a thrifted artwork likely isn’t happening. So this last October, I got creative and planned out my Mystic Sea Collection: A collection of textured paintings on Masonite combining an eerie pirate-esque series of historical ships and whimsical seascapes that collectively could be displayed year round. I made this series fairly varied in size, shape, and price, so there was a little something for all kinds of seascape collectors.
In a bit of a rut, and on a very fun trip to the scenic town of New Bern, NC, I made a bet with my sister who was helping me run my booth at a market we were headed to that October evening. We had just finished setting out the last of the original paintings 15 minutes into the start of the event. Now, it’s important to note that next to my husband, my sister is probably my biggest fan, and is so insightful and helpful with my work. I count on her for honest reviews of my pieces, and she always follows through. I owe so much of the fact that I am still painting to her, as she encourages me to keep going when it feels impossible.
So 15 minutes into the event, and after streak of bad luck selling my art, I looked at her and said “The next original painting I sell, I am treating us to massages. We never do anything for ourselves, so no matter how much the next original sells for or when it even sells, we will get a nice massage.”
Not even joking, as the words quietly left my mouth, a literal angel looked at me and asked how much I wanted for my painting Corsair’s Lullaby. This piece was only in my studio for 3 days while the varnish cured, I had barely even taken it in myself it was such a fresh piece, yet not even 15 minutes into the first event I ever brought it to, someone wanted to walk away with it. I very kindly asked if I could keep it the rest of the event with a deposit and then personally deliver it after the evening was over, and the woman so kindly agreed.
It’s a funny story, in my excitement at selling such a large piece after a bad slump, I had forgotten to get her phone number. I emailed her the invoice for the second half of payment, but couldn’t bring myself to show up at her address without getting in contact with her first. My emails were headed to her spam folder, and I held onto the piece for another week while I tried my hardest to get in contact with her. I said no to so many buyers, some of them offering a higher price than what I was selling it for because I had a buyer lined up, but I promised it to this woman and she deserved the piece. The painting went on to be one of my most admired works to date, and it was my top selling print for 2023 and I had just painted it that October.
Now I make it a point to call out small treats for selling original works, from an iced latte at my favorite coffee shop, to a print of a fellow artist whose work I love. Celebrating those original artwork wins, no matter the size of the painting, makes my art business so much more fun to me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Littlemamagraysbrush.com
- Instagram: @little.mama.grays.brush
- Facebook: @little.mama.grays.brush
Image Credits
Last photo – photo by Sarah Mathis