We were lucky to catch up with Dontae Muse recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Dontae thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

I wish I could have started my creative career sooner than I did but I now realize that I wouldn’t have been able to. There was still so much I needed to learn, even about myself. I started when I was ready.

My creative business started in 2016 when I opened my award-winning fine art gallery, Above Art Studios, in New Brunswick, NJ. I had recently come back from a vacation out of the country to a sales job and was still on vacation mode. I got fired the day I got back. That prompted me to decide to be my own boss.

My inquisitive mind led me to learn and get experience in a mix of fields including; marketing, event planning, community organizing, sales, securities, finance, and artist management. If I had started what i’m doing now sooner than I did then I would not have learned the skills that I needed to be successful presently.

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?

So, I started Above Art Studios to have a space where artists from the African diaspora can be celebrated and control the narrative of their stories. Many of the most talented artists I encountered were self-taught and had difficulties obtaining gallery representation. Very few people wanted to take a chance on them. Without shows to build an artist’s CV an artist has difficulty gaining experience, brand awareness, and credibility so their careers don’t advance or even formulate.

Once I was in the business of art I noticed that a lot of artists didn’t know their business. A lot of artists didn’t want to know in the past. They just wanted to focus on being creative but the horror stories of artists being taken advantage of across all mediums have made today’s artists aware that they need to know their business, too. That’s also where I come in. As an ‘Art Life Consultant’ I coach artists on marketing, sales, and positioning themselves to move up in price and/or prestige.

While consulting/advising some arts organizations I noticed that I wanted to be more intimate and hands-on with artists and be able to answer their questions in real-time so that they would make fewer mistakes, have fewer setbacks, and actually develop and execute a strategy to grow their art businesses whether through traditional channels, independently, or some combination thereof.

I started an international online group coaching community called “The Pay The Artist Club” where artists from different countries (mainly the U.S.) come together twice a month or more via zoom to learn everything from copywriting to building email lists to creating content to discovering and targeting your ideal client avatar to getting funding, creating opportunities, building business credit as an independent artist and the list goes on. There’s a lot that goes into being an entrepreneur and that is what an artist is.

I can’t exhibit, promote, or represent every artist that desires to be in a fine art gallery but I have already helped over 200 master their branding, focus their marketing, and grow their art businesses and I plan to help many more.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

“Pay The Artist” is more than just the club’s name. It’s the motto! Fair equity for the intellectual property of creatives. Not only in receiving compensation for executing commissions, public or private but in support of receiving education and resources. There have always been pressures on artists from society to “get a real job” because artists were not savvy enough to generate comfortable or considerably high incomes.

Learning not only how to plant seeds, find and nurture the relationships that will help you, but also to learn how to create opportunities to generate income for yourself on demand is critical to sustaining yourself as an artist and that’s what I teach.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Most artists and creatives are that because they have to be because that’s how they were designed. It’s a part of their purpose. The most rewarding part of being an artist and creative is freedom. Getting to be you is a freedom that most people don’t have. Many people are always and only what others want them to be.

Life is internalized but an artist gets to pour it back out.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.iamdmuse.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/iamdmuse
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@theartlifepodcast6151
• Other: www.aboveartstudios.com