Too many talented visual artists feel lost or frustrated professionally because they lack fundamental business skills and the confidence to promote themselves and manage their career. The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What you Love provides artists with the information, tools and techniques for developing and sustaining a professional life. It introduces valuable tactics - from planning and assessment to time management and negotiation - which are seldom offered to visual artists in ways that are relevant to their practice. Author, Jackie Battenfield, an artist who has supported herself from art sales for over twenty years, teaches career development programs for visual artists at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Creative Capital Foundation, and Columbia University.

The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What you Love is based upon Battenfield's highly successful classes and workshops which reach out to thousands of students, emerging, and mid-career artists. As a comprehensive resource, it includes real-life examples, illustrations, step-by-step exercises, and bulleted lists that allow readers to dive-in and begin working immediately. Each chapter is filled with insightful "Reality Check" blurbs consisting of advice and information from high-profile artists and art professionals from around the country. It is an experiential guide brimming with field-tested techniques that readers can apply to their own practice. With equal parts of practicality, warmth, good humor, and insight, Battenfield demystifies the path artists travel towards a flourishing career.

Development of the book is a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Sponsored Project and has received support from The Sam & Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts, Inc., and the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation.

PRESS

January 16, 2008, SELLOUT, "New Career Guide in the Chute!"
SELLOUT is a blog that is a dialogue about every practical aspect of being a visual artist--from saving money to resizing jpegs, and everything in between.