What does it mean to validate your art, and why is it so important?

Validating your art means selling your work to strangers—people who are not your mom, dad, relatives, friends, or folks trying to date you. Until you sell to strangers, you don’t know if you have a product the market actually wants. This is the foundation everything else is built on. You cannot skip this step. Many artists think they’ve validated their work when they haven’t truly done so, or they’ve phoned in the effort. Being honest about whether you’ve genuinely validated your art is essential before moving forward with other business activities.

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Asked by synthesized from teaching · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2022-01-22