Doctor Lawyer Artist Chief. Imagine that now. Artists hang out your shingle and pull down your meter. It is time for you to join the ranks of the doctor, lawyer, psychiatrist, chief. The need for your services will not wait any longer. The excuses and detractors can no longer delay the place you must play in our society. The distinctions of distraction and entertainment, satisfaction and addiction are too blurred and the needs are too great in our businesses, education, institutions, and in every layer of our personal lives.
Your move has begun in not so subtle ways that still cover your tracks so you can not be labeled as the artistic, the visionary, or even worse the feminine. Consultants are popping out of the wood work for creativity in business, making brain connections in education, designers concerned with liveable space, and artists influence in every layer of our multimedia world.
There is no mystery in how to claim your place. Clarify what you have to offer and put a price on it. Then go directly to the places in our society in most need, the businesses seeking clarity, the families growing thriving lives, and all institutions struggling to make a better world.
What does the artist have to offer beyond the product that has such a long slow path to its market? You know how to explore, how to mine the depths of the human spirit and how to manifest it in concrete forms. That process is what saves businesses and is misunderstood and avoided in most education.
Take courage because it will take lots of it to both say clearly what you have to offer and to find the clients that will pay for your services. Then what you have are the front line artists claiming their due and the support forces that are cloistered to research new depths of human experience and expression. Both layers would be valued and paid for what they are offering.
Acclaimed artists and consultants understand the importance of what they have and are repeating the benefits. The problem is that the reigning paradigm is one of patronage, honoring the individual by a benevolent benefactor. The assumption is that the artistic process of exploration and manifestation is only tied to talent and has as its only use to soothe or ruffle the sensibilities of individuals or institutions with the resources to support it.
Changing this paradigm has been daunting. In the present atmosphere Artists just have not had the courage or the clarity to stand up and take your place.