Artist Visibility, Practically Speaking
What I’m actually doing to build an artist presence I can live with…
Last time I wrote about my feelings around being visible as an artist, and about defining what “comfort with visibility” even means for someone like me. Writing it, I realised a lot of my frustration comes down to a lack of how in general artist marketing advice — plenty of people telling you visibility matters, not many showing you what trying actually looks like. What I should say is: there’s plenty on the ‘how’ of strategies, not much by way of getting your brain and nervous system ready for visibility.
So this is me trying to show the trying. A caveat first: I’m still on this journey myself, so I can’t offer advice as such — only what I’ve actually done, messily, to help myself. If you haven’t read the mindset side of things yet, you can catch up here (link).
As I wrote last time, a general definition of visibility as an artist is:
How easily your artwork, profile, and message are discovered by the public, galleries, and collectors. It bridges the gap between creating art and building an audience
That breaks down into two themes, each with a few strands. Here’s where I’m actually putting my energy right now.
Online presence
Social media — using platforms to share your creative process
Art portfolio — a clean website showing your best work
Search discovery — using keywords so people can find you online
Creative identity
Signature style — having a look people immediately recognise
Artist statement — a clear story about your inspiration
Press coverage — features in art blogs or magazines
Social media: using platforms to share your creative process
Probably the most contentious and triggering one, for a sensitive, introverted artist. There doesn’t seem to be any way of getting your work seen in the 21st century without some kind of social media presence — though I’d love to hear from an outlier who’s managed it, if you’re out there.
As the definition says, your artwork, profile, and message need to be discovered by the public — and although a website (or a stall, or gallery representation, if that suits your work) is one route in, most of the public is still on social media in some form.
What’s actually helped isn’t a tactic so much as a shift in relationship. A little while back I wrote about trying to use Instagram more intentionally rather than compulsively (link) — that’s been more useful to me than any posting schedule. I’ve also been reading around the idea of marketing without leaning on social media at all, which has been oddly reassuring — a reminder that “post constantly” is a choice, not a law of physics.
Art portfolio: a clean website showing your best work
This is the one I’m trying to prioritise, despite my most protective parts bombarding me with procrastination and perfectionism. Artists are constantly told they need a portfolio — and these days, that usually means a website. The main reason: if you only post your work to external platforms, you have no control over what happens to it if the platform folds (remember MySpace?) or the algorithm changes again and your work suddenly reaches 0.01% of your followers.
So, a website it is. These days you don’t need to be a web developer to build one — I use Squarespace. I won’t pretend it was a breeze for a non-techy person, but if I can do it, anyone can. It took a lot of googling, watching support videos, and asking AI for help — though honestly, most of that effort went into figuring out content, not design. The platform itself is fairly intuitive, and I’d assume the others are similar.
My advice, for what it’s worth: take it slow. If you’re not a developer or a coder, building a website is a real piece of work — but you can start simple. An online gallery you add to as you go is plenty to begin with.
But what do you actually put in your portfolio?
There’s no shortage of advice online, and most of it boils down to the same thing: include the kind of work you want to be commissioned to do.
Defining and refining your style takes time, and a lot of the time it feels like fumbling in the dark. It’s taken me years, so try not to worry about the timeline. The thing that’s genuinely moved the needle for me was a structured course by The Good Ship Illustration — three working illustrators, different niches, refreshingly down to earth about how unglamorous this process actually is. Having other people a few steps further along, being honest about their own fumbling, did more for me than any list of tips could have.
I’ve also started using AI as a kind of second pair of eyes — feeding it a batch of my own work and asking what it notices, patterns I’m too close to see myself. Worth doing your own research on privacy settings before you do this, since you’re sharing your own images.
Search discovery: using keywords so people can find you online
I can’t say a huge amount here, since I’ve only just started learning it myself. It feels like one of those subjects you could study forever and still not fully know, and it’s always changing — but there’s plenty out there to learn the basics. In essence, it’s about giving your titles (articles, videos, images) the keywords you want to be found by.
Photo by NisonCo PR and SEO on Unsplash
Signature style: having a look people immediately recognise
The big one — and I suspect the one most sensitive artists stress over and overthink, myself included. I still don’t know my style precisely, though I’m slowly unearthing it (more on that here).
What’s actually helped is having somewhere to put constraints on the blank page, because a truly blank canvas is sometimes too much pressure to even begin. I take part in a weekly prompt run by Jehane - art agent I admire, and having something to respond to — rather than starting from nothing — has taken a lot of the pressure off. It’s also taught me things I wouldn’t have found by playing it safe: drawing something I wouldn’t normally draw, and discovering what I don’t like, which somehow makes it easier to recognise what I do.
The other thing I do, every so often, is upload a batch of my own images to AI and ask it to notice recurring themes or characteristics — again, worth thinking about what you’re comfortable sharing before you do this. It’s less about getting an answer and more about having a second pair of eyes on my own patterns.
Artist statement: a clear story about your inspiration
Much like signature style, this can take a while to pin down. Writing this Substack is genuinely helping me articulate what I’m about — sometimes you can only see it retrospectively, which means the order is often: make the art first, then look back and see what themes emerge.
Press coverage: features in art blogs or magazines
I can’t offer any real insight here yet. I can only assume that once you’re comfortable with visibility and reasonably consistent, this tends to follow naturally. It’s not something I want to get caught up on this early — for now, I need to concentrate on the other pieces above.
Where that leaves me
Honestly, this whole process has felt pretty messy. I think of it a bit like Michelangelo chiselling David — for ages it just looks like a mess, and then gradually something recognisable starts to emerge. It’s also something I expect to keep tinkering with and refining as I go.
A lot of courses are marketed with certainty — you must do this, or this is what I wish I’d known — but ultimately, we’re all different, and what works for one person won’t necessarily fit another. It takes experimentation, patience (of which I have very little!), and learning to trust yourself. I wish I could offer something more definite than that, but I can’t. I didn’t want to write about what I find so hard about artist marketing advice without also sharing what I’ve actually tried — and to be honest about how difficult it can be.
Ultimately, though, I think you need to find a way to make most of this fun, or you won’t keep doing it. For me, social media stopped being fun a while ago. Writing articles with woodland animals, on the other hand, still is.
A few further things I've come across along the way, if you want to go looking yourself: Tess McCabe's book on Self-promotion without Social Media, Danielle Gardner's "Quiet Marketer" approach to SEO, The Good Ship Illustration's courses*, and United ArtSpace's course on artist statements — take what's useful, leave the rest.
* The Good Ship Illustration is an affiliate link so I would receive a commission should you decide to purchase a course. I’ve done the Find Your Creative Voice and the Business course and I would never use affiliate links for something I haven’t used and valued