What Do You Mean Priorities?

A Fairy Smelling Flowers and Fushias

manipulated photography copyright 2008 MaryAnn Cleary

Recently, I read that in order to truly be successful one needs to prioritize. What does this mean, especially to one who is creative and artistically inclined? It seems to me that most artists are not the best business people. We tend to think, "if we create it, they will come". Wrong.

One of the things that I am desparately trying to do is to stay on track and not get my creative mind and energy into to many directions. I must admit that this is extremely difficult, especially as I try to find my niche and direction.



There are so many things that I have put onto my plate:

• entering contests for my oil paintings (one is due July 3rd)
• being accepted into the Little Falls, MN Arts Festival to be held Sept. 7th & 8th
• trying out photo manipulation to make mandalas (what fun, but this is getting me sidetracked)

Mandala Created of a Sleeping Baby
photography by MaryAnn Cleary
copyrignt 2008

• committing to doing 29 small pieces of artwork for the 29-Day Giving Challenge (I am behind schedule for this)
• doing a "painting a day" to hone my skills and keep them honed as an artist
• writing not one blog, but two
• keeping my website up-to-date (it is up, but not so up to date)
• doing another arts festival near my home in August in Rush City, MN (it would be a great place to do a trial run prior to the Little Falls show)
• finding a part time job so that I can remain an artist (I really have been procrastinating this one as I know that my time will be even more limited....but the bills do need to get paid)
• getting my new printer setup so that I can have control over glicee prints and paper (it has archival pigmented inks and I choose the paper!!!)
• posting a few daily paintings to ebay
• posting to etsy

.........the list goes on

The above are things that keep me busy. Yet my focus on the business side is lacking.

• what about my mailing list
• what about cool business cards
• what about updating my business plan
• what about my artist statement and bio

It is time to focus and stay on the right priorities!!!!

Peonies

manipulated photo

copyright 2008 by Maryann Cleary