Remember and Inspire.

How does creating art with a clear theme help you build your audience?

Imagine you are getting ready to go grocery-shopping for the week.

You could simply show up there and buy whatever stirs your culinary imagination as you browse through each section of the store.

It would seem you have an infinite number of choices.

But you don't really, do you?

You are limited to the foods that your family will actually eat and enjoy, and that will contribute to their health and well-being. Your children may WANT to eat chocolate cake for dinner, but...

You probably also have a spend limit...unless you are independently wealthy, in which case you will most likely delegate that task to your personal chef.

Besides these limits, there are limits you set for yourself. Your choices depend on how much you love or hate cooking, how much time you have available for food preparation, and how much stamina you have for walking around the store.

You don't mind these limits, because they help you make decisions purposefully and quickly. A major benefit is that your family knows what to expect and gets excited when they see you preparing their favorites.

We're talking major warm fuzzies here!

Now within the realm of painting, choices must also be made. If the subject matter is too varied, I may confuse my audience. Confused people do not buy art.

There is an artist I know who ONLY paints large and ONLY fried eggs.

The result is that every painting he puts out there usually sells within minutes of posting his work. His audience knows what to expect from his hand and they eat it up...the way your family knows what to expect for dinner.

 Now I don't think I could go quite that far in order to ensure a steady income, but I do have an overriding theme to my work. While my subject matter varies, it all comes back to a theme of home and serenity. 

In fact, I just finished an online painting challenge and stuck with a theme of harvest. I am carrying that theme into my first solo show scheduled for September of 2025.

One of the biggest challenges artists face is deciding what to paint next. Those possibilities are far more numerous than for grocery shopping.

It might SEEM romantic and carefree to just paint whatever pops into your head or to paint in whatever new style appeals to you.

This is perfectly fine if your art-making is merely for your own pleasure.

If you plan to make your living from it, though, you will need to hone in on your own distinct voice and devote most of your creative time to it.

It might mean making some either/or choices.

I've always been fascinated by stained glasswork and wanted to try my hand at it. I had to consider the startup cost and the time it would take to master it against funds and time needed to continue painting in oils.

My audience, people who love to recall fond memories and enjoy quiet serene places, is growing.

So in my humble experience, when it comes to deciding what to paint next, having no clear direction may actually make you over-think, freeze up, and not paint at all. It's called choice overload....

Finding an overall theme for your work, however, and sticking with it, will make it easier to decide what to paint next and is likely to attract an audience that will want to follow your work for the long haul.

And it starts with painting from YOUR heart.

What do you think? Agree or disagree? Does your work have an overall theme or do you prefer to paint whatever comes to mind at the moment? Leave a comment below.