One of the first steps an artist makes when turning professional is to decide on an art business name, and many new artists make this more complicated than it should be.
Allow me to bottom line this entire article: If you are a fine artist, your first choice is to always use your given name for marketing your original art.
You Are an Artist, Not a Company
Art history is a history of individual artists, not of company names. Since my master’s degree is in art history, I naturally want you to use your name when promoting your art.
Using a company name puts you in league with all of the companies out there who are manufacturing and promoting unremarkable products. You’re different. Art is different. Art is not a mass-produced product.
Using your name for your business name tells the world that your art is elevated from the stuff they can pick up at Target or Pier One. It says “This is made by hand, and not just any hand, but the hand of an artist.”
While it may seem safer to hide behind a business name, playing it safe won’t get you too far in your art career.
I understand it isn’t always this easy. There are sometimes reasons for not using your own name, including, as I’ve learned, reasons of physical and emotional safety.
[ See Use Another Name for Your Art Business ]
Setting aside these very real concerns for the moment, the most frequent arguments against using given names for an art business are the following.
- My name is too common / Someone else already owns the URL with my name [And she’s a porno star!]
- My name is too hard to spell
- I sign my name as X on my paintings, but I want to be known as Y
I consider these objections one by one in this post and podcast episode.