You want to be successful as an artist, right? Sure you do. But the only way to be that is if you have a cohesive coherent grip on what you're doing, why you're doing it, and where you're going-- and the more cohesive and coherent that grip is, the better. As an artist career coach, one of the most common problems I see with artists is that they make art at random, like they're wandering the creative wilderness. First they make some of these, then they make some of those, then they make some like this, then they make some like that, and so on and so forth until they're sitting on top of a great big pile of miscellany. I ask them what they're doing, and they tell me they're making art.

OK, fine; time for some art and artist career coaching questions. You say you're making art, but what does that mean? How do you know when to start? How do you know where you're going? How do you decide what goes where in the composition? How do you know what it's going to look like? When do you know what it's going to look like? How do you when know it's done? How do you know what to make next? I ask artists questions like these all the time, and I get far more blank stares than answers. You'd think their hands temporarily leave their bodies and go off on their own to make art.

"Nobody cares about this stuff," you say. "All they care about is my art."

Wrong. Everybody cares. And do you know who should care the most? You. Why? Because the better you understand your creative process, the more direction you can apply to your art, meaning that you become increasingly purposeful and decreasingly random. Regardless of whether you're aware of it or can quantify it, every time you make a work of art, you follow a deliberate course of action from conception to creation to completion. Art doesn't just happen; it never has and it never will. So given the choice, you might as well be aware of what you're doing while you're doing it rather than just doing it. It helps; believe me.

But wait; there's more. Not only does your work become more purposeful and directed when you're on top of what you're doing, but you can also explain it better to others, and the better others understand your art, the greater your chances of getting shows and making sales. As I've said many times before, nobody buys anything they can't understand.

An artist emailed recently to tell me about a little experiment he conducted. He gave people two entirely different explanations about the exact same piece of his art. When he said it represented an inquiry into the challenges of life, not only was everyone interested, but they also wanted to know more. The explanation actually invited dialogue. However, when he said it was a study in blues, hardly anybody cared. They nodded, thanked him, and moved on. Imagine the reaction if he'd said the art wasn't about anything or that he had no idea what it was about.

This doesn't mean you make stuff up, but it certainly seems to indicate that the better you understand and can talk about your art on a variety of levels, the more interest you'll generate. Think about it. Take two identical paintings-- same size, subject matter, price, artist, and so on-- one represents an inquiry into the challenges of life and the other is a study in blues-- or one comes with an explanation and the other comes with nothing. Which would you rather own? If you're like most people, you want the one with MORE, not the one with LESS, and certainly not the one with NOTHING.

Have you ever heard of a successful artist with a long exhibition history where nobody knows anything about his or her art? The art's all there is? You will NEVER find that. In fact, you'll find exactly the opposite. The more successful the artist, the more there is in terms of documentation, explanatory, analysis, and consequently, understanding. The more successful the artist, the more information is available about every aspect of that artist's life and work, the more the artist is written and talked about, and the more that artist's story continually unfolds. Most importantly, the more successful the artist, the better he or she can answer just about any art-related question anybody asks, not only in terms of specifics but also with respect to long-term implications. These are the artists whose art you see in the best galleries and museums. They know in intricate detail what they're doing and where they're going.

And you have to have some similar sense of destiny if you expect to advance in your career. You can't run around being tongue-tied, directionless, or conceptually challenged about the nature of your work. Because you know what? If you have no idea what you're doing, why you're doing it, or what its significance is, you can't realistically expect anyone to care-- beyond perhaps liking the way your art looks. But no matter how much someone likes or even loves your art, love is never enough-- sooner or later they'll want to know why.

"But I have no idea why," you say. "I make art, and that's that. How am I ever going to figure it out, let alone explain it?"

Well, I'll tell you. The overwhelming majority of artists-- including you -- create art purposefully, not randomly. True, you may not think about or reflect on what you're doing while you're doing it. You may be on automatic; your art somehow happens-- it begins, middles, and ends. Suddenly there it is, and you have no idea where it came from or how it got there.

But that doesn't mean you'll never know. Nor does it mean your art has no cognitive component. Most often, all it means is that you're just plain out of touch with the dynamics of your creative process. Perhaps you've been on the routine for so long, the problem isn't so much that you don't know what you're doing or why you're doing it, but rather that you've forgotten.

Once upon a time, maybe even as far back as when you were a kid, you absolutely positively knew what you were doing and why you were doing it every single time you set out to make art. I don't mean to get psychological on you, but three of the best ways to put words to your creative dynamic are to go back to when you first decided to become an artist and reconstruct your career forward, or to start at the present and deconstruct your career backward, or to take a finished piece of your art and reconstruct its story from conception to completion. You don't have to think about all this stuff while you're making art, but contemplating the course of your artistic existence at some point is never a bad idea.

Ready to give this a try? Excellent. Choose one of the three above options and write down, stream-of-consciousness style, whatever that comes to mind about your art, life as an artist, progressions of events, your creative process, and so on. Pull it out of the air and scribble it. Don't be self-conscious, forget about other people, don't worry about grammar; just barf yourself up a great big pile of garble. You'll have plenty of time to sort it out later.

I know this seems a bit airy-fairy, but you have to start somewhere, and believe me-- if you take this exercise seriously, you'll accumulate some pretty interesting insights, and begin to see that every instant in the production of every work of your art and in the progress of your life as an artist happens for a reason. Your mind and body work in flawless harmony-- all the time-- and with purpose. It's not like you go into a trance, check your brain at the door, and stuff just happens. Even if your art is about randomness, it's random for a reason-- you decide it's random-- and that's not random. So there.

The only tricky part about doing this yourself is that you may be so ingrained in habit patterns that you're almost trapped by them. It's like one of those can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees deals. So if you're stuck, a better way to work might be to have someone who knows something about art either jumpstart you by asking questions or by reading what you've written, seeing if they can follow it, and then asking questions. This is important-- this outside perspective-- but not always necessary.

You might also try acting as your own outside perspective, in other words, say it out loud instead of writing it, and maybe record or video yourself in the process. That way, you can listen to and analyze what you're saying while you're saying it or after saying it-- and then write it. Thinking and writing in silence are totally different than talking. None of this is easy, I know-- it's tough to introspect-- but the potential upside is well worth the effort.

Several questions to help get you going:

* When do you make art? Is it at a regular time? Is it after a specific inspiration? What's on your mind?

* Do you have a routine, a ritual? How do you start, where do you go, how do you lay out your supplies? What do you listen to?

* How does your art evolve? Are you intentional right from the start or does direction materialize as you work?

* What makes your art effective and why?

* Is your art about you? Is it about thoughts, philosophies, events, or other people? Does it embody particular beliefs? Does it tell a story? Does it demonstrate a principle?

* How do you know when you're done? What makes you step back and say, "This is it; this is exactly what I want?"

* Is there a logical progression between one work of art and the next? Does one lead directly to the next? Or are they mutually independent? How do individual pieces of your art relate to one another?