My name is Niki Farrell, I am an oil painter in the Greater Boston area. I was always interested in the arts starting as a child. I can recall making paintings and sculpture with my father, who was also an artist, as a little girl. My art began to grow on its own professionally as a mere teenager. I entered into professional juried competitions and won awards. Others began to recognize the talent I had and wanted to see me succeed and follow my dream. I pursued an art degree with a gracious scholarship at Pennsylvania State University where my art grew astronomically. It was only after college and traveling that I began to see my art as a business. I started creating a lot more work and dedicated a lot of time to grinding out paintings after paintings. I invested time into showing my artwork and creating connections. I dived into my passion and decided to run with it. I began to analyze what the market desired through analytics and personal feedback, while maintaining my own personal style. As a result, my art has expanded, and I have private collectors. I believe if you are passionate about what you do, you can make it work.
As a young entrepreneur, I think that perseverance is an extremely important quality to uphold. Galleries may reject you and you may face failure, but in that failure, you must learn to take pride in the lessons learned and apply them to the future. Developing a target audience and learning how to market to that audience is also an important piece of advice I would give to new entrepreneurs. You need to focus in on a speciality and make you niche. Study your audience and create a target so that you can more efficiently reach a higher potential. Finally, I would say that networking and being yourself is also important as a new entrepreneur. Many new entrepreneurs wish to make connections for their own personal growth, which is advantageous, but you must also want to be friends with your network. Nobody wants to be used or be in a one sided transaction. Be genuine and personable. People will recognize you for those qualities.
If I were to start my career over again, I think that I would have begun looking at the art market as a business earlier on. I only recently realized the potential that exists out there when you change your perspective and your approach. I also am not solely an artist, but I am also a nurse. I think that I am happy with where I am headed in my career.
Top three skills to be a successful entrepreneur:
Hardworking
Resilient
Resourceful
How to connect:
nikifarrellart@gmail.com
Facebook & Instagram: @nikifarrellart
