The Master Class: Crista Cloutier

the

Crista artist's

Cloutier

master class

WITH STYLE

I first notice Crista online. I found her intriquing. Here was this attractive woman selling her knowledge about the art world for what I consider a bargain.

I was curious to make contact and see what she's all about. Whether she would be someone that you the reader would want to know. Surely if I was interested you would be too.

We connected by email several times before I could set up a phone conversation. Crista was in France and London, teaching, writing and photographing.

We talked for about 40 minutes and I found her to be open, refreshing and serious about helping artists find their way towards being a success in whatever way they wanted to be.

I was hooked and I am currently takingher Master Class. This interview is the first of a two-part series with her.

Arists are typically not very good at promoting themselves and getting work. Now, you're offering them a way to do that.

Yes. Over the years that I've been selling, a lot of artists asked me if I'd represent them, and took it personally when I couldn't.

They didn't understand everyone who sells art has their own mission and their own set of clients. I was specializing in politicalart. It was hard for me because I had to say no and would try to expain why. But when artists hear "no" they hear "not enough", "not good enough", "not enough experience". They never really understand it's not

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It made me feel bad because there were a lot of artists I wanted to support, but I absolutely couldn't help everyone. I was helping hundreds of artists already.

So what did you do?

I started the Working Artist, and I really did it with an open heart. It gave me such joy because I wanted to support the creative impulse. I don't care if an artist is just starting out and painting kittens or an artist is museum quality and at the top of their game, I give them both the same amount of myself. It's up to the market to decide who's in and who's out. I don't want to be in that position. What I'm doing is offering the artist tools of what they can do.

(continued)

How effective is that for the artists you work with?

Well, the Master Class is an 8-week course, so that has a beginning and an end. I offer coaching calls and I continue to support my alumni with calls after they take the course. If an artist wants to work one on one with me we can take it further. We really get into their work and strategize their own way forward.

I get a lot of stories from artists who work with me. I got one story from a girl in Thailand...I swear to God she said she was working in a rice paddy and she was an artist, but there were no venues to sell her art. She thought she wanted to sell online...should she take the class? She wasn't sure

the class could help someone like her, so I encouraged her to take it. Now she recently wote to me from a five star hotel and said "I'm writing from a five star hotel because I'm not working in the rice paddy anymore. I'm an artist.

That must be very gratifying to know you've helped someone realize a dream?

Yeah, it is. A homeless artist I met when I was living in England and gifted the class to him writes to me now every few months. He's not homeless anymore. He's become the leader of his arts community. He's doing so well, I'm really proud of him. The next time I ran the course he enrolled without telling me and paid for it. I didn't expect that. It was great...really rewarding.

I've always heard, since my school days at Art Center, you have to have a style to succeed as an illustrator. Do you think that's true? Is it a problem or an asset to work in various styles?

I think it's important to choose one, maybe it's one idea, a branding idea so that an artist is focused to build something. So you're not going in circles, doing a little bit here and a little bit there. If you do that nobody knows who you are and what you do. It should be something that you're learning, growing and going deep on. It gives people a way to get into your work, you know..."Oh that's the artist who...". People like that.

stock of your experiences and creating a CV.

I write in short "blog-size" essays that are on different topics of interest and inspiration. It's about owning your own experiences and leveraging your assets and who you are. I tell success stories of other artists as well as tales of caution. It's kind of a mélange of that.

Are you doing artwork yourself or are you writing?

I'm a visual storyteller as an artist, so I take pictures and I write stories about my life, my travels, art and other artists. I usually use my personal Facebook page to show those things. Also I consider my blog creative. In addition, I'm working on a book right now which features my writing and photographs about being an artist.

What would your stories be about?

This book is called,...or the working title is "First To Jump: Building a Working Artist's Practice". It deals with different steps in a practice like; Inventory of your work, your ssets, your skills. It means taking

I was living in England, I couldn't get a job to save my life! I didn't have a work permit and I was really at the bottom. It was during that horrible recession and I was going to lose my house in the United States. So I was talking to a friend of mine and he said why don't you teach artists how to sell art. I said everyone knows how to sell art. He said they don't. I then said I don't have anything to say. He replied I bet you do. What was so funny was I sold everything I owned and came to Europe a few years before. However, I still had my computer so I started to look at files I might have kept from my life as an art dealer and I found a twenty-five page proposal for a book that was basically The Working Artist. I had already tried to write and publish a book on the subject! I also had a letter from my agent who said there are not enough artists in the world who would be interested in a book like this, so give it up. Determined, I put together a nine week syllabus for a course that I took to the local university and they were really interested in it. Unfotunately what I was doing as an art dealer was a fulltime job. I was working fifity to sixty hours a week and I had this desire to teach

Were you always a positive person or was that a transformation for you?

I grew up in a very negative household. Pretty heavy darkness in my life. But, I was recently talking to a former boyfriend of mine when I was in my twenties, which I considered the epitome of my darkness., where all my childhood stuff played itself out. He remembered me as being very positive, inspirational and very encouraging. He said I haven't changed which completly surprised me. The negative people around us hold up a mirror to us and we tend to buy that. But it's not true.

Did you let your life follow it's own path or did you set goals and steer towards them?

I think it's a little of both. Once I had the idea of the working artist in my head, I ran with it. It was a huge endeavor that took all of my willpower to pull it together... and other times you just have to trust and go for it and follow.

How long ago do you start putting the Working Artist together?

I think about eight years ago when I started to teach a workshop called The Working Artist.I had no money, I was

A guy wrote me one of those fuck you emails, where I wanted to say fuck you back. I responded instead "Hey it sounds like you're having a really crappy day, and since I got your email I'm having a crappy day too. So, why don't you tell me what's going on and let's see if I can help you and turn both of our days around."

this stuff, but I couldn't make it work. I ended up putting it into the bowels of my computer hard drive and completely forgot about it until someone said why don't you teach a workshop. So, there it was already done for me.

I put it together into a format I thought I could teach in a day. I started networking, knocking on gallery doors asking if I could host an artist's workshop in their space. Then I started to get invited to universities, traveling around England, France, America, Italy and South Africa. It just kinda took off, it was rewarding and I had incredible feedback from my students. But, it was really hard for me to make a living because I didn't want to charge to that much money and to travel around and handout workbooks...it was too difficult. I then started to think about bringing the course online. I could move at a slower pace and build on it, charge less money and win.

Do you find that people respond to you based on what you've done for the artist community?

Oh yes, absolutely! I get emails that take my breath away from strangers all over the world. I meet people on the streets...it's bizarre how the internet has made the world so small, and how the kind of work I do just makes people feel like they know me. I also get the negative. I get a lot of people who don't feel hesitant to tell me they don't like me...they think I'm ripping artists off making money off their backs. I've been told I should give the classaway for free and sometimes they just get crude...I get emails that just say fuck you. It used to really really bring me down...it almost destroyed me to be honest because it's my art out there. What I'm doing is my art, my creativity. I had a hard time with it for a really long time. And then recently I found the perfect response...which was to turn it around.

What advice would you give artists, either working artists or student just starting their careers?

Take the business part seriously. Don't wait. Because you'll have to go back and backtrack to create an inventory system and start trying to catch up on your CV because you didn't put things down from the beginning and plan to succeed. That's my advice.

Final questions. You're living in France in Provence in a tiny unamed village. How did that come about?

You know about twenty years ago I came to this tiny village, and there's a small art school here for American students. I came here and I had the idea that I wanted to see the world. But from the moment I came here I didn't want to go anywhere else. So whenever I had any money or vacation time I would try to come here for a week or sometimes a few days at a time. So slowly over the years I put down roots.

Editor Notes: Recently I took Crista's course and I found it to be organized, inspiring and instructive. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to be a professional artist whether they are starting out or like me transitioning from commercial art to fine art.