Anyone who calls themselves an artist knows how personal creating can be. A painting may begin with a colour, an image or a feeling that refuses to leave. By the time it reaches the canvas, it carries something of the person who made it. Art does not need to tell the artist’s life story to feel intimate. The colours we choose, the subjects we return to and even the details we leave out reveal something about us. A viewer may see the finished painting. The artist also sees the hours behind it, the mistakes that changed it and the thoughts that appeared while making it.

But art cannot always remain a private exchange between the artist and the canvas.

Paint costs money. So do brushes, canvases, frames and the time required to create. Once an artist begins thinking about selling their work, another set of questions enters the room. Who will connect with this? Where will it belong? Is it too dark, too strange or too personal? Slowly, what began as an instinctive act can start to feel like a negotiation.

Welcome to another chapter of Bedlam Muses. This time, I find myself reflecting on the tug of war between commerce and creativity.

In recent years, I have felt this conflict more strongly. When I stand before a canvas with a paint-heavy brush in my hand, I can almost hear two sides of myself speaking. The artist in me wants to become lost in the idea. She wants to paint without thinking about trends or the approval of an imagined buyer. She wants to follow the work wherever it leads, even if the result becomes difficult, unsettling or impossible to explain neatly. Then the practical side of me speaks. It reminds me of a simple and rather inconvenient truth: art created for a particular audience may take longer to find the right buyer, making its commercial success less predictable. Commercial success often comes more quickly to work with broad and immediate appeal. Many buyers are naturally drawn to familiar subjects, pleasing colours and paintings that sit comfortably within their homes or offices. There is nothing wrong with that. A beautiful painting does not lose its meaning because it complements a room. Work created with a buyer in mind can still be thoughtful, skilful and deeply felt.

My work, however, tends to ask for a closer and more personal connection. It may not speak to every buyer, but it does not need to. It needs to reach the person who recognises something of themselves within it. The difficulty begins when broad appeal becomes the main measure of artistic value. Work that asks the viewer to pause, accept discomfort or sit with an idea that has no simple explanation is not necessarily difficult to sell. It simply appeals to a more particular buyer. Finding that person may take longer, but the connection can also feel far more meaningful.

Some paintings do not behave politely. They interrupt rather than complement. They ask something from the person looking at them. The buyers who respond to such work are often looking for something specific: a feeling, a memory or a thought they cannot easily put into words.

That is the connection I want my work to create.

My concern is not that my art cannot sell. It is how to reach the people who genuinely understand it without reshaping it for wider approval. A sale matters to me, but so does the reason someone chooses the work. I want it to be bought because it created a real connection, not because I made it safer or easier to place. The conflict is not between commercial art and serious art. That would be too simple and unfair. The conflict is between creating from instinct and creating from prediction. When I begin a painting with an imagined buyer already standing behind me, the work changes. The colours become safer. The subject becomes easier to understand. The idea is tidied away before it has been given the chance to exist properly.

The more often this happens, the quieter the artist in me becomes.

Lately, that artist has started to object. She wants to make work that is personal, complicated and perhaps a little unruly. She wants to create something because it needs to be created, not because it is likely to suit the widest possible audience. The practical side of me cannot ignore money. Building a steady income from work that appeals to a selective audience takes time. The uncertainty does not come from believing the work has no value. It comes from not knowing when it will meet the person who recognises that value.

The phrase “starving artist” sounds dramatic, but financial uncertainty around art is real. Materials cost money, and passion alone cannot pay for them. At the same time, creating only what appears easier to sell brings another kind of cost. It can slowly separate the artist from their own work. A painting may be commercially suitable and still leave its creator feeling absent from it. I am still working out what the right balance looks like for me. For now, I am trying to make art without asking the market for permission at the beginning. I can think about pricing, presentation and potential buyers later. The first conversation needs to remain between me and the canvas.

I am not rejecting commerce. My paintings can and do connect with people; they are simply intended for buyers who respond to personal and emotionally layered work. I want them to continue finding homes, but I do not want to flatten them into something designed for everyone.

My work is not for every wall, and I am learning not to see that as a weakness.

I want each sale to come from genuine connection, rather than from changing my artistic voice to secure broader approval. Perhaps resolving this tug of war is not about choosing creativity or commerce once and for all. It is about deciding which one is allowed to speak first.

For me, the artist must speak first. The practical considerations can wait until the paint has dried.

® Strokes of Chaos