Broke and Talented is Still Broke

Written By Leslie Wisenbaker
By Leslie Wisenbaker

I'm going to tell you something the art community doesn't like to hear.

Being talented is not enough.

Being passionate is not enough. Making beautiful work that moves people to tears is not enough. If you want to run an art business — and a business is what it is the moment money changes hands — you need to think like a business person. Not sometimes. Every single time.

I know this because I've been in some kind of business management since I was 19 years old. I came into the art world late (50 YO) and full-time (at 55 YO), and the thing that surprised me most wasn't how hard the work was. It was how many artists are walking around completely unprotected by basic business sense, waiting to get taken apart.

The Johnny Depp art competition is just the latest example.

Let's Talk About What Actually Happened

A few weeks ago, a competition started flooding artist feeds everywhere. The pitch: $25,000 cash, a feature in Artforum Magazine, and a showcase at The Art of Elysium salon in Los Angeles. Presented by Johnny Depp. For artists. Supporting a charity that helps people through creativity.

Artists were ready. People were already planning their submissions.

Here's what I did when I saw it: I researched it. Took about 5 minutes.

The competition is not run by Johnny Depp. It's not run by Artforum. It's not run by The Art of Elysium. It's run by Colossal Management LLC — a Delaware-registered, Phoenix-based, for-profit company whose entire business model is slapping celebrity names on donation-driven popularity contests.

Johnny Depp joins a roster that already includes Jeff Goldblum, Tony Hawk, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bill Nye, Daymond John, and Elton John. Same machine. Different face. They've run versions of this for fitness competitions, chef competitions, baby competitions, pet competitions, cosplay competitions, and couple competitions. Since 2022 they claim to have raised over $207 million, though they never disclose what percentage they keep before the charity sees a dime.

The rules — the actual rules — are in footer links. Tiny text at the bottom of the website, behind a page of all-caps legal language that virtually nobody will click on. Inside those rules: if you win, you sign over your name, your likeness, and your artwork for advertising purposes. Permanently. In any media. In any country. Without additional compensation. Forever. For free.

The Artforum "feature" is almost certainly a purchased ad, not editorial coverage. Colossal pulled this same move with Bon Appetit on a previous competition — the magazine publicly clarified they had zero association with the contest and that Colossal had simply bought ad space. There are Better Business Bureau complaints about how votes are managed. Past winners have surfaced with almost no social media presence despite winning what is supposed to be a popularity contest.

And the winner isn't chosen by a single curator, gallerist, or art professional. It's a public vote. You get one free vote per day — but donated dollars count as additional votes. Meaning you don't win as an artist. You win as a fundraiser.

Artists are now rage-quitting the competition and posting about it everywhere. They feel deceived and appear bewildered.

My honest, unfiltered reaction: you stopped reading when you saw Johnny Depp's face. That's on you.

The Numbers for Artists Are Brutal and its Rarely Discussed.

Here's some context for why this matters beyond one competition.

Only 10% of art school graduates ever make a living from their artwork. Nearly half of all working visual artists report that under 10% of their income comes from their art. Only 17% make more than 75% of their income from their work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for fine artists at $56,260 — and that's the median, meaning half earn less, with the bottom 10% clearing under $29,120. Most artists hold a second job just to survive.

Those aren't numbers about talent. Plenty of genuinely talented people are buried in those statistics. Those are numbers about whether or not you know how to run a business.

The fantasy that you will create beautiful work, get discovered, win the right competition, go viral, and have your life change — that is not a career plan. That is a lottery ticket. And the people selling lottery tickets profit far more than the people buying them.

Which Brings Me to the Coaching Content Grift

There is a whole ecosystem of artists who stopped making art to sell courses about making art. They have YouTube channels with just enough genuinely useful content to keep you hooked, and then a paid program — they call them cohorts or courses— where the real secrets allegedly live. I've followed some of these people. I've learned useful things from their free videos. I've also noticed every single time that the free content is calibrated specifically to leave out the one thing you actually need, so you'll spend money to find out what it is.

What they're really selling isn't knowledge. It's hope. The hope that someone else cracked the code and will hand it to you for $497.

I'll give them credit: that's a real business model. Cynical, but real. They identified a market — struggling artists desperate for a shortcut — and they monetized it. That's more business acumen than most of their customers have.

Here's the formula, and I'm giving it to you for free: work hard, verify everything, read the contracts, price correctly, protect your IP, build relationships slowly, and do not believe anyone who hasn't shown you their receipts.

What Running an Art Business Actually Takes

I've been doing this long enough — in business, not just in art — to know that the skills below separate the people who last from the people who quit. None of them are glamorous. All of them work.

  • Be stoic. Above everything else, be stoic. Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca — these men built an entire philosophy around one idea: you cannot control what happens to you, only how you respond to it. For a business owner that isn't a nice thought. It is a survival skill. I was at an event recently when a woman from an organization that had not selected me for an exhibition recognized who I was and started apologizing profusely. I stopped her and told her I don't expect to get chosen for most submissions and that I was genuinely grateful for the opportunity to apply. She visibly relaxed — like she'd been bracing for a scene. What that told me is that artists regularly make scenes when they don't get chosen. They expect the rejection to hurt people back. That is not a business mindset. There are no feelings in business. True story.

  • Rejection is data, not judgment. Every submission you don't get into, every gallery that passes, every collector who ghosts you — none of it is a verdict on your worth as a human being or an artist. It means that opportunity wasn't the right fit, the right jury, the right timing, or the right budget. File it, learn what you can, and move on. I am genuinely new to the art world and the success I've already had surprised even me — not because I'm the most talented person in any room I walk into, but because I don't fall apart when someone says no.

  • Read everything before you sign anything. Contracts, submission agreements, competition rules, consignment terms, gallery splits — the actual document, not the summary. The People's Artist competition is a perfect case study: the terms that mattered were buried in footer links that almost nobody clicked. Rights grabs, arbitration clauses, and vague prize language never appear in the headline. They appear in the fine print. If you won't read it, you don't get to complain about it later.

  • Verify before you trust. Verify everything. I run every call for artists, every contract, and every opportunity through research before I give it a second thought. I use AI tools to help me do that faster (this is a great way for artists to use AI) — and then I verify what the AI tells me, because I don't take anyone's word for anything, and sometimes they get it wrong. When something turns out to be legitimate, I'm genuinely pleasantly surprised. That's how you know your standards are working.

  • Know your revenue model and own it. There are many legitimate ways to make money as an artist — commissions, originals, licensing, teaching, gallery sales, content. Not one of those is the right path for everyone. But you need to pick yours consciously, understand your margins, and stop chasing every shiny opportunity that hits your feed. I make the bulk of my income from commissions. I know that. I build toward it on purpose.

  • Price like a business, not like someone who's grateful to be noticed. Underpricing is one of the most self-destructive habits in the art world and it is everywhere. It signals desperation, devalues your work, and creates a ceiling you will spend years trying to break through. Know your costs. Know your market. Price accordingly and hold the line.

  • Build your CV and collector base deliberately. Going viral is not a strategy. Fifty thousand Instagram followers who never buy anything is not a strategy. A single collector who buys once and comes back is worth more than any amount of online noise. Every show, every submission, every commission should answer one question: does this build something lasting, or does it just feel good today?

  • Your brand is a business asset. Consistency in how you present your work, price it, communicate about it, and show up for it is not vanity — it is the difference between being remembered and being forgotten.

  • Grow a thicker skin or stay a hobbyist. The art world has gatekeepers, politics, favoritism, and cliques just like every other industry. You will be overlooked. You will be underestimated. You will watch less talented people get opportunities you deserved. None of it is personal and none of it is permanent. What is permanent is how you conduct yourself when it happens.

One More Thing

The artists who are angry about the People's Artist competition right now aren't wrong to feel misled. The structure of that competition is deliberately designed to look like one thing and function as another. I get it.

But it was findable. All of it. In five minutes. With a search engine every single one of us carries in our pocket.

The lesson is not that Colossal is a villain. The lesson is that Johnny Depp's name should have been a reason to look closer — not a reason to stop looking.

Celebrity plus charity plus free entry plus big prize equals read the rules. Every time. No exceptions.

Being an artist is a calling. Running an art business is a skill set. You need both, and one does not substitute for the other. The artists still standing in five years will be the ones who figured that out.

The rest will be in someone's course, learning how to monetize their passion.

Leslie Wisenbaker is a Texas-based fine artist. She works in oil painting, epoxy resin, pyrography, and macrame. She has been running businesses since she was 19 and went full-time as an artist in 2025. You can find her work at lesliewisenbaker.com.

Sources:

Leslie Wisenbaker
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