It’s Cyber-Monday today. The Black Friday of the internet. In the UK alone there is expected to be expenditure of over £650 million. It’s the worst of consumerism. The worst of capitalism. The worst of marketing and business.

But business and marketing aren’t bad. Like anything, in the right context, they can be good – it’s the abuse and excess which taints them.

Which brings me to art. There are many artists who have and do make their living from their art. The work they create pays the bills. And we all need to pay bills.

So, naturally, for anyone wanting to make a living from their work, there becomes a huge temptation to create work which we know will sell. To invest our talent into work we know people will buy, which there is a guaranteed market for. And to market this work intensively.

As any artist will tell you, there is a cost to the work we create. Both in time, energy and money. And in time I’ve discovered, if we want to create better quality work, help more people, and expand our reach, then business and marketing have to be part of what we do.

But there’s something missing here.

Authenticity.

We need to balance authenticity with the reality of business and marketing. So how and why do we do this?