THE SELF-DETERMINED ARTIST
Self-Knowledge Before Strategy
Know what you are building before you decide how to build it.
There is a version of your creative life where the work you make and the life you live are no longer in constant negotiation, and where your decisions about what to make, how to share it, what to charge and who it is for come from you.
Getting there starts with knowing what you want your career to be built around, and that is where this course begins.
Self-Knowledge Before Strategy
Artists everywhere are claiming the authority to decide what their work means, what it is worth and what it is for, and that shift asks something of each of us. It asks you to know your own answers well enough that the market, the algorithm and whatever is moving through your feed become information you can weigh rather than instructions you follow.
Most of the advice available to artists begins with pricing, marketing, finding an audience, what to post and how to sell more. Those are real questions, and they get better answers when you ask them second. When you know why you make what you make, what you value, how you decide, how your habits shape your days and what your inner critic tends to say when the stakes go up, practical advice stops being a pile of instructions and becomes something you can use.
There is also the question of what success means to you. We absorb so many ideas about what a successful artist is supposed to look like — how visible you should be, how much you should sell, what opportunities you should pursue, how hard you should be working. It is worth stopping to ask whether any of that actually reflects the life and career you want. Once you can see the difference, you have much more freedom to make choices that are genuinely your own.
The Self-Determined Artist is a self-paced guided journey that works through these questions with you and shows how the answers change the way you approach every practical part of your career.
What the course covers
These lessons build on one another, moving from what brought you to your work through to how you hold your ground in an industry full of expectations.
01 · Your Why
We start with what brought you to your art in the first place. This is different from an artist statement or an elevator pitch; it is the reason the work has held your attention over the years, and it becomes the reference point for everything that follows.
02 · Your Values
Your values shape more of your career than you might expect, from the opportunities you say yes to, to the ones that leave you uneasy. This lesson helps you name what you care about so that your decisions can start to reflect it.
03 · Your Habits
The way you work, spend, decide, make things and respond to opportunity follows patterns you may never have looked at directly. We look at them without judgement to find a way to work with what realistically won’t change, and what can be tweaked. No pain.
04 · Your Inner Critic
Rather than trying to silence the critical voice most artists know well, we look at your relationship with it and at the ways it enters your creative and professional choices, so that you can hear it without being directed by it.
05 · How You Learn and Decide
There is no single correct way to build an artistic career, and there is no single way of taking in information either. Understanding how you learn, how you make decisions and what helps you move from knowing something to acting on it gives you a sturdier foundation for the path you choose.
06 · Holding Your Ground
The art world comes with expectations, and while some of them are useful, others belong to someone else's career. This lesson builds the self-awareness to tell them apart and the confidence to make choices that fit who you are and what you want.
07 · Pricing, Selling and Sharing Your Work
Every price you set, every sale you make and every way you describe your work draws on your values, your habits and the voice of your inner critic, whether you notice it or not. This lesson looks at why that is, and at how the self-knowledge you have built in the earlier lessons lets you approach pricing, selling and marketing as yourself, in ways that support both the value of your work and the life you want it to fund.
What this work changes
When you understand what you value and how you work, the practical side of your career begins to look different. Pricing becomes a question of what your work is worth to you and what kind of life you want it to support, rather than a guess based on what other artists charge. Selling gets easier when you are no longer trying to become someone else to do it, and marketing turns into a way of talking plainly about work you understand, reaching the people it was made for at a pace you can keep up.
The benefits reach past your art career as well, since self-knowledge goes wherever you go. The clarity that helps you set a price can help you make decisions in the rest of your life, the understanding you build around your inner critic can change how you meet uncertainty, and knowing your values makes it easier to recognize which opportunities belong to you and which ones only look good from a distance.
It also changes how you take in practical advice. When you know yourself well, new information has something to attach to, and instead of collecting more tips you start putting what you already know to work.
Seven lessons
A complete, guided course that moves from your why and your values through your habits, your inner critic and the way you learn and decide, to holding your ground in an industry that is demanding more from artists than ever.
A 1:1 session
With me, to put it all into action.
Twelve months of access
You can move through the lessons at your own pace and return to them as your practice changes, so the material keeps working for you over the full year.
$395 CAD
Course fee when enrolment opens
This includes your lessons, a 1:1 session with me, and twelve months of access to the course.
BONUS: When enrolment opens, everyone on the waitlist who joins the course will also receive two months of complimentary paid membership in The Artists Well.
What's included
A Note from Lynn
For more than 25 years I have worked with artists, arts organizations, governments and cultural communities, and over that time one thing has become clearer to me.
Artists are given a great deal of information about how to succeed and very little help understanding themselves, their relationship to the work and how to build a life that centres around you, not the industry or an algorithm.
Self-knowledge before strategy. Thats why I created The Self-Determined Artist to close that gap and help you build a solid foundation on which to build a sustainable practice / career.
Artfully Yours,
Lynn Feasey
What’s it like working with me?
"I have had the pleasure of working with Lynn on and off for many years and in many parts of the world. She is a fierce and capable art consultant and curator, with a fine eye for detail, strong support for her artists, and a graceful persistence when there is pressure to get a show ready for the public. Lynn brings a positive energy and years of experience to her work and in the five exhibitions I have done with her, I have watched her turn them into something special."
CHRISTOPHER PORTER CINEMATOGRAPHER, FILMMAKER & FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHER
"Lynn's Wayfinding Sessions are what I've been seeking for many years, since moving to Canada from Mexico.
Thanks to her expertise in several areas of the arts, she has a panoramic view of the sector and knows the intricacies of building an art career. She also has the sensitivity to understand the struggles of being an artist, and also knows how to put in action very specific tasks that allow change and growth.
One of the most valuable aspects of this work is not only her unique inside-out approach to finding my path to become the artist I want to be, coupled with the guidance of an experienced mentor."
DIEGO NARVAEZ, ARTIST
“When I first met Lynn, I was showing art in a local coffee shop. Lynn has given me invaluable advice that has played a big role in helping me grow my art career. I have since done a solo touring show to public galleries and museums, group and solo gallery shows, art festivals, international art fairs, cultural events… and I'm currently prepping my first international solo show."
JENNIFER WALDEN, ARTIST
Is this course for me?
This course is for you if you want to build a career that fits the life you want, and if you would rather understand yourself well before your next big decision than follow a formula designed around someone else's circumstances with less than ideal outcomes. You may want to earn a living from your work while keeping hold of the reason you started making it, and you may be ready to question some of what the industry says you should be doing. You may also want to approach money, pricing, selling and marketing from a clear understanding of what you value and how you work. And if you have simply had a sense that there is a more thoughtful way to build an artistic life, you are right, and this is a good place to begin.
Start with yourself.
Do not assume you need to become more visible, more productive or more strategic, or more like the artists you see doing well online before you can build a meaningful career. What you need is to know yourself well enough that the decisions you make are your own. That is what self-determination means, and it is where this course begins.