How Do You Balance Art and Commerce?

Interesting piece in Campaign (2nd March) about ‘Adland’s Artists’ – advertising luminaries who create art in their spare time, with pics of their creations and quotes about why they do it.

Some of them, like Graham Fink (Executive Creative Director, M&C Saatchi), see a link between their advertising work and their art:

“Art is massively important. It’s important to stamp a part of your spirit on your work projects.”

While Trevor Beattie (Partner, Beattie McGuinness Bungay) sees the two as worlds apart:

“Art has nothing to do with my work; art is in a box marked ‘art’. Advertising is strictly commerce.”

Here’s the article – you need to sign in but apparently registration is now free. (The Brandrepublic site has just gone all Web 2.0 with a new design and blogs – maybe Russell’s having an influence.)

Personally, I like having my poetry occupy a slightly separate space from my coaching work (it even insisted on having its own poetry blog) and I don’t mention it much during coaching sessions, but I’m sure the two influence each other.

How about you? Do you keep your ‘professional creativity’ and your ‘art’ separate or do you like to mix them up?