By Luke Acton
In a March 8 session, multimedia artist and filmmaker Roberto Mighty highlighted the most important ways for artists to generate interest in any creative endeavor and connect to a wider audience.
Arts Wayland presented “Bring Your Art to Life through Video” to teach local creatives how to market their work online as part of the Margaret Stewart Lindsey Masterclass Series,
To introduce his lesson, Mighty told an anecdote from the production of his PBS series “World’s Greatest Cemeteries,” where a visit to a well-known cemetery left him in tears.
“I saw, literally, a pile of bricks and I said, ‘What’s that?’ and the guy told me, ‘Oh, Mr. Mighty,’ and he tells me how this pile of bricks is the story of an incredible person who lived here 150 years ago,” he recounted. “So there were all these beautifully carved monuments, but which monument am I now talking about? It shows that story rules.”
To emphasize this point, Mighty told the story about how Vincent Van Gogh was a complete unknown until his sister-in-law began marketing his paintings not for their artistic value, but with the story of a tortured artist who died from his suffering.
Fortunately for modern artists, technology and social media have made broadcasting a personal narrative to the public much easier than it was in 19th-century France.
A helpful step-by-step storyboard handout illustrated how a quick video posted to Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok can capture interest by sharing a behind-the-scenes peek at the making of a painting.
“People want to know about your process. They don’t believe you thought of it off the top of your head. They wonder whether it was hard,” Mighty said. “Show that it took some sweat to get it this wonderful.”
That means shots of looking pensively at a blank canvas, the artist’s hands at work on their palette, a studio time-lapse, the final reveal, and most importantly, a close-up of the artist’s face tells their story.
Because, Mighty posits, it’s the “why” which makes an artist’s work stand out from the crowd, elevating a simple landscape, for example, into the setting for an inner look into another person’s life journey.
For the last hour of the workshop, the class was tasked with pairing up and brainstorming the narrative behind their own art, a challenge made even harder by a limit of one sentence. Then, as a final twist, Mighty had everyone share not their own story, but their partner’s.
“Jean-Pierre comes to me as someone traveling to capture and record a viewpoint,” said Bert, a musician, introducing a fellow artist. “His art is a mechanism for capturing a viewpoint. He’s traveled a long way, considering he’s not from this zip code; he’s come all the way from across the pond.”
Mighty encouraged Jean-Pierre to give more and to dig into the reason why he moved from France to Massachusetts.
When he explained how he came here for love, Mighty exclaimed, “My God, that’s the best possible reason. I think that’s a very powerful reason.”
There are also stories where the subject fails at something or goes through a great period of anguish, which Mighty explained are also a gripping way to relate an artistic journey.
“We want to hear the thing where I failed at this, or this terrible thing happened,” he said. “And if you think this is crass, it is human nature. I’m not saying he needs to tell your deepest, darkest secrets … I’m saying that if it’s perceived from the heart, in any way, it’s more compelling.”
Of course, having skill and experience to paint a transportive forest scene or write an unforgettable song is important. But all of that talent can be wasted if the emotional story behind the artwork does not hook its audience.
It is this process of forming a uniquely personal story, Mighty claimed, which is the most important part of his class, and something he hopes each creative will remember as they continue on their artistic journey.
