The FASO Podcast

The FASO Podcast sits at the intersection of visual art, sales, and creative endurance. It is built for artists who know talent alone will not carry a career. Laura Baer speaks with artists and art-world figures about the choices that shape a sustainable practice, from pricing and email marketing to gallery relationships, commissions, and community. The business advice is concrete. Cheaper work is not automatically easier to sell, social platforms are not the whole marketing plan, and waiting to be discovered is treated as a fragile myth. The show also keeps returning to the interior side of an artist’s life. Rejection is normal. Discipline matters. Voice takes time. A painting career can ask for both a thick skin and a soft heart. Recent conversations stretch from Emma Kalf’s sober encouragement about self-directed art careers to Matthew James Collins’s view of painting as a lifelong search for home and culture. Stephanie Marzella’s episode centers courage, cohesive work, emotional connection, and strategic relocation. Miriam Shulman brings a sharper business lens, arguing for confident identity, stronger pricing, and email-led collector relationships. Carmen Drake’s conversation warns against becoming a production machine, placing feeling and continued learning at the center of the studio. Grace DeVito’s episode emphasizes intentional practice, portraiture, client collaboration, and mastery developed over many hours. Compilation episodes widen the perspective by gathering past guests around rejection and artist networks. Those episodes make the show feel less like a single interview lane and more like an ongoing field guide for the working artist’s life. The pacing is conversational, with long reflective answers and practical takeaways threaded through them. It is not a theory-heavy art program. It is closer to a candid professional workshop, one where artists talk about what has actually helped them keep making, showing, selling, and growing. The strongest moments come when technique, emotional honesty, and business realism meet in the same exchange. For artists trying to build credibility without losing their sense of purpose, the show offers steady, grounded company.